Colorado-The Bright Romance of American History Part 6

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 a.s.serted 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 ill.u.s.trations, made him a master of eloquence. It was an occasion for thrilling discourse. The land where they were a.s.sembled 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 wors.h.i.+pped 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 pa.s.sing 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 tw.a.n.g 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 superst.i.tion 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 la.s.s. 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 ma.n.u.sinistra 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 b.l.o.o.d.y war, Logan remained idle in his camp, an advocate of peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as I pa.s.sed 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 VANIs.h.i.+NG 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 pa.s.sed 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:

"To the Great Chief at Was.h.i.+ngton, and the Chief of Peoples Across the Waters:

"Long ago, the Great Mystery caused this land to be, and made the Indians to live in this land. Well has the Indian fulfilled all the intent of the Great Mystery for Him. Through this book may men know that the Indian was made by the Great Mystery for a purpose.

"Once, only Indians lived in this land. Then came strangers from across the Great Waters. No land had they; we gave them of our land; no food had they; we gave them of our corn; the strangers have become many and they fill all the country. They dig gold--from my mountains; they build houses--of the trees of my forests; they rear cities--of my stones and rocks; they make fine garments--from the hides and wool of animals that eat my gra.s.s.

None of the things that make their riches did they bring with them from across the Great Waters. All comes from my lands--the land the Great Mystery gave unto this Indian.

"And when I think on this, I know that it is right, even thus. In the heart of the Great Mystery, it was meant that the stranger--visitors--my friends across the Great Waters should come to my land; that I should bid them welcome; that all men should sit down with me and eat together of my corn; it was meant by the Great Mystery that the Indian should give to all peoples.

"But the white man never has known the Indian. It is thus: there are two roads, the white man's road, and the Indian's road.

Neither traveler knows the road of the other. Thus ever has it been, from the long ago, even unto to-day. May this book help to make the Indian truly known in time to come.

"The Indian wise speakers in the book are the best men of their tribe. Only what is true is within this book. I want all Indians and white men to read and learn how the Indians lived and thought in the olden time and may it bring holy--good upon the younger Indian to know of their fathers. A little while and the old Indians will no longer be and the young will be even as white men.

When I think, I know it is the mind of the Great Mystery that the white man and the Indians who fought together should now be one people.

"There are birds of many colors, red, blue, green, yellow--yet it is all one bird. There are horses of many colors, brown, black, yellow, white--yet it is all one horse. So cattle, so all living things--animals, flowers, trees. So man; in this land where once were only Indians and now men of every color--white, black, yellow, red--yet all one people. That this was to come to pa.s.s was in the heart of the Great Mystery. It is right thus, and everywhere there shall be peace."

(Sgd.) By HIAMOVI (High Chief), Chief among the Cheyennes and Dakotas.

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 va.s.salage 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 sh.o.r.es. 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 sh.o.r.es 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 pa.s.s by on their way to the East; that as they were crossing the river, they were treacherously a.s.sailed, a great battle ensued, followed by a continuous warfare, until the enemy was totally destroyed and their civilization blotted out.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 compa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 acc.u.mulated. 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 acc.u.mulated, and house keeping begins, they are husband and wife, all the former preliminaries having const.i.tuted 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 pa.s.sive 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 princ.i.p.al food, and its destruction by the whites took from the Indian his chief mode of existence, and occasioned his menacing att.i.tude 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Behold, he winnoweth barley to-night in the thres.h.i.+ng floor." Ruth 3:2.

As they did in biblical times, so do some of the Indian tribes to this day. They beat out the grain with a stick and then pour it out gently for its cleansing by the wind.]

They mourn noisily with each other in case of death. Likewise did the tribes of the patriarchs, who "mourned with great and very sore lamentation." The Indians think that it takes four days for the soul to reach the land of the dead. So a light burns on the grave nightly for four nights, that the disembodied may not get lost. They believe that there are two souls, one that soars away in dreams, while the other remains in the body. In the absence of a clock in the wigwam and a watch in the pocket, they measure time in their own way; a sun is a day, a moon is a month, and a snow is a season.

It is said the "hand that rocks the cradle is the lever that moves the world." If this be true, then the Indian mother takes no part in the world's movement, for she never has rocked a cradle. The cradle of a child is an oak board two and one-half feet long, and one and one-half feet wide, to which the babe is strapped in a way that the arms and legs are free for exercise and growth. This board lies on the ground, leans against the wigwam or a tree, is carried on the mother's back, or placed between tent poles like the shafts of a vehicle, to which a pony or dog is attached, leaving two of the ends dragging on the ground. The child is sometimes rocked by the wind when fastened high up among the branches of the trees; and that is where the little song comes from that the mother sings to her child to this day; "Rock-a-bye baby in the tree-top; when the wind blows the cradle will rock."

The speeches of the Indians are always impressive. Their words are simple and direct, and there were developed great orators among them in the days when war between the tribes, and against the United States prevailed. Some of the simple pleas which they made for the land of their fathers, were as fine as could be produced by a higher education and a finer civilization. When the French demanded of the tribe of the Iroquois that they move farther back into the wilderness, the eloquent reply of their Chief has been p.r.o.nounced by Voltaire to be superior to any sayings of the great men commemorated by Plutarch: "We were born on this spot; our fathers were buried here. Shall we say to the bones of our fathers, arise, and go with us into a strange land?"