The Canoe and the Saddle/Chapter XI
Kamaiakan[edit]
Towing a horse on each side, by a rope turned about my saddle-horn, I moved but slowly. For a hundred yards I felt a premonitory itching in my spine, as if of arrow in the marrow. I would not deign to turn. If vis a tergo came, I should discover it soon enough. I felt no inclination to see anything more of any Indians, ever, anywhere. I was in raging wrath; too angry as yet to be at a loss for the future; too furious to despond.
Whatever might now befall, I was at least free of Loolowcan the Frowzy. As to mutual benefit, we were nearly quits. He had had from me a journey home and several days of banqueting: I from him guidance hither. He had at last deserted me, shabbily, with assassination in his wishes; but I had not paid him, had vilipended him, and taken myself off unharmed. Withal I was disappointed. My type Indian, one in the close relations of comrade, had failed me. It is a bitter thing to a man to find that he has thrown away even a minor measure of friendship or love upon a meaner nature. I could see what the traitor influences were, but why could he not resist, and be plucky, honorable, and a fine fellow? Why cannot all the pitiful be noble?
What saved me from massacre by the citizens of Weenas was not, I suppose, my six-shooter, not my double-barrel, not my bowie, — though each had its influence on the minds of Indians, — but the neighborhood of the exploring camp. Much as Shabbiest and Olyman disliked these intruders, they feared them more. Loolowcan also felt that he was responsible for my safety, and that, if I disappeared, some one would ask him the inevitable question, where he had put me. The explorers, not having had much success in finding a railroad, would be entertained with an opportunity for other researches. Yet the temptation to six siwashes to butcher one Boston man, owner of three passable horses and valuable travelling gear, is so great, and siwash power to resist present temptation so small, that I no doubt owed something to my armament, and something to my evident intention to use it.
I now made for the exploring camp as best I might. Gubbins and Antipodes were disposed to be centrifugal, and, as I did not wish to weary Klale with pursuits, I held to my plan of towing the refractory steeds. At times the two would tug their lengths of rope isosceles, and meet for biting each other. When this happened, I, seated just behind the apex of the triangle, was wellnigh sawed in twain by the closing sides. After such encounter, Antipodes would perhaps lurch ahead violently, while Gubbins, limping from a kick, would be a laggard. Klale would thus become the point where two irregular arms of a diagonal met, and would be sorely unsteadied, as are those who strive to hold even control between opponent forces.
Thus I jerked along, sometimes tugging, sometimes tugged, until I discerned a distant flicker in the air, which soon defined itself as the American flag, and through the underwood I saw the tents of the exploring party, a welcome refuge.
I was tired, hot, excited, and hateful, disgusted with Indians and horses, and fast losing my faith in everything; therefore the shelter of a shady tent was calming, and so was the pleasant placidity of the scene within. Lieutenant M. was reclining within, buying of a not uncleanly Indian long, neat potatoes and a silver salmon. Dewiness of his late bath in the melted snows of the Weenas sparkled still on the bright scales of the fish. It was a tranquillizing spectacle after the rough travel and offensive encounters of the day. Almost too attractive to a man who, after a few moments of this comparatively Sybaritic dalliance, must renew, and now alone, his journey, fed with musty hard-tack, and must again whip tired nags over plains bristling with wild sage, and over the aggravating backbones of the earth.
The camp could give me, as it did, a hospitable meal of soldiers’ fare; but, with friendliest intentions, the camp could do little to speed me. It could advise me that to launch out unguided into the unknown is perilous; but I was resolved not to be baffled. Le Play House, the mission where Loolowcan should have guided me in the morning, was somewhere. I could find it, and ask Christian aid there. The priests would probably have Indian retainers, and one of these would be a safer substitute for my deserter. I would not prognosticate failure; enough to meet it if it come.
Le Play House is on the Atinam, twenty miles in a bee-line from camp. Were one but a bee, here would be a pleasant flight this summer’s afternoon. But how to surely trace this imaginary route across pathlessness, over twenty miles of waste, across two ranges of high scorched hills? Two young Indians, loungers about the camp, offered to conduct me for a shirt. Cheap, but inadmissible; I am not now, my young shirtless, in the mood for lavishing a shirt of civilization on any of the siwash race. Too recent are the injuries and insults of Loolowcan and the men of Stenchville. I am still in an imprudent rage. I rashly scorn the help of aborigines. Thereaway is Atinam, — I will ride thither alone this pleasant afternoon of summer.
