There are no really wild Indians left in the United States. Formerly
there were many tribes of them, but some have disappeared, and others
have lost their old-time spirit. To-day our Indians live idly on the
reservations or work their little farms with fair industry. Sometimes a
tribe, roused by new wrongs inflicted on it by the white man, takes the
war-path; sometimes some religious idea goes from tribe to tribe
creating great excitement, like the Ghost Dance. But such outbreaks and
excitements are less and less common.
Mr. Lummis has written of the Apache warrior and described the war led
by Geronimo. It was a daring thing. There was but a handful of the
Indians. “Thirty-four men, eight well-grown boys, ninety-two women and
children”—that was all. Only forty-two who could be called fighters. On
May 17, 1885, the little band broke forth from their reservation and
headed for Mexico. It took the United States a year and a half of
useless trouble and expense to pursue them. Time after time, when it
seemed certain that the Indians were trapped, they vanished. They never
stood for a pitched battle. But anywhere, concealed behind rocks or
hidden in brush, they picked off the soldiers sent to capture them. The
forces of the United States and Mexico were both kept constantly upon
the move. When a year had passed about sixty of the Indians returned
home. Twenty warriors, with fourteen women, kept up the battle, when
they too went home. During the year and a half of fighting more than
four hundred whites and Mexicans were killed; only two of the Indian
band were destroyed. During that time Arizona and New Mexico and all the
northern part of Mexico were kept in constant terror. These Apaches were
truly “wild Indians.”
[Illustration: VICTORIO, AN APACHE WARRIOR (LUMMIS).]
The Navajo are _not_ wild Indians though they are related to the Apaches
and were formerly bold fighters. They live near the settled Pueblos and
have learned from them many things. They are a prosperous tribe,
numbering fully ten thousand. They are well-to-do, having nine thousand
cattle, one hundred and nineteen thousand horses, and one million six
hundred thousand sheep and goats. They dress well in their own way and
wear many ornaments.
A Navajo house is a simple affair. It consists of sticks or poles
stacked up so as to meet in a point above; they are then covered over
with bark, weeds, or earth, a hole being left for an entrance and one at
the top for smoke escape: an old blanket hung over the entrance hole
serves as a door. Near this hut there is often a little shelter of
boughs where the family spend most of their time on fine days. The
Navajo also build sweat houses for vapor baths. These are like the
regular hut, but have no smoke hole, and are thickly covered over with
earth. Stones are heated in a fire outside and carried into the sweat
house between sticks; water is dashed over them, and in the steam thus
made the bather sits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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