Buffalo Land Part 4

And so, our camp equipage and live stock following by freight, the express rolled us forward toward the great plains. So far along our route we had seen but few Indians, and those civilized specimens, such as straggle occasionally through the streets of Topeka. The Indian reservations in Kansas are at some distance apart, and their inhabitants frequently exchange visits. The few whom we had seen consisted of Osages, Kaws, Pottawatomies, and Sioux, all equally dirty, but the last affecting clothes more than the others, and eschewing paint. The members of this tribe, generally speaking, have good farms and are worth a handsome average per head. At the time of our visit they were expecting a half million dollars or so from Was.h.i.+ngton, and were soon to become American citizens. One privilege of this citizens.h.i.+p struck us as very peculiar. By the State law, as long as an Indian is simply an Indian, he can buy no whisky, and is thus cruelly debarred from the privilege of getting drunk, but once a voter, he can luxuriate in corn-juice and the calaboose, as well as his white brother. What a travesty upon American civilization and politics!

Muggs was prejudiced against the Osages, having been induced by one of them to invest in a bow and arrows, "for the Hinglish Museum, you know."

On pulling for a trial shot, one end of the bow went further than the arrow, and the cord, warranted to be buffalo sinew, proved to be an oiled string.

Sachem declared that he had found Muggs returning the wreck to the Indian with the following speech: "O-sage, little was your wisdom to court thus the wrath of a Briton. Take with the two pieces this piece of my mind. That your n.o.ble form may be removed soon to the 'appy 'unting ground, where bow trades are not allowed, is the prayer of your patron, Muggs."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _BUREAU OF ILl.u.s.tRATION. BUFFALO. N. Y._

UNNATURALIZED.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _BUREAU OF ILl.u.s.tRATION. BUFFALO. N. Y._

NATURALIZED.]

Mr. Colon asked Tenacious Gripe to explain the condition of the Native Americans in Kansas. The orator kindly consented and thereupon discoursed as follows:

"The Indians of Kansas are divided into the wild and the tame. Both alike cover their nakedness with bright handkerchiefs, old s.h.i.+rts, military coats, and many-hued ribbons. The princ.i.p.al difference in point of dress is in the method of procuring it. Among those tribes which are at peace with the government, the white man robs the Indian; among the wild tribes the conditions are reversed--the Indian robs the white man.

In the one case the contractors and agents carry off their half million dollars or thereabouts; in the other the savage bears away a quant.i.ty of old clothes and fresh scalps. As he finds it difficult to procure sufficient of the white man's justice to satisfy the cravings of his nature, he feeds it with what he can and whenever he can of revenge.

Wise men tell us, gentlemen, that revenge is sweet and justice a dry morsel. All Indians beg when they get an opportunity. The tame ones, if they find it fruitless, divert themselves by selling worthless pieces of wood with strings attached, as bows. The wild ones, in a like predicament, relieve their tedium by whacking away at our ribs with bows that amount to something. The principles actuating both cla.s.ses are alike. It is simply the application which causes difficulty--in the one case an appeal with bow and arrows to our pockets, in the other to our bodies.

"All our wars with these people, gentlemen, are a result of their political economy. They believe that the Great Spirit provided buffalo and other game for his red children. When the white man drives these away, they understand that he takes their place as a means of sustenance, and as they have lived upon the one, so they intend to do upon the other. If the buffalo attempts to evade his duty in the premises, they kill him and take his meat; if the white man, they kill him and take his hair."

Sachem produced a roll of dirty brown paper and said that he had studied the Indian question and found two sides to it. One he could give us in a nutsh.e.l.l, believing that the meat of the nut had often excited the spirit of war.

Where waters sung above the sand, And torrent forced its way, Stretched out, disgusted with the land, A bearded miner lay, Prepared to strike, with willing hand, Whatever lead would pay.

Echo of hoof on beaten ground Rung on the desert air, Ringing a tune of gladsome sound To miner, watching there; A paying lead, at last, he'd found-- The vein a "man of hair."

An instant more, and at the ford A savage chief appeared; The miner saw his goodly h.o.a.rd, And tore his own good beard.

(You'll always find an ox is gored When sheep are to be sheared.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dog Town--The Happy Family at Home.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _BUREAU OF ILl.u.s.tRATION_

"You've riled that Brook"--An old Fable modernized.]

And these the words the miner said: "You've spoilt my drink, old fellow; You've riled the brook, my brother red, And, by your cheek so yellow, To-night above your sandy bed The prairie gale shall bellow.