I could not fitly ask the fusillade for Loolowcan, Olyman, and his gang. Their action had been too incomplete for punishment so final. I requested Lieutenant M. to mamook stick upon my ex-comrade should be present himself. I fear that the traitor escaped unpunished, perhaps to occupy himself in scalping my countrymen in the late war. Owhhigh in that war was unreasonably hung; there are worse fellows than Owhhigh, in cleaner circles, unhung, and not even sent to Coventry.
Before parting, Lieutenant M. and I exchanged presents of our most precious objects, after the manner of the Homeric heroes. Hardshell remainder biscuits he gave, jaw-breakers, and tough as a pine-knot, but more grateful than my hard-tack, well sprouted after its irrigation by the S’kamish. I bestowed, in return, two of my salted tongues, bitter as the maxims of La Rochefoucauld.
Gubbins and Antipodes were foes irreconcilable, — a fact of immense value. Therefore, that they might travel with less expense of scamper to me, I tied their heads together. I felt, and so it proved, that, whenever Antipodes begged to pause and feed, Gubbins would be impelled to keep up a steady jog-trot, and whenever Gubbins wished to inspect a tuft of bunch-grass to the right, his companion would stolidly decline compliance, and plod faithfully along the ideal bee-line. There must be no discursiveness in my troop henceforth.
Then I resolutely said adieu to the friendly camp, and, pointing my train for a defile in the hard hills upon the southern horizon, started, not very gayly, and very lonely. We did not droop, horses or man, but the visionary Hope that went before was weak in the knees, and no longer bounded gallantly, beckoning us onward. The two light-loaded horses, in their leash, were rarely unanimous to halt, but their want of harmony often interfered with progress, and Owhhigh’s whip must often whirr about their flanks, hinting to them not to be too unbrotherly. Toiling thus doggedly on over the dry levels and rolling sweeps of prairie, Klale and I grew weary with the remorseless sunshine, and our responsibility of the march.
As I rounded a hillock, two horsemen, galloping toward me, drew up at a hundred yards to reconnoitre. One of them immediately rode forward. What familiar scarecrow is this? By that Joseph coat I recognize him. It is Shabbiest, pleased evidently to see that Loolowcan has taken his advice, and I am departing alone.
“Kla hy yah? Howdydo?” — said the old man, “Whither now, O Boston tyee?”
“To Le Play House,” answered I, short and sour, feeling no affinity for this rusty person, the first beguiler of my treacherous guide.
“Not the hooihut,” said he. “Nanitch ocook polealy; behold this powder,” — the powder I had given him. For this gift, within his greasy garb there beat a grateful heart, or possibly, a heart expectant of more, and he volunteered to guide me a little way into the trail. Moral: always give a testimonial to dreary old grumblers in ole clo’, when you meet them in the jolly morning, — possibly they may requite you when you meet at sulky eve.
First, Shabbiest must ask permission of his companion. “My master,” he said; “I am elaita, a slave.” The master, a big, bold Indian of Owhhigh type, in clothes only second-hand, gave him free permission. The old man’s servitude was light.
Shabbiest led off on his shambler in quite another direction from mine, and more southerly. After a mile or so we climbed a steep hill, whence I could see the Nachchese again. I saw also behind me a great column of dust, and from it anon two galloping riders making for us.
They dashed up, — the same two youths who at camp had offered to guide me to Le Play House for a shirt. I was humbler now than when I refused them before noon, having over-confidence in myself, and my power of tracing bee-lines. We must, perhaps be lost in our younker and prodigal periods before our noon, that we may be taught respect for experience, and believe in cooperation of brother-men.
Now, I possessed two shirts of faded blue-check calico, and was important among savages for such possession. One of these, much bedimmed with dust, at present bedecked my person, — buckskin laid aside for the heat. There was no washerwoman within many degrees of latitude and longitude, — none probably, between the Cascades and the Rockys. Why not, then, disembarrass myself of a valueless article, — a shirt properly hors du combat, — if by its aid I might win to guide me two young rovers, ambitious of so much, distinction on their Boulevards as a checked calico could confer?
