Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 10

by Cincinnatus Heine Miller

CHAPTER X.

TWO LITTLE INDIANS.

HE sunshine follows the rain. There was a sort of general joyousness. The Prince was now a king, it seemed to me. He had fought a battle with himself, with fate against him ; fought it silent, patient and alone; he had conquered, and he was glad.

The great hero is born of the bitter struggle. Who cannot go down to battle with banners, with trumps and the tramp of horses ? Who cannot fight for a day in a line of a thousand strong with the eyes of the world upon him? But the man who fights a moral battle coolly, quietly, patiently and alone, with no one to applaud or approve, as the strife goes on through all the weary year, and after all to have no reward but that of his own conscience, the calm delight of a duty well performed, is God s own hero. He is knighted and ennobled there, when the fight is won, and he wears thenceforth the spurs of gold and an armour of invulnerable steel.

We went down again among the boulders in the bed of the creek. The Prince swung his pick, I shovelled the thrown-out earth, and the little Indians would come and look on and wonder, and lend a hand in an awkward sort of a way for a few minutes at a time, then go back to the cabin or high up on the hills in the sun, following whatever pursuit they chose.

The Prince did not take it upon himself to direct or dictate what they should do, but watched their natural inclinations and actions with the keenest interest.

He loved freedom too well himself to attempt to fetter these little unfortunates with rules and forms that he himself did not hold in too great respect ; and as for taxing them to labour, they were yet weak, and but poorly recovered from the effects of the famine on the Klamat.

Besides, he had no disposition to reduce them to the Christian slavery that was then being introduced, and still obtains, up about Mount Shasta, wherever any of the Indian children survive.

The girl developed an amiable and gentle nature, but the boy showed anything but that from the first. He always went out of the cabin whenever strangers entered, would often spend days alone, out of sight of everyone, and stubbornly refused to speak a word of English. At the end of weeks he was untamed as ever, and evidently untamable. The Prince had procured him a cheap suit of clothes,

something after the fashion of the miner s dress ; but he despised it, and would only wear his shirt with the right arm free and naked, the red sleeve tucked in or swinging about his body. He submitted to have his hair trimmed, but refused to wear a hat.

His chief delight was, in pointing arid making faces at the Doctor s bald head, whenever that indi vidual entered, as he stood in the corner by his club; but I never knew him to laugh, not even to smile. The first great epoch of his civilized life was the receipt of a knife as a gift from the Prince. It was more to him than diamonds to a bride. He kept it with him everywhere; slept with it always. It was to him as a host of companions.

Sometimes he talked in the Indian tongue to the girl, but only when he thought no one noticed or heard him.

The girl was quite the other way. She took to domestic matters eagerly, learned to talk in a few weeks, after a fashion, and was most anxious to be useful, and as near like an American as possible. She had a singular talent for drawing. One day she made an excellent charcoal picture of Mount Shasta, on the cabin door, and was delighted when she saw the Prince take pride in her work. She was eager to do everything, and insisted on doing all the cooking.

She had a great idea of the use of salt, and often an erroneous one. For instance, one morning she put salt in the coffee as well as in th e beef and

beans. I think it was an experiment of hers that she was so anxious to please and make things palatable, she put it in to improve the taste. I can very well understand how she thought it all over, and said to herself, u Now if a little pinch of this white substance adds to the beans, why will it not contribute to the flavour of the coffee?" Once she put sugar on the meat instead of salt, but the same mistake never happened twice.

I must admit that she was deceitful, somewhat. Not wilfully, but innocently so. In fact, had anything of importance been involved, she would have stood up and told the whole simple truth with a perfect indifference to results. She did this once I know, when she had done an improper thing, in a way that made us trust and respect her. But she did so much like to seem wise about things of which she was wholly ignorant. When she had learned to talk she one day pretended to Klamat to also be able to read and understand what was written on the bills of the butchers. Her ambition seemed to be to appear learned in that she knew the least about. That is so much like many people you meet, that I know you are prepared to call her half-civilized, even in these few weeks.

This sort of innocent deceit is no new thing, particularly in women. And I rather like it. Go on to one of our fashionable streets to-day in America, and there you will find that the lady who has the least amount of natural hair has invariably the

largest amount of artificial fix-ups on her head. This rule is almost infallible ; it has hardly the tra ditional exception to testify to its truth.

In fact, does not this weakness extend even to man? You can nearly always detect a bald-headed man, even while his hat is on his head, by the display and luxuriance of the hair peeping out from under his hat. With the bald-headed man every hair is brought into requisition, every hair is brushed and bristled up into a sort of barricade against the eyes of the curious. The few hairs seem to be marshalled up for a fierce bayonet charge against any one who dares suspect that the head which they keep sentry round is bald. That man is bald and he feels it. Only bald-headed men make this display of what hair they have left.

And I am not sure but that nature herself is a little deceitful. The dead and leafless oaks have the richest growth of ivy, as if to make the world believe that the trees were thriving like the bay. All about the mouths of caves, all openings in the earth, old wells and pits, the rankest growths abound, as if to say, here is no wound in the breast of earth ! here is even the richest and the choicest spot upon her surface.

