Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1894-08-22
POOR LOS CONSORT.
!. The Red Man and White Man
the Same"
BUT IT'S DIFFERENT WITH WOMEN.
Papooses and Tpoubles-The Squaw has
aHard and Toilsome Lot-The Wild
West Show Woman.

A great deal has been said about the
Indian chief at the Wild West Show,
but very little, if anything, has been
said about the Indian woman. But she
is there. Sitting in her tent, placid,
like a mahogany memorial, Scared,
wrinkled and sedate, the mother of
much Papoose," the wife of big In
jun, the accomplishing woman of ma
lures own making.
She does, indeed, take an unpreten-
tious part in the exhibition, comes on
when the settlers train is to be at
tackled, and drags the tent-poles and
makes the fire and otherwise shows how
the red woman humbly performs her
whole duty in life. But nobody pays
much attention to her, for, unlike the
white woman, she does not appear to
be born with the dramatic instinct, OF
she has relinquished it altogether to
her dusky lord.
The male Indian is essentially theat-
ric. Cooper and the rest of them have
tried to make us believe that he is
mixture of stole and Roman Senator,
who does not care for forms and cere-
monies-a kind of untutored Brahmin,
given to meditation when not given to
murder But the fact is he is first
class fal1ir always; as proud of his strut
and makeup as turkey cock; as sus-
ceptible to symbolism as a ritualist or
French ballad singer, and as fond of
personal exhibition as a stages struck
ingenue
He spends more time in painting his
he is prouder of his legs than skirt
dancer; under his enameled hide he has
more personal vanity than the belle of
the season. He works (when he does
work., fights and dies with fine sense
of dramatic effect and mise en- scene.
All the ribbons and broken crocBery
and bric-a- brac in his family are on his
person. In his full war toggery he is
as resplendent as q cockatoo, and as
important as a dozen major-generals Of
militia. When he goes into battle he
makes as much noise as a college boy;
he has as keen sense of rank and title
as British dowager, and his eagle
eye swims in vermilion and chrome yell
cow with the same luxurious frenzy
that marks Tadema or Turner.
In word, the nomadic knight of the
frontier is two-thirds ornamental, and
his better half is quite three thirds use
full and undecorative. L have looked
,,,kS oil re- If thn WILD Wnst N
search of the fawn-eyed maiden of the
laughing water, that beautiful Mime
haha of song and tradition. Never
have l seen a Pocohontas or a Naomi,
whose raven locks were full of the mys-
teries of night, and whose dark eyes
scintillated with dreams.
She always had high cheek bones,
and her hair was matted down with
buffalo tallow and smelt bad. She was
scrawny and wanted scrubbing, and she
seemed to have in her snappish black
eyes lurking fear that her stupendous
father would sell her to somebody for
a pony suddenly.
don't think there is much romance
in a wildwood maiden's life, and as for
freedom-well, that is an absolutely
unknown quantity with her. If you
really desire to look upon the uneman-
cipated woman you must, l think, con-
template her in tent, with blanket
drawn around her shoulders, arrived at
maternity. This fine type of the rachaic
woman sits with her hands crossed in
the rear of the show. Her back is just
trifle bent, for she has carried the
burden of humanity like a pack
horse many thousands of miles, while
her decorative chief rode ahead on his
pony and smoked his pipe. Her face is
curiously wrinkled, like an old mahog-
any carving. Probably she has suffered
in her dull way, tIt she never COM
planned, and some of these inarticulate
lines are no doubt records.
Every day this woman takes her part
in the pageant, and what sadly sug-
gestive part it is! The bucks dash ON
with wild cries. They are decked with
eagle feathers, and painted in all hues.
They thrill you with their animation,
and surprise you with their wild aban-
donment. The woman and her female
companions, with the children, drive
ON the tent-poles slowly, and wander
about the arena as they have wandered
about the continent for generations.
Sometimes they chant low minor
strain that is like wall suppressed,
but which has in it an A minor thread
of plant that perhaps you have heard
in Poland or among the crags of Ire
land.
But it is soprano note, and seems
to me to have come down from prehis-
toric times-the same sad womans cry
that must have echoed in Judea i'll
Herod's time, and reverberated in the
glens of Switzerland, and may be de-
tected today in Holland and in Turkey,
where the wings of sex are yoked to
toll or pinioned to pleasure.
l had burning desire to interview
that grim mother ON the woman ques-
ton. l had vague notion that it
would be like going back to Isaiah for