CHAPTER IX.

GENERAL FREMONT AND THE MORMONS.

John C. Fremont.

1842 This noted explorer so prominently identified with our early Colorado history, was educated at Charleston College. He then became a teacher on a United States Sloop of War on board of which was detailed a young Lieutenant who later became famous as Admiral Farragut. Afterwards, Fremont was employed as a surveyor for a railroad in South Carolina. In 1838 he was made a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Topographical Corps—the same corps that gave us Major Long. He was selected to make a trip of geographical research and observation into Iowa, Minnesota and Dakota with a noted French Scientist named Nicollet, who had been sent to this country by his Government. In 1840 Fremont headed an expedition for the establishment of Military Posts in the West, and to definitely fix the position of South Pass on the head waters of the North Platte River, which was on the line of travel to the western coast. He was a long time getting ready, and did not leave Washington for St. Louis until May 2, 1842, from which point he took a public steamer up the Missouri River. On board he met Kit Carson, with whose personality he was so pleased that he dismissed the French trapper he had already engaged as guide, and selected Carson instead. Carson was then on his way back to the West, from having given his little girl into the care of the Sisters at a Convent in St. Louis; her mother, who was an Indian woman, having recently died. They left the steamer at the mouth of the Kansas River, which empties into the Missouri where Kansas City is now located. It was then a little settlement of a few rude houses, known as Kansas Landing, and later became Westport. A little way above was Roubidoux Landing, named for a French Fur Trapper and Trader who operated in Colorado. This Landing afterwards became St. Joseph. Fremont says, as they started out across the prairie to the westward, "It was like a ship leaving the shore for a long voyage, and carrying with her provisions against all needs in its isolation on the ocean."

A Government Scout.

They traveled northwest until they reached the Platte River where the City of Kearney is now situated, near which a Fort was established, called "Fort Kearney." From this point they proceeded west along the south bank of that stream, one hundred miles to the junction of the two Platte Rivers. Here they divided, Fremont with three others following the South Platte, the remaining nine going by way of the North Platte to the fur-trading station that later became Fort Laramie, at which point the Laramie River joins the Platte. On the way, Fremont was entertained one night by the Indians at a feast. It was a banquet with no suggestion of fairyland, such as so often delights us now; no subdued strains from a hidden orchestra pouring forth its entrancing harmonies; no myriads of electric lights dazzling with their splendid brilliancy; no wealth of roses filling the air with their rich perfume; no polished mahogany, damask linen, glowing glassware or priceless silver; no well groomed men or richly gowned women, radiant in their loveliness. There were none of these accessories, but there was princely hospitality. There was the ushering of the guests to their places by the Chiefs, with the courtly dignity that white men might equal but never excel. In honor of the occasion the choicest robes were spread upon the ground for seats. There was the rich soup of fat buffalo meat and rice, served in deep wooden bowls, with tin spoons, by the women. There was the dog boiling in the pot for the second course, in token of a state occasion, while the disconsolate puppies moaned pitifully in the corner of the wigwam.

On July 10th Fremont reached Fort St. Vrain on the Platte, established about ten miles south of where the Cache la Poudre River and the Platte unite. He remained here a few days and then headed north to Fort Laramie, getting too far East, however, over on Crow Creek, where he had to travel forty miles without water—the first and only hardship on his trip going and coming. He found the rest of the party waiting for him, and they proceeded west up the Platte to the South Pass, the point of his destination when he started from Washington. He found the Pass a well-established thoroughfare, made so by the fur-trading companies. He ascertained its height to be seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-three feet. There was no pass anywhere about of so low an altitude. It is about two hundred miles due west of Fort Laramie—which is not, however, the Laramie City located on the Union Pacific Railroad northwest of Cheyenne.

Fremont saw to the perpetuation of his name in the highest mountain peak, about forty miles northwest of the Pass, and just east of Green River, having an elevation of thirteen thousand seven hundred and ninety feet. He then started on his return to St. Louis, where he arrived October 10, 1842, his journey both ways being without special value or interest.

