The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1923-03-29
"HODLE RED MAN.
indian of tie Frontier as Re
Really Was.
Found Highest Enjoyment In the In
Fiction Of Suffering, and Not
E.ave in Battle.

During the period Of the Spanish
risk In our West-it became, actually,
an Indian risk-Indians killed nearly
three hundred white men, women and
children, and wasted, burned and de-
stroyed a million dollars in properties.
They were. more than anything else,
destructive; they loved excitement;
and what they preferred above all was
running off the live stock of a cara
van then they could get some fresh
meat and horses and fill the remaining
horses and cattle with arrows. shoot
them at point-blank range with old
tirelock fuses.
The Jicarillas were drunken pottery
turner's the Utes were the best armed
Of all the local tribes, they were SUI
perior In war and hunting. But their
war making was peculiar, and highly
reasonable, In that they insisted on
every circumstance favorable to them
selves. Failing this they wouldn't
fight! For attack they preferred the
passage of the late moon; and 1t was
their pleasure to happen on some de-
tached w~oodchoppers, a lonely mes
senger or a small party of wagons in
a narrow canyon.
Occasions like those gave their
sense of humor and ingenuity full
play; II they were I'm a hurry the muir
dering would be swift, the scalps Sc
cured without ceremony but when the
situation was safe they fingered over
p~reliminaries and refinements. 1t was
their ambition to lay bare terror and
uncover pain, and their inventive fac
ulties we're endless; there would be
more premonitory touches of steel and
flame, little whisperings of torment,
the feathery edge of agony, an eter-
nifty Of hours before the b~lackened
end.
The Indian regarded this as nor.
mai, an end to be avoided, of course,
but faced with the inevitable, they ac-
cepted it in the image of men Of stone.
The objections, the tenderness Of the
white race, seemed to them. wholly un.
reasonable; the cries and expostula-
tons they must have regarded as no
comic than contemplate.
Vanity both in conduct and appear
ance was the mark Of a proper mascu-
line carriage the men rather than the
women painted: they eradicated every
hair from their boards and eye.ashes
and eyebrows, and, Sitting their ears
hold pendants, hung beads to the
weight of half a pound from each. For
the rest, they wore breech clouts, moe
casins and leggins of strouding, and a
they woye their hair with gum
and paint, trinkets and feathers and
at war, coated their faces with char.
coal.
The bows they carried were three
and four feet long, made of elastic
wood, elks' horns, or, more infre-
l%uently, of buffalo ribs, but bone was
inferior to the bois dare wrapped and
with slnew. They carried, as
well, lances, the inevitable scalping
knives-in the Southwest there were
no tomahawks-and shields OF elk
hide painted with the signs of the enc
mics they had killed.
AT peace in their villages the
and sheafs of pipestems
wrapped in red and blue cloths, were
hung on tripods before the lodges of
hide rubbed soft with the
brains OF that Indispensable animal
buffalo liver dipped in gall they con
the greatest OF delicacies-
and there, to a little drum and a
.squeaking pipe, they INDUCED In
dances of a most humorous obscenity;
there they were domestic.
Solemnly they slapped their naked
and solemn sons, and varied the smok-
Of their formal and informal pipes
BY the food with which they literally
themselves. In their philosophy
md existence. In their fate, there was
no tomorrow.-Joseph Hergesheimer
the Saturday Evening Post.