Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1891-05-12
Copyright, 1891, by Edgar w. Nye.l

THE DOWNTRODDEN CHEROKEE.
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 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 1t occurred to him that he
could make the top wire a telegraph
wire, and with an instrument at head
| quarters he could detect a break and
locate 1t at any time. So now line re-
palrer and cheap operator, who has
nothing to do but to communicate with
himself all day, constitute the fence
force in place of the old and expensive
corps OF riders and repairers
We rode up from Galveston the other
day with Conductor Taylor. He is a
hearty man with a genial smile filed
with mirth and gilt edged teeth. He is
the kind OF conductor who looks out for
his passengers comfort. He telegraphed
| ahead and got lunch for us, which
| saved our lives no doubt, for we had to
travel all day on the Houston and
Shreveport railroad, which is said to be
the worst in the United States Yet it
Is genial and accommodating road.
All the trains are accommodation trains
The one rode on stopped fifteen min
utes while tall man went back to re-
cover his hat, and it was not very
good hat either.
When the train pauses at a station on
the Houston and Shreveport road the
little bronze razorback hog comes and
eats 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 as a fellow passen-
ger. He wore pink shirt, with large.
wide founces at the wrists and around
his neck. He had been drinking, so l
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 welled up in his dark eve
and fell on my vest. He said that his
ACAho ONhOb al bAlC SOuIu db Ol1c llIut,
but 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,
nor anybody else, for that matter. The
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 a little Calvinism into the
heart of Timbuctoo, but his relatives to-
day do not even know the names of
the 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
fitness 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 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 a 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 at
the matter differently, however
Everything is out of repair on the
road except the receiver. He
S looking first rate.
In Louisiana the great parent of wa
ers was on the rampage. Recently pipes
md fumes of one kind and another have
been inserted at various points along the
banks of the river, so l am informed,
md when the water is high leakage
frequently occurs which grows at last to
We terrific crevasse. Then the water
vanders away all over the state, and
loats the pork barrel in the cellar of the
,etter classes.
We met up with the Mississippi and
ound where it was at, more than six
hours before we really crossed it. was