Fremont's second trip was made in 1843, and seems to have been principally for the purpose of establishing a shorter route through the mountains than the Oregon Trail by the way of South Pass. He came in from the east, up one of the branches of the Republican River to Fort St. Vrain on the Platte, where he arrived July Fourth. On his way he no doubt approached the Platte between Akron and Fort Morgan, where there is a Butte named for him. He tried to learn from the hunters, trappers and Indians, of a trail west through the great range of mountains, but there was no one who could give him any information. Following the Platte from Fort St. Vrain, he reports finding a Fort Lancaster about ten miles up the river, which was the trading post of Mr. Lupton and had then somewhat the appearance of a farm. He passed through a village of Arapahoe Indians, probably near the mouth of Clear Creek, camped a little above Cherry Creek, and followed the Platte River to its entrance into the mountains at the canon. Needing meat, he went east on to the plains in search of buffalo; crossed Cherry Creek and the road to Bent's Fort; reached Bijou Creek, thence up to its head on the divide where he reported an elevation of seventy-five hundred feet—being the same altitude as at Palmer Lake, twenty-three miles west. Altitudinal ascertainings are taken by the simple process of looking at a watchlike, vest-pocket instrument, whose delicately adjusted mechanism is affected by air-pressure. From this place, he made a sketch of Pike's Peak, and is "charmed with the view of the valley of Fountain Creek," on which Manitou and Colorado Springs are located, and which he reached a little north of its junction with the Arkansas River. He speaks of finding at this point a "Pueblo" where a settlement of mountaineers were living, married to Spanish wives, "who had collected together and occupied themselves with farming, and a desultory Indian trade." They had come from the Taos Valley settlements, the Valley that was later named the Rio Grande. "Pueblo" was the name given by the Mexicans to their civilized villages. Taos is taken from the name of the Taos tribe of Indians. Returning he followed up Fountain Creek to Manitou Springs, thence north over the Divide to Fort St. Vrain.

Fremont then decided to go up the Cache la Poudre Valley and cross the Divide to the Laramie River. He describes the buttes he saw on this trip "with their sharp points and green colors"; the same so clearly defined now, on the automobile road beyond Dale Creek, between Fort Collins and Laramie City, one of the most picturesque scenes in the whole State of Colorado. He followed the Laramie River down to the present line of the Union Pacific Railroad, then west to the North Platte River and beyond, where, getting tangled up in the hills, he finally recognized the Sweetwater Mountains to the north to which he proceeded; thence to the familiar Oregon Trail which he followed to Salt Lake and on to California.

On his return he entered Colorado near the mouth of Green River, went northeast and encountered some branch of the White River, possibly the Snake River, which he followed over the Divide to the North Platte River, and thence up into North Park. While in Middle Park, a number of squaws came to his camp greatly excited and made known the fact that nearby a great battle was in progress between two Indian tribes, and they wanted him to go with his party to help their side. He declined and hurriedly departed. He passed over into the Cripple Creek country, where after a few days of aimless traveling he descended a branch of the Arkansas River to Pueblo.

Fremont's memoirs are very rambling, and contain such a mass of undigested material that it requires much reading and study to follow him in his wanderings through Colorado. The streams, mountains and localities had no names, and he gave them none. We can only trace his journeyings by his camping places where he gives his latitudes and longitudes, and which is only incidentally given and not in its regular order. He ascertained latitude and longitude by the use of a scientific instrument in its application to the sun, moon and fixed stars, as the Indians often found their own locations by the study of these same heavenly bodies, from centuries of observation without an instrument, the knowledge being passed down from father to son, generation after generation.

On one of his trips, as he came in sight of Bent's Fort, the three cannon mounted on its parapets, belched forth a greeting that sounded sweet to the ears of the trained soldier, as the reverberating music of the booming of the guns rolled down the Valley of the Arkansas to meet him.

A storm in the mountains is a frightful thing in winter and more than one was encountered by General Fremont and his party. A number of the men sacrificed their lives through the mistaken judgment of a leader, who ordered them forward to breast the fury of those icy blasts of snow and sleet. Oh! The terror of such a death! The awe of those cold, bleak, snow-capped pinnacles; how cruelly they look down upon the lost and helpless victim, prostrate at their feet, snow-bound, hopeless and in despair! How subtly and menacingly the sharp wind moans; how it shrieks and roars through the gulches, and how the giant pines creak, and writhe, and groan, as they bend before the gale! How the blinding, biting, swirling snow falls through the freezing air, burying the trail and filling the icy gorges with ever deepening drifts! And at last, the shivering sufferer meets his doom as he sinks in utter exhaustion on his bed of snow, and drifts away into the stupor of death. The inanimate form is buried deeper and deeper under its white shroud, and heedless of the tempest raging above, sleeps the sound, dreamless sleep of death.

