The Vanishing Race Part 13

And now the far stretch of the years loomed up: boys again, trapping foxes, learning to shoot the arrow which finally found its mark in the buffalo calf; capturing and taming the wild horse; the first war party; the first scalp, and its consequent honour among the tribe; the first coup counted; the eagle that was shot to get the coveted feather that to all men should be a pledge of victory; then the love for an Indian maiden, the ponies and furs and beadwork willingly given in exchange for this new love; the making of a new home. Thoughts of war parties, and war's bitter struggles; other coups counted, other scalps taken, were thoughts that lighted new altar fires. In imagination vast herds of ponderous buffalo once again thundered across the plains, and the exhilaration of the chase quickened the pulse beat, only to give place to the tireless lament that the buffalo were all gone. Memories of tribal tragedies, of old camping places, of the coming of the white man, of broken treaties, of the advent of the soldiers-all thronged for recognition; the wigwam around which happy children and the merry round of life sped on, the old men, their counsellors and friends, who had gone into the spirit land, and now this was to be the last, the very last council. The heart grows tense with emotion as they break the silence, and in Indian fashion chief looks into the face of chief, and, without an uttered word, they pa.s.s one by one through the doorway that leads to a land without a horizon.

[The Fading Sunset]

The Fading Sunset

The prairie gra.s.s turned to brown, the trees on the banks of the nearby river turning to crimson and orange, the Syrian blue of the skies, holding here and there a mountainous cloud, the brilliant sunshine of the early autumn day, all served to emphasize and revivify the splendid mosaic of colouring worn by the chieftains, as, without the mockery of speech, they mounted their horses, and faced their final destiny.

The Indian is a superb horseman. Both horse and rider seem to have grown together. It is poetry in motion. The brilliant cavalcade are fast leaving the old council lodge in the distance. The word farewell was baptized with the spirit of peace, and now as they ride forth the banner of peace floats over them. Peace is in the air. Not far hence there is a river to cross, whose waters were born amid the snows of the distant mountains, and the river bathed in sunlight utters its jubilations of peace. Like "an army with banners" they enter the shaded defile of the valley-cross the swiftly flowing stream, and pa.s.s out upon the plain.

Weird and picturesque is the procession as the long line of hors.e.m.e.n face the loneliness of the far-flung line of desert waste-the flat and sombre serenity of sand and sage and cactus. Clouds of dust are lifted from the immensity of the arid stretches, like smoke signals to the matchless immensity of the sky. The burning haze, the molten heavens, the weird and spearlike cactus, the valiant hors.e.m.e.n, hold the eye. We follow their trail until they are almost lost to view in the drapery that enshrouds sand and sage and riders. There seems now to be a tragic soul roaming these infinite wilds, restless and burning with pa.s.sion, the companion of storms and the herald of violent deeds.

[Vanishing into the Mists]

Vanishing into the Mists

The chiefs bravely emerge from these echoless silences, dust-covered but intrepid. They must now make the ascent of abrupt and ma.s.sive bluffs.

The summit attained, they pause for rest and retrospect. The trail has been obliterated. Every hoof-print in the sands has been erased. The trackless, yellow expanse now a.s.sumes alluring miles of colour; the royal purple of the shadows seems like tinted bands binding all the intervale back yonder to the far distant council lodge. They are familiar with the speech of the granite hills, from whose heights they now view the prospect. In these rocks, so red that it would seem as though the molten fires had not yet cooled, the Indian listens to the tongues of ten million years. Earth's heart fires had here and over there split the land and left jagged monuments of stone and red ash bearing still the tint of flame which had been cooled by the breath of countless winters. Still subject to the inner and absorbing pa.s.sion of his life, the Indian made an altar in this weird sanctuary, and waited to worship.

But for the Indian the path is forever down-down into the shadowed vale, down into the abysmal canon, bal.u.s.traded with sombre, cold gray rocks holding in the far recesses secret streams that make their way beneath the mountain to the cloven rock on the sunlit slope. Thither then they rode, solemn but steadfast. Once and again they turned upon their tired steeds to look back upon the far-reaching line of cliffs which to them seemed to float in the rising tide of a crimson sea. Forward and ever on until they had reached the hush of the s.p.a.cious prairies, rolling like the billows of the ocean. Melancholy broods in the mind when these limitless and unexplored stretches sweep before the eye bounded only by the horizon.

The spirit of a great awe stilled the souls of these men, every one, because added to the monotone of the landscape they must heed the demands for endurance, for it was again "a land where no water is." Memory is at times the birth-hour of prophecy, but here memory clothes the present with pain and loss, and for them prophecy died yesterday and the despair of a to-morrow writes its gloomy headlines upon every advance step of their journey. But the Indian will face it. He always faces death as though it were a plaything of the hour. The winds on these prairies always travel on swift wing-they are never still-they are full of spectral voices. The chiefs have left the council lodge, they have said farewell, their days of triumph are behind them. Thoughts that burn the brain held the weary pilgrims.

[Facing the Sunset]

Facing the Sunset

One refreshing thought is now flung at them: their days of journeying have brought them within sight of water-water without which there is no life.

