Half a Century Part 21

"No."

"How far is it to St. Cloud?"

"Six miles."

"Are there fresh horses and men there?"

"Oh, plenty."

"If you dig us out here, how long will it be before we go in again?"

This they did not know.

"Then had not the driver better go to St. Cloud with both horses? The horse left here would be ruined standing in that slush."

"But, madam," said the agent, "if we do that we will have to leave you here all night."

"Well," I said, "I do not see how you are going to get rid of me."

So the driver started with the two horses on that dreadful journey; had I known how dreadful, I should have tried to keep him till morning. As he left, I made the Germans draw off their boots and pour out the water, rub their chilled feet and roll them up in a buffalo robe. The agent lay on his box, I cuddled in a corner, and we all went to sleep to the music of the patter of the soft rain on our canvas cover. At sunrise we were waked by a little army of men and horses and another schooner, into which we pa.s.sed by bridge. We reached St. Cloud in time for breakfast, and were greeted by the news that General Lowrie had been sent home insane. He was confined in his own house, and his much envied young wife, with her two babies, had become an object of pity.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE WEST.

Before going to Minnesota, I had the common Cooper idea of the dignity and glory of the n.o.ble red man of the forest; and was especially impressed by his unexampled faithfulness to those pale-faces who had ever been so fortunate as to eat salt with him. In planning my hermitage, I had pictured the most amicable relations with those unsophisticated children of nature, who should never want for salt while there was a spoonful in my barrel. I should win them to friendships as I had done railroad laborers, by caring for their sick children, and aiding their wives. Indeed, I think the Indians formed a large part of the attractions of my cabin by the lakes; and it required considerable time and experience to bring me to any true knowledge of the situation, which was, and is, this:

Between the Indian and white settler, rages the world-old, world-wide war of hereditary land-ownership against those who beg their brother man for leave to live and toil. William Penn disclaimed the right of conquest as a land t.i.tle, while he himself held an English estate based on that t.i.tle, and while every acre of land on the globe was held by it.

He could not recognize that t.i.tle in English hands, but did in the hands of Indians, and while pretending to purchase of them a conquest t.i.tle, perpetrated one of the greatest swindles on record since that by which Jacob won the birthright of his starving brother.

This Penn swindle has been so carefully cloaked that it has become the basis of our whole Indian policy, the legitimate parent of a system never equalled on earth for crime committed with the best intentions. It intends to be especially just, by holding that the Creator made North America for the exclusive use of savages, and that civilization can only exist here by sufferance of the proprietors. This sufferance it tries to purchase by engaging to support these proprietors in absolute idleness, from the proceeds of the toil they license, even as kings and other landed aristocrats are supported by the labor of their subjects and tenants.

As the successors of the tent-maker of Tarsus have for thirteen centuries been found on the side of aristocrats in every contest with plebians, so the piety of the East, controlled by men who live without labor, was and is on the side of the royal red man, who has a most royal contempt for plows, hoes and all other degrading implements.

The same community of interests which arrayed the ma.s.s of the clergy on the side of Southern slaveholders, arrayed that same clergy on the side of the Western slave holder, and against the men who seek, with plows and hoes, to get a living out of the ground. Under this arrangement we have the spectacle of a Christian people arrayed in open hostility to those who plant Christian churches, schools and libraries on the lair of the wolf; and in alliance with the savage who coolly unjoints the feet and hands of little children, puts them in his hunting pouch as evidence of his valor, and leaves the victim to die at leisure; of those who thrust Christian babies into ovens, and deliberately roast them to death; of those who bind infants, two by two, by one wrist, and throw them across a fence to die; of those who collect little children in groups and lock them up in a room, to wail out their little lives; of those who commit outrages on innocent men and women who the pen must forever refuse to record. The apology with which piety converts the crimes of its pets into virtues, is that its own agents have failed to carry out its own contract with its own friends.

The men and women who take their lives in their hands to lead the westward march of civilization, are held as foes by the main body of the army, who conspire with the enemy, and hand them over as scapegoats whose tortures and death are to appease divine wrath for the crimes which this same main body say it has itself committed against Indians.

No one pretends that Western settlers have injured Indians, but Eastern philanthropists, through the government they control, have, according to their own showing, been guilty of no end of frauds; and as they do not, and cannot, stop the stealing, they pay their debts to the n.o.ble red man by licensing him to outrage women, torture infants and burn homes. When gold is scarce in the East, they subst.i.tute scalps and furnish Indians with scalping-knives by the thousand, that they may collect their dues at their own convenience.

