Part 7
Around San Antonio are many ranches. These are more like large farms, and there are high trees and hills and a wonderful variety of flowers. There are also antelope and wild fowl for those who love to hunt, and the scalp of a coyote brings fifty cents to those who care for money; for the coyotes pull down the young calves. The life on the range is not at all lonely here, for the women on the ranch do not mind riding in twelve miles to a dance in San Antonio, and there are always people coming out from town to remain a day or two. The more successful of these ranches are like English country-houses in their free hospitality and in the constant changing of the guests.
Many of these about San Antonio are owned, in fact, by Englishmen, although a record of the failures of the English colonists of good family and of well-known youths from New York would make a book, and a very sad one. There was a whole colony of English families and unattached younger sons at Boerne, just outside of San Antonio, a few years ago; but they preferred cutting to leg to cutting out cattle, and used the ponies to chase polo balls, and their money soon went, and they followed. Some went to England as prodigal sons, some to driving hacks and dealing faro, and others into the army. A few succeeded, and are still at Boerne, notably a cousin of Thomas Hughes, who founded the ill-fated English colony of Rugby, in Tennessee.
Of the New York men who came on to San Antonio, the two Jacob boys are more frequently and more heartily spoken of by the Texans than almost any other Eastern men who have been there. They did not, as the others so often do, hire a foreman, and spend their days in the San Antonio Club, but rode the ranch themselves, and could cut out and brand and rope with any of those born on a range. Their ranch, the Santa Marta, still flourishes, although they have become absentee landlords, and have given up chasing wild steers in Texas in favor of the foxes at Rockaway.
A ranch which marks the exception in the rule of failures of our English cousins is that of Alfred Giles in Kendal and Kerr counties. It covers about thirteen thousand acres, and a very fine breed of polled Angus cattle are bred on it. Indeed, the tendency all over Texas at present is to cultivate certain well-known breeds, and not, as formerly, to be content with the famous long-horned steer and the Texan pony. Mr. Giles’s ranch, the Hillingdon, looks in the summer, when the imported Scotch cattle are grazing over it, like a bit out of the Lake country. Walnut, cherry, ash, and oak grow on this ranch, and the maidenhair-fern is everywhere, and the flowers are boundless in profusion and variety.
The coming of the barb-wire fence and the railroad killed the cowboy as a picturesque element of recklessness and lawlessness in south-west Texas. It suppressed him and localized him and limited him to his own range, and made his revolver merely an ornament. Before the barb-wire fence appeared, the cattle wandered from one range to another, and the man of fifteen thousand acres would over-stock, knowing that when his cattle could not find enough pasturage on his range they would move over to the range of his more prosperous neighbor. Consequently, when the men who could afford it began to fence their ranges, the smaller owners who had over-bred, saw that their cattle would starve, and so cut the fences in order to get back to the pastures which they had used so long. This, and the shutting off of water-tanks and of long-used trails brought on the barb-wire fence wars which raged long and fiercely between the cowboys and fence men of rival ranches and the Texas Rangers. The barb-wire fences did more than this; they shut off the great trails that stretched from Corpus Christi through the Pan Handle of Texas, and on up through New Mexico and Colorado and through the Indian Territory to Dodge City. The coming of the railroad also made this trailing of cattle to the markets superfluous, and almost destroyed one of the most remarkable features of the West. This trail was not, of course, an actual trail, and marked as such, but a general driveway forty miles wide and thousands of miles long. The herds of cattle that were driven over it numbered from three hundred to three thousand head, and were moving constantly from the early spring to the late fall.
No caravan route in the far Eastern countries can equal this six months’ journey through three different States, and through all changes of weather and climate, and in the face of constant danger and anxiety. This procession of countless cattle on their slow march to the north was one of the most interesting and distinctive features of the West.