"No relatives of mine are dead, At least by Injun cunnin', But many other hearts have bled, And many eyes are runnin'; For blood and tears alike are shed, When _you_ go out a gunnin'.

"Some slumbrin' peaceful, first they knew, They heard your horrid din-- Women as well as men you slew, You b.l.o.o.d.y son of sin; I mourn 'em all, revenge 'em too, Through Adam they were kin."

This having said, the miner smart, Drew bead upon the red man: They're fond of beads--it touched his heart, And Lo, behold, a dead man; Upon Life's stage he'd played his part, A gory sort of head man!

Two packs of goods lay on the ground; Quoth miner, "Lawful spoil!

My lucky star at last has found As good as gold and oil; I kinder felt that fate was bound To bless my honest toil.

"Such heathen have no lawful heirs-- I'll be the Probate Judge, For though they kinder go in pairs, Their love is all a fudge; I'll 'ministrate on what he wears, And leave his squaw my grudge."

CHAPTER VII.

GRIPE'S VIEWS OF INDIAN CHARACTER--THE DELAWARES' THE ISHMAELITES OF THE PLAINS--THE TERRITORY OF THE "LONG HORNS"--TEXANS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS--MUSHROOM ROCK--A VALUABLE DISCOVERY--FOOTPRINTS IN THE ROCK--THE PRIMEVAL PAUL AND VIRGINIA.

We noticed many fine rivers rolling from the northward into the Kaw, which stream we found was known by that name only after receiving the Republican, at Junction City. Above that point, under the name of the Smoky Hill, it stretches far out across the plains, and into the eastern portion of Colorado. Along its desolate banks we afterward saw the sun rise and set upon many a weary and many a gorgeous day.

All the large tributaries of the Kansas river, consisting of the Big Blue, Republican, Solomon, and Saline, came in on our right. Upon our left, toward the South, only small creeks joined waters with the Kaw, the pitch of the great "divides" there being towards the Arkansas and its feeders, the Cottonwood and Neosho.

We had now fairly entered on the great Smoky Hill trail. Here Fremont marked out his path towards the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, and on many of the high _b.u.t.tes_ we discovered the pillars of stone which he had set up as guides for emigrant trains, looking wonderfully like sentinels standing guard over the valleys beneath. Indeed we did at first take them for solitary herders, watching their cattle in some choice pasture out of sight.

Most of our party had expected to find Indians in promiscuous abundance over the entire State, and we were therefore surprised to see the country, after pa.s.sing St. Mary's Mission, entirely free of them. Muggs asked Gripe if the American Indian was hostile to all nationalities alike, or simply to those who robbed him of his hunting-grounds. The orator replied as follows:

"Sir, the aborigine of the western plains cares not what color or flavor the fruit possesses which hangs from his roof tree. The cue of the Chinaman is equally as acceptable as hairs from the mane of the English lion. A red lock is as welcome as a black one, and disputes as to owners.h.i.+p usually result in a dead-lock. His abhorrence is a wig, which he considers a contrivance of the devil to cheat honest Indian industry.

I would advise geologists on the plains to carry, along with their picks for breaking stones, a bottle of patent hair restorative. It is handy to have in one's pocket when his scalp is far on its way towards some Cheyenne war-pole. The scalping process, gentlemen, is the way in which savages levy and collect their poll-tax. Any person in search of romantic wigwams can have his wig warmed very thoroughly on the Arkansas or Texas borders. On the plains along the western border of Kansas, however, geologists can find a rich and comparatively safe field for exploration. It is doubtful if the savages ever wander there again.

"Of the Indian warrior on the plains we may well say, _requiescat in pace_, and may his pace be rapid towards either civilization or the happy hunting ground. History shows that his reaching the first has generally given him quick transit to the second. The white man's country has proved a spirit-land to Lo, whose n.o.ble soul seems to sink when the scalping-knife gathers any other rust than that of blood, and whose prophetic spirit takes flight at the prospect of exchanging boiled puppies and dirt for the white brother's pork and beans. Very often, however, it must be said, Lo's soul is gathered to his fathers by reason of its tabernacle being smitten too sorely by corn lightning."

As Gripe paused, the Professor took up the subject in a somewhat different strain:

"We have here in this State," remarked he, "a tribe which may well be called the Indian Ishmael. Its hand is and ever has been, since history took record of it, against its brethren, and its brethren's against it.