Fremont tells little of his last three trips; some being on secret missions for the Government; one was for his own benefit and that of Senator Benton of Missouri, whose daughter, Jessie Benton, he had married—a lady of many fine womanly qualities and personal charms. On one of his trips, William Gilpin was along, on a visit to the settlements of Oregon. Gilpin later became Colorado's first Governor. One expedition took him up the Rio Grande to Salt Lake and on to the Coast.

Indians Watching Fremont's Force Fording the Platte.

When representing the Government, Fremont's work was along military lines principally, his operations leading up to the conquest of California in 1847. The name California appears in an old Spanish romance as an Island, where innumerable precious stones were found, and Cortez applied the name to the Bay and to the country that is now California which he thought was an Island. Fremont's work, however, was not all military, for at the same time he was mapping streams, taking altitudes, and making reports that would assist in ascertaining facts about a country then little known or understood. Colorado has a County named for him, of which Canon City is the County Seat. There are Counties in Wyoming, Idaho and Iowa, similarly named. Eighteen states of the union have towns bearing his name. "Fremont Basin" covers the western part of Utah, all of Nevada, and a part of the southeastern portion of California—in all, a region about four hundred and fifty miles square. "Fremont Pass" in the Rocky Mountains has an elevation of eleven thousand three hundred and thirteen feet and is in the Gore Range, about ten miles northwest of Leadville.

General Fremont occupied many positions of trust under the Government. He was Governor of California when there was much trouble that diplomacy might have averted. He was Governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1882. His exploring trips had made him famous and he secured the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 1856, but was defeated by Buchanan. In 1864 his name was put in nomination for the Presidency but Lincoln's popularity so overshadowed him that his name was withdrawn. He was Major-General of the Army in the Civil War, with headquarters at St. Louis, where he promulgated the unauthorized order freeing the slaves of those in arms against the Government, which so embarrassed the Administration that the order was repealed and he was relieved of his authority. Later, reinstated, he refused to take part in a battle because command of the army had been given to General Pope whom he claimed to outrank.

Fremont journeyed all over Colorado and failed to find anything worthy of note. While camped on the sites of Cripple Creek and Leadville, he saw no signs of the enormous gold deposits of the greatest gold mines in Colorado. While at North Park he did not observe the coal outcroppings there—probably the most extensive coal fields in the United States. While traveling through our valleys he could not look into the future and see them groaning under a diversity of crops, the most valuable ever raised in any country. He drank from our cool sparkling streams, but he did not see how that wealth of water could be supplied to the thirsty crops. He saw millions of fat buffalo on the plains, but he failed to realize that the same nutritious grasses would make beef equal to the corn-fed product of the East. He viewed the most sublime scenery ever looked upon by the eyes of man, but his reports contained no adequate description of the majestic outlines of the mountains whose grandeur thrills the beholders from all the countries of the world.

The Mormons.

1847 The Mormons as a religious body, attempting to get beyond the reach of the power of the United States Government which they claimed was persecuting them, sought solace in the bosom of the Dominion of Mexico, which then owned much of our country west of the Rocky Mountains, wrested by them from Spain in their war for freedom. At this very time the United States was fighting Mexico, and the Mormons had no more than gotten out of the United States before they were in again by Mexico ceding to our Government in 1848, the very territory which these much persecuted people had chosen for a new settlement. The Mormons had gathered from all quarters at Florence, Nebraska, just above Omaha, where the water works of that City are now located. They had wintered at this point in great discomfort, with much sickness, and so many deaths that the country seemed to be one vast grave yard.

In January, 1847, Brigham Young started West with one hundred and forty-two in his party to find a location to which the rest should follow. They had seventy-three wagons which moved two abreast for protection, and they had a cannon and were well armed. They reported seeing hundreds of thousands of buffalo grazing along the Platte Valley, and were obliged to send outriders ahead to make a way through the herds for their caravan. They traveled on the north side of the Platte River so as to have an exclusive trail of their own, and it became known as the "Mormon Trail"; the fur traders having made their trail along the south side of that river. When they reached Fort Laramie, they ferried across to the south side of the river where the Government Post had been located; the change from the north to the south side being necessary because of the physical difficulties on the side of the river where they had been traveling. Here on June 1, 1847, they were joined by a party of Mormons who had started from Mississippi and Illinois; had wintered where Pueblo now is; had passed north through Colorado, and doubtless over the ground occupied by Denver following the Platte River to Greeley where they would travel almost due north to Fort Laramie. These Mormons at Pueblo were the very beginning of anything approaching white citizenship in Colorado, for no other white families had ever spent so long a time within the present limits of our State.

