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Samantha at the World's Fair, a novel by Marietta Holley |
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Chapter 8 |
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_ CHAPTER VIII We were travellin' in a car they call a parlor, though it didn't look no more like our parlor than ours does like a steeple on a wind-mill. But it wuz dretful nice and comogeous. We five occupied seats all together, and right next to us, acrost the aisle, wuz two men a-arguin' on the Injun question. I didn't know 'em, but I see that Thomas J. and Krit wuz some acquainted with 'em; they wuz business men. When I first begun to hear 'em talk (they talked loud--we couldn't help hearin' 'em), they seemed to be kinder laughin', and one of 'em said: "Yes, they denied the right of suffrage to wimmen and give it to the Injuns, and the next week the Injuns started off on the war-path. Whether they did it through independence or through triumph nobody knows, but it is known that they went." And I thought to myself, "Mebby they wuz mad to think that the Goverment denied to intelligent Christian wimmen the rights gin to savages." Thinks'es I, "It is enough to make a Injun mad, or anything else." [Illustration: "They denied the right of suffrage to wimmen and give it to the Injuns."] But I didn't speak my mind out loud, and they begun to talk earnest and excited about 'em, and I could see as they went on that they felt jest alike towards the Injuns, and wanted 'em wiped off'en the face of the earth; but they disagreed some as to the ways they wanted 'em wiped. One of 'em wanted 'em shot right down to once, and exterminated jest as you kill potato-bugs. The other wanted 'em drove further off and shet up tighter till they died out of themselves; but they wuz both agreed in bein' horrified and disgusted at the Injuns darin' to fight the whites. And first I knew Krit jest waded right into the talk. He waded polite, but he waded deep right off the first thing. And, sez he, "Before they all die I hope they will sharpen up their tommyhawks and march on to Washington, and have a war-dance before the Capitol, and take a few scalps there amongst the law-makers and the Injun bureau." He got kinder lost and excited by his feelin's, Krit did, or he wouldn't have said anything about scalpin' a bureau. Good land! he might talk about smashin' its draws up, but nobody ever hearn of scalpin' a bureau or a table. But he went on dretful smart, and, sez he, "Gentlemen, I have lived right out there amongst the Injuns and the rascally agents, and I know what I am talkin' about when I say that, instead of wonderin' about the Injuns risin' up aginst the whites, as they do sometimes, the wonder is that they don't try to kill every white man they see. "When I think of the brutality, the cheatin', the cruelty, the devilishness of the agents, it is a wonder to me that they let one stick remain on another at the agencies--that they don't burn 'em up, root and branch, and destroy all the lazy, cheatin', lyin' white scamps they can get sight of." The two men acted fairly browbeat and smut to hear Krit go on, and they sez-- "You must be mistaken in your views; the Goverment, I am sure, tries to protect the Injuns and take care of 'em." "What is the Goverment doin'," sez Krit, "but goin' into partnership with lyin' and stealin,' when it knows just what their agents are doin', and still protects them in their shameful acts, and sends out troops to build up their strength? Maybe you have a home you love?" sez Krit, turnin' to the best lookin' of the men. "Yes, indeed," sez he; "my country home down on the Hudson is the same one we have had in the family for over two hundred years. My babies are to-day runnin' over the same turf that I rolled on in my boyhood, and their great-great-grandmothers played on in their childhood. "My babies' voices raise the same echoes from the high rock back of the orchard, the same blue river runs along at their feet, the sun sets right over the same high palisade. Why, that very golden light acrost the water between the two high rocks--that golden line of light seems to me now, almost as it did then in my childhood, the only path to Heaven. "Heaven and Earth would be all changed to me if I had to give up my old home. Why, every tree, and shrub, and rock seems like a part of my own beloved family, such sacred associations cluster around them of my childhood and manhood. And the memories of the dear ones gone seem to be woven into the very warp and woof of the stately old elm-trees that shade its velvet lawns, and the voice of the river seems full of old words and music, vanished tones and laughter. "No one can know, or dream, how inexpressibly dear the old home is to my heart. If I had to give it up," sez he, "it would be like tearin' out my very heart-strings, and partin' with what seems like a part of my own life." The