Young gallopers, the shirt is yours. Ho for Le Play House!
Adieu, Shabbiest, unexpected re-enterer on this scene! Thy gratitude for two charges of powder puts a fact on the merit side of my book of Indian character. Receive now, with my thanks, this my last spare dhudeen, and this ounce of pigtail, and take away thyself and thy odorous coat from between the wind and me. Shabbiest rode after his master.
Everything now revived. Horses and men grew confident, and Hope, late feeble in the knees, now with braced muscles went turning somersets of joy before us. Antipodes and Gubbins, unleashed, were hurried along by the whoops and whips of my younker guides; and Klale, relieved of responsibility, and inspired by gay companions, became sprightly and tricksy. Sudden change had befallen my prospects, lately dreary. Shabbiest had come as forerunner of good fortune. Then, speeding after him, appeared my twin deliverers, guiding me for the low price of a shirt totally buttonless.
It was worth a shirt, nay, shirts, merely to be escorted by these graceful centaurs. No saddle intervened between them and their horses. No stirrup compelled their legs. A hair rope twisted around the mustang’s lower lip was their only horse furniture. “Owhhigh tenas,” one of Owhhigh’s boys, the younger claimed to be. Nowhere have I seen a more beautiful youth. He rode like an Elgin marble. A circlet of otter fur plumed with an eagle’s feather crowned him. His forehead was hardly perceptibly flattened, and his expression was honest and merry, not like the sombre, suspicious visage of Loolowcan, disciple of Talipus.
Neither of my new friends would give me his name. After coquetting awhile, they pretended that to tell me would be tamanoüs of ill omen, and begged me to give them pasaiooks’ names. So I received them into civilization under the titles of Prince, and Poins. These they metamorphosed into U’plint’z and K’pawint’z, and shouted their new appellatives at each other in glee as they galloped. Prince, my new Adonis, like Poins, his admiring and stupid comrade, was dressed only in hickory shirt of the Hudson’s Bay Company and some nondescript raggedness for leggins. Deer are not abundant in this arid region, and buckskin raiment is a luxury for chiefs.
With these companions, the journey, just now dismal, became a lark. Over the levels the horses dashed freshly, — mine as if they wished to show how much I had undervalued their bottom, and how needless had been my detour, under my false leader, to exchange these trusty, and tried fellow-travellers for unknown substitutes. Over the levels they dashed, and stout of heart, though not quite so gayly, they clambered the hills Macadamized with pebbles of trap.
Antipodes, loping in the lead, suddenly shied wildly away from a small rattlesnake coiled in the track. The little stranger did not wait for our assault. He glided away into a thick bush where he stood on the defensive, brandishing his tongue, and eying us with two flames. His tail meanwhile recited cruel anathemas, with a harsh, rapid burr. He was safe from assault of stick or stone, and I was about to call in my old defender, the revolver, when Uplintz prayed me to pause. I gave him the field, while Kpawintz stood by, chuckling with delight at the ingenuity of his friend and hero.
Uplintz took from a buckskin pouch at his belt his pipe, and, loosening from the bowl its slender reed stem, he passed through it a stiff spire of bunch-grass. A little oil of tobacco adhered to the point. He approached the bush carefully, and held the nicotinized straw a foot from the rattlesnake’s nose. At once, from a noisy, threatening snake, tremulous with terror and rage from quivering fang to quivering rattle, — a snake writhing venomously all along its black and yellow ugliness, — it became a pacified snake, watchful, but not wrathful.
Uplintz, charmer of reptiles, proceeded with judicious coolness. Imperceptibly he advanced his wand of enchantment nearer and nearer. Rattler perceived the potent influence, and rattled no more. The vixenish twang ceased at one end of him; at the other, his tongue became gently lambent. The narcotic javelin approached, and finally touched his head. He was a lulled and vanquished rattlesnake. He followed the magic sceptre, as Uplintz withdrew it, a very drunken serpent “rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard,” staggering with the air of a languidly contented inebriate. He swayed feebly out upon the path, and squirmed there, while the charmer tickled his nose with the pleasant opiate, his rattles uttering mild plaudits.
