all here: my mother, I, Kurteyef, Madam unnatural and uncanny. At the first pause in Kolenkina, and "- the other names I could the conversation he said to me abruptly, but in not catch. After a moment's parley the gen- a strange, drawling, monotonous tone, "Wedarmes seemed to go away, Miss Armfeldt have-a graveyard-of-our-own shut and re-barred the door, and coming back here.-Would-you-like-to-see-it?" into the room said with a smile, "They were I was so surprised and startled by his mansatisfied; they did n't insist on coming in." ner and by the nature of his question that I Then, turning to me, she added in English: did not for a moment reply; but the convic"The gendarmes visit us three times a day to tion suddenly flashed upon me that it was a see what we are doing and to make sure that political convict who had lost his reason. As we have not escaped. Their visits, however, the knocking at the gate after the murder in have grown to be formal, and they do not Macbeth seemed to De Quincey to deepen the always come in." emotions excited by the tragedy and to reflect back a sort of added horror upon all that had preceded it, so this strange, unprompted question, with its suggestions of insanity and death, seemed to render more vivid and terrible the stories of human suffering that I had just heard, and to intensify all the emotions roused in my mind by the great tragedy of penal servitude. Conversation was then resumed, and for two hours or more I listened to stories of convict life in prison, on the road, or at the mines, and answered, as well as I could, the eager questions of the convicts with regard to the progress of the Russian revolutionary movement. In the course of the talk my attention was accidentally attracted to a person whom I had not particularly noticed before and to whom I had not been introduced. It was a man thirty or thirty-five years of age, with a colorless, strangely vacant face and large, protruding blue eyes. He had seated himself on a low wooden stool directly in front of me, had rested his elbows on his knees with his chin in his open hands, and was staring up at me with a steady and at the same time expressionless gaze in which there seemed to be something I remained with the political convicts that night until after midnight, and then walked home with my blood in a fever that even the frosty atmosphere of a semi-arctic night could not cool. Everybody had gone to bed except Mr. Frost, who was watching anxiously for my return. I threw myself on the divan in my room and tried to get to sleep; but all that I had just seen and heard kept surging through my mind, and it was morning before I finally lost consciousness. George Kennan. ON THE INDIAN RESERVATIONS. I WAS camping with a couple of prospectors one night some years ago on the south side of the Pinal Range in Arizona Territory. We were seated beside our little cooking fire about 9 o'clock in the evening engaged in smoking and drowsily discussing the celerity of movement displayed by Geronimo, who had at last been heard of down in Sonora, and might be already far away from there, even in our neighborhood. Conversation lapsed at last, APACHE SOLDIFE, OR SCOUT, and puffing our pipes and lying on our backs we looked up into the dark branches of the trees above. I think I was making a sluggish calculation of the time necessary for the passage of a far-off star behind the black trunk of an adjacent tree when I felt moved to sit up. My breath went with the look I gave, for, to my unbounded astonishment and consternation, there sat three Apaches on the opposite side of our fire with their rifles across their laps. My comrades also saw them, and, old, hardened frontiersmen as they were, they positively gasped in amazement. "Heap hungry," ejaculated one of the savage apparitions, and again relapsed into silence. As we were not familiar with Mr. Geronimo's countenance we thought we could see the old villain's features in our interlocutor's, and we began to get our artillery into shape. APACHE The savages, in order to allay the disturbance which they had very plainly created, now explained. "We White Mountain. No want fightwant flour." They got the flour in generous quantities, it is needless to add, and although we had previously been very sleepy, we now sat up and entertained our guests until they stretched themselves out and went to sleep. We pretended to do the same. During that night I never closed my eyes, but watched, momentarily expecting to see more visitors come gliding out of the darkness. I should not have been surprised even to see an Apache drop from a branch above me. They left us in the morning, with a blessing couched in the style of forcible speech that my Rocky Mountain friends affected on unusual occasions. I mused over the occurrence; for while it brought no more serious consequences