The Ranche on the Oxhide Part 10

"Buffalo Bill found your basket on the trail the other side of Bluff Creek ford," interrupted Joe, "and that is how we came to know that the Indians had captured you."

"I remember now," said Kate, "that I held on to it for a long time and then dropped it. I don't know why I kept it in my hand. Well, as I was saying, I rode out to the patch, tied Ginger to a sumac bush, and began to pick the berries, which were ripe as I had expected. I had nearly filled my basket when with a dash that nearly frightened me out of my senses, a band of Indians came from the other side of the big ledge, and before I knew where I was, I found myself in front of a horrible-looking savage, and the whole band started south as tight as their ponies could go. I remember hearing Ginger give a snort, as he jerked up by the roots the bush I had tied him to, and fairly flew towards the ranche--"

"There, mother," said Joe, "that's just what I told you when Ginger came home with the sumac fastened to his bridle!"

"Oh, if I could only have jumped on Ginger's back," continued Kate, "before the Indians had got me, they never would have had the ghost of a chance of catching me. But they came upon me before I had the least idea they were anywhere near.

"We rode all that afternoon, halting for a few moments, long after dark, for the Indians to change ponies, as they had some loose ones with them.

We kept on at a good gait all that night, until about daylight, when we stayed for more than an hour on the other side of the Arkansas River, to graze the ponies among the sand hills, and for the Indians to eat their breakfast. They were quite kind to me; gave me some dried buffalo meat, and brought me some water from the stream in a horn, and tried to make me understand that they did not intend to harm me.

"Of course, I was frightened at the idea of being carried off by the horrid savages, but I tried to keep my senses, and watched every tree and rock on the trail. I looked at the sun to learn which way we were going, and determined in my mind that I would escape at the first opportunity.

"On the tops of the highest points of the hills, I saw the stone monuments, which Joe had often told me were placed by the savages on their travels from place to place, as marks to show where water and wood are to be found."

"Yes," said Mr. Tucker; "you can see those piles of stones on every hill about here; and from them you can always see water or timber, indicating where to camp."

"They were to be seen on every divide we crossed," continued Kate; "and besides, I saw lots of the compa.s.s-plant, or rosin-weed, the leaves of which, Joe had told me, always pointed north, so I felt satisfied if I could ever escape, I would have no trouble in finding my way back to the Oxhide.[2] After a long, wearisome ride, until the next morning, we arrived at the Canadian River, which the Indians called the 'Mai-om,' or Red, and on the bank of which was the village consisting of about a hundred lodges.

"There I was turned over to the women, who treated me very decently, and I immediately began to study the language, for I knew that that would help me in getting into their good graces. I willingly took hold of the work which falls to the lot of the squaws in every camp, and taught them how to cook after the white style. You may imagine I had plenty to do, for the warriors liked the biscuit I used to make, and they sometimes had a good deal of flour for which they had traded with the white men who bought their furs.

"I made friends of the dogs in the village, and there were hundreds of them, some of them miserable curs, but they could make more noise than a pack of wolves; and I thought if I could teach them to know me, they would not bother me when I attempted to run away; for you know that they are the most watchful animals imaginable. At night, not the slightest sound escapes their well-trained ears, and at the approach of a human being, they set up the most terrific barking and howling you ever heard. Well, I soon made friends with every one of them, and I could go around the village after dark, and they would not utter a growl.

"I watched very closely the large herd of ponies,--there were more than two hundred belonging to the village,--to find out which one of them was the fleetest, and had the most endurance. I picked out the little roan I rode here, and, Joe, I will make him a present to you; for if you had not taught me so much about plants, and the methods of the Indians, and before all things else, taken such pains with me when I wanted to ride a pony, I never should have been able to run away and come home safely."

"Thank you, Kate," said Joe. "We have kept Ginger just as finely as ever for you, and he is the best pony in the whole country, I don't care how many the Indians may have."

Kate went on with her wonderful experience. "Near the tepee where I slept I found an old elm tree that had a great hollow in it near the roots, and I determined to make it my storehouse for the food I should need when I ran away. I did not, of course, begin to hide anything in it until I had been in the village for over four months. Then I used to save little by little of my portion of the dried buffalo meat, as I knew that it would keep for a long time without spoiling.

"We ate all sorts of things that at first rather disgusted me; puppy-stew, for instance. Now, mother and Gertrude, don't laugh; I really soon learned to like it, though I never expect to be compelled to eat it again. It is the cleanest thing the Indians have, if you will only get over the natural prejudice against eating dog. Why, just think, the puppies are only sucklings when they are eaten; they have tasted nothing but their mother's milk, and the mothers are fed on buffalo meat only.

