But bloody though the subjugation, it did not compare with the deadly effects of the benevolent manner in which her race had been ruled since the enactment of the various treaties. The Indian Bureau was a blighting curse; its officials, with an army of employees, when not down right thieves conniving with favor-currying politicians and grafters, were, in the main, blundering incompetents, who could not for one day make good in any well regulated and honest business channel. Habits, the building of untold centuries of wilderness life, were sought to be changed within a single generation. It had taken the Caucasian thousands of years to climb to his present state, even with the utility of the various animals suited for domestication and so very essential to the progress of any people. The Indian had had none of this great advantage. Aside from the fierce wolf-dog, the llama of far off South America was the only quadruped of the New World that could be utilized in this respect, even had it been known to her people and its importation possible. Charity and common sense had not marked the white man’s dealings with the various tribes.
Skilled in the art of white washing, brooded the girl, the Indian Bureau was an octopus, with life extracting tentacles reaching into every Indian reservation of the Union. A vampire! whose wing cools with the breeze of never-to-be-filled promises, the wound of its deadly beak, while it drains the heart’s blood of its hapless “ward.” Where rested the wrong? The Bureau! a branch of the Government. The Government? the dollar-marked will of the politician. The politician? the priest, and the Levite, who “pass on the other side” from the bruised, and robbed victim of systematized plunder-lust, lying naked by the trail. Should an occasional Samaritan stoop to minister to the sufferer’s wants, he is rebuked by the Bureaucrats, and warned that such charity is ill advised; wasted where not an exigency. Surely, had the Indian been driven to drink of the waters of Marah, nor had there risen a Moses to cast into the embittered flood, a branch from the tree of sweetening properties.25
Heedless of passing time, Cogewea still sat meditating. There were the Blackfeet, many of whom she knew. From a vast territory “given” them from their own lands reaching down to the banks of the Yellowstone, they were now crowded into a cramped area on the frosty confines of the National Glacier Park; their more habitable domain taken from them without their consent, and without the least of compensation. In their case, as with other tribes, a treaty with the conqueror, had proven subservient to the supercilious will of the dictator. From a once virile, self-supporting people, they had, through massacres by United States troops, and starvation because of thieving, pilfering Bureau agents—ofttimes selected from the ranks of ministers of the gospel—dwindled to a pitiful, diseased remnant of their former independent greatness.26
But the Blackfeet tragedy was not the only bundle of somber facts to rise specter-like on the girl’s vision. There were the few remaining warriors of the Nez Perce martyr, Chief Joseph. Heroes, patriots! Victims of plutocratic chicanery, and broken faith on the part of the “powers that be!” Justice, bound and gagged, still weeping on the mountain tops of the romantic Wallowa.27 Not an Indian reservation in the land, where loot, robbery, and general malfeasance did not overshadow all the beneficence claimed for the natives through contact with an advanced civilization. Unqualified for the new conditions thrust upon him, no voice in affairs most vital to his very existence, the tribesman is obliged to accept a pottage mixed for him in the kitchenry of a political pap-fostered Bureau of more than six thousand salaried guardians (?) of his interests, paid for out of his own tribal funds. Overwhelmed by pent-up feelings, Cogewea murmured aloud:
“And all this in the land of the freebooter, and the home of the slave! Prate not to me of the superiority of a philosophy which tolerates such conditions, over that of my savage ancestors. In my agony, with uplifted hands, I cry to the stars as the torch-lights set by the Great Spirit: ‘How long! Oh! Night Watches of the Ages, must this injustice endure! Woe is my people! Surely, have the Four Riders of the Apocalypse passed through the valleys, over the plains and mountain ranges of our former possessions.’ ”
Densmore reached the summit of the butte to find Cogewea seated on the rim of the table-like rock, swinging a shapely foot, and listlessly tapping the cliffy wall with her quirt. She had removed her sombrero, and as he approached from below, her form was cast in sharp silhouette against a limpid skyline, where it appeared as much in place as when in saddle. At sight of the Easterner, her mood changed and she called mischievously:
“Hell‑o, Sir Shoyahpee! From whence, my gallant knight-errant of the wilderness way?”
“Why did you run away from me?” he asked with a degree of petulance, ignoring her innocent flippancy.
“You are too slow for me,” was the laughing reply.
“Too slow? In what way?”
“Why, in heeding the call of the morning to speed the sunlit trail.”
“Oh! I heard no call! Heard