At last Kpawintz, the stolid, whipping out a knife, suddenly decapitated our disarmed plaything, and bagged the carcass for supper, with triumphant guffaws. Kpawintz enjoyed his solution of the matter hugely, and acted over the motions of the snake, laughing loudly as he did so, and exhibiting his tidbit trophy.
We had long ago splashed across the Nachchese. The sun, nearing the western hills, made every opening valley now a brilliant vista. The rattlesnake had died just on the edge of the Atinam ridges, and Kpawintz was still brandishing his yellow and black prey, and snapping the rattle about the flanks of his wincing roan, when Uplintz called me to look with him up into the streaming sunshine, and see Le Play House.
A strange and unlovely spot for religion to have chosen for its home of influence. It needed all the transfiguring power of sunset to make this desolate scene endurable. Even sunset, lengthening the shadow of every blade of grass, could not create a mirage of verdant meadow there, nor stretch scrubby cottonwood trees to be worthy of their exaggerated shade. No region this where a Friar Tuck would choose to rove, solacing his eremite days with greenwood pleasures. Only ardent hermits would banish themselves to such a hermitage. The missionary spirit, or the military religious discipline, must be very positive, which sends men to such unattractive heathen as these, — to a field of labor far away from any contact with civilization, and where no exalting result of converted multitudes can be hoped.
The mission was a hut-like structure of adobe clay, plastered upon a frame of sticks. It stood near the stony bed of the Atinam. The sun was just setting as we came over against it, on the hill-side. We dashed down into the valley, that moment abandoned by sunlight. My Indians launched forward to pay their friendly greeting to the priests. But I observed them quickly pause, walk their horses, and noiselessly dismount.
As I drew near, a sound of reverent voices met me, — vespers at this station in the wilderness. Three souls were worshipping in the rude chapel attached to the house. It was rude indeed, — a cell of clay, — but a sense of the Divine presence was there, not less than in many dim old cathedrals, far away, where earlier sunset had called worshippers of other race and tongue to breathe the same thanksgiving and the same heartfelt prayer. No pageantry of ritual such as I had often witnessed in ancient fanes of the same faith; when incense filled the air and made it breathe upon the finer senses; when from the organ tones large, majestical, triumphant, subduing, made my being thrill as if music were the breath of a new life more ardent and exalting; when inward to join the throngs that knelt there solemnly, inward to the old sanctuary where their fathers’ fathers had knelt and prayed the ancestral prayers of mankind for light and braver hope and calmer energy, inward with the rich mists of sunset flung back from dusky walls of time-glorified marble palaces, came the fair and the mean, the desolate and the exultant, — came beauty to be transfigured to more tender beauty with gentle penitence and purifying hope, — came weariness and pain to be soothed with visions of joy undying, celestial, — came hearts wellnigh despairing, self-scourged or cruelly betrayed, to win there dear repentance strong with tears; to win the wise and agonized resolve; — never in any temple of that ancient faith, where prayer has made its home for centuries, has prayer seemed so mighty, worship so near the ear of God, as vespers here at this rough shrine in the lonely valley of Atinam.
God is not far from our lives at any moment. But we go for days and years with no light shining forth from kindling heart to reveal to us the near divineness. With clear and cultivated perception we take in all facts of beauty, all the wonderment of craft, cunning adaptation, and subtile, design in nature; we are guided through thick dangers, and mildly scourged away from enfeebling luxury of too much bliss; we err and sin, and gain the bitter lessons of penance; and all this while we are deeming or dreaming ourselves thoughtfully religious, and are so up to the measure of our development. But yet, after all these years, coming at last to a wayside shrine, where men after their manner are adoring so much of the Divine as their minds can know, we are touched with a strange and larger sympathy, and perceive in ourselves a great awakening, and a new and wider perception of God and the godlike, and know that we have entered upon another sphere of spiritual growth.
Vespers ended. The missionaries, coming forth from their service, welcomed me with quiet cordiality. Visits of men not savage were rare to them as are angels’ visits to worldlings. In winter they resided at a station on the Yakimah in the plains eastward. Atinam was their summer abode, when the, copper-colored lambs of their flock were in the mountains, plucking berries in the dells, catching crickets on the slopes.