"I suppose that you, mother and Gert, want to know how puppy-stew is prepared? Well, when the little things are rolling fat, as round as a ball of b.u.t.ter, the old woman who has charge of the lodge takes them up and feels them all over, and if satisfactory, she chokes them to death by literally hanging them to a tree with a buffalo sinew. When dead, they are singed before the fire, just as you singe a fowl; the entrails are taken out, and then the flesh is boiled in a pot, and eaten as hot as possible. The savages, particularly the old squaws, can take up in their buffalo-horn spoons, meat which would scald a white person to death, and swallow it without the slightest difficulty. I suppose that that, and their constant brooding over a smoky fire in the tepees, makes them look so old and wrinkled at an early age. They are the most horrid-looking witches you ever saw, and they would need no 'fixing up'

to play the part in Macbeth."

"Talking of curious dishes eaten by the Indians," said Mr. Tucker, "up in Oregon, where I was trapping a good many years ago, the squaws make what I call Indian jelly-cake. They take the black crickets, roasted, which form a large portion of their subsistence, and make a kind of bread of them, after having ground them on a flat stone. They then spread on it the boiled berries of the service tree or bush, and if it was not manipulated by their very dirty hands, it would be very palatable."

"The Indians of the great plains," continued Kate, "live almost exclusively on meat; they gather a few berries sometimes, but their princ.i.p.al diet is buffalo meat.

"After I had been in the village for over four months, I began to think of trying to escape. My clothes were becoming more ragged every day, and I was obliged to resort to the blanket as a covering, though I kept what I had worn there as long as I could.

"One day there was a great feast in the village, with dancing and carousing, which the warriors kept up until long after midnight, and consequently slept very soundly. Now, thought I, is my time. So after I found out that the old squaw with whom I lodged was sound asleep, I crept up, and looked out to see what kind of a night it was. The moon was low down in the western heavens, but bright enough for me to see the trail, so I determined to make the attempt. I took a piece of buffalo robe for a saddle, and went out to the herd to catch the pony on which I had had my eyes for such a long time, and had petted whenever I was not watched. The dogs, of course, had come out of their holes to see what was going on, having heard my almost noiseless footsteps; but recognizing me instantly, they did not set up their customary howl. They went back to sleep without making any trouble, and I walked out to the herd about a quarter of a mile away, and soon found the little roan I wanted. He came up to me without a neigh, luckily, and I fastened the piece of robe on him, tucked the dried buffalo meat, which I had taken from my hiding-place, into my bosom, and jumping on, started at a pace which, if I had not been a good rider, would have tossed me off before I had gone half a dozen yards.

"The pony seemed to know just what I required of him, for he ran on a good lope, with his belly almost touching the ground, and in a little while I had crossed the ford of the Canadian, and was going up the divide on the other side as fast as I dared to force him. I took a glance at the north star to get my bearings, for I dared not follow the broad trail, as the Indians would be sure to track me, and struck across the country, up one hill and down the other until day began to break.

Then I stayed a few seconds at a small branch to let my pony drink and to take a swallow myself, and on I went, not daring to let him graze yet.

"Mile after mile the n.o.ble little fellow carried me until late that afternoon. Of course I watered him at every creek I came to, but did not halt until it had grown quite dark. Then I took him about a mile down into a piece of timber, unsaddled him and let him graze for more than an hour. I kept my ears open, fearing every moment to hear the sound of ponies' hoofs, for I felt confident that the Indians would follow me the moment they discovered that I was gone.

"When I thought he had sufficiently rested, and I had eaten a small piece of the meat, I mounted him again and started on a lope northward.

I kept the little gallop, changing into a brisk walk once in a while, until I could see by the daylight the long silvery line of the Arkansas, looking like a white snake in its many windings. Then I felt pretty safe, after I had stopped and watched the trail back as far as I could, which was for more than two miles. I could see nothing like dust, nor hear a sound, so I began to hope that I had really escaped, and my heart began to feel lighter than it had for many a long month.

"I crossed the Arkansas, which the Indians call 'Mit-sun,' meaning Big, and it was up to my pony's breast, but he struggled through splendidly, though I got my moccasins wet, for the water came to my knees. I did not mind that, as I had often got wet through in the Canadian where we used to go swimming almost every morning while at the village. The squaws are very fond of the water in that way, but are not so clean with their hands as I would many a time have liked them to be.

"On the other side of the divide separating the Arkansas from the Smoky Hill, I halted in a box-elder grove to rest my roan, and rest myself, for I was nearly worn out. I felt very safe then, for I knew that I was approaching the settlements on Plum Creek, and if I had known, what Joe has just told us, that the war was over, I might have been at my ease all the way from the Arkansas.

"Early this morning I came to Bluff Creek, at the very spot where I had crossed with the Indians, and how my heart fluttered when I knew I was so near dear Errolstrath! From that creek I rode slowly, as I knew I had nothing to fear from the Indians, for the settlements were too thick, and besides it was daytime, when the Indians rarely attack.

