Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 32
CHAPTER XXXII.
AFTER A DOZEN YEARS.
MORE than a dozen years had passed away. And what years! I had gone through almost every stage and experience of human life. I had gone far out and away from my life in the mountains among the Indians. I had come to look upon it as upon the life of another. It seemed to be no longer a part of my nature or myself, much as I loved it and fondly as I cherished the memory of the dead days and their dead. Irresistibly I was drawn to return at the first possible opportunity, and now in the yellow autumn I was nearing my old home. The narrow trails were no longer in use. A broad stage road was hewn from out the mountain-sides, and we dashed through the forests as if on the highway of an old civilization.
I was an utter stranger to all. I saw no familiar faces among the few worthless Indians about the stations, and no white man suspected that I had once held dominion in all that wild and splendid region.
I sat with the driver as the six horses spun us at a gallop around the spurs of the mountain crags over hanging the Sacramento river. Our road, cut from the rocks, had looked like a spider web swinging in the air when we saw it first from the waters of the Sacramento, that boiled and foamed in a bed-rock flume now thousands of feet below us.
The passengers, who had been very loud and hilarious, were now very quiet, and an old gentleman, who was engaged in some quartz speculation, and had been extremely anxious to get ahead, here stuck his head out of the window as he gasped for breath, and protested to the driver that he had changed his mind about reaching camp so soon, that, in fact, he was in no hurry at all, and that, if he was a mind to, he might go a little slow.
The driver then gently threaded the ribbons through his fingers as if to get a firmer hold, threw his right arm out, and snapped the silk under the heels of his leaders.
This was the nervous man's only answer.
It was perfectly splendid. We were playing spider and fly in the heavens. Down at the mountain's base and pressed to the foamy rim of the river, stood the madroño and manzanita, light, but trim-limbed, like sycamore; and up a little way were oak, and ash, and poplar trees, yellow as the autumn frosts could paint them; and as the eye ascended the steep and stupendous mountain that stood over across the river against us, yet so close at hand, the fir and tamarack grew dense and dark, with only now and then a clump of yellow trees, like islands set in a sea of green.
Here and there a scarlet maple blazed like the burning bush, and, to a mind careless of appropriate figures, might have suggested Jacob's kine, or coat of many colours. How we flew and dashed around the rocky spurs! Some chipmunks dusted down the road and across the track, and now and then perched on a limb in easy pistol-shot; a splendid grey squirrel looked at us under his bushy tail, and barked and chattered undisturbed; but we saw no other game. In a country famous for its bear, we saw not so much as a track.
Down under us on the river-bank the smoke of a solitary wigwam curled lazily up through the trees, and the Indian that stood on the rocks spear ing the autumn run of salmon looked no taller than a span.
Again we dashed around a rocky point, and the driver set his leaders back on their haunches with a jerk that made six full groans issue from inside the stage, and as many heads hurry through the windows. The driver pushed back his hat, the hat that stage drivers persist in wearing down on their noses, pointed with his whip into the air, and said,
"How's that for high?"
Then again he snapped his silk, settled the insiders in their seats, and we were dashing on as before.
Mount Shasta! Shasta the magnificent was before us, above us! And so sudden! And at last, and after so many many years!
As if a great iceberg of the north had broken loose, and, seamed and scarred by the sun, drifted through the air upon us.
The driver felt and silently acknowledged the power of this majestic presence, for he held the silk in his hands very quietly, and let the tired horses have it their own way till he drew the reins and called out at the end of the next half hour, "Fifteen minutes for supper!" Even the foaming horses, weary as they were, lifted their ears a little and stepped more alert and lively when the sun flashed back upon us from the snowy breastplate of kingly Shasta.
Here I determined to cross the Sacramento, climb the mountains of the other side, pierce the splendid forests, and reach the valleys of McCloud at the base of Shasta.
In my mind, the wigwams still sent up their smoke through the dense firs of the McCloud, and pretty maidens still bore water on their heads in willow baskets from the river to the village. I almost heard the ancient, wrinkled squaws, grinding acorn bread, and the shouts of the naked children at their sports.
I could get no ponies, and so had to take little lean Mexican mules, old and lazy as possible, the remnant of some of the great pack trains that strung across ng across these mountains in the days when they were only marked by narrow trails, and everything was trans ported on the backs of these patient little animals.
My guide, sent along by the ranchero to take care of the mules and return them, was a singular Indian. His name was u Limber Jim." I should have known his name was Limber Jim before I heard it. Out here things take their names just as they impress you. Once a six-foot desperado said to a man with a freckled face, who had wedged himself into a party as they were lifting glasses, "What is your name?"
"P. Archibald Brown."
"P. Archibald Hell! your name is Ginger."