Messrs. D’Herbomez and Pandosy had been some five years among the different tribes of this Yakimah region, effecting of course not much. They had become influential friends, rather than spiritual guides. They could exhibit some results of good advice in potato patches, but polygamy was too strong for them. Kamaiakan, chiefest of Yakimah or Klickatat chiefs, sustained their cause and accepted their admonitions in many matters of conduct, but never asked should he or should he not invite another Mrs. Kamaiakan to share the honors of his lodge. Men and Indians are firm against clerical interference in domestic institutions. Perhaps also Kamaiakan had a vague notion of the truth, that polygamy is not a whit more unnatural than celibacy.
Whether or not these representatives of the Society of Jesus have persuaded the Yakimahs to send away their supernumerary squaws, for fear of something harsher than the good-natured amenities of purgatory, one kindly and successful missionary work they have done, in my reception and entertainment. Their fare was mine. Salmon from the stream and potatoes from their own garden spread the board. Their sole servant, an old Canadian lay brother, cared for my horses,— for them and for me there was perfect repose.
By no means would Uplintz and Kpawintz allow me to forget their promised reward. Each was an incomplete dandy of the Yakimahs until that shirt of blue had been tried on by each, and contrasted with the brown cuticle of each. They desired to dress after my mode; with pasaiooks’ names and an exchangeable shirt between them, they hoped to become elegant men of Boston fashion. Twilight was gloom to their hearts until I had condescended to lay aside that envied garment, until it had ceased to be mine, and was the joint property of two proud and happy young braves, and until each, wearing it for a time and seeing himself reflected in the admiring eyes of his fellow, felt that he was stamped with the true cachet of civilization. Alas, that the state of my kit did not permit me to double the boon, and envelope the statuesque proportions of Uplintz with a clean calico, rich in pearl buttons. For there came an obtruding question, how the two juvenals would distribute the one mantle. Would they appear before the critical circles of Weenas only on alternate days? Would they cleave the garment into a dexter and a sinister portion, one sleeve and half a body to each? Or would they divide the back to one, and the front to the other, and thenceforth present, the one an obverse, the other a reverse to the world? It is my hope that their tenancy in common of this perishable chattel did not sunder companionship. Kpawintz would infallibly give up his undivided half to Uplintz, if that captivating young Adonis demanded it. But I trust that the latter was content with grace, beauty, and rattlesnakes, and yielded the entire second-hand shirt to his less accomplished friend. Elaborate toilettes are a necessity of ugliness. Uplintz, fair as Antinoüs, would only deteriorate under frippery.
It had a fresh flavor of incongruity to talk high civilization on the Atinam, in a mud chamber twelve feet square, while two dusky youths of Owhhigh’s band, squatted on the floor, eyed us calmly, and, when their pipe was out, kept each other awake with monotonous moaning gutturals. The mountain gale of to-night was strong as the mistral of Father D’Herbomez’s native Provence.
We talked of that romantic region, comparing adobe architecture of the Northwest with the Palace of Avignon, the Amphitheatre of Nismes, the Maison Carrée, and the Pont du Gard. Kamaiakan’s court lost by contrast with King René’s, and no Petrarch had yet arisen among the Yakimahs. Then, passing over the Maritime Alps into the plains of Piedmont, we measured Monte Rosa, dominant over Father Pandosy’s horizon of youth, with St. Helen’s, queen of the farthest West, and rebuilt in fancy, on these desert plains, sunny Milan and its brilliant dome,
It is good to have the brain packed full of images from the wealthy past; it is good to remember and recall the beautiful accumulations of human genius from earliest eld to now. For with these possessions a man may safely be a comrade of rudest pioneers, and toughen himself to robust manliness, without dislinking himself from refinement, courtesy, and beauty of act and demeanor. Nature indeed, wise, fair, and good, is ever at hand to reintroduce us to our better selves; but sometimes, in moods sorry or rebellious, Nature seems cold and slow and distant, and will not grant at once to our eagerness the results of long, patient study. Then we turn to our remembrances of what brother men have done, and standing among them, as in a noble amphitheatre, we cannot be other than calm and patient; we cannot fall back into barbarism and be brutal, though our present society be Klalams or Klickatats; and even when treachery has exasperated us in the morning, in the evening, under the quieting influence of Art and History, we can forgive the savage, and think of pacifying themes.
