Before them, surely, sullenly and slow,
The desperate and cheated Indians go.
The people of Boomtown invariably
spoke of Henry Wilson as the oldest settler in the
Jim Valley, as he was of Buster County; but the Eastern
man, with his ideas of an “old settler,”
was surprised as he met the short, silent, middle-aged
man, who was very loath to tell anything about himself,
and about whom many strange and thrilling stories were
told by good story-tellers. In 1879 he was the
only settler in the upper part of the valley, living
alone on the banks of the Elm, a slow, tortuous stream
pulsing lazily down the valley, too small to be called
a river and too long to be called a creek. For
two years, it is said, Wilson had only the company
of his cattle, especially during the winter-time,
and now and then a visit from an Indian, or a trapper
after mink and musk-rats.
Between his ranch and the settlements
in Eastern Dakota there was the wedge-shaped reservation
known as the Sisseton Indian Reserve, on which were
stationed the customary agency and company of soldiers.
But, of course, at that time the Indians were not
restricted closely to the bounds of the reserve, but
ranged freely over the vast and beautiful prairie
lying between the coteaux or ranges of low hills which
mark out “the Jim Valley.” The valley
was unsurveyed for the most part, and the Indians
naturally felt a sort of proprietorship in it, and
when Wilson drove his cattle down into the valley
and squatted, the chief, Drifting Crane, welcomed
him, as a host might, to an abundant feast whose hospitality
was presumed upon, but who felt the need of sustaining
his reputation as a host, and submitted graciously.
The Indians during the first summer
got to know Wilson, and liked him for his silence,
his courage, his generosity; but the older men pondered
upon the matter a great deal and watched with grave
faces to see him ploughing up the sod for his garden.
There was something strange in this solitary man thus
deserting his kindred, coming here to live alone with
his cattle; they could not understand it. What
they said in those pathetic, dimly lighted lodges
will never be known; but when winter came, and the
new-comer did not drive his cattle back over the hills
as they thought he would, then the old chieftains
took long counsel upon it. Night after night
they smoked upon it, and at last Drifting Crane said
to two of his young men: “Go ask this cattleman
why he remains in the cold and snow with his cattle.
Ask him why he does not drive his cattle home.”
This was in March, and one evening
a couple of days later, as Wilson was about re-entering
his shanty at the close of his day’s work, he
was confronted by two stalwart Indians, who greeted
him pleasantly.
“How d’e do? How
d’e do?” he said in reply. “Come
in. Come in and take a snack.”
The Indians entered and sat silently
while he put some food on the table. They hardly
spoke till after they had eaten. The Indian is
always hungry, for the reason that his food supply
is insufficient and his clothing poor. When they
sat on the cracker-boxes and soap-boxes which served
as seats, they spoke. They told him of the chieftain’s
message. They said they had come to assist him
in driving his cattle back across the hills; that
he must go.
To all this talk in the Indian’s
epigrammatic way, and in the dialect which has never
been written, the rancher replied almost as briefly:
“You go back and tell Drifting Crane that I like
this place; that I’m here to stay; that I don’t
want any help to drive my cattle. I’m on
the lands of the Great Father at Washington, and Drifting
Crane ain’t got any say about it. Now that
sizes the whole thing up. I ain’t got anything
against you nor against him, but I’m a settler;
that’s my constitution; and now I’m settled
I’m going to stay.”
While the Indians discussed his words
between themselves he made a bed of blankets on the
floor and said: “I never turn anybody out.
A white man is just as good as an Indian as long as
he behaves himself as well. You can bunk here.”
The Indians didn’t understand
his words fully, but they did understand his gesture,
and they smiled and accepted the courtesy, so like
their own rude hospitality. Then they all smoked
a pipe of tobacco in silence, and at last Wilson turned
in and went serenely off to sleep, hearing the mutter
of the Indians lying before the fire.
In the morning he gave them as good
a breakfast as he had bacon and potatoes,
with coffee and crackers. Then he shook hands,
saying: “Come again. I ain’t
got anything against you. You’ve done y’r
duty. Now go back and tell your chief what I’ve
said. I’m at home every day. Good
day.”