To go further into a new field. If a true woman loves you truly she fortifies against it in every pos sible way as a weak place in her nature. She tries to deceive, not only the world, but herself. To keep out the eyes of the inquisitive she wou ld build a

barricade to the moon. She would not be seen to whisper with you for the world. Yet if she loved you less, she would laugh and talk and whisper by the hour, and think nothing of it. I like such deceit as that. It is natural.

The miners were at work like beavers. Up the stream and down the stream the pick and shovel clanged against the rock and gravel from dawn until darkness came down out of the forests above them and took possession of the place.

The Prince worked on patiently, industriously with the rest, with reasonable success and first-rate promise of fortune. The pent-up energies of the camp were turned loose, and the stream ran thick and yellow with sediment from pans, rockers, toms, sluices and flumes. Never was such industry, such energy, such ambition to get hold of the object of pursuit and escape from the canon before another winter set up an impassable wall to the civilized world.

Spring came sudden and full-grown from the south. She blew up in a fleet of sultry clouds from the Mexican seas, along the Californian coast, and drew up to us between the rocky, pine-topped walls of the Klamat.

At first she hardly set foot in the canon. The sun came down to us only about noon-tide, and then only tarried long enough to shoot a few bright shafts through the dusk and dense pine-tops at the banks of snow beneath, and spring did not like the place as

well as the open, sunny plains over by the city, and toward the Klamat lakes. But at last she caine to take possession. She planted her banners on places the sun made bare, and put up signs and land-marks not to be misunderstood.

The balm and alder burst in leaf, and catkins drooped and dropped from willows in the water, till you had thought a legion of woolly caterpillars were drifting to the sea. Still the place was not to be surrendered without a struggle. It was one of winter s struggles. He had been driven, day after day, in a march of many a thousand miles. He had retreated from Mexico to within sight of Mount Shasta, and here he turned on his pursuer. One night he came boldly down and laid hands on the muddy little stream, and stretched a border of ice all up and down its edges ; spread frost-work, white and beautiful, on pick, and torn, and sluice, and flume and cradle, and made the miners curse him to his beard. He cut down the banners of the spring that night, lamb-tongue, Indian turnip and catella, and took possession as completely as of old.

The sun came up at last and he let go his hold upon the stream, took off his stamp from pick and pan, and torn, and sluice and cradle, and crept in silence into the shade of trees and up the mountain side against the snow.

And now the spring came back with a double force and strength. She planted California lilies, fan* and bright as stars, tall as little flag-staffs, along the

mountain side, and up against the winter s barricade of snow, and proclaimed possession absolute through her messengers, the birds, and we were very glad.

Paquita gathered blossoms in the sun, threw her long hair back, and bounded like a fawn along the hills. Klamat took his club and knife, drew his robe only the closer about him in the sun, and went out gloomy and sombre in the mountains. Sometimes he would be gone all night.

At last the baffled winter abandoned even the wall that lay between us and the outer world, and drew off all his forces to Mount Shasta. He retreated above the timber line, but he retreated not an inch beyond. There he sat down with all his strength. He planted his white and snowy tent upon this ever lasting fortress, and laughed at the world below him. Sometimes he would send a foray down, and even in mid-summer, to this day, he plucks an ear of corn, a peach, or apricot, for a hundred miles around his battlement, whenever he may choose.

Now that the way was clear, immigrants and new arrivals of all kinds began to pour into the camp. The most noticeable was that of the new Alcalde.

This Alcalde was appointed by the new commis sioners of the new county, and as might have been expected, since the place brought neither profit nor honour, was only a broad- cloth sort of a man. A new arrival from the States, looking about for a place where he could sit down and eat his bread

K

exempt from the primal curse. No doubt this little egotist said to himself, u If there is a spot on earth where God s great tribute-taker will not find me, it is over at The Forks, on Humbug, and there will I pitch my tent and abide."

He had read just enough law to drive every bit of common sense out of his head, and yet not enough to get a bit of common law into it ; except, perhaps, the line which says that " Law is a rule of action pre scribed by the superior, which the inferior is bound to obey."

Being austere in his tastes, and feeling that he had a dignity to sustain, he made friends with the Doctor, and took up quarters in the Doctor s cabin.

As is the case with all small creatures, the Judge came into camp with a great flourish of trumpets, and what was most remarkable, he wore a " stove pipe " hat and a "boiled shirt;" the first that had ever been seen in the camp. This was a daring thing to undertake. The Judge, of course, had not the least idea of his achievement and the risk he incurred.

These men of the mountains always have despised and perhaps always will despise a beaver hat. Why ? Here is food for reflection. Here is a healthy, well- seated antipathy to an innocent article of dress, without any discovered reason. Let the profound look into this.

