Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 18

by Cincinnatus Heine Miller

CHAPTER XVIII.

GOOD-BYE.

HESE Indians, and all Indians for that matter, have some strange customs, at which we laugh, or talk of in a mild, missionary, patronizing sort of a way.

Did it ever occur to an American sovereign, as he lifted up his voice in the public places, and thanked God that he is not as Indians are, that they may possibly laugh at some of his customs too ? I think it never did.

When an Indian gets sick his friends have a dance. When a white man begins to lose his hair he rushes off to a barber, and has what he has left cut off to the scalp. Nature, always obliging, comes to his assistance then ; and he never has to have any great portion of it cut again, but is permitted to make the rest of the journey with his head as bright and naked as a globe.

Very odd to have a dance when you get ill ; but

not half so odd as it is to cut off your hair to save your hair. Indians, who never cut the hair, and women also, who until recently wore their hair nearly natural, never are bald. Yet I reckon men have gone on cutting their hair for baldness, the very thing that brings it on, for thousands of years past, and, I suppose, will still go on doing so for thou sands of years to come.

We received some visits now from the chief of the Shastas. He was not a tall man, as one would suppose who had seen his warriors, but a giant in strength. You would have said, surely this man is part grizzly bear. As I have said before, he was bearded like a prophet.

I now began to spend days and even weeks in the Indian village over towards the south in a carion, took part in the sports of the young men, listened to the teachings and tales of the old, and was not un happy.

The Prince was losing his old cheerfulness as the summer advanced, and once or twice he half hinted of taking a long journey away to the world below.

At such times I would so wish to ask him where was his home, and why he had left it, but could not summon courage. As for myself, let it be here understood, once for all, that when a man once casts his lot in with the Indians he need return to his friends no more, unless he has grown so strong of soul that he does not need their countenance, f or he is

with them disgraced for ever. I had crossed the Rubicon.

It was the time of the Autumn Feasts, when the Indians meet together on a high oak plain, a sort of hem of the mountain, overlooking the far valley of the Sacramento, to celebrate in dance and song their battles of the summer and recount the virtues of their dead. On this spot, among the oaks, their fathers had met for many and many a generation. Here all were expected to come in rich and gay attire, and to give themselves up to feasting and the dance, and show no care in their faces, no matter how hard fortune had been upon them.

Indian summer, this. A mellowness and balm in the very atmosphere ; a haze hanging over all things, and all things still and weary like, like a summer sunset.

The manzineta-berries were yellow as gold, the rich anther was here, the maple and the dogwood that fringed the edge of the plain were red as scarlet, and set against the wall of firs in their dark, eternal green.

The scene of the feast was a day s ride from the cabin, and the Prince and I were expected to attend. Paquita would of course be there, and who shall say we had not both looked forward to this day with eagerness and delight ?

Gold, in any quantity, except in romance, is the heaviest and hardest thing to carry and keep with you in your wanderings in the mountains you can imagine.

Q

We had saved only a trifle of dust compared to the amount report credited us with. This we put in four little buckskin bags, each taking two and placing them one in the left and one in the right pocket of his catenas. This held them to their places in hard rides ; besides it was a sort of laying in of stores for some storm that might blow in upon us at any moment. Even if the lessons of the squirrels and the Indian women, all the autumn days laying up their stores for winter, had gone for nought, the lesson of the Humbug miners was not forgotten. And yet I had no idea that any grave danger could overtake us there, and I am certain I had no desire to leave the peaceful old forests and the calm delight of the mountain camp.

Of course I was very silly, as most young people are ; but it seemed to me the world below was but a small affair, and all the people in it of but little consequence, so long as Paquita and the Prince were remaining in the mountains.

Had they gone down into the world, then the mountains had been rugged and cold enough, no doubt, and the world below much like home; but while they remained I had no thought of going away.

The mine did not promise much after all. We began to have a strong suspicion that we had only chanced upon a pouch in the rock a little "chimney" that nurses a few thousand dollars worth of dust about the flue, and nothing more with the quartz

rock back of this, as barren and hard as flint. A common thing is this, and the most disappointing of all things. Years ago, before the miners began to learn this, many a fortune was squandered in erecting mills on ledges that never offered any further re ward than the one little pocket.

We went to the feast rode through the forest in a sort of dream. How lovely ! The deer were going in long bands down their worn paths to the plains below, away from the approaching winter. The black bears were fat and indolent, and fairly shone in their rich oily coats, as they crossed the trail before us.

Hundreds were at the feast, and we were more than welcome. The Chief came first, his warriors by his side, to give us the pipe of peace and welcome, and then a great circle gathered around the fire, seated on their robes and the leaves ; and as the pipe went round, the brown girls danced gay and beautiful^ half-nude, in their rich black hair, and flowing robes.

But Paquita was shy. She would not dance, for somehow she seemed to consider that this was a kind of savage entertainment, and out of place for her. She had seen just enough of civilized life . to deprive her of the pleasures of the wild and free.

