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
In 1846 Pow-e-shiek came with his band to visit his old home. We were
“early settlers” then, and had built our cabins on the sloping sides of a
bluff overlooking the valley below. From this outpost we descried the
bands of piebald ponies and then the curling smoke, and next the poles of
his wick-e-ups (houses); and soon we saw Pow-e-shiek coming to make known
his wish that he might be permitted to pasture his stock on the fields
which we had already robbed of corn. The recognition in me of one who had
assisted in removing his people seemed to surprise and please him, and for
a moment his eye lit up as if some fond reality of the past had revived
the friendship that had grown out of my sympathy for him in his dark hour
of departure from his home. And when I said, “This is my father, and my
mother, these my sisters and my brothers, and this place is our home,” he
gave to the welcoming hands a friendly grasp in evidence of his good
intentions, and then assured us that no trouble on his part should grow
out of his coming, and that, if his young men should do any dishonest
acts, he would punish them; that he had come back to spend the winter once
again near his haunts of olden times, perhaps to kill the deer that he
thought white men did not care about since they had so many cattle and
swine. We accepted his assurance, and believed him to be just what he
pretended,——a quiet, honest old chief, who would do as he agreed, nor seek
excuse for not doing so.
The dinner hour had passed, but such as we had my mother set before him,
and he did not fail to do full justice to everything upon the table. He
made sure that his pappooses should complete what he began by making a
clean sweep into one corner of his blanket to bear it to his lodge. After
dinner he drew out his pipe, and filling it with Kin-ni-ki-nick (tobacco),
and lighting it with a coal of fire, he first sought to propitiate the
Great Spirit by offering up to him the first puff of smoke; next the
devil, by blowing the smoke downward, and saved the third for himself; and
after that he offered to the fourth person in his calendar, my father, the
privilege of expressing his approval. But, as he was not a smoker himself,
he passed the pipe to his oldest son, intimating his desire that he should
be represented by proxy. I, willing to do his bidding, in friendship for
our guest, _it may be_, or perhaps from other personal motives, soon
reduced the Kin-ni-ki-nick to ashes and handed back the empty pipe to
Pow-e-shiek. I knew not that I had transgressed the rules of politeness
until afterwards, when I offered a pipe to our strange-mannered guest, he,
with dignity, drew a puff or two and then passed it back, with an
expression of countenance which declared unmistakably that it was meant
for reproof.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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