The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1872-10-31
An Aboriginal Politician.
BY MAX ADELER.

During the recent visit of party of Indians
to the East, one of the number, Squatting
Bear, was observed to behave himself in very
remarkable and mysterious manner. he sepa-
rated himself from his companions upon one
occasion, for several hours, and was then seen
returning dragging huge Saratoga trunk be-
hind him through the Streets with a string.
When he reached his lodgings with the trunk,
the other Indians. we're puzzled them
believed the trunk to be model for new. kind
of wigwam with Mansard root, while others
conceived the idea that it was patent bath
tub of some peculiar sort, and that SqHatting
Bear, in q moment of mental alteration, had
been seized with aninexplicable and unprece-
dented desire to wash himself. The; souls, of
the sayages burned with fiery indignation as
they contemplated the possibility. Of the adop-
ton of this revolutionary, enervating and de-
moralizing practice of the pale-faces by the
noble red man. But when they questioned
Squatting Bear and demonstrated with him,
that incomprehensible brave merely placed his
copper-colored finger upon his burnt-umber
nose and winked solemnly with his right eye.
The trunk was carried through to the wig
wan of ,Squatting Bear unopened, lat the ex-
pense of Uncle Sam,) and within the precincts
of his home it was hidden finally from view,
and was soon entirely forgotten.
In the tribe, the brave who killed the largest
number of enemies in any given year and Sc
cured the usual trophies of victory, was enti-
tied to occupy the position of chief. Squatting
Bear was known to have ardent aspirations for
the office, and he worked hard to win it. For
while after his return he was always foremost
in every fight; and when the scalps were
counted around the campfire, he invariably
had secured the greatest number. Gradually,
L &c tbo. bso,, i,,y,r oooH
with the notion that Squattings trophies some.
times did not bear very correct proportion to
the ferocity of the contest or to the number of
the slain. Several times, after brief skirmish
in which ten or fifteen men were killed, Squat
ting would come siding home with as many
scaIps as there were dead men, while, at the
same time, the other warriors would together
have nearly as many more.
The braves thought it was queer, but they
did not give the sub ject very serious attention
until after the massacre of certain band of
emigrants which passed close by the camp of
the tribe There were just twenty persons in
the company, and after the butchery several
Indians took the trouble to count the bodies,
and to keep tally with butcher-knife upon
the side of chip. That night, when the
scalps were numbered, each brave had one or
two apiece, but Squatting Bear handed out e8-
actly forty-seven of the most beautiful punches
of human hair that ever were seen west of the
Mississippi. The braves looked cross-eyed at
each other and cleared their throats Two of
the number stole out to the battlefield for the
purpose of counting the bodies again, and of
ascertaining if this had been managerie with
few double-headed persons in the party.
Yes, there lay exactly twenty corpses and
to make matters worse, one of them was bald
headed man, who, for additional security to his
scalp, had run skate strap over his head and
buckled it under his chin.
When they returned, the entire camp devoted
itself to meditation and calculation. Twenty
men killed and forty-seven scalps in the pos
session of a single brave, without counting
those secured by other participants in the con-
testi The more the warriors pondered over
this fact, the more perplexing it became. A
brave, while eating his supper and rejecting
upon the problem, would suddenly imagine he
saw his way clear, and he would stop, with his
mouth full of baked dog, and fix his eyes upon
the wall and think desperately hard. But the
solution invariably eluded him. Then all of
/ them would glide behind their wgwams and
upon their finger and they would get sticks
and lam the poil - into the sand, and do hard
sums out of their aboriginal arithmetic. And
they would tear around through the Indian
rule of three, and struggle through their own
kind of vulgar fractions, and wreste with
something that they believed to be multiple
cation table. But in vain. Forty-seven scalps
off twenty heads 1t seemed impossible.
They tried it with algebra, and let the num-
ber of heads equal z, and the numberof scalps
equal a. and then they multiplied & into 9 and
substracted every letter in the alphabet in sue
cession from the result until their brains reeed,
but still themystery remained unsolved ''>'
! At last a secret council was held, and it was
determined. that Squatting Bear must. have
some powerful and wonderful charm which
enabled him to perform such miracles, and all
hands agreed to investigate the matter upon
the FIRST opportunity. So the next week there
was another fight in which four persons were
killed, and that night Squatting actually had
the audacity to rush out one hundred and eigh-
ty-seven scalps, and to ask those benighted
savages, sitting around that fire, to believe that
he had snatched all that hair from those four
heads. .a.f.
1t was too much-much too much; they
seized him and drove white oak stake through
his bosom to hold him still, and then they pro-
ceeded to his wigwam to ascertain how that
scalp business was conducted by the Bear fam
ily. They burst open the Saratoga trunk the
first thing, and therein they found fifteen hum
dred wigs and keg of red paint, purchased
by the disgraceful aboriginal while in Phila-
delphia.
That concluded his career. They buried him
at once in the Saratoga trunk, and the wigs
with him, and ever since that time they have
elected annually committee on scalps, whose
business it is to examine every hirsute trophy
with double -barrcllcd gun microscope of nine
hundred diameters.
"TvE Cor MAD."-The Detroit Free Press
relates an incident which occurred on the re-
turn of an excursion party from that city.
Soon after the boat left Toledo the steward was
approached by an excited individual, who ask
ed him if he was the captain. The steward
renlied in the negative. at the same time giving