than the loss of some odd pounds of bacon and flour, yet there was a warning in the way those Apaches could usurp the prerogatives of ghosts, and ever after that I used to mingle undue proportions of discretion with my valor. Apaches are wont to lurk about in the rocks and chaparral with the stealth of coyotes, and they have always been the most dangerous of all the Indians of the Western country. They are not at all valorous in their methods of war, but are none the less effective. In the hot desert and vast rocky ranges of their country no white man can ever catch them by direct pursuit. Since railroads and the telegraph have entered their territory, and military posts have been thoroughly established, a very rigorous military system has kept them in the confines of the San Carlos reservation, and there is no longer the same fear that the next dispatches may bring news of another outbreak. But the troopers under General Miles always had their cartridge-belts filled and their saddlepockets packed, ready at any hour of the day to jump out on a hostile trail. The affairs of the San Carlos agency are administered at present by an army officer, Captain Bullis of the Twenty-fourth Infantry. As I have observed him in the discharge of APACHE WOMAN WITH RATIONS. his duties I have had no doubt that he pays high life insurance premiums. He does not seem to fear the beetle-browed pack of murderers with whom he has to deal, for he has spent his life in command of Indian scouts, and not only understands their character, but has gotten out of the habit of fearing anything. If the deeds of this officer had been done on civilized battlefields instead of in silently leading a pack of savages over the desert waste of the Rio Grande or the Staked Plain, they would have gotten him his niche in the temple of fame. Alas! they are locked up in the gossip of the army mess-room, and end in the soldiers' matter-of-fact joke about how Bullis used to eat his provisions in the field, opening one can a day from the packs, and, whether it was peaches or corned-beef, making it suffice. The Indians regard him as almost supernatural, and speak of the "Whirlwind" with many grunts of admiration as they narrate his wonderful achieve ments. The San Carlos reservation, over which he has supervision, is a vast tract of desert and mountain, and near the center of it, on the Gila River, is a great flat plain where the long, low adobe buildings of the agency are built. Lines of white tents belonging to the cantonment form a square to the north. I arrived at this place one evening, after On the following morning I got out my sketchbook, and taking my host into my confidence, I explained my plans for action. The captain discontinued brushing his hair and looked me over with a humorous twinkle in his eyes. "Young man," he said, "if you desire to wear a long, gray beard you must make away with the idea that you are in Venice." I remembered that the year before a Blackfoot upon the Bow River had shown a desire to tomahawk me because I was endeavoring to immortalize him. After a long and tedious course of diplomacy it is at times possible to get one of these people to gaze in a defiant and fearful way down the mouth of a camera; but to stand still until a man draws his picture on paper or canvas is a proposition which no Apache will entertain for a moment. With the help of two officers, who stood up close to me, I was enabled to make rapid sketches of the scenes and people; but my manner at last aroused suspicion, and my game would vanish like a covey of quail. From the parade in front of our tent I could see the long lines of horses, mules, and burros trooping into the agency from all quarters. Here was my feast. Ordinarily the Indians are scattered for forty miles in every direction; but this was rationday, and they all were together. After breakfast we walked down. Hundreds of ponies, caparisoned in all sorts of fantastic ways, were standing around. Young girls of the San Carlos tribe flitted about, attracting my attention by the queer ornaments which, in token of their virginity, they wear in their hair. Tall Yuma bucks galloped past with their long hair flying out behind. The squaws crowded around the exit and received the great chunks of beef which a native butcher threw to them. Indian scouts in military coats and armed with rifles stood about to preserve order. Groups of old women sat on the hot ground and gossiped. An old chief, with a very respectable amount of adipose under his cartridge-belt, galloped up to our group and was introduced as Esquimezeu. We shook hands. to the guard-house, granted absolute divorces, and probated wills with a bewildering rapidity. The interpreter struggled with his English; the parties at law eyed one another with villainous hate, and knives and rifles glistened about in a