Читать книгу The Vanishing Race: The Last Great Indian Council - Joseph K. Dixon - Страница 9

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The Indian has lived such a life of hazard for long centuries that he has had trained into him a first great instinct to fight. They have a war star in the sky, and when it moves the time to make war is heavy upon them. There are many cogent reasons for the belief that before the coming of the white man there were no general or long-continued wars among the Indians. There was no motive for war. Quarrels ensued when predatory tribes sought to filch women or horses. Strife was engendered on account of the distribution of buffalo, but these disturbances could not be dignified by the name of war. The country was large and the tribes were widely separated. Their war implements were of the crudest sort. A shield would stop a stone-headed arrow, and it necessitated a hand-to-hand conflict for the use of a flint-headed lance and the ponderous war club. The white man came, and for hundreds of years their contest has been waged against a superior force. They have disputed every mile of territory which has been acquired from them. During all that time they could not make a knife, a rifle or a round of ammunition. [pg 24] Their method of communication was confined to the smoke signal, signal fires and scouts. They had no telegraph, no heliograph, no arsenal. Modern implements of war they have been able to obtain only in late years and then in meagre quantities, even then only by capture or at exorbitant rates. The Indian has proved himself a redoubtable and masterful foe. For more than three hundred years millions of civilized white people have fought a bitter battle with three hundred thousand red men. During all these tragic years the nations of the world have moved on to discovery, subjugation, and conquest. Nation has taken up arms against nation. England, France, and Spain have put a rim of colonies about the globe. Our own great civil struggle has been written down on the pages of history with letters of blood. England, France, Spain, and the United States have during this period tried their prowess with these less than three hundred thousand braves and only now has the decimation become complete. No such striking example of endurance, power of resistance, and consummate generalship has been recorded in the annals of time. Sitting-Bull, Red Cloud, Looking-Glass, Chief Joseph, Two Moons, Grass, Rain-in-the-Face, American Horse, Spotted Tail, and Chief Gall are names that would add lustre to any military page in the world's history. Had they been leaders in any one of the great armies of the [pg 25] nation they would have ranked conspicuously as master captains. The Indian, deprived of the effectiveness of supplies and modern armament, found his strongest weapon in the oratory of the council lodge. Here, without any written or established code of laws, without the power of the press and the support of public sentiment, absolutely exiled from all communication with civilized resources, unaided and alone, their orators presented the affairs of the moment to the assembled tribe, swaying the minds and wills of their fellows into concerted and heroic action. The wonderful imagery of the Indian orator—an imagery born of his baptism into the spirit of nature—his love of his kind, and the deathless consciousness of the justice of his cause made his oratory more resistless than the rattle of Gatling guns, and also formed a model for civilized speech. It was an oratory that enabled a few scattering tribes to withstand the aggressions of four great nations of the world for a period of several centuries, and to successfully withstand the tramping columns of civilization. The science and art of Indian warfare would take volumes to compass. His strategy and statesmanship compelled victory. He was almost always assured of victory before he proceeded to battle. He knew no fear. A thousand lives would have been a small gift had he the power to lay them on the altar of his cause. He pitted the perfection of details [pg 26] against the wily strategy of his own colour and the pompous superiority of the white man's tactics. On the trail care was taken to cover up or obliterate his footprints. When a fire became necessary he burned fine dry twigs so that the burning of green boughs would not lift to the wind an odour of fire, nor carry a trail of smoke. He conceived and carried out a wonderful deception in dress. In winter a band of warriors were painted white. They rode white horses and their war dress was all of it made of the plainest white so that a group of warriors, stationed on the brow of a hill, would appear in the distance like a statuesque boulder clad in snow. This disguise also enabled them to come with stealthy step upon wild game. In autumn their horses were painted yellow and they wore a garb of yellow so that fringing the edge of the forest they could not be distinguished from the leaves of the dying year. The blue-green of the sagebrush, so conspicuously omnipresent on the prairies, furnished the Indian with another helpful form of disguise. He would almost completely disrobe and paint his face, his arms, and his hair, as well as the body of his horse, exactly the colour of the sagebrush; and when scouting, after their crouching fashion, among the clusters of sagebrush, or riding in the distance along the verdure-covered banks of a stream, the disguise would be so absolutely complete that detection [pg 27] became a difficult task. It was an ingenious and artistic display of war talent.

Answering the Smoke Signal

We are led to wonder often concerning the Indian's passion for his coup stick (pronounced coo). This rod, bedecked with eagle feathers and his own colour scheme, is the Indian's badge of empire. It is the “Victoria Cross” of his deeds of valour. In battle he rushes amid his foes, touches the enemy with his coup stick—that man is his prisoner, and he has counted a coup. He slays an enemy, then rushes up and touches him with the stick, takes his scalp; another coup is counted. The credit of victory was taken for three brave deeds: killing an enemy, scalping an enemy, or being the first to strike an enemy, alive or dead; any one of these entitles a man to rank as a warrior and to recount his exploit in public; but to be the first to touch an enemy is regarded as the bravest deed of all, as it implied close approach in battle. In the last Great Indian Council and on the journey home the attention of the writer was called to the prominence given to the coup stick. They are present at all ceremonial functions and are carried on all ceremonial parades. The warrior who can strike a tepee of the enemy in a charge upon a home camp thus counted coup upon it and is entitled to reproduce its particular design in the next new tepee which he made for his own use, and to perpetuate the pattern in his family. The eagle [pg 28] feathers on the stick can only be placed there after the warrior has counted his coup, recounted it in public, and the deed has met with the approval of all the warriors. The eagle, the proudest and most victorious of birds, then yielded a feather, which is deftly fastened with a circle of shining beads to the stick, and the proud victor flaunts another emblem of his bravery.

The Attack on the Camp

The buffalo, once the king of the prairies, has been practically exterminated. Perhaps no greater grief has ever entered into the life of the Indian than this wilful waste and irreparable loss. To this hour the Indian mourns the going away of the buffalo. He cannot be reconciled. He dates every joyful and profitable event in his life to the days of the buffalo. In the assembly of chiefs at the last Great Council the buffalo was the burden of every reminiscence. These veteran chiefs studied with melancholy eyes the old buffalo trails, and in contemplation of the days of the chase they said, as they thought backward, “My heart is lonely and my spirit cries.” So much did they love the buffalo that the Indian children played hunting the buffalo. The animal furnished food and clothing, and many parts of the stalwart frame they counted as sacred. The annihilation of these vast herds aroused the darkest passions in the heart of the Indian, and many times stirred his war spirit and sent him forth to do battle against the aggressors. Within the nine [pg 29] years between 1874 and 1883 over eight millions of buffalo were ruthlessly slain. But the war curtain of the Indian has been rung down, and the vast area which twoscore years ago supported these vast herds of wild game is covered to-day with domestic animals and teems with agricultural life, furnishing food supplies for millions upon millions all over the civilized world.

Buffalo Thundered Across the Plains

An Indian Home