An “outfit” for this expedition would consist of as many cowboys as were needed to hold the herd together, a wagon, with the cook and the tents, and extra ponies for the riders. In the morning the camp-wagon pushed on ahead to a suitable resting-place for the night, and when the herd arrived later, moving, on an average, fifteen miles a day, and grazing as it went, the men would find the supper ready and the tents pitched. And then those who were to watch that night would circle slowly around the great army of cattle, driving them in closer and closer together, and singing as they rode, to put them to sleep. This seems an absurdity to the Eastern mind, but the familiar sounds quieted and satisfied these great stupid animals that can be soothed like a child with a nursery rhyme, and when frightened cannot be stopped by a river. The boys rode slowly and patiently until one and then another of the herd would stumble clumsily to the ground, and others near would follow, and at last the whole great herd would be silent and immovable in sleep. But the watchfulness of the sentries could never relax. Some chance noise--the shaking of a saddle, some cry of a wild animal, or the scent of distant water carried by a chance breeze across the prairie, or nothing but sheer blind wantonness--would start one of the sleeping mass to his feet with a snort, and in an instant the whole great herd would go tearing madly over the prairie, tossing their horns and bellowing, and filled with a wild, unreasoning terror. And then the skill and daring of the cowboy was put to its severest test, as he saw his master’s income disappearing towards a cañon or a river, or to lose itself in the brush. And the cowboy who tried to head off and drive back this galloping army of frantic animals had to ride a race that meant his life if his horse made a misstep; and as the horse’s feet often did slip, there would be found in the morning somewhere in the trail of the stampeding cattle a horrid mass of blood and flesh and leather.
Do you wonder, then, after this half-year of weary, restless riding by day, and sleepless anxiety and watching under the stars by night, that when the lights of Dodge City showed across the prairie, the cowboy kicked his feet out of his stirrups, drove the blood out of the pony’s sides, and “came in to town” with both guns going at once, and yelling as though the pent-up speech of the past six months of loneliness was striving for proper utterance?
The cowboy cannot be overestimated as a picturesque figure; all that has been written about him and all the illustrations that have been made of him fail to familiarize him, and to spoil the picture he makes when one sees him for the first time racing across a range outlined against the sky, with his handkerchief flying out behind, his sombrero bent back by the wind, and his gauntlets and broad leather leggings showing above and at the side of his galloping pony. And his deep seat in the saddle, with his legs hanging straight to the long stirrups, the movement of his body as it sways and bends, and his utter unconsciousness of the animal beneath him would make a German riding-master, an English jockey, or the best cross-country rider of a Long Island hunting club shake his head in envy and despair.
He is a fantastic-looking individual, and one suspects he wears the strange garments he affects because he knows they are most becoming. But there is a reason for each of the different parts of his apparel, in spite of rather than on account of their picturesqueness. The sombrero shades his face from the rain and sun, the rattlesnake-skin around it keeps it on his head, the broad kerchief that he wears knotted around his throat protects his neck from the heat, and the leather leggings which cover the front of his legs protect them from the cactus in Texas, and in the North, where the fur and hair are left on the leather, from the sleet and rain as he rides against them. The gauntlets certainly seem too military for such rough service, but any one who has had a sheet rope run through his hands, can imagine how a lasso cuts when a wild horse is pulling on the other end of it. His cartridge-belt and his revolver are on some ranches superfluous, but cattle-men say they have found that on those days when they took this toy away from their boys, they sulked and fretted and went about their work half-heartedly, so that they believe it pays better to humor them, and to allow them to relieve the monotony of the day’s vigil by popping at jack-rabbits and learning to twirl their revolver around their first finger. Of the many compliments I have heard paid by officers and privates and ranch-owners and cowboys to Mr. Frederic Remington, the one which was sure to follow the others was that he never made the mistake of putting the revolver on the left side. But as I went North, his anonymous admirers would make this same comment, but with regret that he should be guilty of such an error. I could not understand this at first until I found that the two sides of the shield lay in the Northern cowboy’s custom of wearing his pistol on the left, and of the Texan’s of carrying it on the right. The Northern man argues on this important matter that the sword has always been worn on the left, that it is easier to reach across and sweep the pistol to either the left or right, and that with this motion it is at once in position. The Texan says this is absurd, and quotes the fact that the pistol-pocket has always been on the right, and that the lasso and reins are in the way of the left hand. It is too grave a question of etiquette for any one who has not at least six notches on his pistol-butt to decide.