There had grown a cast of care upon her lovely face of late. She was in the secret of all the Indians plans. At least she was a true Indian true to the rights of her race, and fully awake to a sense of their wrongs.

She was surely lovelier now than ever before ; tall, and lithe, and graceful as a mountain lily swayed .by the breath of morning. On her face, through the tint of brown, lay the blush and flush of maidenhood, the indescribable sacred something that makes a maiden holy to every man of a manly and chivalrous nature ; that makes a man utterly unselfish, and per fectly content to love and be silent, to worship at a distance, as turning to the holy shrine of Mecca, to be still and bide his time ; caring not to possess in the low coarse way that characterizes your common love of to-day, but choosing rather to go to battle for her, bearing her in his heart through many lands, through storms and death, with only a word of hope, a smile, a wave of the hand from a wall, a kiss blown far, as he mounts his steed below and plunges into the night. That is a love to live for. I say the knights of Spain, bloody as they were, were a noble and a splendid type of men in their way.

The Prince was of this manner of men. He was by nature a knight of the chivalrous, grand old days of Spain, a hero born out of time, and blown out of place, in the mines and mountains of the North.

Once he had taken Paquita in his arms, had folded a robe around her as if she had been a babe. She was all everything to him. He renounced all this. Now he did not even touch her hand.

The old earnestness and perplexity had come upon the Prince again on our coming to the feast. Once,

when the dance and song ran swift and loud and all was merriment, I saw him standing out from the circle of warriors, of young maidens and men, with folded arms, looking out on the land below. I had too much respect, nay reverence, for this man to disturb him. I leaned against a tree and looked as he looked. Once his eyes left the dance before him, arid stole timidly toward the place where Paquita sat with her brother watching the dance. What a devotion in his face. I could not understand him. Now he turned to the valley again, tapped the ground with his foot in the old, restless way, but his eyes soon wandered back to Paquita. At last my gaze met his. He blushed deeply, held down his head and walked away in silence.

The next day was the time set apart for feats of horsemanship. The band was driven in, all common property, arid the men selected their horses. The Prince drew out with his lasso a stout black steed, with a neck like a bull. His mane poured down on either side, or stood erect like a crest ; a wiry, savage, untrained horse that struck out with his feet, like an elk at bay. Pie saddled him, and led him out all ready now, where the other horses stood in line, then came to me, walked a little way to one side, put out one hand and with the other drew me close to him, held down his head to my uplifted face, and said,

" Good-bye."

I sprang up and seized hold of him, but he went pri calmly

u I must go away. You are happy here ; you will remain, but I must go. After many years I will return. You will meet me here on this spot, years and years from to-day. Yes, it will be many years ; a long time. But it is short enough, and long enough. I will forget her it I will forget by that time, you see, and then there is all the world before me to wander in."

He made the sign of departure. The chief came forward, Paquita came and stood at his side. He reached his hands, took her in his arms, pressed her to his breast an instant, kissed her pure brow once, with her great black eyes lifted to his, but said no word.

The Indians were mute with wonder and sorrow. When you give the sign of going, there is no one to say nay here. No one importunes you to stay ; no one says come to my place or come to mine. No such folly. You know that you are welcome to one and all, and they know that if you wish to go, you wish to go, and that is all there is of it. This is the highest type of politeness ; the perfect hospitality.

The Prince turned to his steed, drew his red silk sash tighter about his waist, undid the lasso, wound the lariat on his arm, and wove his hand in the flow ing mane as the black horse plunged and beat the air with his feet. Then he set him back on his haunches, sprang from the ground, and forward plunged the steed with mane like a storm, down the place of oaks, pitching towards the valley.

The trees seemed to open rank as he passed, and then to close again ; a hand was lifted, a kiss thrown back across the shoulder, and he was gone gone down in the sea below us, and I never saw my Prince again for many a year. Noble, generous, self- denying Prince ! The most splendid type of the chivalric and the perfect man I had ever met.

All this was so sudden that I hardly felt the weight of it at first, and for want of something to do to fill the blank that followed, I mounted my horse and took part in the sports with the gayest of the gay.

Indians do not speak of anything that happens suddenly. They think it over, all to themselves, for days, unless it is a thing that requires some action or expression at once, and then speak of it only cautiously and casually. It is considered very vulgar indeed to give any expression to surprise, and nothing is more out of taste than to talk about a thing that you have not first had good time to think about.

During the day I noticed that my catenas were heavier than usual, and unfastening the pockets, I found that they contained all four of the bags of gold.

Why had he left himself destitute ? Why had he gone down to battle with the world without a shield ? gone to fight Goliath, as it were, without so much as a little stone. I wanted to follow him and make him take the money all of it. I d espised

it, it made me miserable. But I had learned to obey him, to listen to him in all things. And was he not a Prince?

u Ah!" said I to myself, at last, "he has gone down to take possession of his throne. He will cross the seas and see maidens fair indeed, nearly as lovely in some respects as Paquita;" and this was my consolation.

u Years and years," I said to myself that night as I looked in the fire, and the dance went on; " Years and years !" I counted it upon my fingers,, and said u I will be dead then."