I refer to the pitiful remnant of the once great Delawares. From the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic they have steadily retreated before civilization, marking their path westward by constant conflicts with other races of red men. The nation in its eastern forests once numbered thousands of warriors. Now, three hundred miserable survivors are hastening to extinction by way of their Kansas reservation.

"A number of their best warriors have been employed as scouts by the government, when administering well merited chastis.e.m.e.nt to other murdering bands. The Delawares, I have often thought, are like blood-hounds on the track of the savages of the plains. They take fierce delight in scanning the ground for trails and the lines of the streams for camps. There is something strangely unnatural in the wild eyes of these Ishmaelites, as they lead the destroyers against their race, and a.s.sist in blotting it from the face of the continent. Themselves so nearly joined to the nations known only in history, it is like a plague-stricken man pressing eagerly forward to carry the curse, before he dies, to the remainder of his people."

The valleys of the Saline, Solomon, and Smoky Hill, as we pa.s.sed them in rapid succession, seemed very rich and were already thickly dotted with houses. This is one of the best cattle regions of the state, and vast herds of the long-horned Texan breed covered the prairies. We were informed that they often graze throughout the entire winter. As early in the spring as the gra.s.s starts sufficiently along the trail from Texas to Kansas, the stock dealers of the former State commence moving their immense herds over it. The cattle are driven slowly forward, feeding as they come, and reach the vicinity of the Kansas railroads when the gra.s.s is in good condition for their summer fattening. As many as five hundred thousand head of these long horns have been brought into the State in a single season. Some are sold on arrival and others kept until fall, when the choicest beeves are s.h.i.+pped East for packing purposes, or into Illinois for corn feeding. The latter is the case when they are destined eventually for consumption in Eastern markets, gra.s.s-fed beef lacking the solid fatness of the corn-fed, and suffering more by long transportation.

This very important trade in cattle, when fully developed, will probably be about equally divided between southern and central Kansas, each of which possesses its peculiar advantages for the business. While the valley of the Arkansas has longer gra.s.s, and more of it, the dealers in the Kaw region claim that their "feed" is the most nutritious. My own opinion, carefully formed, is that both sections are about equally good, and that the whole of western Kansas, with Colorado, will yet become the greatest stock-raising region of the world. The climate is peculiarly favorable. Two seasons out of three, on an average, cattle and sheep can graze during the winter, without any other cover than that of the ravines and the timber along the creeks.

The herders who manage these large bodies of cattle are a distinctive and peculiar cla.s.s. We saw numbers of them scurrying along over the country on their wild, lean mustangs, in appearance a species of centaur, half horse, half man, with immense rattling spurs, tanned skin, and dare-devil, almost ferocious faces. After an extensive acquaintance with the genus Texan, and with all due allowance for the better portion of it, I must say, as my deliberate judgment, that it embraces a larger number of murderers and desperadoes than can be found elsewhere in any civilized nation. A majority of these herders would think no more of snuffing out a life than of snuffing out a candle. Texas, in her rude solitude, formerly stretched protecting arms to the evil doers from other states, and to her these cla.s.ses flocked. She offered them not a city but a whole empire of refuge.

Just beyond Brookville, two hundred miles from the eastern border of Kansas, our road commenced ascending the Harker Bluffs, a series of sandstone ridges bordering on the plains.

On our left, Mushroom Rock was pointed out to us, a huge table of stone poised on a solitary pillar, and strangely resembling the plant from which it is named. As the professor informed us, we were on the eastern sh.o.r.e of a once vast inland ocean, the bed of which now forms the plains. Sachem thought the rock might be a petrified toad-stool, on a scale with the gigantic toads which hopped around in the mud of that age of monsters. The professor thought it was fas.h.i.+oned by the waters, in their eddyings and was.h.i.+ngs.

Subsequent examinations showed this entire region to be one of remarkable interest to the geologist. A few miles east of Mushroom Rock, near Bavaria, as we learned from the conductor, human foot-prints had been discovered in the sandstone. The professor, who had long ascribed to man an earlier existence upon earth than that given him by geology, was greatly excited, and at his earnest request, when the down train was met, we returned upon it to Bavaria.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _BUREAU OF ILl.u.s.tRATION_

MUSHROOM ROCK,

On Alum Creek, near Kansas Pacific R. R.--From a Photograph.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _BUREAU OF ILl.u.s.tRATION_

INDIAN ROCK, on Smoky Hill River, Kansas--From a Photograph.]