This may seem to-day a bitter partisan accusation, but it must be the calm verdict of history when this comes to be written by impartial pens.

Under the pretense that America belonged, in fee simple, and by special divine right, to that particular h.o.a.rd of savages, who, by killing off some other h.o.a.rd of savages, were in possession when Columbus first saw the Great West, the Eastern States, which had already secured their land by conquest, have become more implacable foes to civilization than the savages themselves.

The Quaker would form no alliance with Southern slave-holders. He recoiled from the sale of women and children in South Carolina, but covered with his gray mantle of charity the slave trade in Minnesota.

When a settler refused to exchange his wife or daughter with an Indian for a pony, and that Indian ma.s.sacred the whole family to repair his wrongs, his Quaker lawyer justified the act on the score of extreme provocation, and won triumphal acquittal from the jury of the world.

When the Sioux, after the Bull Run disaster, arose as the allies of the South, and butchered one thousand men, women and children in Minnesota, the Quakers and other good people flew to arms in their defense, and carried public sentiment in their favor. The agents of the Eastern people had delayed the payment of annuity three weeks, and then insulted Mr. Lo by tendering him one-half his money in government bonds, and for this great wrong the peaceable Quaker, the humanitarian Unitarian, the orthodox Congregationalist and Presbyterian, the enthusiastic Methodist and staid Baptist, felt it but right Mr. Lo should have his revenge.

Most Eastern Christians are opposed to polygamy in Utah, and Fourierism in France, but in Minnesota among Indians these inst.i.tutions are sacred.

They demanded that England should by law prohibit widow-burning and other heathen customs in India, but nothing so rude as statutes must interfere with the royal privileges of these Western landlords. If by gentle means Mr. Lo can be persuaded to stop taking all the wives he can get, extorting their labor by the cudgel, and selling them and their children at will, all well and good! Millions are expended on the persuading business, and prayer poured out like the rains in Noah's flood, without any perceptible effect; but still they keep on paying and praying, and carefully abstain from all means at all likely to accomplish the desired result. All the property of every tribe must be held in common, so that there can possibly be no incentive to industry and economy; but if the Indian refuse to be civilized on that plan, he must go on taking scalps and being excused, until extermination solve the problem.

Long before I saw an Indian on his native soil, the U.S. Government had spent millions in carrying out this Penn policy. For long years, Indians had sat like crows, watching the white farmers and artisans sent to teach them industry, and had grunted their honest contempt. They watched the potato planting, that they might pick out the seed for present use.

They pulled down fences, and turned their ponies into the growing crops, used the rails for fire wood, burned mills and houses built for them, rolled barrels of flour up steep acclivities, started them down and shouted to see them leap and the flour spurt through the staves; knocked the heads out of other barrels, and let the ponies eat the flour; poured bags of corn on the ground when they wanted the bag, and in every way showed their contempt for the government, whose policy they believed to be the result of cowardice. Thousands of dollars' worth of agricultural machinery lay "rotting in the sun" while the n.o.ble red aristocrat played poker in the shade; his original contempt for labor intensified by his power to extract a living from laborers, through their fear of his scalping knife.

Hole-in-the-day, the Chippewa chief, had been educated by Baptist missionaries, and was a good English scholar, but would not condescend to speak to the government except through an interpreter. For him six hundred acres of land had been fenced, and a large frame cottage built and painted white. In this he lived with six wives, and a United States salary of two thousand a year and his traveling expenses. He dressed like a white man, dined with State officers in St. Paul, went to church with a lady on his arm, sat in a front pew, and was a highly distinguished gentleman of the scalping school.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE INDIAN Ma.s.sACRE OF '62.

The Indians had been ugly from the first outbreak of the Rebellion, and Commissioner Dole, with Senator Wilkinson, had come out to pacify them.

The party pa.s.sed through St. Cloud, and had camped several miles west, when in the night there came up one of those sudden storms peculiar to this land. Their tents were whisked away like autumn leaves, and they left clinging to such productions of mother nature as were at hand, well rooted in her bosom, to avoid a witches' dance in the air. But it grew worse when the rain had covered the level ground six inches deep in water, and they must keep their heads above the surface.

They returned to St. Cloud in the morning in sorry plight, and the delay was one of the injuries to the poor Indians, and counted as sufficient justification for the subsequent ma.s.sacre. The delay, however, saved their lives. The messenger who aroused the people of St. Cloud in the small hours was traveling post after this Dole commission, for whose safety there was much anxiety, but none for St. Cloud, since the Indians would not attack us while there were two companies of soldiers in town.

