CHAPTER VI

OF INDIANS IN ARMOR

The next morning was a busy one for all hands. A messenger had been sent across the Inlet to summon Seammux and another Indian, and Mr. Fannin's camp outfit was brought down from the loft, got together and cleaned; and provisions were bought. By the middle of the day, Seammux, and an Indian named Sillicum, had crossed the Inlet, and anchored their canoes close to the shore. Then the blankets, the food, and the mess kit were carried down and stowed in the boat, and by that time it was noon. Immediately after the midday meal the party set out.

Mr. Fannin had proposed that he and Jack should go in the small canoe with the lighter load, and that Hugh should go in the canoe with the two Indians, who, being stronger and far more used to paddling than the white men, could move along at a better rate.

"You and I," said Fannin, "although our canoe is smaller and lighter, will have a good deal harder time in getting along than the Indians. I suppose that you have never paddled much, and I haven't either, for a number of years. But now that you are going to make a canoe trip you must learn to paddle and must be able to do your share of the work."

"Of course I have paddled some," said Jack, "in a birch-bark canoe, but I have never done much of it."

"No," said Fannin, "I suppose you have just paddled around a few miles for the fun of the thing, but you will find that if you undertake to paddle here for hours, or for a whole day, that it gets to be pretty tiresome work before the sun has set."

"Yes," said Jack, "I should think it would be tiresome. Quite different from riding a horse along over the prairie."

Mr. Fannin turned to Hugh, saying: "Mr. Johnson, it won't be necessary for you to paddle at all, unless you feel like doing so. The Indians will do all that. They are both good canoemen, and all you will have to do is to sit in the boat and smoke your pipe."

"Well," said Hugh, "I can certainly do that without much trouble. On the other hand, I think it might be well to take along another paddle for me, in case we are in water that is running strongly against us."

Another paddle having been secured, they stepped on board the canoes, pushed off, and were soon on their way up the inlet.

The tide was running strongly in from the sea and for an hour or two their progress was very good. At first Jack was a little awkward with his paddle, for the canoe was wider than any that he had ever seen before; and he was thus obliged to paddle with straighter arms. Mr. Fannin told him not to pay any attention at present to the direction of the canoe, but to leave all that to the stern paddle, which he, himself, wielded. So Jack paddled steadily on one side of the canoe, but kept his eyes straight ahead and watched the direction toward which the bow pointed. They reached the North Arm, and turning north, followed the westerly bank, and about six o'clock reached and passed up by the island just below the head of the Arm. Here Fannin spoke to the Indians, and after some little talk they turned toward the shore; and, when the bank was reached, unloaded their canoes, and prepared their camp. The top of the bank was four or five feet above the water's level, and the soil was quite dry.

Mr. Fannin, looking carefully about for a camp, chose a somewhat elevated spot; and explained to the Indians where the fire should be made and the beds placed. The Indians each took an axe, went into the woods and presently returned, dragging a number of poles, two of which had crotched ends, and were already sharpened at the bottom. These were driven into the soil so that the crotches stood about six feet from the ground. Between these crotches a pole was laid, and, resting on this pole, and running down to the ground at a low angle, were a dozen or twenty other poles, the whole forming the sloping roof of what was to be a brush leanto. Then the Indians went off again and presently returned with armfuls of cedar boughs with which they proceeded to thatch this roof, laying the butts up and the points down. It was not long before they had a thatched shelter, which would shed a pretty heavy rain. In the meantime, Mr. Fannin had kindled a fire, in front of the shelter and Hugh and Jack had brought in a good pile of wood. It was not easy here to find good fire-wood, however. So great is the prevalence of rain and fog in these coast forests that all the fallen tree trunks seemed to Jack too wet to burn. However, Hugh took an axe and began to cut and split some rather large logs, that, after the outer spongy layer of moist rotten wood had been passed, were found to be perfectly sound and dry. The Indians now began to cook the evening meal of fried bacon, fried potatoes, and coffee; while the others brought the blankets from the canoes and spread their beds under the leanto so that their feet would be towards the fire. By the time this had been done, Seammux announced that the food was ready, and before long the members of the party were sitting about the fire, highly enjoying their meal. After they had eaten, Jack said: "I see, Mr. Fannin, that you have brought your shot-gun along, this time, just as you did yesterday, when we came out here. Do you carry it with you everywhere?"