A Californian desperado is not a fool; he is oftener a genius. "P. Archibald Brown" was never heard of after that. Down in Arizona is now a board at the head of a little sandy hillock marked "GINGER."
When Limber Jim moved, every limb and muscle was in motion. When he opened his mouth he also opened his hands, and when he opened his hands he would helplessly open his mouth. After we had forded the Sacramento and climbed the long and rugged trail on the other side, we rested in the shade and I asked the creature his history. His short and simple annals were to the effect that he was an Indian lad in good standing with the whites while they were at war with his fathers, and was a great pet among them. But one morning after a pack train had disappeared a rancheria was surrounded and all the men and boys taken to the camp for
execution, in case the mules were not returned in a given time.
The animals, of course, did not come back, and the Indians, a dozen or more, were punctually suspended to the nearest tree, and Jim was hung among the rest. He said he was hung by mistake; and was very confident there was no intention of hanging him, but that he got mixed up with the rest, and that men who did not know his face suspended him, where he hung all day by the neck till it got very dark, when they took him down and told him they were very sorry. He added mournfully, that his nerves had never been reliable since.
We pushed our little Spanish mules along the worn trail that stretched across the mountain. At noon we came down to the McCloud, which we found too deep to ford, and therefore bore up the stream a little way till we could find a lodge and log canoe. It looked so very lonely. Here stood lodges, but they were empty. There, on a point where I had left a thriving, prosperous village, the rye grass grew rank and tall as our shoulders as we rode along. The lodges stood still as of old. An Indian never tears down his house. It will serve to shelter some one who is lost or homeless ; besides, there is a superstition which forbids it. From one of these lodges a small black wolf started out and stole swiftly across the hill. When a white man leaves a habitation he changes the face of things ; an Indian leaves them unimpaired. His deserted house is the perfect body
with only the soul withdrawn. An empty Indian village is the gloomiest place in the world.
We crossed the McCloud, and our course lay through a saddle in the mountains to Pit river; so called from the blind pits dug out like a jug by the Indians in places where their enemies or game are likely to pass. These pits are dangerous traps; they are ten or fifteen feet deep, small at the mouth, but made to diverge in descent, so that it is impossible for anything to escape that once falls into their capacious maws. To add to their horror, at the bottom, elk and deer antlers that have been ground sharp at the points are set up so as to pierce any unfortunate man or beast they may chance to swallow up. They are dug by the squaws, and the earth taken from them is carried in baskets and thrown into the river. They are covered in the most cunning manner; even footprints in an old beaten trail are made above the treacherous pits, and no depression, no broken earth, nothing at all indicates their presence except the talismanic stones or the broken twigs and other signs of a sort of rude freemasonry which only the members of a tribe can understand.
Here we passed groves of most magnificent oak. Their trunks are five and six feet in diameter, and the boughs were then covered with acorns and fairly matted with the mistletoe.
Coming down on to the banks of Pit river, we heard the songs and shouts of Indian gi rls gathering acorns. They were up in the oaks, and half covered in the mistletoe. They would beat off the acorns with sticks, or cut off the little branches with tomahawks, and the older squaws gathered them from the ground, and threw them over their shoulders in baskets borne by a strap around the forehead. I must here expose a popular delusion.
I have heard parents insist that their girls should wear shoes, and tight ones at that, in childhood, so that their feet should be small and neat when grown. Now, I am bound to say that these Indian women, who never wear anything closer than a moccasin or Mexican sandal, and not half of the time either of the two, have the smallest and prettiest feet, and hands also, I have ever seen.
These few Indian girls were pretty. Some of them were painted red ; and their splendid flow of intense black hair showed well in the yellow leaves and the rich green mistletoe. Some warriors watched a little way off on a hill, lest some savage border ruffians, under a modern Romulus, should swoop down upon them and carry them off.
We rode under the oaks and they laughed play fully and crept closer into the leaves. One little sun- browned savage pelted Limber Jim with acorns. Then he opened his mouth and laughed, and opened his hands and let go his reins, and rolled and shook in his saddle as if possessed by an earthquake.
Toward evening, in the bend of Pit river, we came upon an old Indian herding ponies, and it
occurred to us to leave our mules to rest and get fresh horses. Accordingly, we approached the old fellow, sunning himself on the sand before his lodge, and said, in the old words by which a favour was asked when first I knew this people, and had for the asking,
"Brother, the sun goes on. Your brothers are weary and have far to go. Bring us better horses."
The old tender of herds turned his head half way, and informed me in broken English and butchered Mexican, badly put together, that he had some horses to sell, but none to give away. Consternation! These Indians are getting civilized, I said to myself. Here has been a missionary in my absence; and we rode on.