True, they were unarmed, but surely arms would be sent and their marching orders rescinded. The outbreak was mysterious. It was of course in the interests of the South, and meant to prevent the troops leaving the State; but why had not the tribes struck together?

The answer was that after the ma.s.sacre had been arranged in council, two Sioux visited a white family in which they had often been entertained, were drunk, and could not resist the impulse to butcher their entertainers. This precipitated the attack, for so soon as the news reached the tribe, they went to work to execute their b.l.o.o.d.y purpose.

Johnson, a converted Chippewa, hurried to inform us that his tribe with Hole-in-the-day in council had resolved to join the Sioux and were to have made St. Cloud their base of operations, but the Sioux had broken out before the arms and ammunition came, and these they were hourly expecting. On the same day a formal message came from Hole-in-the-day that Commissioner Dole must come to the reservation to confer with his young braves, who would await his arrival ten days, after which time their great chief declined to be responsible for them.

A runner arrived from Ft. Abercrombie, who had escaped by crawling through the gra.s.s, and reported the Fort besieged by a thousand savages, and quite unprepared for defense. There were several St. Cloud people in the Fort, and so far from expecting aid from it it must be relieved. The garrison at Ft. Ripley had not a man to spare for outside defense.

People began to pour into St. Cloud with tales of horror to freeze the blood, and the worst reports were more than confirmed. The victorious Sioux had undisputed possession of the whole country west, southwest and northwest of us, up to within twelve miles of the city, and had left few people to tell tales. Our troops spent their time teaching women and children the use of firearms, and hoping for arms and orders to go to the relief of Abercrombie. There was no telegraph, and the last mail left no alternative but to start for Fort Snelling, with such short time to get there that every available man and horse must go to hurry them forward. They left in the afternoon, and that was a dreadful night. Many of the more timid women had gone east, but of those that remained some paced the streets, wringing their hands and sobbing out their fear and despair and sorrow for the husbands and brothers and sons taken from them at such a crisis.

When the troops left, we thought there were no more men in St. Cloud, but next morning found a dozen, counting the boys, who were organized to go out west to the rescue of settlers, and still there were some guards and pickets, and some who did nothing but find fault with everything any one else did.

Men and women spoke with stiffened lips and blanched faces. Families in the outskirts gathered to more central places, and there were forty-two women and children in my house the night after the troops left, and for every night for weeks. We kept large kettles of boiling water as one means of defense. I always had the watchword, and often at midnight I would go out to see that the pickets were on duty, and report to the women that all was well. Brother Harry was appointed General of State troops, succeeding Gen. Lowrie, and arms were sent to him for distribution, while women kept muskets by them and practiced daily. The office of my democratic contemporary was closed, and he fled to New England, while his a.s.sistant went with my only male a.s.sistant to rescue settlers. I had two young ladies in the office, one a graduate of a New York high school, and through all the excitement they kept at work as coolly as at any other time. We got out the paper regularly, and published many extras.

The history of the horrors and heroisms which reached us during the six weeks in which Ft. Abercrombie held out until relief came, would make a volume, and cannot he written here. The unimaginable tortures and indecencies inflicted on brave men and good women, are something for which the Christian supporters and excusers of the Sioux must yet account at the bar where sentimental sympathy with criminals is itself a crime; and where the wail of tortured infants will not be hushed by reckoning of bad beef and a deficiency in beans.

While the Sioux sat in council to determine that butchery, some objected, on the ground that such crimes would be punished, but Little Crow, leader of the war party, quieted their fears by saying:

"White man no like Indian! Indian catch white man, roast him, kill him!

White man catch Indian, feed him, give him blankets," and on this a.s.surance they acted.

One thing was clearly proven by that outbreak, viz.: that services to, and friendship for, Indians, are the best means of incurring their revenge. Those families who had been on most intimate terms with them, were those who were ma.s.sacred first and with the greatest atrocities.

The more frequently they had eaten salt with a pale-face, the more insatiable was their desire for vengeance. The missionaries were generally spared, as the source through which they expected pardon and supplies. The Indian was much too cunning to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. The tribe do not object to the conversion of individuals. Saying prayers does not interfere with their ideas of their own importance. Preachers do not labor with their hands, and Indians can join the clerical order or get religion, without losing caste, for labor to them is pollution.

Two wagon loads of arms and ammunition _en route_ for Hole-in-the-day, were intercepted during the ma.s.sacre, and for want of them he was induced to keep quiet. For being such a good Indian, he had a triumphal trip to Washington at government expense, got ten thousand dollars, and a seventh wife.

CHAPTER L.