"No," said Fannin, "not everywhere; but I generally mean to have it with me whenever I go any great distance from home, and am so fixed that I can carry it and a few shells. Of course, I often go out hunting just to get meat, and then I leave the shot-gun at home; but when I go out hunting for pleasure, and especially when I go into a new country, I always try to carry it; for one never knows when he may see a new bird, or at all events a bird that he cannot recognize. I would rather get hold of a bird that I've never seen before, than kill almost any game that can be found in the country. Of course, if I were up in Vancouver Island in the country where the elk range, I would not carry the shot-gun, because I would want to get an elk more than any bird that I should be likely to see. A good many of those elk have been killed, of course, but I don't know that any of them have ever fallen into the hands of a naturalist; and we none of us know what they are. They may be the same elk that are found on the plains and in the Rocky Mountains, or they may be something quite different. I should like to be the man to bring out a skin of one of those animals and to have it compared with the elk that we know so well. I have seen two or three heads of the Island elk, and to me they don't look like the elk of the East, but it's a long time since I saw an eastern elk, and maybe I have forgotten just how it looks."

"Are those elk plenty?" asked Jack. "Mr. James spoke about them, but he didn't seem to know much more than the fact that there were elk up on the Island, back of Comox."

"No one knows much about them," replied Fannin. "They live in the thick timber, high up on the mountains, and mainly on the western slope. The Indians kill them sometimes, and bring in the skins and sell them, but not often. Most of the skins they use to make clothing of, or else for ceremonial robes, or for armor."

"Armor?" queried Jack; "that is something new to me. I never knew that Indians wore armor. They have shields, of course; and I've seen plenty of these; and a very good protection they are, for they will stop an arrow, and are likely to turn a ball from an old-fashioned trade gun. Isn't that so, Hugh?"

"Yes, son," replied Hugh, "that's all true enough; but Indians do wear armor sometimes; or, at least, there are stories told of their wearing armor, but it was always something that they had got from the white men, and not anything that they had made themselves."

"Why, how's that, Hugh? That's something that you never told me, and I don't think I ever heard the Indians speak about it."

"Maybe not," said Hugh, thoughtfully. "When I come to think of it, I don't believe the Blackfeet ever had anything of that kind; but the Pawnees did, and so did the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes. I will have to tell you that story some time."

"Tell it now," said Fannin; and Jack added: "Yes, tell it now, Hugh."

"Well," said Hugh, "it's quite a long story, but I'll tell it to you if you like. But before I begin I'll tell you how I first heard about this armor. Way back, more than twenty years ago, I used to hear the Pawnees talk about an iron shirt that they had. They talked about it pretty freely, but I never got to see it. As near as I could tell, it was something to be worn on the body; perhaps hung around the neck and tied around the waist and under the arms. In other words, it didn't cover up the whole body, but was something like a breastplate,--something that would just protect a man's breast and belly if he were shot at or cut at from the front.

"Years after that, when with the Cheyennes, I heard about a shirt, an iron shirt, that they had; and when they talked about it, as they often did, I found out that this shirt that the Pawnees had they had captured from the Cheyennes, who once owned that and a lot more things like it; in fact, a regular suit of iron clothes. There was a cap made of steel, with a kind of a mask that let down in front over the face; and a sort of a cape from behind that covered the neck. There was a coat that covered the whole body and the upper part of the arms, and laced up on one side; while there was a pair of leggings that covered the legs from the waist down to the ankles. According to the Cheyenne's tell, the man that had this suit of clothes on could stand up and let people shoot at him all day long and he never would be hurt. But they said that these clothes were so powerful heavy that they were very hard to wear; that a man dressed up in them could hardly mount his horse, and that if he tumbled off and fell down, it was all that he could do to get on his legs again. For this reason they never wore the whole suit of clothes; but they would take a part of it and wear it into battle, and of course the man who wore it could go right into the thick of the shooting, and the arrows and the bullets would not hurt him at all, unless he happened to be hit on some part of his body that was not covered.

"Now, I think it was along about 1852 that the Cheyennes and the Pawnees had a big fight on Republican River. A big war party of Cheyennes, Sioux, and Apaches, Kiowas and Comanches had gone out to kill all the Pawnees; they were going to wipe the Pawnees off the earth. They found the Pawnees hunting buffalo on the Republican River, and attacked them, and they had a big fight, in which quite a number were killed on both sides, and among them a lot of the bravest of the Cheyennes. A big chief, 'Touching the Cloud,' wore a part of this iron clothing--only the leggings, they say, spread out over the breast. He had been very brave, and the Pawnees hadn't been able to hit him at all. During the fight he charged on a single Pawnee, who ran away. The Pawnee and Touching the Cloud were both mounted, and Touching the Cloud, who, notwithstanding his armor, wasn't taking any chances, rode up on the right-hand side of the Pawnee to strike him. Of course you can understand, that coming up on the right-hand side the Pawnee could not turn around on his horse far enough to shoot back with his bow; whereas, if the Cheyenne had ridden up on the left-hand side, the Pawnee could have turned around, and, pulling the bowstring with his right hand, could shoot at the Cheyenne. But as bad luck would have it, this Pawnee that Touching the Cloud was going to strike was a left-handed man; so just as the Cheyenne was going to strike him he whirled around on his horse and shot an arrow which, more by good luck than skill, I reckon, struck the Cheyenne in the right eye and went through his brain.

