“Aw, quit kidding! This is a time for sociability. Leave that cayuse with Wanawish, and come on my grandstand. Help take care of this scenery. It is a bit more than one pair of optics can do with justice.”
Densmore mounted the rock and settled himself at her side. He manifested but slight interest in the great panorama unrolled to the eastward. His unpoetic nature was not visibly impressed by the picture so soul-inspiring to the girl.
“Isn’t it grand?” she questioned. “These are my prairies, my mountains, my Eden. I could live here always! I shall hate to leave them when the final summons comes. Wherever I go, I recall every outline of those embattled ranges, nor can the vision close at the grave. When away, I grow lonesome, as a child for its mother. I become heartsick for a sight of those snow-shrouded peaks, so rich in legendary lore.”
“Would you not leave these sandy wastes, those piled up stones of chilly bleakness for a life of social elegance and untrammeled gayety?”
“Leave this”—she exclaimed with outstretched hand—“where our forefathers fought, where they hunted the buffalo? Leave the land where our braves rest in their last sleep? Never! I could not be content elsewhere. Do you see that?” indicating a half concealed object at the base of their perch. “It is the skull of a former mighty buffalo bull; horns time-roughened, and all bleached and grey with age. It is the last piteous wreck of a once ‘Monarch of the Plains.’ Colleague of my race, with him went our hopes, our ambition, and our life. A gift from the source of all existence, the buffalo was valued by the tribes above all animals. My nation was ruined when this, its larder, was destroyed by the invader. I can not forgive the wrong.”
This lofty sentiment received scant consideration in the calculating reply of the covetous Densmore.
“It may appear harsh, but the day has come when the Indian must desist from his wild, savage life. The Government is working hard for his betterment, and he should respond with a willingness to advance by adjusting himself to the new order of things. The opening of this reservation to settlement, tends to mingle him with his white brother, leading to an inter marriage of the two races. The tribesman will learn wisdom from his new neighbors, who will teach him how best to wrest his food supplies from the soil. The change was inevitable, and why should you go on the warpath? You are too broad minded for such antiquated ideas. Educated, you should put improbable concepts aside.”
“I believe you mean well,” was the impatient reply, “and a few whites do try to uplift my race. They purpose right, but they do not understand the Indian mind; never will, it would seem. Had a tribesman gone to your European homes with the ultimatum: ‘Desert your heavy houses; come into the open and adopt our mode of life,’ I am sure you Caucasians would have regarded him as an unreasonably brainless arrogant. Preposterous as such analogy may be, it adequately expresses the native conception of foreign intolerance. But I suppose that what is, was to be, and we must accept the inevitable.”
“Obviously the transition from savagery to the civilized state has been a stormy one for the Red man, but the voyage having been accomplished, he will, under the beneficent guidance of a liberal and just Government, steadily advance to the highest plane of mental, and physical development. Doubtless he endured some hardships during the days of warfare, but all that is compensated by his present day treatment.”
“Compensated by present day treatment!” repeated Cogewea scornfully. “Such density is excusable, since your sojourn has been in the North-country, for not one in twenty thousand of true citizenry are informed on the ‘Indian Problem,’ past and present. Partisan writers have chronicled the story of conquest, and political stranglers see to it that the public is kept blinded to actual conditions. And the Indian’s ‘mental and physical development!’ What a joke, if it were not so pathetically tragic.”
“But, my little war-maid,” expostulated the obdurate Easterner, “are you not a bit over zealous, and therefore mistaken in your contentions in this respect? While I came from Canada directly, I was raised in the Atlantic states, and have seen reports from the Indian Commissioner covering the administrations on all the reservations. From the statements therein contained, the Indian Bureau is. …”
“A nasty smear on the Government escutcheon,” broke in the girl fiercely. “A stagnant cesspool swarming with political hatched vermin! Stenchful with the fumes of avarice and greed; selfishly indifferent to the Macedonian cry of its victims writhing under the lash wielded by the hand of Mammon! Pitch is a fastidious cosmetic, compared with the Bureau slime.”
“Now, you are surveying the situation through colored lenses,” persisted Densmore. “It can not be that the tribes in general are grossly mishandled. Doubtless there are occasional mistakes in the appointment of Indian agents, as in any other branch of business, but these are removed. In the North-country you would hardly dare criticise the administrative government so severely.”
“I know! I have been in the North-country, in fact have lived across the border. But I am not there now, nor am I criticising our Government. It is of the Indian Bureau that I am speaking. A child of unnatural parentage, fostered by undemocratic principals, it has no legitimate place under a flag claiming to stand for all that is embodied in the word ‘Liberty.’ If you think that I am prejudiced, that I am unfair in statements, look up the facts for yourself, but do not depend too strongly on information emanating from the Bureau. Its reek can be found on any of the reservations. It is here with the Flatheads, with the Crows, with the Nez Perces, the Colvills, the Yakimas, and the Chipewas of the White Earth. The Pueblos have their troubles,
