Читать книгу Bill Nye's Chestnuts Old and New - Nye Bill - Страница 12

Indians are quick and impulsive in the matter of homicide. They are slow to grapple with anything of a humorous nature, and all the humorous lecturers who have been on the Ute lecture course have lost money, but in the holocaust line, or general arson, torture and massacre business, they act with astonishing rapidity. As a race, they regard this entire land as their own, just as the mosquitoes claim New Jersey, simply because they were there first.

The Indians see that the property is improving, and so they feel more and more wealthy and arrogant. They claim that they will never give up their rights unless they get hard up, and even then it will not count. They always have a mental reservation in these matters, which they prefer to the reservation provided by the government.

Indians naturally dislike to see these lands in the possession of wealthy men whose sons earn a precarious livelihood by playing lawn tennis.

Colorow once made a short speech to his troops, which was taken down at the time by a gentleman who was present and who was collecting material for a new third reader for our common schools.

Colorow claimed that it was incorrect, and the notes were found afterward on the stenographer's body. It is about as ticklish business to report an Indian speech as it is to poultice a boil on the person of the Ameer of Cabul.

In closing Colorow said: "Warriors, our sun is set. We are most of us out on third base, and we have no influence with the umpire.

"Once I could stand on the high ground and one shout would fill the forest with warriors. Now the wailing wind catches up my cry and bears it away like the echo of our former greatness, and I hear a low voice murmur, 'Rats.'

"Whisky and refinement have filled our land with sorrow. The white man crossed the dark waters in his large canoe and filled the forest with churches and railroad accidents.

"The Indian loves not to make money and own aldermen for which he has no use. He loves his wives and his children and intrusts them with the responsibility of doing all his work. The white man comes to us with honeyed words and says if we will divide our lands with him he will give us a present; and when we give him a county and a half he gives us a red collar-button and a blue book, in which he has written in his strange and silent language, 'When this you see, remember me.' Our warriors are weak and have the hearts of women. They care not for the war-path or the chase. Most of them want to go on the stage. Once my warriors went with me at a moment's warning to clean out the foe. They slept in the swamps with the rattlesnakes at night and fought like wolves in the daytime. Now my warriors will not go on the warpath without a valise, and some of them want to carry their dinner.

"Some day, like the fall of a mighty oak in the forest, Colorow will fall to the earth and he will rise no more. You will be scattered to the four winds of heaven, and you will go no more to battle. Some of you will starve to death, while others will go to New York and wear a long linen duster, with the price of cut-rate tickets down the back. Some of you will die with snakes in your moccasins, and others will go to Jerusalem to help rob the Dead wood coach.

"Warriors, I thank you for your kind attention and appreciation. The regular outbreak will begin to-morrow evening at early candle-light. The massacre will open with a song and dance."

Colorow dresses plainly in a coat of paint and a gun.