A roof crushes and fevers one who has been long wont to sleep beneath the stars. I preferred my blankets without the cabin, sheltered by its wall from the wind that seemed to prophesy a storm of terrors growing on the mountains and the sea, to the luxury of a bunk within. The good fathers were lodged with more than conventual simplicity. Discomfort, and often privation, were the laws of missionary life in this lonely spot. It was camp life with none of the excitement of a camp. Drearily monotonous went the days of these pioneers. There was little intellectual exercise to be had, except to construct a vocabulary of the Yakimah dialect, — a hardly more elaborate machine for working out thought than the babbling Chinook jargon. They could have inevitably but small success in proselyting, and rarely any society except the savage dignity of Kamaiakan, the savage vigor of Skloo, and the savage cleverness of Owhhigh. A tame lustrum for my hosts, varied only by summer migrations to the Atinam and winter abode on the Yakimah. If the object of a man’s life were solely to produce effect upon other men, and only mediately upon himself, one would say that the life of a cultivated and intellectual missionary, endeavoring to instruct savages in the complex and transitional dogmatisms of civilization, was absolutely wasted.
When I woke, late as sunrise, after the crowded fatigues and difficulties of yesterday, I found that already my hosts had despatched Uplintz and Kpawintz to a supposed neighbor camp of their brethren, to seek me a guide. Also the old servitor, a friendly grumbler, was off to the mountains on a similar errand. Patience, therefore, and remember, hasty voyager, that many are the chances of savage life.
Antipodes had shaken to pieces whatever stitched bag he bore. I seized this moment to make repairs. Among my traps were needles and thread of the stoutest, for use and for presents. The fascinating squaw of Weenas, if she had but known it, was very near a largess of such articles. But the wrong-doing of Sultan Olyman lost her the gift, and my tailor-stock was undiminished. I made a lucky thrust at the one eye of a needle, and began my work with severe attention.
While I was mending, Uplintz, with his admiring Orson, Kpawintz, came galloping back. Gone were the Indians they had sought; gone so said their trail — to gad nomadly anywhere. And the two comrades, though willing to go with me to the world’s end for the pleasure of my society and the reward of my shirts, must admit to Father Pandosy, cross-examining, that they had never meandered along the Dalles hooihut.
The old lay brother also returned bringing bad luck. Where he had looked to find populous lodges, he met one straggling squaw, left there to potter alone, while the Bedouins were far away. The many chances of Indian life seemed chancing sadly against me. Should I despair of farther progress, and become an acolyte of the Atinam mission?
Just then I raised my eyes, and lo! a majestic Indian in Lincoln green! He was dismounting at the corral from a white pacer. Who now?
“Le bon Dieu l’envoie,” said Father Pandosy; “c’est Kamaiakan même.”
Enter, then, upon this scene Kamaiakan, chiefest of Yakimah chiefs. He was a tall, large man, very dark, with a massive square face, and grave, reflective look. Without the senatorial coxcombry of Owhhigh, his manner was strikingly distinguished, quiet and dignified. He greeted the priests as a Kaiser might a Papal legate. To me, as their friend, he gave his hand with a gentlemanly word of welcome.
All the nobs I have known among Redskins have retained a certain dignity of manner even in their beggarly moods. Among the plebeians, this excellence degenerates into a gruff coolness or insolent indifference. No one ever saw a bustling or fussy Indian. Even when he begs of a blanketeer gifted with chattels, and beg he does without shame or shrinking, he asks as if he would do the possessor of so much trumpery an honor by receiving it at his hands. The nauseous, brisk, pen-behind-the-ear manner of the thriving tradesman, competitor with everything and everybody, would disgust an Indian even to the scalping point. Owhhigh, visiting my quarters at Squally with his fugue of beggars, praying me to breech his breechless, shirt his shirtless, shoe his shoeless child, treated me with a calm loftiness, as if I were merely a steward of his, or certainly nothing more than a co-potentate of the world’s oligarchy. He showed no discomposure at my refusal, as unmoved as his request. Fatalism, indolence, stolidity, and self-respect are combined in this indifference. Most of a savage’s prayers for bounty are made direct to Nature; when she refuses, she does so according to majestic laws, of which he, half reflectively, half instinctively, is conscious. He learns that there is no use in waiting and whining for salmon out of season, or fresh grasshoppers in March. According to inevitable laws, he will have, or will not have, salmon of the first water, and aromatic grasshoppers sweet as honey-dew. Caprice is out of the question with Nature, although her sex be feminine. Thus a savage learns to believe that power includes steadiness.