General Fremont had passed by Salt Lake in 1843 on one of his expeditions, and doubtless the Mormons knew of that Valley from his report as well as of other points of the West. But the Mormons did not know where they were going to settle, and had started north-westerly from South Pass in search of a location and then turned to the south to Salt Lake Valley. Upon their arrival there, the first day, they planted six acres of potatoes because of the necessity of having food for the vast numbers who were to follow them. The rest of the people started from Florence July 4, 1847, and consisted of nearly two thousand persons, about six hundred wagons, over two thousand oxen, and many horses, cows, sheep, hogs and chickens. Following later, came hundreds with push carts, who started too late to get through before winter set in. Their suffering, starving, sickness, and the death of nearly a quarter of their number on the way is a sad story, and is the toll exacted in the settling of a new country.

For many months, the Mormon Trail was lined with the traffic of thousands of emigrants from all parts of the United States and Europe. There were wagon trains hauling supplies of all kinds, such as merchandise, machinery, seed and building materials. There were the two-wheeled carts into which food and a small allowance of necessary apparel were placed for the trip; and those carts were pushed all the way across the plains by both old and young. It was said that every step of the way was marked by a grave. No such sight and no such suffering has ever been witnessed before in the settlement of any part of the world.

Ten years afterwards, the Church, grown arrogant, defied the power of the United States Government and proposed war. General Albert Sidney Johnson was sent on an expedition against them. Starting too late to cross the mountains, the army became storm bound and was compelled to winter at Fort Bridger in the southwest corner of Wyoming, at a tremendous loss of lives, both of men and horses. They were short of supplies, and an expedition was sent to New Mexico for food. It was successful, and returned north through Colorado, skirting the eastern base of the mountains and, no doubt, passed through the site of Denver just before the gold excitement broke out in Colorado. They doubtless followed the trail taken by Fremont to Fort Laramie in 1842, and by the Mormons in 1847.

1849 The rush for the new gold discoveries in California began in 1849 and in a year it became a panic, so great was the hurry to reach there from the East. It is estimated that seventeen thousand persons passed Fort Laramie in June, 1848, coming up the Platte from Omaha; while from Kansas City, Leavenworth and St. Joseph, many thousands passed through southeastern Colorado on the Santa Fe Trail, and thence to Salt Lake where the Mormons grew rich in their trade with these excited gold seekers. Nothing has ever been seen resembling the gold developments of California. Fortunes were made in a day when a treasure house was unlocked, and poverty claimed the affluent in a night, when a pocket pinched out. The wealth that was poured into the laps of the fortunate prospectors was fabulous. The Comstock Mine alone, named for the man who opened it up and lost it, yielded a solid mass of treasure, amounting to one hundred and eight million dollars to the four fortunate owners. It sent to the United States Senate, Fair, Stewart and Jones, three of the partners, and gave the Atlantic Cable Line to Mackey, the fourth, whose son still controls it.

So, having been discovered by General Coronado and his army with their brilliant cavalcade and martial music; by the two black-robed Friars with their noiseless followers; by Lieutenant Pike and his loyal band; by Major Long and his associates; and last, by General Fremont with his five exploring parties; while the tidal wave of travel and excitement is sweeping by us to its destiny on the sunny western slope, and we are left in solitude, awaiting the bright awakening ten years hence; let us take an introspective view of the people whose history is forever interwoven with ours, whose race is nearly run, while ours is just begun.

Ventura, Historian of the Tribe of Taos Indians, Garbed in His White Buffalo Robe—Made White by Tanning.

Indian History was Transmitted Orally to the Youth, the Brightest of Whom Became in Turn the Historian.

CHAPTER X.

OPPORTUNITY.

A Fortune Won and Lost.

