Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1884-06-12
Bill Nye on the Indianized American
Squaw Jim.


Caucasion nomad, why don't you say
something? Brace up and tell us your
experience. Were you kidnapped
when kid and run off into the wild
wickup of the forest. or how was it
that you came to leave the Yankee
reservation and eat the raw dog OF the
Sioux"
We were all sitting around the roar
ing fat-pine fire at the foot of the
canon, and above us the full moon was
filling the bottom of the black notch
in the mountain where God began to
engrave the gulch that grew wider
and deeper till it reached the valley
where we were.
Squaw Jim was tall, silent and
grave. He was as dignitied as the
king of clubs and as reticent as the pri-
vate cemetery of q deaf and dumb
asylum. He didn't move when Dutch
Joe spoke to him, but he noticed the
remark, and aftera while got up in the
freight, and later on the silent savage
made the longest speech of his life.
"Boys, you call me Squaw Jim and
you cali my girl half breed. | have
no other name than Squaw Jim with
the pale faced dude and the dyspeptic
sky pilot who tells me of his God.
You call me Squaw Jim because I've
married a squaw and insist on living
with her. If l had married Mist Of
the. W aterfall and had lived in my
tepee with her Summers and wintered
at St. Louis with wife who belonged
to tall peaked church, and who wore
her war paint and her false scalp-lock
and her false heart into Gods wigwam,
I'd be all right probably. They would
have laughed about it little among
the boys, it would have been wayne in
the big stone lodges of the white mans
city.
81 loved a pale faced girl in Con-
necticut forty years ago. She said she
did me, but she met with a change of
heart and married bare back rider
in circus. Then she ran away with
the sword swallower of the side show,
and finally broke her neck trying to
walk the tight rope. The jury said if
the rope had been as tight as she was
it might have saved her life.
Since then I've been where the sun
and the air and the soil were free. It.
kind of soothed me to wear moccasins
and throw my billed shirt into Missouri.
Ittook the fever Of jealousy and dis
appointment out of my soul to sleep
in the great bosom of the unhoused
night. Soon learned how to parley-
vous in the Indian language and to
wear the clothes of the red man. |
married the squaw girl who saved me
from the mountain fever and my foes
She did not yearn for the equestrian
of the white mans circus. She didn't
know how to raise XxYxZ to the
ninth power, but she was wife wor
thy of the President of the United
States. She was away off the trail in
matters of Etiquette, but she did not
know what it was to envy and hate the
pale.faced squaw with the sealskin
sacque and the torpid liver, and the
high priced throne of grace and the
aesthetic Savior. She never sighed to
go where they are filling up Connecti
cuts celestial exhibit with the girls
who get mysteriously murdered and
the young men who dldut 60 out lee
turing. You see l keep posted,
"Boys, you kind of pity me reckon
and say Squaw Jim might have been
in Congress if he'd stayed with his
people and wore night shirts and pared
his claws, but you needn't. /
"My wife can't knock the tar out
of symphony on the piano, but she can
mop the dew off the grass with
burglar and knock out dudes eye at
sixty yards rise.
"My wife is little foggy on the
winter style Of salvation and probably
you stall her on how to drape silk vel
vet overskirt so it wouldn't hang one
sided, but she has crude idea of an
every day, all wool General Superin.
tendent of the Universe and Father of
all-Humanity, whether they live un'
der horse blanket tepee or Gothic
mortgage. She might look out of
place before the cross with her chill
blains and her childlike confidence
among the Tom.cat sealskin sacques of
your camel's hair Christianity, but if
the world was supplied with Christians
like my wife purgatory would make
and assignment and the Salvation
Army could 60 home and hoe corn.
Sabe?" BILL NYE.
Compare the dose and quantity of
Hoods Sarsaparilla, and you have con-
elusive proof of itssuperior strength and
eheapness.
A scientific paper announces that in
its next issue will appear an elaborate
article entitled, Chow to Handle Bees"
Now, bee is not a difficult thing to