Kamaiakan’s costume was novel. Louis Philippe dodging the police as Mr. Smith, and adorned with a woollen comforter and a blue cotton umbrella, was unkingly, and a caricature. He must be every inch a king who can appear in an absurd garb and yet look full royal. Kamaiakan stood the test. He wore a coat, a long tunic of fine green cloth. Like the irregular beds of a kitchen garden were the patches, of all shapes and sizes, combined to form this robe of ceremony. A line, zizgag as the path over new-fallen snow trodden by a man after toddies too many, — such devious line marked the waist. Sleeves, baggy here, and there tight as a bandage, were inserted somewhere, without reference to the anatomical insertion of arms. Each verdant patch was separated from its surrounding patches by a rampart or a ditch of seam, along which stitches of white threads strayed like vines. It was a gerrymandered coat, — gerrymandered according to some system perhaps understood by the operator, but to me complex, impolitic, and unconstitutional.
Yet Kamaiakan was not a scarecrow. Within this garment of disjunctive conjunction he stood a chieftainly man. He had the advantage of an imposing presence and bearing, and above all a good face, a well lighted Pharos at the top of his colossal frame. We generally recognize whether there is a man looking at us from behind what he chances to use for eyes, and when we detect the man, we are cheered or bullied according to what we are. It is intrinsically more likely that the chieftainly man will be an acknowledged chief among simple savages, than in any of the transitional phases of civilization preceding the educated simplicity of social life, whither we now tend. Kamaiakan, in order to be chiefest chief of the Yakimahs, must be clever enough to master the dodges of salmon and the will of wayward mustangs; or , like Fine-Ear, he must know where kamas bulbs are mining a passage for their sprouts; or he must be able to tramp farther and fare better than his fellows; or, by a certain tamanoüs that is in him, he must have power to persuade or convince, to win or overbear. He must be best as a hunter, a horseman, a warrior, an orator. These are personal attributes, not heritable; if Kamaiakan Junior is a nature’s nobody, he takes no permanent benefit by his parentage.
Chieftainly Kamaiakan seated himself and his fantastic coat in the hut. He had looked in to see his friends, the good fathers, and to counsel with them what could be done for Mrs. Kamaiakan the third. That estimable lady had taken too much salmon, — very far too much, alas! — and Kamaiakan feared that he was about to become a widower, pro tanto. Such a partial solution of the question of polygamy was hardly desired by the missionaries. It were better to save Mrs. K. the third; for doubtless already, knowing of her illness, many a maiden of Yakimah high fashion was wishing that her locks might glisten more sleekly attractive; many a dusky daughter of the tribe was putting on the permanent blush of vermilion to win a look from the disconsolate chief. The fathers feared that he would not content himself with one substitute, but, not to give offence, would accept the candidates one and all. Therefore one of the gentlemen busied himself with a dose for the surfeited squaw, — a dose in quantity giant, in force dwarf, — one that should make itself respected at first sight, and gain a Chinese victory by its formidable aspect alone.
While one compounded this truculent bolus, the other imparted my needs to the chief.
Kamaiakan himself could not profit by this occasion to make a trip to the Dalles and cultivate my society. Not only domestic trials, but duties of state prevented. Were he absent at this critical epoch, when uninvited soldier-men were tramping the realm and winking at its ladies without respect to rank, who would stand forward as champion? Who pacify alike riotous soldier-man and aggrieved savage? Kamaiakan could not leave the field to Skloo the ambitious, nor to Owhhigh the crafty, when he returned from Squally rich with goods, the proceeds of many a horse-theft. Absent a week, and Kamaiakan might find that for another, and not for him, were the tawny maids. Kamaiakan must stay. A nobleman on the climb must keep himself always before the vulgar.
