Trail Tales Part 3

That best portion of a good man's life-- His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love.

--Wordsworth.

The Methodist locomotive engineer had died joyful. "I am so glad to go," he said. "I am like a boy when there's a circus in town; I've got the price, and my baggage is checked clear through."

I was holding a memorial service for him in his old home town, and at the close a big, broad-shouldered man came forward to the altar rail and quietly said, "You did not know that man."

The remark startled me a little, for I had been acquainted with him for many years; in fact, had once been his pastor.

"I thought I did," replied I.

"No, you never really knew him," was the insistent rejoinder; "let me tell you something about him. Years ago I was not living as I ought, and I had all sorts of trouble. My wife was very sick, and we were living in a bit of a shack back here a little way where she finally died. I was down and out. The fellows wanted to be good to me, and they were--in their way of thinking--but it did me no good. They would say, 'Come, brace up, old fellow, have a drink and forget your troubles.' But there are some troubles drink will not drown; mine was one of them.

"One night our friend came up to my shack, and having visited a while he said: 'Old man, you're up against it hard, ain't you?' I replied, 'Yes, I am, just up to the limit.' 'Well, let's pray about it.' I told him I didn't believe in prayer. 'All right,' said he, 'I do, and I'll pray any way.' You should have heard the prayer he made. It was about like this: 'G.o.d, here's my friend, Charley; he's in an awful fix.

We'll have to do something for him. I've done all I can; now, it's up to you to see him through. Amen.'

"Then he arose from his knees and, handing me his check book, he said, 'My wife and I ain't got much, only a couple o' thousand in the bank; but here's this check book all signed up; take it and use it all if you need it, and G.o.d bless you!'

"But," added the narrator of the story, "I couldn't use money like that."

The tears were fast falling over his bronzed cheeks as he told with tenderness the story, and as I looked into his eyes I knew that through knowledge of the dead engineer's kingly kindness had come to him the knowledge of the new life.

INDIANS OF THE TRAIL

Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn.

--_Burns_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHIEF JOSEPH, NEZ PERCE INDIAN]

INTRODUCTORY WORDS

Indian character is human character because the Indian is human. Being human he is susceptible to all human teaching and experiences. None yields more readily to love and kindness.

Few can speak of the Indian with absolute propriety, for very few know him. To the mind of most Americans, I venture to say, the very name "Indian" suggests scalpings, ma.s.sacres, outrages of all kinds and an interminable list of kindred horrors; all too true. But it must be remembered that the Indian presented to his first discoverers a race most tractable, tenderhearted, and responsive to kindness. He was indeed the child of the plain, but a loving child.

The chevaliers both of Spanish and English blood taught him in the most practical manner the varied refinements of deceit, treachery, and cruelty. He was an apt scholar, and the devotee of social heredity, which has here so striking an example, cannot curse the redman if the sins of the fathers are meted out to succeeding generations.

Under definite heads I am giving some very brief sketches of living, down-to-date aborigines, such as have come under my own observation in Utah and Idaho.

POCATELLO, THE CHIEF

The nodding horror of whose shady brows Threats the forlorn and wandering pa.s.senger.

--_Milton_.

Fort Hall Reservation, until 1902, embraced a large territory of which Pocatello was the center. These Idaho red people are the remnants of the once powerful tribes of the Bannocks and Shoshones, which ranged from the Blue Mountains in Oregon to the backbone of the Rocky Mountains. The compressing processes used by the aggressive white people have encircled, curtailed, and squeezed their borders so that now they are centered at Fort Hall, half way between Pocatello and Blackfoot. Here the government has a school for them, and the Protestant Episcopal Church a mission.

Pocatello is named for a wily old chief of that name, who became an outlaw to be reckoned with. He once led a cavalcade of his sanguinary followers against the newly made non-Mormon town of Corinne, Utah; but a Mormon who had been notified of the proposed ma.s.sacre, by a coreligionist, likewise told a friend among the Gentiles, and a precautionary counter plan was formulated. Nothing more came of it than an evening visit from Brigham Young and his staff, who, as reported, p.r.o.nounced and prophesied an awful and exterminating curse upon the town and people. However, because of the warning, his curses went elsewhere.

Until recently there lived in the region of the city of Pocatello an old squaw-man (white man with an Indian wife). His home was within the borders of the reservation, and he had been there since before the time when the boundary line between the United States and England (Canada) was settled. The old man was called "Doc," and once when visiting him I said, "Tell me about old Pocatello, Doc, and what became of him."