man looked very earnest and sincere when he said this, and even agitated. He meant what he said, no doubt on't. And then Krit sez, "How would you like it if you were ordered to leave it at a day's notice--leave it forever--leave it so some one else, some one you hated, some one who had always injured you, could enjoy it-- "Leave it so that you knew you could never live there again, never see a sun rise or a sun set over the dear old fields, and mountains, and river, you loved so well-- "Never have the chance to stand by the graves of your fathers, and your children, that were a-sleepin' under the beautiful old trees that your grandfathers had set out-- "Never see the dear old grounds they walked through, the old rooms full of the memories of their love, their joys, and their sorrows, and your loves, and hopes, and joys, and sadness? "What should you do if some one strong enough, but without a shadow of justice or reason, should order you out of it at once--force you to go?" "I should try to kill him," sez the man promptly, before he had time to think what to say. "Well," sez Krit, "that is what the Injuns try to do, and the world is horrified at it. Their homes are jest as dear to them as ours are to us; their love for their own living and dead is jest as strong. Their grief and sense of wrong and outrage is even stronger than the white man's would be, for they don't have the distractions of civilized life to take up their attention. They brood over their wrongs through long days and nights, unsolaced by daily papers and latest telegraphic news, and their famished, freezin' bodies addin' their terrible pangs to their soul's distress. "Is it any wonder that after broodin' over their wrongs through long days and nights, half starved, half naked, their dear old homes gone--shut up here in the rocky, hateful waste, that they must call home, and probably their wives and daughters stolen from them by these agents that are fat and warm, and gettin' rich on the food and clothing that should be theirs, and receivin' nothing but insults and threats if they ask for justice, and finally a bullet, if their demands for justice are too loud-- "What wonder is it that they lift their empty hands for vengeance--that they leave their bare, icy huts, and warm their frozen veins with ghost-dances, haply practisin' them before they go to be ghosts in reality? What wonder that they sharpen up their ancestral tomahawk, and lift it against their oppressors? What wonder that the smothered fires do break out into sudden fiery tempests of destruction that appall the world? "You say you would do the same, after your generations of culture and Christian teaching, and so would I, and every other man. We would if we could destroy the destroyers who ravage and plunder our homes, deprive us of the earnings of a lifetime, turn us out of our inheritance, and make of our wives and daughters worse than slaves. "We meet every year to honor the memory of the old heroes who rebelled and fought for liberty--shed rivers of blood to escape from far less intolerable oppression and wrongs than the Injuns have endured for years. "And then we expect them, with no culture and no Christianity, to practise Christian virtues, and endure buffetings that no Christian would endure. "The whole Injun question is a satire on true Goverment, a lie in the name of liberty and equality, a shame on our civilization." "What would you do about it?" said the kinder good-lookin' man. Sez Krit, "If I called the Injuns wards, adopted children of the Goverment, I would try not to use them in a way that would disgrace any drunken old stepmother. "I would have dignity enough, if I did not stand for decency, to not half starve and freeze them, and lie to them, and cheat them till the very word 'Goverment' means to them all they can picture of meanness and brutality. I would either grant them independence, or a few of the comforts I had stolen from them. "If I drove them out of their rich lands and well-stocked hunting-grounds they had so long considered their own--if I drove them out in my cupidity and love of conquest, I would in return grant them enough of the fruits of their old homes to keep up life in their unhappy bodies. "If I made them suffer the pains of exile, I would not let them endure also the gnawings of starvation. "And I would not send out to 'em the Bible and whiskey packed in one wagon, appeals to Christian living and the sure means to overthrow it. [Illustration: "I would not send 'em Bibles and whiskey packed in one wagon."] "I would not send 'em religious tracts, implorin' 'em to come to Christ's kingdom, packed in the same hamper with kegs of brandy, which the Bible and the tracts teach that those that use it are cursed, and that no drunkard can inherit the kingdom." But, sez Krit, "The Bible they _should_ have. And after they had mastered its simplest teachings, they should don their