Cigar-store Indians -- Pictorial works; Indians of North America -- Statues
Again a friend took me to one of the best known and most valued medical
women in New York for a shampoo and a treatment of my face which
certainly did need to be steamed and electrified. Imagine the general
astonishment when another Indian spirit kindly “controlled” the
masseuse, (something which she affirmed had never happened before) and
he wished to encourage me about my heart as several doctors still in the
flesh had been criminally or at least brutally frank about its condition
and I was naturally alarmed. And he said “No need worry about heart; you
no got bad heart, only what I call nervous heart. You got scared but you
stay out doors and let books alone. When you go home go to the Tepee and
stand by it, and some of us will go walk with you. We are often there.”
Whatever that was, it did me much more good than the physicians, who
frightened me into an abnormal and utterly useless despondency, but
whose charges were so high as to increase my temperature and heart
action. So me for the Medicine Man of Mystery—with thanks. Excuse this
personal digression.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
GODDESS OF LIBERTY AND THREE OTHER ATTRACTIVE LADIES]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
LIKE his prototype, the stalwart Red man, who once regarded this
beautiful, broad land as his own, the Tobacco Sign Indian is now rapidly
disappearing from all city streets by order of officials because the
figures encumber places of business.
He has a distinct genealogy for it is believed that the wooden statue
came first into existence in England as a Tobacco sign because Sir
Walter Raleigh, who carried the plant back from his trip to America,
told of the Indian’s Pipe of Peace and the joys of smoking, besides
enjoying it himself. Naturally the Brave himself should be used to
advocate its use.
So, it became the symbol of cigar stores both in England and other
countries, as the striped pole belongs to the Barber, who in old times
used to bleed his patrons as well as shave them, and the frisky Goat
called attention to “Bock Beer.”
Soon all of these will have gone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account