The old man, half reclining on the pile of household debris in one corner of his shanty, permitted me to sit by the door--for there were no chairs in the place. The four corners were occupied as follows: in one were his saddle and accouterments for range work; in another the acc.u.mulation of rags and blankets on which he slept (for he lived alone now, the wife being dead); in another was his little stove, and the last held the door where I sat. The air was fresher there, I thought. The veteran of eighty or more years, bronzed by the winds and roughened by the sweeping sands of the desert, lighted his pipe and said: "It war in the days o' them freighters who operated 'tween Corinne an' Virginny City when Alder Gulch was a-goin' chock full o'

business. The Forwardin' Company hed a mighty big lot o' rollin' stock an' hosses to keep the traffic up. The hull kentry was Injun from put-ni' Corinne to that there Montanny town. The Bear Rivers an' the Fort Hall tribes, the Bannocks an' the Blackfeet uste to make life anything but a Fourth-o'-July picnic fer them fellers an' their drivers. Right h'yur was the natterelest campin' place fer the Company, or, ruther, a natterel spot fer the stage-station, where they could git the stock fresh an' new an' go on, as they hed to do, night an' day, so's to keep business a-movin', ye see. Fer 'twas a mighty long rout fer pa.s.sengers.

"Now, Pocatello an' his bunch o' red devils got into the habit o'

runnin' off the stock, an' sometimes the Company'd haf to wait half a day to git enough teams to go on north; or to wait till the f.a.gged ones'd git a little rest an' then push on wi' the same ones. Mr.

Salisbury, of Salt Lake, was the head o' the Forwardin' Company, an'

he an' his people got mighty all-fired tired o' that sort o' business.

Hosses was dear them days, but Injuns was cheap; so he told a lot o'

us'ns he'd like tarnation well if this sort o' thing'd stop kind o'

sudden like; an' we planned it might be done jist that way too.

"We kind o' laid low, an' nothin' happened fer quite a while; but one night a fine bunch o' hosses was run off jist when they's a big lot o'

treasure goin' over the line, an' the management was sure mad. They told us 'uns agin somethin' had to be done, an' despert quick this time. So we got busy. We begun to round ol' Pocatello up, an' he seemed to smell a rat or somethin' wuss, an' started up Pocatello Crick yander, that there canon, see? He went almighty fast too when he got started; so did we, now I tell you, an' we jist kep' a-foller'n', an' foller'n', an' foller'n', we did--a hull lot ov us--an'--an'--an'

Pocatello never come back."

Then the old squaw-man tapped the ashes from his pipe, and rising said, "Well, I guess I'll cinch up the cayuse an' ride some this a'ternoon."

THE BABYLESS MOTHER

Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.--_Saint Matthew_.

One of the many signs that the Indian is human is his slowness to learn. Ever since 1492 the whiter man has been trying to force some supposedly useful things into the mind of him of the darker skin. One of these is that he of the blanket has no rights that he of the dress coat is bound to respect. The Indian rises in practical debate to this question. His arguments are not words, but the rifle and the scalping-knife. The whiter man demurs when he receives his justice dished up to him in redskin style.

It is unreasonable to the Indian that the white man should take from him his hunting grounds and limit his access to the very streams whence his people for ages uncountable filled their pantries for the winter. He has learned to his disgust (without place for repentance) that equivalents are equivocations, and that the little baubles the fathers of the tribes had for their broad acres were mostly worthless.

The civilized trick of procuring the mystic sign manual known as signature had fastened on them the gyves of perpetual poverty.

In addition to this, the nation demanded they should send their children to the white man's school in the far, far away Eastern land, where they could not see them and from which so many of the red-faced lads and la.s.sies returned with that dread disease, pulmonary tuberculosis. But they were only Indians, and what rights had they?

When boys and girls were not promptly surrendered, the soldiers were sent to chase them down. It would not seem good to us to have big, brawny Indians on horseback give chase to our children, and catch and tie them like so many hogs, to be carted off to a land unknown to us; but then these are only Indians. That makes all the difference imaginable.

Some years ago the Fort Hall Indians went on their usual trip to the edge of Yellowstone Park--Jackson's Hole--for the purpose of laying in their annual supply of elk and bear meat. The government had forbidden this, yet they went, with their indispensable paraphernalia and camp equipage, taking the squaws (and papooses, of course) to dress and care for whatever of provision fell into their hands.

When it was discovered that the Indians had gone in the face of the prohibitory order the soldiers were sent to drive them out. Such racing and chasing! "Wild horse, wild Indian, wild horseman," as Was.h.i.+ngton Irving puts it. Every man and woman for himself now.

Papooses were slung on the saddle-horns of their mothers' horses, a loop being fastened to the back of the board to which every little copperfaced tike was strapped. In one of the hard flights through the thickly fallen and storm-twisted pines, firs, and chaparral a mother, pressed too hard by the soldiers and cavalry, lost her baby.