war-paint and feathers, and go out with it in their hands as missionaries to the white race, to try to teach them its plainest and simplest doctrines, of justice, and mercy, and love." But at this very minute the cars tooted, and the two men seized their satchels, and after a sort of a short bow to Krit and the rest of us, they rushed offen the train. I believe they wuz conscience-smut, but I don't know. [Illustration: I believe they wuz conscience-smut, but I don't know.] When we arrove at the big depot at Chicago, the sun wuz jest a-drawin' up his curtains of gorgeous red, and yeller, and crimson, and wuz a-retirin' behind 'em to git a little needed rest. The glorious counterpane wuz kinder heaped up in billowy richness on his western couch, but what I took to be the undersheet--a clear long fold of shinin' gold color--lay straight and smooth on the bottom of the gorgeous bed. And the sun's face wuz just a-lookin' out above it, as if to say good-bye to Chicago, and trouble, and the World's Fair, and Josiah and me, as we sot our feet on _terry firmy_. (That is Latin that I have hearn Thomas J. use. Nobody need to be afraid of it; it is harmless. My boy wouldn't use a dangerous word.) But to resoom and go on. As I ketched the last glimpse of the old familier face of the sun, that I had seen so many times a-lookin' friendly at me through the maple trees at Jonesville, and that truly had seemed to be a neighbor, a-neighborin' with me, time and agin--when I see him so peaceful and good-natured a-goin' to his nightly rest, I thought to myself-- Oh! how I wish I could foller his example, for it duz seem to me that nowhere else, unless it wuz at the tower of Babel, wuz there ever so much noise, and of such various and conflictin' kinds. Instinctively I ketched holt of my pardner's arm, and sez I, "Stay by me, Josiah Allen; if madness and ruin result from this Pandemonium, be with me to the last." He couldn't hear a word I said, the noise wuz that deafnin' and tremendious. But he read the silent, tender language of the brown cotton glove on his arm, and he cast a look of deep affection on me, and sez he in soulfull axents-- "Hurry up, can't you? Wimmen are always so slow!" I responded in the same earnest, heartfelt way. And anon, or perhaps a little before, Thomas J. and Krit hurried us and our satchel bags into a big roomy carriage, and we soon found ourselves a-wendin' our way through the streets of the great Western city, the metropolis of the Settin' Sun. Street after street, mild after mild of high, towerin' buildin's did we pass. Some on 'em I know wuz high enough for the tower of Babel--and old Babel himself would have admitted it, I bet, if he had been there. And as the immense size and magnitude of the city come over me like a wave, I thought to myself some in Skripter and some in common readin'. When I thought that fifty years ago the grassy prairie lay stretched out in green repose where now wuz the hard pavements worn with the world's commerce; when I thought that little prairie-dogs, and mush-rats, and squirells wuz a-runnin' along ondisturbed where now stood high blocks full of a busy city's enterprise; when I thought that little pretty, timid birds wuz a-flyin' about where now wuz steeples and high chimblys--why, when I thought of all this in common readin', then the Skripter come in, and I sez to myself in deep, solemn axents-- "Who hath brought this thing to pass?" And then anon I went to thinkin' in common readin' agin, and thinks'es I-- A little feeble woman died a few days ago--not so very old either--who wuz the first child born in Chicago--and I thought-- What a big, big day's work wuz done under her eye-sight! What a immense house-warmin' she would had to had in order to warm up all the housen built under her eye! Millions of folks did she see move into her neighborhood. And what a party would she had to gin to have took all her neighbors in! What a immense amount of nut-cakes would she have had to fry, and cookies! Why, countin' two nut-cakes to a person--and that is a small estimate for a healthy man to eat, judgin' by my own pardner--she would have had to fry millions of nut-cakes. And millions of cookies, if they wuz made after Mother's receipt handed down to me; that wouldn't have been one too many. And where could she spread out her dough for her cookies--why, a prairie wouldn't have been too big for her mouldin' board. And the biggest Geyser in the West, old Faithful himself, wouldn't have been too big to fry the cakes in, if you could fry 'em in water, which you can't. But mebby if she had gin the party, she could have used that old spoutin' Geyser for a teapot or a soda fountain--if she laid out to treat 'em to anything to drink. But good land! there is no use in talkin', if she had used a volcano to steep her tea over, she couldn't made enough to go round. _ |
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