Every foot of ground here, even up to the rugged base of Shasta, was familiar to me. Sometimes, to the terror of Limber Jim, I took the lead in the trail. I knew as well as he the stones or the broken twigs that pointed out the pit. All the afternoon we rode along the rim of the bright blue river, except when forced to climb a spur of mountain that ran its nose fairly into the water and cut us off.
All along the shores stood deserted lodges, and the grass grew rank and tall around them. They had been depopulated for years. I had not as yet met a single old acquaintance.
It was fairly dark before we dismounted at an empty lodge and pitched camp for the night.
Early we set out next morning on our solitary
ride for the camp, where the little remnant of the Shastas were said to be gathered high up on the mountain. More empty lodges, right and left only solitude and desertion.
We left the river and turned up a gorge. Some times, in the great canon running to the sun, the air was warm and fresh of falling leaves; and then again as we turned a point it came pitching down upon us, keen and sharp from the snows of Shasta. But few birds sing here. There are some robins and larks, and also some turtle-doves, which the Indians will not harm. Partridges in splendid crests ran in hundreds across the trails, and these whistle all the year; but there was an unaccountable scarcity of birds for a country so densely timbered.
At last, when the shadows were very long, we climbed a rugged, rocky hill, nearly impassable for man or mule, and saw on a point in a clump of pines, that could only be reached by crossing an open space of rocks and lava, the camp we sought.
Indians have no terms of salutation. If the dogs do not celebrate your arrival, all things go on the same as if you had never been. You dismount, un saddle your mule, turn it to grass, take a drink of water, and then light your pipe, when the men will gather about you by degrees and the women bring refreshments. But our arrival here was an uncommon occasion. No white man had as yet set foot on this rocky ridge and natural fortress; and then when it was known that one had returned to
their mountains whom they had known of old, and
whose exploits arid manners they had magnified by
repeated narration, no Indian stolidity could keep up
their traditional dignity. Children peeped from the
lodges, and squaws came out from among the trees,
with babies in willow baskets. There was a little
consultation, and we were taken to a lodge of great
dimensions, made of cedar bark fastened by
withes and weights to a framework of fir and
cedar poles. The walls were about eight feet high;
the roof sloping like that of an ordinary cabin, with
an opening in the comb for the smoke.
We had refreshments ; meats roasted by the fire, and manzanita berries ground to powder, and acorn bread.
Runners were sent to the Modoc camp, a half-day distant, and the few warriors came. But I did not know a single face. The old warriors had all perished. New men had grown in their places. It seemed as if I had outlived my generation even in my youth. Then a long smoke in silence, a little time for thought, and preparations were made for a great talk.
And what a talk it was ! Indians, like white men, talk best about themselves. They spoke by turns, each rising in his place, speaking but once, and few or many minutes, according to his age and inclination. They gesticulated greatly, and spoke rapidly; sometimes striking with imaginary knives, twanging bows, and hurling tomahawks ; and all the time boasting of their own deeds or those of their fathers. One young man who had not yet been in battle told of killing a bear; this made another young man laugh, and then all the Indians frowned terribly. To think that a young man should so far forget himself as to laugh in council!
Nearly all the speeches were mournful, sad, and pathetic, but some very fine things were said. As of old, all their invectives were hurled at their hereditary enemy. One old man said, " The whites were as the ocean, strong and aggressive; while the red men were as the sand, silent, helpless, tossed about, run upon, and swallowed up." He was the only one that stood up tall and talked like a reasonable man. He wore a robe of panther skins thrown back from his shoulders.
I saw that even these few surviving people would not die in silence. They were as a wounded serpent that could yet strike if a foot was set in reach.
To me all this was sad beyond recital. What had these people seen, endured, felt, suffered in all the years of my absence ! And the end was not yet.
The struggles of many years were recounted many times, by each man telling the part he had borne in the battles, and from an Indian's standpoint it looked sad enough. The old savage spoken of had not much to say of himself, but now and then his long fingers-would point to scars on his naked breast, when alluding to some battle.
"Once," said he, in conclusion, u we were so many
we could not all stand upon this hill ; now we are all in one little cawel;" and here he made a solemn sweep with his arm, which was very grand. Then after a pause he said : u Once I had seven wives, now I have only two."
At midnight, with solemn good-nights, the men arose one by one and retired. Over all things there hung a gloom. I went out into the village of a dozen houses that crouched down under the dense black pines. What a glorious moon! Only such a moon as California can afford. A long white cloud of swans stretched overhead, croaking dolefully enough ; the sea of evergreen pines that rolled about the bluff and belted the base of Shasta was sable as a pall, but the snowy summit in the splendours of the moon, flashed like a pyramid of silver! All these mountains, all these mighty forests, were to me as a schoolboy's play-ground, the playmates gone, the master dead!