“Cogewea, I can not agree with you on that score. The public would not tolerate such conditions.”
“Easy there! for the ice is thin. The great mass of people who have to struggle for existence, have not the time nor ability to investigate or fight other than their own battles. The wealthy, churchgoing Christians, have irons in the fire and are too busy with their prayer bribes—ofttimes coming up on the collection plate, whereby they are to squeeze through the celestial gate—to bother casting a crust to the underdog of an ‘inferior’ race. This leaves the business man and politician a free hand with the ‘Indian Problem.’ Although brought up in the tenets of Christianity, do you wonder that at times I revert to the more simple beliefs of my ancient people?”
“Perhaps not, but does not the Indian’s taciturn and solitary nature stand in the way of his assimilating the highest standards of life?”
“If you refer to the white man’s highest standards, I do not know. There has never been an adequate test of his ability along that line, never having come in general contact with them. He has been kept too busy absorbing the lower standards so bounteously thrust upon him, to ponder on the possibility that perhaps his white brother was not treating him to his best in stock. The tendency to measure your neighbor by your own code of morals, holds good with the Red man, and, since his gifts are always the best that he possesses, he judges the pale face accordingly; by the goods which he delivers.”
“Well, the native excelled in the art of refined hair-lifting if nothing more,” interjected Densmore with a forced laugh. “Nor was he altogether a failure at kindling torture fires, though averse to supplying the ember-fuel for his own teepee hearthstone.”
“Scalping was not an exclusive American fashion,” parried Cogewea. “The ancient Scythians, at least were addicted to this pastime, who also used enemy skulls for drinking cups. The stake roasting, however cruel and revolting, was never mixed with religious creeds and the worship of a God whose chief attributes, we are taught, are love, justice and mercy. A born fighter, the Indian preferred death to ignominious servitude; and these qualities, instead of being detrimental may yet prove his redemption, if only he can survive the imbecilities and harsh supervision of an obsolete Department. Once secure in his battle for a square deal, he will go forward, and his racial affinities—the product of climatic and celestial influences—will stamp themselves on the entire Nation. This characteristic at times urges me on. I like to contend for that which I deem to be my rights. I must go on the war path and have my say or I’ll bust! Savey?”
The Easterner regarded his companion with open amusement, as he rejoined:
“Yes! you are evidently right in that. Are you in the scalping mood today, my little Joan of Arc?”
“If I were, the subject material immediately available would hardly suffice for the appeasement of my warlike proclivities,” was the spirited retort. “But it seems that every time I come to this butte of hidden mysteries, sympathy for my trampled race—the once dignified native American—throbs my very being. When I remain here till nightfall, I can hear the death chant and wailing of the spirit-Indians whose bones are being disturbed by the homesteader’s plow. I can see the teepeed villages melting before the blaze of conquest and the shattered nations sweeping desolately towards the ocean-laved portals of the sunset.”
“Where did you get that old buffalo skull and the fragmentary arrow point?” queried Densmore, abruptly changing the subject.
“I found the skull in a small canyon away out on the big flat to our right. I was riding at the time, sort of sightseeing in the last buffalo roundup; corralling of the bunch taken to Canada. The herd was owned by Meschell Pablo, the ‘Buffalo King of the Flathead.’ He has a well regulated home on the creek some miles from here, where he lives in state. Almost a full-blood Indian, his ancestors hunted buffalo on these same grounds, as did mine of the Swa-netk-qha, who made annual trips here.
“The broken jasper arrow head I picked up on the main Indian trail, now unused, where it winds over the ridge you see yonder; where the cloud-shadows are so thick. Both are relics of an era gone with the sunset of other snows. I brought them here where my Indian nature loves the solitude; where there is yet a lingering semblance of the wild.”
“It must have been exciting, the corralling of the buffaloes,” said Densmore. “I wish that I could have witnessed that sport.”
“It was a grand and never to be forgotten sight,” replied Cogewea sadly. “But it was pitiful to see the animals fight so desperately for freedom. Although I participated in a way, it brought a dimness to my eyes. They seemed to realize that they were leaving their native haunts for all time. To the Indian, they were the last link connecting him with the past, and when one of the animals burst through the car, falling to the tracks and breaking its neck, I saw some of the older people shedding silent tears. But what else could the owner do than sell them? The reservation had been thrown open to settlement and the range all taken by homesteaders. Pablo had to make some kind of disposition, so he sold his herd to the Canadian Government. The few too wild to corral, were killed. They were considered too dangerous for the white settlers, but we never found them dangerous when we were here alone.”
“I suppose that the animals were regarded as unprofitable, compared with other possibilities; and as standing in the way of the progressive development of the country.”
“Yes, they were killed for the benefit of the ‘Missourians.’ The United States