The Indians smiled kindly, and drawing
their blankets over their arms, went away toward the
east.
During April and May two or three
reconnoitering parties of land-hunters drifted over
the hills and found him out. He was glad to see
them, for, to tell the truth, the solitude of his
life was telling on him. The winter had been
severe, and he had hardly caught a glimpse of a white
face during the three midwinter months, and his provisions
were scanty.
These parties brought great news.
One of them was the advance surveying party for a
great Northern railroad, and they said a line of road
was to be surveyed during the summer if their report
was favorable.
“Well, what d’ye think
of it?” Wilson asked, with a smile.
“Think! It’s immense!”
said a small man in the party, whom the rest called
Judge Balser. “Why, they’ll be a town
of four thousand inhabitants in this valley before
snow flies. We’ll send the surveyors right
over the divide next month.”
They sent some papers to Wilson a
few weeks later, which he devoured as a hungry dog
might devour a plate of bacon. The papers were
full of the wonderful resources of the Jim Valley.
It spoke of the nutritious grasses for stock.
It spoke of the successful venture of the lonely settler
Wilson, how his stock fattened upon the winter grasses
without shelter, etc., what vegetables he grew,
etc., etc.
Wilson was reading this paper for
the sixth time one evening in May. He had laid
off his boots, his pipe was freshly filled, and he
sat in the doorway in vast content, unmindful of the
glory of color that filled the western sky, and the
superb evening chorus of the prairie-chickens, holding
conventions on every hillock. He felt something
touch him on the shoulder, and looked up to see a
tall Indian gazing down upon him with a look of strange
pride and gravity. Wilson sprang to his feet and
held out his hand.
“Drifting Crane, how d’e do?”
The Indian bowed, but did not take
the settler’s hand. Drifting Crane would
have been called old if he had been a white man, and
there was a look of age in the fixed lines of his
powerful, strongly modeled face, but no suspicion
of weakness in the splendid poise of his broad, muscular
body. There was a smileless gravity about his
lips and eyes which was very impressive.
“I’m glad to see you.
Come in and get something to eat,” said Wilson,
after a moment’s pause.
The chief entered the cabin and took
a seat near the door. He took a cup of milk and
some meat and bread silently, and ate while listening
to the talk of the settler.
“I don’t brag on my biscuits,
chief, but they eat, if a man is hungry enough.
An’ the milk’s all right. I suppose
you’ve come to see why I ain’t moseying
back over the divide?”
The chief, after a long pause, began
to speak in a low, slow voice, as if choosing his
words. He spoke in broken English, of course,
but his speech was very direct and plain, and had
none of those absurd figures of rhetoric which romancers
invariably put into the mouths of Indians. His
voice was almost lion-like in its depth, and yet was
not unpleasant. It was easy to see that he was
a chief by virtue of his own personality.
“Cattleman, my young men brought
me bad message from you. They brought your words
to me, saying he will not go away.”
“That’s about the way
the thing stands,” replied Wilson, in response
to the question that was in the old chief’s
steady eyes. “I’m here to stay.
This ain’t your land. This is Uncle Sam’s
land, and part of it’ll be mine as soon as the
surveyors come to measure it off.”
“Who gave it away?” asked
the chief. “My people were cheated out of
it. They didn’t know what they were doing.”
“I can’t help that.
That’s for Congress to say. That’s
the business of the Great Father at Washington.”
Wilson’s voice changed. He knew and liked
the chief; he didn’t want to offend him.
“They ain’t no use making a fuss, chief.
You won’t gain anything.”
There was a look of deep sorrow in
the old man’s face. At last he spoke again:
“The cattleman is welcome; but he must go, because
whenever one white man goes and calls it good, the
others come. Drifting Crane has seen it far in
the east, twice. The white men come thick as the
grass. They tear up the sod. They build
houses. They scare the buffalo away. They
spoil my young men with whisky. Already they begin
to climb the eastern hills. Soon they will fill
the valley, and Drifting Crane and his people will
be surrounded. The sod will all be black.”