"I often got off my pony when it grew too dark to see, to feel the leaves of the compa.s.s-plant, that I could always find without much hunting on every hill. Now, mamma and father, don't you think that I have made a famous ride?"

"We all think so," said her father; "it is one of the most remarkable on record, and we rejoice more than even you can imagine, to have our dear daughter back again, well as ever, after such an experience."

"Why don't the Indians raise corn?" inquired Rob, in a general way; "it is so easily grown out here on the plains."

"Some of the tribes do," replied Mr. Tucker. "The Sioux and the Mandans have always had their corn-fields, but as usual the women have to do all the work. Do you know, Rob, that the corn is a native plant of North and South America, yet it has never been found wild?"

"Do tell us about it," said Mrs. Thompson; and Kate asked if there were not some legend connected with it, "for there is not a thing that they eat, without its wonderful story."

"Certainly," replied Mr. Tucker. "There is a beautiful legend among the Sioux, which I learned from them when I was among them in 1840, and as it is not late yet, if you like, I will tell it to you."

"Do! do!" all exclaimed in chorus.

"Of course," began Mr. Tucker, "among the Indians the origin of corn is wrapped up in the supernatural legends of the race, of which there are several, differing materially, however, in their details. Strange as it may seem, nowhere in all the vast domain of both Americas, has a wild species of corn been discovered; and yet the inhabitants of these continents have used it from the earliest times, of which even history has no record. Yet, at some time in the unchronicled past it must have grown wild. An unknown benefactor of his race--one whose name not even tradition preserves, excepting in unintelligible myths--saw somewhere, the feathery ta.s.sels and glossy blades with their silken ears amidst the foliage of a sedgy river bank, and owing to his first care, the wild plant, after many ages, has become the maize of commerce, and the king of all the cereals of the nineteenth century.

"When Columbus found the New World, corn was the staple food of all tribes of Indians from the far north to the extreme south, who attempted to cultivate the soil at all.

"The celebrated Pere Marquette, the Catholic priest who pa.s.sed his life among the savages, met with it at every point, on his memorable journey down the Mississippi River, in 1763. It has been exhumed from tombs of a greater antiquity than those of the Incas of Peru. Darwin discovered heads of it embedded in an ancient beach that had been upheaved eighty-five feet above the sea-level.

"That Indian corn is indigenous to America, has never been questioned by botanists, for Europe knew nothing of it until Columbus returned home from our sh.o.r.es.

"Longfellow has poetically told of one of the Indian traditions of the origin of corn, in his _Hiawatha's Fasting_.

"The legend was first transmitted to the white men by Rattlesnake, and strange to say, he was a chief of the Kansas or Kaw tribe of Indians. He related it on an island at the mouth of the Kansas River, in 1673, as is recorded in the old French ma.n.u.script of an early traveller.

"It states that a band of a hundred Kansas Indians in returning from a successful raid on the Shawnees, of whom they had taken several prisoners, halted on the island, taking advantage of the thick timber which grew in groups, as a convenient spot to torture their captives.

"Pere Marquette, whom the Indians called 'The White Prophet,' happened to be there most opportunely; for through the respect and veneration in which the monk was held, he saved the lives of the hapless Shawnees, who were set at liberty. That evening while eating their supper of cooked hominy, the good priest asked for the legend which told of the origin of Indian corn, and Rattlesnake gave it, as he said he had often heard it at his mother's knee.

"It is the same story the Sioux told me, but I will follow the language of the old ma.n.u.script, for I have often read it.

"Once when the world was young, and there were but few red men in it, there was a chief whose wife bore him many children. Every summer added one and sometimes two to his family. They became so numerous that the father could not give them sufficient food, and the hungry children were continually crying. By great patience and skill in hunting, however, the chief at length raised a large family, until his eldest son reached the stature of manhood.

"In those days the red men all lived in peace and friendship. There was no war, and no scalp-locks hung from the doors of the lodges. The eldest son had the fear of the Great Spirit in his heart, and, like his father, he toiled patiently in the chase that he might a.s.sist in procuring food for his brothers and sisters.

"In those days all of the promising young men, at their entrance into manhood, had to separate themselves from the tribe, and retire into the forest, to see if the Great Spirit would grant them some request. During this time there was to be neither eating nor drinking, but they were to spend the hours in thinking intently on the request they were making of the Manitou.

"When the young man had gone a long distance in the forest, he began to pray to the Great Spirit, and to ask for a favor which he had long cherished in his heart for the occasion. He had often felt how frequently the chase had disappointed the red men, and how often their families had gone to sleep hungry, because they had no meat. He had always determined when his fasting and dreaming hour should come, that he would ask the Great Spirit to give the red men some article of food more certain than the meat obtained in the chase.

"All that day the youth prayed, and thought of his request, and neither water nor food entered his mouth.

"At night, with a bright hope in his young heart, he lay down to sleep.