As for myself, I have looked into this thing, but am not satisfied. The only reason I can gi ve for this

enmity to the " tile " in the mountains of California, is not that the miners hold that there is anything wrong in the act or fact of a man wearing a beaver, but because it invests the man with a dignity an artificial dignity, it is true, but none the less a dignity too far above that of the man who wears a slouch or felt. The beaver hat is the minority, the slouch hat is the majority; and, like all great majorities, is a mob a cruel, heartless, arrogant, insolent mob, ignorant and presumptive. The beaver hat is a missionary among cannibals in the California mines. And the saddest part of it all is, that there is no hope of reform. Tracts on this subject would be useless. Fancy a beaver hat in a dripping tunnel, or by the splashing flume or dumping derrick!

Born of a low element in our nature is this ant agonism to the beaver hat; cruel as it is curious, selfish, but natural.

The Englishman knows well the power and dignity of a beaver hat. Go into the streets of London and look about you. Surely some power has issued an order not much unlike that of the famous one-armed Sailor " England expects every man to wear a beaver hat."

But to return to this particular hat before us, it is safe to say that no other man than the Judge in all California could have brought into camp and worn with impunity this hat.

It is true there was a universal giggle through the

camp, and it is likewise true that the Howlin Wil derness called out, " Oh, what a hat! Set em up! Chuck em in the gutter! Saw my leg off!" and so on, as the Judge passed that way the morning after his arrival. But shrewd men at once took his measure ; saw that he was a harmless little egotist, and in their hearts took his part in the hat question, and set him up as a sort of wooden idol of the camp.

It is not best to always seem too strong in the presence of strong, good men. Man likes to pet and patronize his fellow when he is weak. A strong man will throw his arms around a helpless man and protect him. Strength challenges strength. The combat of bulls on the plain ! Possibly man inclines to uphold the weak because there is no suggestion of rivalry, but I do not think that. Here is room for thought.

u It s all right, boys," said six-foot Sandy, as he stood at the bar of the Howlin Wilderness, and held out his glass for a little peppermint : "It s all right, I tell you ! He shall run a hat as tall as Shasta if he likes, and let me set eyes on the shyster that interferes. It s a poor camp that can t afford one gentleman, anyhow." And here he hitched up his duck breeches, threw the gin and peppermint down his throat, and wiping his hairy mouth on his red sleeve, turned to the crowd, ready to " chaw up and spit out," as he called it, the first man who raised a voice against the Judge and his beaver hat in all The Forks.

Six-foot Sandy was an authority at The Forks. A brawny and reckless miner a sort of cross between a first-class miner and a second-class gambler ; a man who vibrated between his claim up the creek and the Howlin Wilderness saloon. But he was a shrewd, brave man, of the half-horse, half-alligator kind, and was both feared and respected. After that the beaver hat was safe at The Forks, and a fixture.

To illustrate the power and dignity of the beaver hat even here, where reverence and respect for any thing that smells of civilization is not to be thought of, I may mention that a month or two after the event described above, another beaver hat put in an appearance at The Forks. There was not even a protest. The man had sense enough to keep silent, took a quiet game of u draw " with the boys at the Howlin Wilderness, and won at once the title of Judge.

After dark the quiet game went on in the corner, and Sandy came down from the claim.

" Who s that?" said Sandy to the bar-keeper, as he threw his left thumb over his shoulder, and with his right hand lifted his gin and peppermint.

u That? why that s Judge Judge why, the new Judge."

u Judge hell!" said Sandy, wiping his beard and looking sharply under the hat rim. " I know him, I do. He s a waiter over in a Yreka restaurant. I ll go for him, I will. He is a fraud on the public."

And he went up behind the man, as he sat there on a three-legged stool, serenely leading out his ace for his opponent s Jack.

u Come down !" said the new Judge, gaily ; u come down ! I have you now ! Come down ! "

Sandy raised his hands, his great broad hands, like slabs of pine, and brought them down on top of the beaver hat like an avalanche. The hat shot down and the head shot up, till it was buried out of sight in the wrecked and ruined beaver.

The man sprung to his feet, thrust out his hands, and jumped about like a boy in " Blind-man s-buff," and Sandy walked back to the bar, cool and uncon cerned, and ordered gin and peppermint.

The man at last excavated his nose, and took a bee-line for the door, amid howls of delight from the patrons of the HowlnV Wilderness. That is the usual fate of beavers in the mines. They may be respected, but they perish for all that.

Let a member of Congress, or even of the Cabinet, go up into the mountains with a beaver, and ten to one he would have it driven down over his nose. He would have to stand it too; he would have to laugh, call it a good joke, and treat " the boys" in the bargain. After that they would call him a good fellow, give him "feet" in an extension of the a Jenny Lind" ledge, u Midnight Assassin," or " Roaring Lion," and vote for him, if he should be a candidate for office, to the last man.

I leave this question of the hat now to those wise

men of America who have rushed out upon the frontier a pen in one hand, a telescope in the other, and, viewing the Indian from afar off, decided in a day that he was a bad and a bloody character.

I leave this question to those teachers, with every confidence that their capacities will prove equal to the task. The subject is worthy such men, and the men worthy such a subject.