Part 23 (1/2)
XV
HOW THE MEDICINE OF THE ARROWS WAS BROKEN AT REPUBLICAN RIVER; TOLD BY THE CHIEF OFFICER OF THE DOG SOLDIERS
This is the story the Dog Soldier told Oliver one evening in April, just after school let out, while the sun was still warm and bright on the young gra.s.s, and yet one somehow did not care about playing. Oliver had slipped into the Indian room by the west entrance to look at the Dog Dancers, for the teacher had just told them that our country was to join the big war which had been going on so long on the other side of the Atlantic, and the boy was feeling rather excited about it, and yet solemn.
The teacher had told them about the brave Frenchmen, who had stood up in the way of the enemy saying, ”They shall not pa.s.s,” and they hadn't. It made Oliver think of what he had read on the Dog Dancer's card--how in a desperate fight the officer would stick an arrow or a lance through his long scarf, where it trailed upon the ground, pinning himself to the earth until he was dead or his side had won the victory.
Oliver thought that that was exactly the sort of thing that he would do himself if he were a soldier, and when he read the card over again, he sat on a bench with his back to the light looking at the Dog Dancers, and feeling very friendly toward them. It had just occurred to him that they, too, were Americans, and he liked to think of them as brave and first-cla.s.s fighters.
From where he sat he could see quite to the end of the east corridor which was all of a quarter of a mile away. n.o.body moved in it but a solitary guard, looking small and flat like a toy man at that distance, and the low sun made black and yellow bars across the floor. In a moment more, while Oliver was wondering where that woodsy, smoky smell came from, they were all around him, all the Dog Warriors, of the four degrees, with their skin-covered lances curved like the beak of the Thunder Bird, and the rattles of dew-claws that clashed pleasantly together. Some of them were painted red all over, and some wore tall headdresses of eagle feathers, and every officer had his trailing scarf of buckskin worked in patterns of the Sacred Four. Around every neck was the whistle made of the wing-bone of a turkey, and every man's forehead glistened with the sweat of his dancing. The smell that Oliver had noticed was the smoke of their fire and the spring scent of the young sage. It grew knee-high, pale green along the level tops, stretching away west to the Backbone-of-the-World, whose snowy tops seemed to float upon the evening air. Off to the right there was a river dark with cottonwoods and willows.
”But where are we?” Oliver wished to know, seeing them all pause in their dancing to notice him in a friendly fas.h.i.+on.
”Cheyenne Country,” said one of the oldest Indians. ”Over there”--he pointed to a white thread that dipped and sidled along the easy roll of the hills--”is the Taos Trail. It joins the Santa Fe at the Rio Grande and goes north to the Big Muddy. It crosses all the east-flowing rivers near their source and skirts the p.a.w.nee Country.”
”And who are you--Cheyennes or Arapahoes?” Oliver could not be sure, though their faces and their costumes were familiar.
”Cheyennes _and_ Arapahoes,” said the oldest Dog Dancer, easing himself down to the buffalo robe which one of the rank and file of the warriors had spread for him. ”Camp-mates and allies, though we do not call ourselves Cheyennes, you know. That is a Sioux name for us,--Red Words, it means;--what you call foreign-speaking, for the Sioux cannot speak any language but their own. We call ourselves Tsis-tsis-tas, Our Folk.”
He reached back for his pipe which a young man brought him and loosened his tobacco pouch from his belt, smiling across at Oliver, ”Have you earned your smoke, my son?”
”I'm not allowed,” said Oliver, eyeing the great pipe which he was certain he had seen a few moments before in the Museum case.
”Good, good,” said the old Cheyenne; ”a youth should not smoke until he has gathered the bark of the oak.”
Oliver looked puzzled and the Dog Warrior smiled broadly, for gathering oak bark is a poetic Indian way of speaking of a young warrior's first scalping.
”He means you must not smoke until you have done something to prove you are a man,” explained one of the Arapahoes, who was painted bright red all over and wore a fringe of scalps under his ceremonial belt. Pipes came out all around the circle and some one threw a handful of sweet-gra.s.s on the fire.
”What I should like to know,” said Oliver, ”is why you are called Dog Dancer?”
The painted man shook his head.
”All I know is that we are picked men, ripe with battles, and the Dog is our totem. So it has been since the Fathers' Fathers.” He blew two puffs from his pipe straight up, murmuring, ”O G.o.d, remember us on earth,”
after the fas.h.i.+on of ceremonial smoking.
”G.o.d and us,” said the Cheyenne, pointing up with his pipe-stem; and then to Oliver, ”The Tsis-tsis-tas were saved by a dog once in the country of the Ho-He. That is a.s.siniboine,” he explained, following it with a strong grunt of disgust which ran all around the circle as the Dog Chief struck out with his foot and started a little spurt of dust with his toe, throwing dirt on the name of his enemy. ”They are called a.s.siniboine, stone cookers, because they cook in holes in the ground with hot stones, but to us they were the Ho-He. The first time we met we fought them. That was in the old time, before we had guns or bows either, but clubs and pointed sticks. That was by the Lake of the Woods where we first met them.”
”Lake of the Woods,” said Oliver; ”that's farther north than the headwater of the Mississippi.”
”We came from farther and from older time,” said the Dog Soldier. ”We thought the guns were magic at first and fell upon our faces.
Nevertheless, we fought the Ho-He and took their guns away from them.”
”So,” said the officer of the Yellow Rope, as the long buckskin badge of rank was called. ”We fought with Blackfoot and Sioux. We fought with Comanches and Crows, and expelled them from the Land. With Kiowas we fought; we crossed the Big Muddy and long and bitter wars we had with Shoshones and p.a.w.nees. Later we fought the Utes. We are the Fighting Cheyennes.
”That is how it is when a peaceful people are turned fighters. For we are peaceful. We came from the East, for one of our wise men had foretold that one day we should meet White Men and be conquered by them.
Therefore, we came away, seeking peace, and we did not know what to do when the Ho-He fell upon us. At last we said, 'Evidently it is the fas.h.i.+on of this country to fight. Now, let us fight everybody we meet, so we shall become great.' That is what has happened. Is it not so?”
”It is so!” said the Dog Dancers. ”Hi-hi-yi,” breaking out all at once in the long-drawn wolf howl which is the war-cry of the Cheyennes.
Oliver would have been frightened by it, but quite as suddenly they returned to their pipes, and he saw the old Dog Chief looking at him with a kindly twinkle.