“I hope you’re right,” was the rancher’s
grim reply.
“But they will not come if the
cattleman go back to say the water is not good.
There is no grass, and the Indians own the land.”
Wilson smiled at the childish faith
of the chief. “Won’t do, chief won’t
do. That won’t do any good. I might
as well stay.”
The chief rose. He was touched
by the settler’s laugh; his eyes flashed; his
voice took on a sterner note. “The white
man must go!”
Wilson rose also. He was not
a large man, but he was a very resolute one.
“I shan’t go!” he said, through his
clinched teeth. Each man understood the tones
of the other perfectly.
It was a thrilling, a significant
scene. It was in absolute truth the meeting of
the modern vidette of civilization with one of the
rear-guard of retreating barbarism. Each man
was a type; each was wrong, and each was right.
The Indian as true and noble from the barbaric point
of view as the white man. He was a warrior and
hunter made so by circumstances over which
he had no control. Guiltless as the panther, because
war to a savage is the necessity of life.
The settler represented the unflagging
energy and fearless heart of the American pioneer.
Narrow-minded, partly brutalized by hard labor and
a lonely life, yet an admirable figure for all that.
As he looked into the Indian’s face he seemed
to grow in height. He felt behind him all the
weight of the millions of westward-moving settlers;
he stood the representative of an unborn State.
He took down a rifle from the wall the
magazine rifle, most modern of guns; he patted the
stock, pulled the crank, throwing a shell into view.
“You know this thing, chief?”
The Indian nodded slightly.
“Well, I’ll go when this is empty.”
“But my young men are many.”
“So are the white men my brothers.”
The chief’s head dropped forward.
Wilson, ashamed of his boasting, put the rifle back
on the wall.
“I’m not here to fight.
You can kill me any time. You could ‘a’
killed me to-night, but it wouldn’t do any good.
It ’ud only make it worse for you. Why,
they’ll be a town in here bigger’n all
your tribe before two grass from now. It ain’t
no use, Drifting Crane; it’s got to be.
You an’ I can’t help n’r hinder
it. I know just how you feel about it, but I
tell yeh it ain’t no use to fight.”
Drifting Crane turned his head and
gazed out on the western sky, still red with the light
of the fallen sun. His face was rigid as bronze,
but there was a dreaming, prophetic look in his eyes.
A lump came into the settler’s throat; for the
first time in his life he got a glimpse of the infinite
despair of the Indian. He forgot that Drifting
Crane was the representative of a “vagabond
race;” he saw in him, or rather felt in
him, something almost magnetic. He was a man,
and a man of sorrows. The settler’s voice
was husky when he spoke again, and his lips trembled.
“Chief, I’d go to-morrow
if it ’ud do any good, but it won’t not
a particle. You know that, when you stop to think
a minute. What good did it do to massa_cree_
all them settlers at New Ulm? What good will it
do to murder me and a hundred others? Not a bit.
A thousand others would take our places. So I
might just as well stay, and we might just as well
keep good friends. Killin’ is out o’
fashion; don’t do any good.”
There was a twitching about the stern
mouth of the Indian chief. He understood all
too well the irresistible logic of the pioneer.
He kept his martial attitude, but his broad chest
heaved painfully, and his eyes grew dim. At last
he said: “Good-by. Cattleman right;
Drifting Crane wrong. Shake hands. Good-by.”
He turned and strode away.
The rancher watched him till he mounted
his pony, picketed down by the river; watched him
as, with drooping head and rein flung loose upon the
neck of his horse, he rode away into the dusk, hungry,
weary and despairing, to face his problem alone.
Again, for the thousandth time, the impotence of the
Indian’s arm and the hopelessness of his fate
were shown as perfectly as if two armies had met and
soaked the beautiful prairie sod with blood.
“This is all wrong,” muttered
the settler. “There’s land enough
for us all, or ought to be. I don’t understand
Well, I’ll leave it to Uncle Sam anyway.”
He ended with a sigh.