The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-05-10


THE DOWNTRODDEN CHEROKEE
a whole town is hardly worth assessing.
A county with barbed wire fence
around it is more like the customary
thing. A friend of mine here has the
best of a county. 1t is fenced in with
barbed wire, which the outlaw used to
cut now and then SO that the cattle
would get out and wander away into
Peru and other neighboring places. He
had to keep force of cowboys to "ride
the lines" and examine the fence every
day, until it occurred to him that he
could make the top wire a telegraph
wire, and with an instrument at head
quarters he could detect break aad
locate it at any time. So now line re.
paireT and a cheap operator, who has
nothing to do but to communicate Wi th
himself all day, constitute the fence
force in place of the old and expe nsive
corps of riders and repairers.
We rode up from Galveston tlke other
day with Conductor Taylor. He is a
hearty man with a genial smile filled
with mirth and gilt-edge'l teeth. He is
the kind of conductor v<sso looks out for
his passengers comic. e. He telegraphed
ahead and got a lunch for us, which
saved our hives ne doubt, for we had to
travel all daI on the Houston and
shreveport lnilroad. which is said to be
the worst IN the United States. Yet it
Is g .nial and accommodating road
All de trains are accommodation trains
Re one | rode on stopped fifteen min
o1es while tall man went back to re-
cover his hat, and it was not very
good hat either
When the train pauses at station on
the Houston and Shreveport road the
little bronze razorback hog comes and
oeats the axle grease off the cars. and the
inebriated Cherokee Indian assists his
jag on board the train and reproaches
the white man for rObbing him Of his
lands. We had one rs "a fellow passen-
ger. He wore pink shirt, with large,
wide flounces at the wrists and around
las neck. He had been drinking, so |
was told by people who knew him.
Though | thought at first that it was his
way. He spoke of the past with some
sorrow, and as he held my hand great
big warm tear welIed up in his dark eye
and fell on my vest. He said that his
folks owned all the south at one time.
bat the white man came among them,
and two or three treaties with thirty
days and costs deprived them of their
once lands.
The Cherokee has not been well treat
ed, of course. Neither has the negro,
L. a, E., Io+ hn
heather has been imposed upon, and so
has the missionary who went across the
sea to knock little gospel into him. A
missionary who graduated with meat
the same female seminary, in fact-went
over to sock little Calvinism into the
heart of Timbuctoo, but his relatives to-
day do not even know the names of
She folks who ate him. On the other
hand, the heather is said To murmur a
good deal about the flavor of several
well meaning pastors who used tobacco
to excess, and which impaired their use
fulness from food standpoint. The
use Of tobacco for many years makes the
most toothsome people as unpalatable as
a Mexican.
In the day coach there was lady
with a snuff stick in one corner of her
mouth, asleep. The clipper" is quite
common here among the plain people
IF one could have seen this peri slum-
bering there, with her snuff swab in the
corner of her sagging jaw and the corn
cob stopper of bluing bottle-which
did not contain bluing any more, how
ever-as it peeped from the pocket of
her deep and profound mourning dress,
he would have said TO himself How
cool and restful must have seemed the
grave in which her husband secreted
himself!" Any way that is what said.
Others, of course, might have looked al
the matter differently, however
Everything is out of repair on the
Shreveport road except the receiver. He
is looking first rate.
In Louisiana the great parent of wa
tiers was on the rampage. Recently pipes
and fumes of one kind and another nave
been inserted at various points along the
banks of the river. SO | am Informed
and when the water is high leakage
frequently occurs which grows at last to
be terrific crevasse Then the water
wanders away all over the state, and
floats the pork barrel in the cellar of the
better classes.
We met up with the Mississippi and
found where it was at, more than SIX
hours before we really crossed It WAS
almost certain that we came upon it be-
fore we got to Shreveport, but the con-
ductor said he hardly thought that pos