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Hermann Hesse - "Siddhartha"

Charles Dickens - "Bleak House"

Jules Verne - "De la Terre  la Lune"

William J. Kountz, Jr. - "Billy Baxter's Letters"

Indian Why Stories

F >> Frank B. Linderman >> Indian Why Stories




"First I saw my own people in three wars.
Then I saw the Buffalo disappear in a hole in
the ground, followed by many of my people.
Then I saw the whole world at war, and many
flags of white men were in this land of ours. It
was a terrible war, and the fighting and the blood
made me sick in my dream. Then, last of all,
I saw a 'person' coming--coming across what
seemed the plains. There were deep shadows
all about him as he approached. This 'person'
kept beckoning me to come to him, and at last
I did go to him.

"'Do you know who I am,' he asked me.

"'No, "person," I do not know you. Who
are you, and where is your country?'

"'If you will listen to me, boy, you shall be
a great chief and your people shall love you.
If you do not listen, then I shall turn against
you. My name is "Reason."'

"As the 'person' spoke this last, he struck
the ground with a stick he carried, and the blow
set the grass afire. I have always tried to know
that 'person.' I think I know him wherever he
may be, and in any camp. He has helped me
all my life, and I shall never turn against him
--never."

That was the old chief's dream and now a
word about the sweat-bath. A small lodge is
made of willows, by bending them and sticking
the ends in the ground. A completed sweat-
lodge is shaped like an inverted bowl, and in
the centre is a small hole in the ground. The
lodge is covered with robes, bark, and dirt, or
anything that will make it reasonably tight.
Then a fire is built outside and near the sweat-
lodge in which stones are heated. When the
stones are ready, the bather crawls inside the
sweat-lodge, and an assistant rolls the hot
stones from the fire, and into the lodge. They
are then rolled into the hole in the lodge and
sprinkled with water. One cannot imagine a
hotter vapor bath than this system produces,
and when the bather has satisfied himself inside,
he darts from the sweat-lodge into the river,
winter or summer. This treatment killed thou-
sands of Indians when the smallpox was brought
to them from Saint Louis, in the early days.

That night in the lodge War Eagle told a
queer yarn. I shall modify it somewhat, but in
our own sacred history there is a similar tale,
well known to all. He said:

"Once, a long time ago, two 'thunders' were
travelling in the air. They came over a vil-
lage of our people, and there stopped to look
about.

"In this village there was one fine, painted
lodge, and in it there was an old man, an aged
woman, and a beautiful young woman with
wonderful hair. Of course the 'thunders' could
look through the lodge skin and see all that
was inside. One of them said to the other:
'Let us marry that young woman, and never
tell her about it.'

"'All right,' replied the other 'thunder.' 'I
am willing, for she is the finest young woman
in all the village. She is good in her heart,
and she is honest.'

"So they married her, without telling her
about it, and she became the mother of twin
boys. When these boys were born, they sat
up and told their mother and the other people
that they were not people, but were 'thunders,'
and that they would grow up quickly.

"'When we shall have been on earth a while,
we shall marry, and stay until we each have
four sons of our own, then we shall go away
and again become "thunders,"' they said.

"It all came to pass, just as they said it would.
When they had married good women and each
had four sons, they told the people one day
that it was time for them to go away for-
ever.

"There was much sorrow among the people,
for the twins were good men and taught many
good things which we have never forgotten, but
everybody knew it had to be as they said.
While they lived with us, these twins could
heal the sick and tell just what was going to
happen on earth.

"One day at noon the twins dressed them-
selves in their finest clothes and went out to a
park in the forest. All the people followed
them and saw them lie down on the ground in
the park. The people stayed in the timber
that grew about the edge of the park, and
watched them until clouds and mists gathered
about and hid them from view.

"It thundered loudly and the winds blew;
trees fell down; and when the mists and clouds
cleared away, they were gone--gone forever.
But the people have never forgotten them, and
my grandfather, who is in the ground near
Rocker, was a descendant from one of the sons
of the 'thunders.' Ho!"





RETROSPECTION

It was evening in the bad-lands, and the red
sun had slipped behind the far-off hills.
The sundown breeze bent the grasses in the
coulees and curled tiny dust-clouds on the
barren knolls. Down in a gulch a clear, cool
creek dallied its way toward the Missouri, where
its water, bitter as gall, would be lost in the
great stream. Here, where Nature forbids
man to work his will, and where the she wolf
dens and kills to feed her litter, an aged Indian
stood near the scattered bones of two great
buffalo-bulls. Time had bleached the skulls
and whitened the old warrior's hair, but in the
solitude he spoke to the bones as to a boyhood
friend:

"Ho! Buffalo, the years are long since you
died, and your tribe, like mine, was even then
shrinking fast, but you did not know it; would
not believe it; though the signs did not lie.
My father and his father knew your people,
and when one night you went away, we thought
you did but hide and would soon come back.
The snows have come and gone many times
since then, and still your people stay away.
The young-men say that the great herds have
gone to the Sand Hills, and that my father still
has meat. They have told me that the white
man, in his greed, has killed--and not for
meat--all the Buffalo that our people knew.
They have said that the great herds that made
the ground tremble as they ran were slain in
a few short years by those who needed not.
Can this be true, when ever since there was a
world, our people killed your kind, and still
left herds that grew in numbers until they
often blocked the rivers when they passed?
Our people killed your kind that they them-
selves might live, but never did they go to war
against you. Tell me, do your people hide. or
are the young-men speaking truth, and have
your people gone with mine to Sand Hill shadows
to come back no more?"

"Ho! red man--my people all have gone.
The young-men tell the truth and all my tribe
have gone to feed among the shadow-hills, and
your father still has meat. My people suffer
from his arrows and his lance, yet there the
herds increase as they did here, until the white
man came and made his war upon us without
cause or need. I was one of the last to die, and
with my brother here fled to this forbidding
country that I might hide; but one day when
the snow was on the world, a white murderer
followed on our trail, and with his noisy weapon
sent our spirits to join the great shadow-herds.
Meat? No, he took no meat, but from our
quivering flesh he tore away the robes that
Napa gave to make us warm, and left us for
the Wolves. That night they came, and quar-
relling, fighting, snapping 'mong themselves,
left but our bones to greet the morning sun.
These bones the Coyotes and the weaker ones
did drag and scrape, and scrape again, until
the last of flesh or muscle disappeared. Then
the winds came and sang--and all was done."

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