Wigwam and war-path; or, The royal chief in chainsMeacham, A. B. (Alfred Benjamin)
History
Wigwam and war-path; or, The royal chief in chains
Meacham, A. B. (Alfred Benjamin)
Indians of North America
To return to Pow-e-shiek’s band leaving their home. Who shall ever recount
the sorrows and anguish of those people, while they formed in line of
march, and turned their eyes for the last time upon the scenes that had
been all the world to them? What mattered it though they realized all the
pangs their natures were capable of, in those parting hours, with the
uncomfortable promises that the ploughshare of civilization would level
down the graves of their fathers, before their retreating footprints had
been obliterated from the trail which led them sadly away? They were
“Injins;” and they ought to have been in better luck than _being_
“Injins.”
Such was the speech of a white man in whose hearing I had said some word
of sympathy on the occasion. I did not like the unfeeling wretch then, and
have not much respect for him, or for the class he represents. Now I may
have charity and pity, too, for all such. Charity for the poverty of a
soul so devoid of the finer sensibilities of “common humanity that make
mankind akin;” pity for a heart overflowing with selfishness, made
manifest in thoughtless or spiteful speech.
The trying hour in the lives of these Indian people had come, and the long
cavalcade moved out along the line of westward march, wagons loaded with
corn and other supplies. The old men of the tribe, with darkened brows and
silent tongue, sat on their horses; the younger ones, with _seeming_
indifference, in red blankets, feathers, and gaudy paints, moving off on
prancing ponies, in little squads, to join the funeral pageant; for so it
was. They were leaving the cherished scenes of childhood to hunt for
sepulchres in the farther West.
The women, young and old, the drudges of the Indian household, as well as
homes, where the sunlight of civilization _should_ warm the hearts of men,
and move them to truer justice, were gathered up, and preparing their
goods for transportation, while bitter tears were flowing and loud
lamentations gave evidence of the grief that would not be repressed, and
each in turn, as preparations were complete, would lift the
pappoose-basket with its young soul to altitudes of mother’s back or
horse’s saddle, and then, with trembling limbs, climb to their seats and
join the sad procession, adding what of woful wailing seemed necessary to
make the whole complete with sights and sound that would bid defiance to
painter’s skill or poet’s words, though, in the memory of those who beheld
it, it may live as long as the throbs of sympathy which it kindled shall
repeat themselves in hearts that feel for human sorrow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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