Hanging in a room of the White House when the magnetic, able and masterful Roosevelt was President, was this beautiful poem of Senator Ingalls. A gem of rarest value in word painting; a literary production beyond criticism; but in sentiment, harmful and discouraging! It is not true! Opportunity has knocked repeatedly at the door of countless numbers, and future generations will hear its call again and again. Only one chance to be given us? No! Life is too fine and means too much for "the hour of fate" to hang on so slender a thread as a single opportunity. It comes many times to some; it comes but once to others; it does not come to all. To Antoine Janis, a French Trapper, it knocked unbidden at his door but once; he failed to answer, and he lived to appreciate his great loss, for he had fortune placed within his grasp and did not realize it. Once, all the beautiful Cache la Poudre Valley was his; every acre of land from La Porte to the Box Elder; every lot in Fort Collins; wealth which would run into the millions. It was the gift of the Indians, and was his as absolutely as though it had come by Deed of Warranty with all its covenants, clear and indefeasible. The Government in its Treaties with the Indians recognized their grants, and had Janis asserted his rights to this vast property, his claim would undoubtedly have been recognized by the Government as in many similar cases. He continued his residence in Larimer County for thirty-four years, going then to the Indians at the Pine Ridge Agency and remaining there until his death. The close friendship, early formed between him and the Indians, was never broken, and they buried him with honors.

I like to imagine that famous meeting at La Porte, when that Valley, then nameless, changed hands. The Indians as a race were dignified, serious, and on formal occasions acted with great deliberation. They were a generous people, and were about to make a present to the White Brother who had come to dwell among them. Bold Wolf, the Chief, called his counsellors together. From out the seven hundred tepees they came, in their brilliant dress of state. They gathered around the camp fire, seated on their feet, with Antoine Janis as their honored guest. They smoked the pipe of peace; not a pipe for each, but one for all, that would draw them closer in lasting friendship. Resting their painted cheeks on the palms of their hands, they listened with the utmost respect to those who spoke. The oratory of the Indian is proverbial. His dignified and serious bearing, his simple words and brief sentences, his profound earnestness and apt illustrations, made him a master of eloquence. It was an occasion for thrilling discourse. The land where they were assembled was theirs. It was the land of their fathers. It was theirs by right of discovery, by right of occupancy. Here they had lived their lives; here their children had been born; here their dead were buried, and here they had worshipped the Great Spirit to whom their ancestors had bowed. And they were to give away the best of their heritage; the luxuriant meadows of the richest and most beautiful valley in their vast domain were to go to the White Brother forever. Thereafter, every man, woman and child of the tribe recognized that the country they looked out upon, over which their ponies grazed, across which the buffalo roamed, even the very ground upon which their wigwams stood, was the property of Antoine Janis.

The Call of the Blood.

About the year 1800 some French trappers and hunters were passing out of Colorado, into New Mexico, in quest of new streams in which to ply their avocation. The pack ponies which they were driving on ahead suddenly stopped and centered about an object at which they sniffed intelligently. The trappers coming forward to investigate looked at each other in amazement as they gathered around a deserted child lying on the bosom of the unfeeling earth, hungry and helpless. These bronzed and bearded men were heavy handed, but not stony hearted; and they met the responsibility as best they could. Moses had been left in the bullrushes of a stream for his preservation. This child had been left in the tangled weeds on the bank of a stream for its destruction. Moses lived to become the leader of a nation. This child was saved—but let us see. It was taken by the trappers, named Friday for the day upon which it was found, as in the tale of Robinson Crusoe, an Indian youth was named Friday for the day of his discovery. Friday grew and thrived, was adopted by one of the party, and at the age of fourteen was taken along to St. Louis, where he was sent to school, and shared in the joys and griefs of other boys of his age. When he was twenty-one, the cry that had long been suppressed gave utterance. He wanted to see his people. Leaving home, he came to Colorado, and to the tribe of the Arapahoes, who had crossed the path of the trappers twenty-one years before. It was a new life to which he was admitted. During his visit a buffalo hunt was organized in his behalf. He watched the preparations, saw the gathering of the ponies from off the prairies, the testing of the bows and arrows, the night of feasting and dancing before the start at earliest dawn. Wending their way over the plains, they finally spied the herd. At once the dullness of the hunters gave place to trained alertness; absolute quiet reigned; the ponies crept forward slowly and softly, step by step, with their riders clinging to their sides to give the appearance of a band of grazing horses. At last they were near enough, and then the signal. Away went the horses and riders in a whirlwind of excitement, the eyes of the riders blazing, the nostrils of the horses dilating. Away went the herd, shaking the earth with the thunders of their flight; away flew the arrows to the twang of the bows, as they sped straight and true into the heaving sides of the struggling animals. Down went the buffalo, down on their trembling knees, down on their quivering sides, as they stretched themselves out for their final death struggle. Down went the Indians to dance in glee around the prostrate bodies of their trophies.

