Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX.
THE LAST OF THE LOST CABIN.
HESE Indians use but few words. A coward and a liar is the same with them ; they have no distinct terms of expressing the two sins. Sometimes a single eloquent gesture means a whole sentence, and expresses it, too, better than could a multitude of words.
I said to the old chief one day, u Your language is very poor ; it has so few words."
u We have enough. It does not take many words- to tell the truth," he answered.
u Ah, but we have a hundred words to your one. " u Well, you need them."
There was a stateliness in his manner when he said this, and a toss of the head, that meant a whole chapter.
He seemed to say, " Yes, from the number of lies you have told us, from the long treaties that meant
nothing that you have made with us; from the multitude of promises that you have made and broken, and made again, back as far as the traditions of my people go, I should say that you needed even a thousand words to our one."
" Words, umph ! Tell me how my dog looks out
of his eves?"
./
The old Indian arose as he said this, and gathered his blanket about his shoulders. The dog lay with his nose on his two paws, and his eyes raised to his master s.
" You have not words enough in all your books to picture a single look from the eyes of my dog."
He drew his blanket closer about him, turned away, and the dog arose and followed him.
I had a pocket Bible with me once, in his camp. I was young, enthusiastic, and anxious to do a little missionary business on my own responsibility. I showed it to the chief, and undertook to tell him what it was.
u It is the promise of God to man," I said, u His written promise to us, that if we do as He has com manded us to do, we shall live and be happy for ever when we die."
He took it in his hand, upside down, and looked at the outside and inside very attentively.
" Promises ! Is it a treaty ? "
"Well, it is a treaty, perhaps; at least, it is a promise, and He wrote it."
u Did it take all of this to say that? I do not
like long treaties. I do not like any treaties on paper.
They are so easy to break. The Indian does not
want his God to sign a paper. He is not afraid to
trust his God."
u But the promises? " I urged.
He pointed to the new leaves on the trees, the spears that were bursting through the ground, handed rne the book gruffly, and said no more.
The Prince was gone, perhaps to return no more. I was again utterly alone with the Indians. I looked down and out upon the world below as looking upon a city from a tower, and was not unhappy.
I dwelt now altogether with the chief. His lodge was my home ; his family my companions. We rode swift horses, sailed on the little mountain lakes with grass and tule sails, or sat down under the trees in summer, where the wind came through from the sea, and drank in silently the glories and the calm delights of life together. Nothing wanted, nothing attempted. We were content, silent, and satisfied. Was it not enough? Despise a love of nature, and even a love of woman, that is ranted and talked about as if it were a pain in the stomach. A dog may howl his passion, but the most of beasts are more decent in this than the mass of men.
" They will find the cabin, yet," said the chief, u if it is allowed to stand. Then they will search till they find the mine, then a crowd of people will come, like grasshoppers in the valley; my warriors will be murdered, my forests cut down, my grass
will be burned, my game driven off, and my people
will starve. As their father to whom they look for
protection and support, I cannot allow it to stand."
u It shall be as you say. Send some men with me. What care I for the cabin, and what is a mine of gold to me here? "
We went down, we burned the cabin to the ground. We did not leave even a pine board, and after the embers had cooled and a rain had settled the ashes, we dug up the soil and scattered seeds of reeds and grass on the spot. The stumps, chips, logs, everything was burned that bore the mark of the white man s axe.
A year or two afterwards I passed there, and all was wild and overgrown with grass, the same as if no man had ever sat down and rested there below the boughs.
Some pines that stood too close to the burning cabin had yellow branches at one side, and where the bark had burned on that side they were gnarled and seared, and stood there parched up and ugly, in a circle, as if making faces at some invisible object in their midst.
That is all there is really of the lost cabin, which once created such a commotion in northern California.
Men came, less numerous of course, each season, year after year, looking for the lost cabin, for it was pleasant to come up from the hot plains of the Sacramento, and up from the cities on the sea, and camp here by the cool streams, and travel under the
great trees away from even a hint of the sun ; but they never found so much as a trace of the lost cabin, and at last gave it up as a myth not unlike Gold Lake, Gold Beach, and the Lost Dutchman of the earliest days of the Pacific excitements.
I did not return to the mine because, in the first place, I believed that it was only a treacherous pocket that had nothing more to give but promises. But beyond all that, I was trying to rise to the dignity of some little virtue, after the Prince had shown so much, and these Indians had set such good examples. What should I do with the gold, even if I found a mountain of it? My wants were few and simple. Except to make journeys, I did not need a dollar. I had all that I could use; what use, then, had I for more?
I could only point it out to my countrymen, and that meant toil and strife, privation and endurance for them; for the Indians it meant annihilation. With the constant sense before me that it was and is exhausted, I have been enabled to let the leaves fall there, and the moss to grow in the mine for many, many years. Sometimes we have almost to lie to ourselves to get strength to do a simple act of justice; nay, to even not do a deliberate wrong.
What, after all, if my grand, old, noble pyramid of the north, white as faith, sphinx-like looking out over the desert plains of the east, the seas of the west, the sable woods that environ it, should be built on a solid base of gold !
When the Modoc has led his last warrior to battle
up yonder in his rocky fortress, fired his last shot, and
the grass is growing in the last war-path of those
people, then, and not till then, I may go up where the
solemn trees with their dead limbs stand around,
making faces at something in the centre, pitch a tent
there, and go down in the canon with men, and picks
and shovels, and bars of steel and iron.
At the same time, I am trying to bring myself up to the conviction of the truth, that a great deal of gold is rather to be avoided than sought after. Every day I look around, and see how many thousands there are who have gold and nothing else ; I see the sin there is in it and the getting of it. The ten thousand temptations it brings a man, tied up in the bags along with it, and let out when it is let out, in separable from it. I see that it is sinking my coun try, morally, every day ; and yet with this steady drift of all things toward the one goal, this sailing of every ship in life for the one Golden Gate, barren as it is, forgetting the green isles of palm and the warm winds there ; I say, with all this, it is hard to stand up tall and despise it.
Save money for the children? Bosh! Are you afraid to put them down on the track of life, to take a fair and even start with the rest ? Do you want to start them ahead of nine-tenths of those who have to run the race of life ? Do you think they have not brains or backbone enough to make their way with the rest ? How many of all the millions can start with a fortune ?
No. Put them out on the track, well trained and
strong, and let them run the race fairly and squarely
with the humblest there, and then if they win they
win like men. Must have money to appear well !
Fiddle-sticks ! To buy a new coat and furniture, so
as to receive your friends. My dear sir, friends
never yet came to see a man s new coat or his nice
house ; never ! If your friends want to see new
coats, they can go to the clothing stores and see a
thousand every day for nothing.
No, we do not hoard up money altogether for the children, or for friends to look upon, but we heap it up because we are selfish cowards ! Because we have not nerve enough to stand on our own merit, or hav ing so little merit and so much money, we prefer to trust to the latter for a place in the eyes of the world. And then there is a low, contemptible fear that we will come to want, and so toil and toil and build a barricade of gold about us, and die at last in fear, pinched t6 death between twenty-dollar pieces, that the starved and hungry soul has crept between, with the last bit of young, strong manhood that we were born with crushed utterly out of us.