That long green fringe winding under the brow of the distant hills means tree growth. The Indian loves the brotherhood of trees. Trees grow in that desolate landscape only on the borders of streams. Toward the water and welcome shade they hasten. Tired beast and tired man lave in the lifegiving flood. The horses wade in it as though the snows had melted and run thither to caress and refresh them. Oh, the exhilaration of water! On the margin of the far banks the camp is made for the night.

There is witchery in a Western night. Myriads upon myriads of low-hung stars, brilliant, large and l.u.s.trous, bend to warm the soul and light the trail. Under these night lamps, amid the speech of leaves and the rush of the river, they bivouac for their last night, bending under the weight of thoughts too deep for tears. In the haze of a broken sleep they wrought out again the sorrows of their troubled record. When the morning broke through the dull gray of the eastern sky rim, he would be a heartless surgeon of emotions who attempted to probe the pathos of their thoughts, and a dull and vulgar rhetorician who should attempt to pa.r.s.e the fathomless sorrow of their speech.

In the hush of the new morning they mounted, and set forth upon their journey over the Great Divide. All Nature seemed conscious of the burden weighing to the earth every Indian thought, and trailing in the dust every hope of the race. The birds remembered not to sing-the prairie dogs ceased their almost continual and rasping chatter. The very horses seemed to loiter and fear the weary miles of their final day of travel. The hills, the sky, the very light of the noonday sun gathered to themselves a new atmosphere and spread it like a mantle over this travelling host.

Tired feet now press the highest dome of the hills. It had been a westward climb. Full in their faces, as though to canonize the moment, the G.o.d of day had wrought cloud and sky into a miracle of sunset, trans.m.u.ting by living fire the brown gra.s.ses into burnished gold-the fading sage into a silver glow, and the gleam of the distant river into the red of wine. The scene transfixed them. Gladiators of other days became helpless children. During the solemn suspense of this tragic moment, waiting in confused and wondering silence, their faces lighted with the ominous sunset sheen, one great chief uttered speech for all: "Brothers, the West, the West! We alone have the key to the West, and we must bravely unlock the portals; we can buy no lamp that will banish the night. We have always kept our time by the sun. When we pa.s.s through the gates of this dying day, we shall pa.s.s into a sunless land, and for us there shall be no more time, a forever-land of annihilating darkness."

For one wistful moment they looked and waited, then the hill upbore them no longer. They filed down the narrow, barren ridge, lined on either hand by sullen and impa.s.sable gulfs. Their eagle feathers fluttered from war-bonnet and coup stick, encarnadined by the sun's red rays. Steeper and more rugged became the path until they were confronted by the sharp edge of the bluff. There was danger in the untrodden descent. It was a pathway of struggle.

Once in the valley

They said farewell forever.

Thus departed the Great Chieftains, In the purple mists of evening.

[The Sunset of a Dying Race]

The Sunset of a Dying Race

The Indian composes music for every emotion of his soul. He has a song for the Great Mystery; for the animals of the chase; for the maiden he woos; for the rippling river. His prayers are breathed in song. His whole life is an expression in music. These songs are treasured down through the ages, and old age teaches youth the import of the melody so that nothing is lost, nothing forgotten. Haydn wrote his "Creation,"

Beethoven his "Symphonies," Mendelssohn his "Songs Without Words," Handel gave the world his "Dead March in Saul," Mozart was commissioned by Count Walsegg to pour his great soul into a requiem; during its composition he felt that he was writing the dead march of his soul. For generations it has been sung in the little church at St. Mark's, where the great composer lies in an unknown grave. Had the Indian the combined soul of these masters in music, could he cull from symphony and oratorio and requiem and dirge the master notes that have thrilled and inspired the ages, he then would falter at the edge of his task in an attempt to register the burden of his lament, and utter for the generations of men the requiem wrought out during these moments of pa.s.sion-a pa.s.sion of sorrow so sad that the voice of it must ride through the width of the sky, and conquer the thunder of the fiercest tempest. The orchestral grandeur of the world's great composers is the child of genius. They reached the far heights of inspiration in a few isolated instances and for the delight of men. The Indian composing his own requiem must encompa.s.s the eternal pathos of a whole race of mankind riding forth beyond the challenge of death. It is well that the Indian does not compose this death march, for the sorrow of it would hush all lullabies, and banish the laughter of children.

Napoleon said to his soldiers, drawn up in battle line on the plains of Egypt, in sight of the solemn Sphinx and the eternal pyramids: "Forty centuries look down upon your actions to-day!" Four hundred and a score years ago Columbus looked first upon the red man. These solemn centuries look down upon this day; look down upon the sheathed sword, the broken coup stick, the shattered battle-axe, the deserted wigwams, the last red men mobilized on the plains of death. Ninety millions, with suffused eyes, watch this vanishing remnant of a race, whose regnant majesty inspires at the very moment it succ.u.mbs to the iconoclasm of civilization.

It is the imposing triumph of solitary grandeur sweeping beyond the reach of militant crimes, their m.u.f.fled footfalls reaching beyond the margin of an echo.

[The Empty Saddle]

The Empty Saddle