And Friday? No one ever hunted as Friday hunted! The thirst of blood was upon him. He had plunged into the midst of danger, and knew no pity, no compunction, no fatigue. The instinct of his race that had been sleeping for years surged to the surface at a bound, never again to be dormant. That night he threw off the garb that stood for the civilizing influences of the past, donned the yellow blanket of his race and adopted the life of his people. That day of daring, and his education, marked him as a leader, and he became a Chief of the Arapahoe nation.

Chief Friday had a son. He was called Jacob after that Patriarch, who, when asked his age by Pharaoh, replied so poetically "the days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, but have not attained unto the days of the years of the lives of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage." There is a superstition among the Indians that if they have lost a battle, they must sacrifice some member of another tribe as an offering to the Great Spirit. Jacob had been chosen for the sacrifice. Hearing of it he fled. Returning two years later when he supposed there was no further fear of his destruction, he was set upon and left dead upon the ground. Friday loved Jacob with a very great love, and so did he love the good of his people. He counseled peace, and instead of plunging two nations in war, he buried his son with a breaking heart, hidden by the stoicism of his race.

Chief Friday had a daughter. A winsome lass. Light of foot, with a singing voice and dancing eyes. She was called "Little Niwot" by her father, because she used her left hand, and Niwot in the Indian tongue means "left hand." I asked a doctor once, those wisest of wise men, why it was that out of fifteen hundred million of the earth's inhabitants, so few used the left hand prominently, and this was his reply: "Upebanti manusinistra ob herededitatum."

Niwot's education was not alone like that of the other Indian children, whose eyes were trained to see the beauty in the sun, the moon and the stars; whose ears were attuned to catch the voices in the murmuring brooks, the music in the rustling trees, the melody in the warbling birds; but she had learned of her father as well, who taught her from the remembrances of those far-off days in the St. Louis schools. Little Niwot loved an Indian youth, who was not the choice of her mother. So she ran away with her dusky mate and became the wife of the man of her choice. Friday was left alone. Jacob was dead and Niwot was gone; he grieved for them, and could not be comforted. Niwot became the name of a Creek near Longmont, and of a near-by station on the Colorado and Southern Railway. So in station and stream, the memory of a little Indian maiden is to always be kept green.

And Friday died; died in the happy thought that in the civilizing processes that had been going on about him, he had always tried to stay the hand of his people when raised to check the white wave that was sweeping them to their destruction. Chief Friday was well known to the early settlers, and from them has come this story, here a little and there a little, and now woven into print for the first time. The unhappy ending of his life is like that of Chief Logan, whose heart-breaking plea has been handed down to us in this great burst of touching eloquence:

"I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came naked and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his camp, an advocate of peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as I passed and said, 'Logan is a friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with you but for the injuries of one man; Col. Cresap, who, the last Spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."

CHAPTER XI.

A VANISHING RACE.

There was a white man once with an idea. So modest was this man that he was unwilling that even his name and the idea should be linked together. He wanted the Indians to become better known to the whites, to themselves, to their children, and to the future generations of children. So he passed from one tribe to another and made known his plan to them. They were to write a book; a book that would contain a record of their thoughts and ideals, their songs and unwritten music, their folk-lore, their views of the past, and their beliefs in the mysterious future. The idea pleased them, grew on them, and ended in their becoming deeply interested. The book was prepared and printed and it contains the following touching and stately introduction by the High Chief of the Indian Tribes. It moves forward so like a majestic anthem, so solemn in its unspoken sorrow, so full of gentle dignity that it sweeps into our souls like the cadence of a great Amen:

Who is the Indian? This question has been asked for more than four hundred years, and from out the buried silence of the past has come no answering voice. Columbus asked it as approaching the border of a New Hemisphere he gazed thoughtfully upon the features of another race of beings. Ferdinand and Isabella asked it, as these strange men doomed to vassalage stood proudly before them speaking in an unknown tongue. Cortez asked it, as he riveted the chains of servitude upon two million of them in the Conquest of Mexico. Coronado asked it, as his army moved among the wandering tribes with their differing languages and customs. The Pilgrim Fathers asked it with varying emotions, as they viewed the curious natives waiting for them on the bleak New England shores. France asked it, and trusted its most highly cultured scientist to bring reply. "Nothing," he said as he returned, "Nothing." He had visited many tribes, studied their languages, customs and character, read everything ever written about them, and he knew nothing and nothing ever will be known.

