The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-04-07
AN INDIAN FIGHTER.
ChIcArn Timca.


 Edward II. Allison, in his buck skin clothes and his old white lop- rim hat, is one of the most interesting men ever met. l usually find that the men who have national reputa- tions by their exploits on the plains and among the Indians dwindle and shrivei and become stupidly uninter- esting when one comes near enough to them to sec what they really arc. But this Is not true of Mir. Allison. The more one sees of him the more inter- ested one becomes in him. It was he who, single handed, brought about the surrender of Sitting Bull after the massacre of General Custer and his troops, and the story of this exploit gave Mir. Allison national name, but after all that was only one of his OK ploits and by no means the most inter- esting of them.
 wish everybody in this land-ev- erybody whose head has been filled with false pictures of Indian fighting and of life on the great American plains-l wish that every such boy could hear Mir. Allison talk for an hour. He is far more entertaining than the dime novelist, and what Is better he makes true pictures, which, while they entertain, are full of good meaning and profit to those who hear them. He is an ideal "lndian fighter" but is very far from that particular and false set up by the cheap penny a. liners who never saw plain or an Indian, but who write miserable stuil about them both by the mile. It is a gentleman who inhabits those buck skin clothes of Edward II. Allison an intelligent, hearty, true gentle man and scholar
 Mir. Allison was born in Michigan in 1S47, and spent the first fifteen years of his life on his fathers farm. Then, though yet so young, he passed the examination (standing as high as ninety), and was matriculated at Ann Arbor university.
 Soon after this he enlisted for the war, out of which he became after three years, at the age of nine teen, fitted as the army is likely to fit one of his years, for something more active and exciting than the old farm lite in Michigan. In 1866 he ac- cordingly went west and became a government despatch bearer. Ever since that time he has lived upon the plains, suffered its hardships, learned its lesson, and now he has come out, after twenty-two years of it, an in- telligent gentlemen with a broad un- derstanding not only of Indians, their languages and their characteristics, but of "the Indian question:" in all its phases, from that viewed by the statesman to that imagined by the ambitious youngster who sticks his mothers bread knife in his belt and starts to exterminate the race of red men.
 Mir. Allison has not merely learned the Sioux language he has mastered 1t. He speaks A dozen or more lingos, or dialects, but he says the Sioux Is the language of the American Indian, and of the BOG, ,000 Indians In All the country the Sioux nation comprises one- sixth.
 "There is," said he, "only one lan- guage that is employed by all QUE western Indians. It is the sign lan- guage."
 Then Mir. Allison gave me an ex- ample of his tongue" An Indian is hungry. He motions with one hand towards his open mouth, as If he were throwing food into it, and then makes a negative gesture away from his mouth. The translation literally is, "I have eaten-not." Of course he has not eaten; he is hungry. If he is very hungry the gesture towards bis mouth isgreater in extent-that is he motions towards his mouth and con- tinues the gesture clear along down his stomach; he is empty all the way down, so to speak. Now he wants to say he has looked for game.
 This Is said by pointing his two first fingers away from his eyes, the back of his hand being in front of his nose. If he was to say he had to look long for the game he points in several directions and for some time with these finger eyes" To tell of mount ing his pony and riding away, he straddles two fingers of one hand over the foreGnger of the other and makes . galloping motion with the hand. To say that he levels his gun at the game he holds his arms a. if holding gun. Skipping one palm upon the other means that he fired the gun and skipping the back of one hand on the palm of the other means that he brought down the game. If he missed the mark he makes the same gesture, but adds the negative flourish to it-he brought down the game not" So he goes through everything he has to say, and Mr. Allison tells me that every Indian in the west knows this language perfectly