"That about ended the fight, and the Cheyennes and their party went off licked.

"That was one of the biggest misfortunes that the Cheyennes ever had, for Touching the Cloud was a brave warrior, a wise man, and one of the handsomest among the Cheyennes. He had been the orator for the Cheyennes at the Horse Creek Treaty in 1851; and later had gone to Washington; and then, soon after his return, was killed, as I tell you."

"Well," said Fannin, "that's an interesting story, and that Indian was certainly in mighty hard luck. I guess it was fated that he should die."

"Well, Hugh," remarked Jack, "that's one of the best stories I ever heard, and it's queer that you never told it to me before. I guess there are lots of interesting things that you have seen and know that you have never let me hear about."

"Maybe there are, son; but it does seem to me that I've done a heap of talking since I've known you; more maybe than I've done in a good many years before."

"But where did this armor come from, Hugh?" asked Jack.

"Well, I was going to come to that. You see, after Touching the Cloud was killed, the Pawnees captured the armor that he had, and have kept it ever since. The rest of the clothes the Cheyennes had a few years ago. I don't know what has become of them.

"I asked particularly where these clothes came from, and the story the Cheyennes tell is something like this: A good many years ago, I don't know whether it was fifty or a hundred years, one of them Mexicans that used to come up trading from the South brought this suit of clothes with him, packed in a box. After he had been trading for a while in the Arapahoe and Cheyenne camps, he opened the box one day and took out these iron clothes, and showed them to the Indians. Pretty soon there were two or three of them that came to understand that an arrow or a bullet could not go through these clothes, and then they wanted to trade for them; but the Mexican let on that he didn't want to sell them, and packed them again in the box and put them away. You see, the Mexican could count on getting a big price for these things, for the Indian who owned them could figure on being a pretty big man. In the first place, he would be safe in going into battle; and in the second place, he could do such brave things that he'd get up an almighty big name for himself right away; and in the third place, all the tribes that he went to war against, would soon learn that he could not be hurt in battle and would think that he had some powerful medicine or helper, and so they would always run away when he was with a party that attacked them. So the possession of these iron clothes would make a man famous for bravery, and that is the thing of all others that Indians are eager for. Well, the upshot of it was that these Indians began bidding against each other for the iron clothes; and at last an Arapahoe gave the Mexican three or four buffalo horses for them, and got them. After a little while, however, he found out that there were some things about the suit that made it a less desirable piece of property than he had supposed; and when a Cheyenne offered him a great price for it, he sold it to him; and so it passed from hand to hand, parts of it often being worn in battle, and always, or almost always protecting the wearer from any harm. That's all I know about the iron shirt. I expect it was one of those old coats of mail which the Spaniards used to wear in early days when they first came to America."

Hugh stopped, refilled his pipe, which had gone out while he was talking, leaned over and took up a coal out of the ashes and deftly applied it to the bowl of the pipe; and then, after getting the tobacco well alight, turned to Fannin and said: "Now tell us, friend, about this armor that your Indians out here use."

"Well," said Fannin, "this armor is not of white man's make. The Indians fix it up themselves. They make long shirts of elk-skin, and sew into them straight pieces of wood, sometimes round, and as thick as your finger, sometimes flat and a little wider than a common lath. The elk-skin and the wood make an armor that will stop an arrow or a knife thrust. It's a pretty clumsy article of clothing, and an Indian who wears one of these coats of mail can't get around very easily; but he's pretty well protected, and I guess feels a whole lot braver with such a shirt on than he would feel if he were naked."

"I guess he does," said Hugh. "It's curious the way they worked that thing out for themselves. Now, I can remember when I first came out on the plains that sometimes the trappers, if they were in a bad place and surrounded, used to wear shirts of the skins of two black-tail deer,--one in front and one behind and tied under the arms. They said that those skins, when wet, would turn an arrow. I wonder if they got that from the Indians? I wouldn't be a mite surprised.

"I have heard, too," he added, "that there are some other Indians that use armor of this kind; and that the Pueblo Indians that live down South in Arizona and New Mexico use a sort of basket work to protect themselves in war. Somebody told me once, but I can't remember who it was, that some of the Southwest people wore shirts lined with cotton that would stop an arrow; and I know for sure that some of the plains' Indians wadded their shields with buffalo hair or with feathers, which also helped to stop the arrows. I expect likely there's a good deal more of this armor business than we know anything about. For all I know, maybe there have been books written about it."

"Well," said Fannin, "we ought to get an early start to-morrow morning if we are going to go up to the head of the Arm and climb the mountains. I guess we'd better turn in."

"I reckon we had," said Hugh; while Jack said: "I'm not a bit sleepy, and I wish you'd both go ahead and tell some more Indian stories."

"Too late now," said Fannin. "I guess we'll have plenty of time for Indian stories a little later;" and before long they had all turned into their blankets.