May not human life have had its very beginning on this hemisphere? May there not in the remote past have been a Columbus who sailed East and discovered the Continent of Europe making it the New World and leaving this the Old? The pendulum of the clock swings in seconds. The pendulum of the growth and decay of continents swings in centuries, in eons. The meteor of Rome blazing through the heavens took one thousand years to fall. Like the Ocean's tide is the ebb and flow of nations. That there was a prehistoric race on this continent and an extinct civilization, we know. We read it in the Valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi, in the copper beds by the side of Lake Superior, along the shores of Ecuador, and in the country to the southward. From time immemorial, from generation to generation, from father to son, has been handed down a tradition among the once powerful tribe of the Iroquois Indians, that their ancestors, overflowing their boundaries, had moved down from the northwest to the Mississippi; that on the east side of that river they had found a civilized nation with their towns, their crops and their herds; that permission was obtained to pass by on their way to the East; that as they were crossing the river, they were treacherously assailed, a great battle ensued, followed by a continuous warfare, until the enemy was totally destroyed and their civilization blotted out.

An Indian Chief Addressing the Council.

The bones of human beings are dust by the side of mammals estimated by geologists to be fifty thousand years old. The allotted period of a man's life is three score years and ten. He could be born seven hundred times, live seven hundred lives, die seven hundred deaths in those five hundred centuries. It is not within the compass of the human mind to grasp the infinite detail in the rise and fall of nations within such a period. Read the story of nine generations of men, from Adam to Noah in the first five Chapters of Genesis, for the multiplication of the human race from just two people, and the destruction of a population so numerous that they were like the sands of the ocean's beach. Following on but a few pages, we find that out of the Ark had "grown many nations and many tongues," and they were so crowded that the Lord said unto Abram, "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation." Abram went, and he took his nephew Lot along, and directly we read that "the land was not able to bear them that they might dwell together," and they separated, one going to the right hand and the other to the left hand. With this historical data before us, do we ask whence came these millions of Indians and their confusion of tongues? There is a touch of similarity between the wandering tribes in early Bible history, with their many languages, their patriarchs, their flocks and herds, their peaceful lives and their dissensions and wars—and that of our Indians, with the earth before them, with their tribal Chiefs, their many dialects and their nomadic lives. If the North American Indians had possessed a written language; if after their discovery, they had been able to make recorded conveyances of vast tracts of lands to the subjects of the different Powers of the Old World; if international law could have been appealed to for the protection of these individual rights, there might have been a world war on this continent that would have made our rivers run red with blood.

When we close our minds to months and years and think in centuries, it is easy to understand the diversity of languages. Tribes going off by themselves, drop words from their vocabulary as time goes on, and use other words that mean the same; after the passing of generations there is an entirely new dialect. It is so in nearly all the countries of the Old World; people living under the same government, neighbors, cannot talk to each other. Climate too has something to do with language. Russians and Eskimos use a speech that requires very little lip movement, so as not to inhale the cold air of those cold regions. In a mild climate there is the open language with many vowels.

When we discovered the Indian, we found a character the like of which has no parallel in all history. It was the untutored mind of a child in the body of an adult; there was respect for each other and scrupulous honesty in their dealings among themselves; there was government by a Chief and his council, comprising the oldest of the tribe, to whom all questions of importance were submitted, the Chief being such because of inheritance, or daring, or possessions; there was the love of the parent for the child, and the teachings that developed the highest efficiency in hearing, tasting, smelling, seeing and touching, for upon these faculties thoroughly trained, depended success in war, and sustenance in peace; there was pride of ancestry and a reverence for the Great Spirit, the maker and ruler of the universe. It seems almost a pity that this Arcadia could not have remained untouched. We asked for a little land to pasture our cows and to use for gardens. It was given by them grandly. We asked for more, and it came cheerfully; we demanded still more, and it came gracefully. Then we quit asking and took it; took it with shot and shell, as we hungrily pressed on, doubling one tribe back upon another; bayonets in front, bows and arrows in the rear, and they fought each other, and they fought us. We called them savages; and they were savage, and so would we all be under like treatment. Justice and diplomacy would have saved thousands of lives and millions in money. We made many treaties with the Indians which were broken by us and this occasioned most of our Indian wars. Canada had the Indians and no wars. Her dealings with them were on principle and along steadfast and unchanging lines. Men grew old and died in the Indian Service, and those next in line took their places. They understood the Indian nature, and knew they possessed a high sense of honor and the dealings were fair to each side. Our politics have been at the bottom of nearly all our troubles. As parties have changed, men have changed. A promise made one day has been broken by the men who came on the morrow. The Interior Department failing to handle the perplexing question, the Indians were turned over to the various church organizations, who failed to get the right proportions in their mixture of morals and business. Then the War Department tried it; and all the time the lands of the red men diminished, and the land of the white man increased. Up to the year of Colorado's admittance into the Union as a Territory, 1861, there had been three hundred and ninety-three treaties made with the one hundred and seventy-five tribes of Indians embraced within the Territory of the United States, by which 581,163,188 acres of land were acquired.

