American Museum of Natural History -- Fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction; Nature stories, American; Western stories
"There are many things an Indian can do and a white man not catch him at
it. The Turk would sit and feed the fire at evening, now a bundle of dry
brush and then a handful of wet grass, smoke and smudge, such as hunters
use to signal the movements of the quarry. He would stand listening to
the captains scold him, and push small stones together with his foot for
a sign. He could slip in the trail and break twigs so that Pawnees could
read. When strange Indians were brought into camp, though he could only
speak to them in the language of signs, he asked for a Pawnee called
Running Elk, who had been his friend before he was carried captive into
Zuni Land. They had mingled their blood after the custom of friendship
and were more than brothers to one another. And though the Iron Shirts
looked at him with more suspicion every day, he was almost happy. He
smelled sweet-grass and the dust of his own country, and spoke face to
face with the Morning Star.
"I do not understand about stars," said the Road-Runner. "It seems that
some of them travel about and do not look the same from different
places. In Zuni Land where there are mountains, the Turk was not always
sure of his god, but in the Pawnee country it is easily seen that he is
the Captain of the Sky. You can lie on the ground there and lose sight
of the earth altogether. Mornings the Turk would look up from his chains
to see his Star, white against the rosy stain, and was comforted. It was
the Star, I suppose, that brought him his friend.
"For four or five days after Running Elk discovered that the Turk was
captive to the Iron Shirts, he would lurk in the tall grass and the
river growth, making smoke signals. Like a coyote he would call at
night, and though the Turk heard him, he dared not answer. Finally he
hit upon the idea of making songs. He would sing and nobody could
understand him but Running Elk, who lay in the grass, and finally had
courage to come into the camp in broad day, selling buffalo meat and
wild plums.
"There was a bay mare with twin colts that the Turk wished him to loose
from her rope and drive away, but Running Elk was afraid. Cold mornings
the Indian could see the smoke of the horses' nostrils and thought that
they breathed fire. But the Turk made his friend believe at last that
the horse is a great gift to man, by the same means that he had made the
Spaniards think him evil, by the In-knowing Thought.
"'It is as true,' said the Turk, 'that the horse is only another sort of
elk, as that my wife is married again and my son died fighting the
Ho-he.' All of which was exactly as it had happened, for his wife had
never expected that he would come back from captivity. 'It is also
true,' the Turk told him, 'that very soon I shall join my son.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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