manner suggestive of the fact that the court of last resort was always in session. Among these people men are constantly killing one another, women are carried off, and feuds are active at all times. Few of these cases come before the agent if the parties think they can better adjust their own difficulties by the blood-atonement process, but the weak and the helpless often appeal. After leaving the office and going some distance we were startled by a gun-shot from the direction of the room we had just left. We These Indians have natural dignity, and it takes very little knowledge of manners for them to appear well. The Apaches have no expression for a good-bye or a greeting, and they never shake hands among themselves; but they consider handshaking an important ceremony among white men, and in their intercourse with them attach great importance to it. I heard an officer say that he had once seen an Apache come home after an absence of months: he simply stepped into the jicail, sat down without a word, and began rolling a cigarette. The day was very hot, and we retired to the shade of Captain Bullis's office. He sat there with a big sombrero pulled over his eyes and listened to the complaints of the Indians against one another. He relegated certain offenders VOL. XXXVIII.-52. started back. The negro soldiers of the guard came running past; the Indians became excited; and every one was armed in a minute. A giant officer of infantry, with a white helmet on his head, towered above the throng as he forced his way through the gathering mass of Indians. Every voice was hushed, and every one expected anything imaginable to happen. The Indians began to come out of the room, the smoke eddying over their heads, and presently the big red face and white helmet of the infantry officer appeared. "It's nothing, boys only an accidental discharge of a gun." In three minutes things were going on as quietly as before. Captain Bullis sauntered up to us, and tipping his hat on one side meditatively scratched his head as he pointed to an old wretch who sat wrapped in a sheet against the mud wall of the agency. "There's a problem. That old fellow's people won't take care of him any longer, and they steal his rations. He's blind and old and can't take care of himself." We walked up and regarded the aged being, whose parchment skin reminded us of a mummy. We recoiled at the filth, we shuddered at his helplessness, and we pitied this savage old man so steeped in misery; but we could do nothing. I know not how the captain solved his problem. Physical suffering and the anguish of cast-off old age are the compensations for the self-reliant savage warrior who dozes and dreams away his younger days and relegates the toil to those within his power. We strolled among the horses and mules. They would let me sketch them, though I thought the half-wild beasts also shrunk away from the baleful gaze of the white man with his bit of paper. Broncos, mules, and burros stood about, with bags Remingtonof flour tied on their saddles and great chunks of meat dripping blood over their unkempt sides. These woe-begone beasts find scant pasture in their desert home, and are banged about by their savage masters until ever-present evils triumph over equine philosophy. Fine navy blankets and articles of Mexican manufacture were stretched over some of the saddles, the latter probably obtained in a manner not countenanced by international law. The Apaches have very little native manufacture. They rely on their foraging into Mexico for saddlery, serapes, and many other things; but their squaws make wicker-work, some of which I have never seen surpassed. Allas, or water-jars, of beautiful mold and unique design, are sold METHOD OF SKETCHING AT SAN CARLOS. to any one who desires to buy them at a price which seems absurdly mean when the great labor expended on them is considered. But Apache labor is cheap when Apaches will work at all. The women bring into the cantonment great loads of hay on their backs, which is sold to the cavalry. It is all cut with a knife from bunches which grow about six inches apart, and is then bound up like wheat and carried for miles. By evening all the Indians had betaken themselves to their own rancherias, and the agency was comparatively deserted for another week. I paused for a day on the Gila, some miles from the agency, to observe the methods of agriculture practiced by the San Carlos Indian tribe. The Gila River bottoms are bounded on each side by bluffs, and on these the Indians build their brush jicails. High above the stifling heat of the low ground the hot winds from the desert blow through the leafy bowers which they inhabit. As they wear no clothing except breech-cloth and moccasins, they enjoy comparative comfort. The squaws go back and forth between their WICHITAS SMOKING THEIR MEDICINE. |