As tribes differed in their languages, so they differed in their customs; and the following traits are applicable to some tribes and not to others.

The stoicism of the Indian is well known; but that trait of his character has its qualifications. He shows the taciturn side of his nature to strangers, but the world is not so serious as his austere countenance would indicate. Among his own people he is a fun-loving, story-telling, game-indulging human being. There are degrees in their social status measured by what they have done and the property they have accumulated. They have their ideas of propriety, and are shocked that a man and woman should dance together. The men dance in a ring by themselves, and the women dance in an outer ring, while a drum gives accents to their movements. Usually they sing something mournful, its weird rhythm following one for days.

A child is usually named by its father, who walks abroad from the tent for that purpose, selecting the name of what he sees first that impresses him most. So they have such peculiar names as Rain in the Face, Yellow Mag-pie, Sleeping Bear, Thunder-cloud, Spotted Horse and White Buffalo. However, there are no white buffalo. They are black until the hot sun of each season fades the black to brown, which later sheds, to come out black again. When a buffalo hide is tanned on both sides, it becomes white, which gives rise to the name White Buffalo. They have but one name other than their tribal name. The name "squaw" was first found in the language of the Naragansett tribe of Indians and is doubtless an abbreviation of the word "Esquaw." Other tribes have their own peculiar name for women. The name squaw came into general use and spread all over the United States and Canada, was carried to the western tribes of Indians by the whites, and was used by all whites and all Indians. A squaw man is one who does a woman's work, or a white man who marries an Indian woman.

A youth does not tell a maiden of his love for her. That is told and answered by heart telepathy in the old, old way. He tells his father, who calls his relatives to a council and a feast, to consider the matter. Then the young man's mother carries the proposal to the mother of the maid, who tells it to the girl's father, and a meeting is called by him of his relatives and friends, where there is much feasting and speaking. The two mothers then meet, and accept for their children. The girl prepares a dish and carries it to the tent of the young man daily as a token of her intention to serve him all her days. When the tepee is ready, and the presents accumulated, and house keeping begins, they are husband and wife, all the former preliminaries having constituted the wedding ceremony.

An Indian never touches a razor to his face, for they are a beardless race. The tribes who occupied the eastern part of the United States, wore their hair clipped short like the Chinamen, excepting that instead of a queue, there was a scalp lock which they adorned with feathers. It was worn in defiance of the Indians of other tribes, who were thus dared to come and take their scalp. The picturesque and warlike appearance of the Indians that comes from painting their faces with deep and varying hues, originated in the preservation of the skin from burning and chapping in the sun and alkali dust. They used compounds made from roots or earth which they ground or baked and mixed with grease. There were many kinds of earth that had different tints which they liked, so this became a permanent custom which made their appearance seem fierce and warlike. They believe that the red men are made of earth, and the white men are made of sea foam.

In surgery they had rude skill and in disease they had a limited knowledge of the proper application of roots and herbs. But they knew nothing of the science of medicine in its complicated form as practiced by the learned of the profession at the present time, who so thoroughly understand prophylaxis, serum therapy, and the role of antibodies in passive immunization. Dentistry was unknown among them; their simple food and outdoor lives kept them well, and the food they ate was thoroughly ground between their well-preserved teeth. The game that was formerly so abundant was their principal food, and its destruction by the whites took from the Indian his chief mode of existence, and occasioned his menacing attitude toward our people. Other food consisted of wild berries, sweet potatoes, rice and nuts, which they would gather and bury. As they had a practiced eye, they found the buried food of the squirrel, the otter and the muskrat, which they would dig up and appropriate to their own use.