But a follower of the chief had just ambled up on a pony, leading his sumpter horse. Him Kamaiakan despatched up the Atinam, where he had heard that a camp of his people had halted on their way to the mountain berry patches. Among them was a protege of the chief, who knew every trail of the region and had horses galore.
Many are the chances of nomad life. Enter now, in the background, a siwash soon to be a personage in this drama, if the last legs of his flea-bitten white Rosinante can but convey him to the foreground to announce himself.
Enter Ferdinand on the scene, in an Isabella yellow shirt, — he and his garments alike guiltless of the soap of Castile, or any soap of land less royal.
Ferdinand was a free companion, a cosmopolite of his world. He was going somewhere, anywhere, nowhere. He had happened in with dinner in view. So long as the legs of Rosinante lasted, Ferdinand could be a proud cavalier. Now, those legs failing, he drooped. He would soon become a peon, a base footman, and possibly, under temptation, a footpad. Better, then, quarter himself on his friends and former masters, the priests, until in the free pastures of Atinam Rosinante should grow bumptious again.
As his name imported, this new-comer claimed to be identified with civilization. “No Indian name have I,” he said, “I am Fudnun, a blanketeer.” He was a resolved renegade from Indian polity and sociality. He had served with the Hudson’s Bay Company. He had even condescended to take lessons in cookery from the pale-face squaws of the Willamette.
While Ferdinand was thus announcing himself, and communicatively making good his claim as a blanketeer, the envoy of Kamaiakan returned. He had hastened up the Atinam, and come to Camp No-camp. The able-bodied siwashes had all vanished, leaving only a few children, recently out of the papoose period, and a few squaws far on toward second childhood. Only such were left as had no more than power enough to chase and bag the agile grasshopper and far-bounding cricket, and to pounce upon and bag every tumbling beetle of the plain.
Such industry the messenger had found at the camp; but the able-bodied, capable of larger duties, had vanished up the wild valleys, and scattered along the flanks of Tacoma, to change their lowland diet for that of the mountainside; — while the fresh horses I should have had swam in the verdure of the summit prairies, the guide I should have had was stuffing by the handful strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, sallal-berries, and his squaws, with only furtive tribute to their own maw, were bestowing the same fruits into baskets for provident drying.
Again what was to be done, for day grew toward noon, and by to-morrow night I must be at the Dalles, eighty miles away? My kind friends of the mission were discussing whether the old sacristan could be trusted to know the trail and bear the fatigues, when Ferdinand rose, stepped out of the chorus, to become an actor in the drama, and thus spoke, self-prompted : —
“Fudnun nika, pasaiooks; Ferdinand I, blanketeer. Siks nika copa Boston tyee; friend I to Boston chief. Nika nanitch cuitan, closche yakah klatawah; I’ve seen the horses, they’ll go well enough. Nika kumtux Dalles hooihut, pe tikky hyack klatawah; I know the Dalles trail, and am ready to go at once.”
Excellent Ferdinand! What fine apparition, what quaint Ariel, doing his spiriting gently, wooed thee to these yellow sands of Atinam to be my deliverer? Sweet youth, thou shalt have a back-load of trinkets to carry to thy Miranda when we part. Fudnun the blanketeer, let us go.
My new comrade showed Boston energy. He drove up the three horses at once. Rest and bunch-grass at discretion had revived them. A tough journey was before us, but thus far they had not failed in the face of worse difficulties than we were to meet. For a supplement, the missionaries lent me a mare of theirs, to be ridden as far as her foal would follow, and left on the prairie for Ferdinand to pick up on return. The kindness of these gentlemen went with me after my departure.
Adieu, therefore, to the good fathers, and may they be requited in better regions of earth, or better than earth, for their hospitality. Adieu Kamaiakan, prudent and weighty chief! fate grant thee a coat of fewer patches, a nobler robe of state. Adieu the old lay brother. Uplintz and Kpawintz, my merry pair, continue foes of the rattlesnake, and friends to the blue-shirted Boston men.