Although Mr. Kleberg’s cowboys have been shorn of their pistols, their prowess as ropers still remains with them. They gave us an exhibition of this feature of their calling which was as remarkable a performance in its way as I have ever seen. The audience seated itself on the top of a seven-rail fence, and thrilled with excitement. At least a part of it did. I fancy Mr. Kleberg was slightly bored, but he was too polite to show it. Sixty wild horses were sent into a pen eighty yards across, and surrounded by the seven-rail fence. Into this the cowboys came, mounted on their ponies, and at Mr. Kleberg’s word lassoed whichever horse he designated. They threw their ropes as a man tosses a quoit, drawing it back at the instant it closed over the horse’s head, and not, as the beginner does, allowing the noose to settle loosely, and to tighten through the horse’s effort to move forward. This roping was not so impressive as what followed, as the ropes were short, owing to the thick undergrowth, which prevents long throws, such as are made in the North, and as the pony was trained to suit its gait to that of the animal it was pursuing, and to turn and dodge with it, and to stop with both fore-feet planted firmly when the rope had settled around the other horse’s neck.
But when they had shown us how very simple a matter this was, they were told to dismount and to rope the horses by whichever foot Mr. Kleberg choose to select. This was a real combat, and was as intensely interesting a contest between a thoroughly wild and terrified animal and a perfectly cool man as one can see, except, perhaps, at a bull-fight. There is something in a contest of this sort that has appealed to something in all human beings who have blood in their veins from the days when one gladiator followed another with a casting-net and a trident around the arena down to the present, when “Peter” Poe drops on one knee and tries to throw Hefflefinger over his shoulder. In this the odds were in favor of the horse, as a cowboy on the ground is as much out of his element as a sailor on a horse, and looks as strangely. The boys moved and ran and backed away as quickly as their heavy leggings would permit; but the horses moved just twice as quickly, turning and jumping and rearing, and then racing away out of reach again at a gallop. But whenever they came within range of the ropes, they fell. The roping around the neck had seemed simple. The rope then was cast in a loop with a noose at one end as easily as one throws a trout line. But now the rope had to be hurled as quickly and as surely as a man sends a ball to first base when the batsman is running, except that the object at which the cowboy aims is moving at a gallop, and one of a galloping horse’s four feet is a most uncertain bull’s-eye.
It is almost impossible to describe the swiftness with which the rope moved. It seemed to skim across the ground as a skipping-rope does when a child holds one end of it and shakes the rope up and down to make it look like a snake coiling and undulating over the pavement.
One instant the rope would hang coiled from the thrower’s right hand as he ran forward to meet the horse, moving it slowly, with a twist of his wrist, to keep it from snarling, and the next it would spin out along the ground, with the noose rolling like a hoop in the front, and would close with a snap over the horse’s hoof, and the cowboy would throw himself back to take the shock, and the horse would come down on its side as though the ground had slipped from under it.
The roping around the neck was the easy tossing of a quoit; the roping around the leg was the angry snapping of a whip.
There are thousands of other ranches in the United States besides those in Texas, and other cowboys, but the general characteristics are the same in all, and it is only general characteristics that one can attempt to give.
VI
ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION
VI
ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION
THE American Indian may be considered either seriously or lightly, according to one’s inclination and opportunities. He may be taken seriously, like the Irish question, by politicians and philanthropists; or lightly, as a picturesque and historic relic of the past, as one regards the beef-eaters, the Tower, or the fishwives at Scheveningen. There are a great many Indians and a great many reservations, and some are partly civilized and others are not, and the different tribes differ in speech and manner of life as widely as in the South the clay-eater of Alabama differs from a gentleman of one of the first families of Virginia. Any one who wishes to speak with authority on the American Indian must learn much more concerning him than the names of the tribes and the agencies.
The Indian will only be considered here lightly and as a picturesque figure of the West.
Many years ago the people of the East took their idea of the Indian from Cooper’s novels and “Hiawatha,” and pictured him shooting arrows into herds of buffalo, and sitting in his wigwam with many scalp-locks drying on his shield in the sun outside. But they know better than that now. Travellers from the West have told them that this picture belongs to the past, and they have been taught to look upon the Indian as a “problem,” and to consider him as either a national nuisance or as a much-cheated and ill-used brother. They think of him, if they think of him at all, as one who has fallen from his high estate, and who is a dirty individual hanging around agencies in a high hat and a red shirt with a whiskey-bottle under his arm, waiting a chance to beg or steal. The Indian I saw was not at all like this, but was still picturesque, not only in what he wore, but in what he did and said, and was full of a dignity that came up at unexpected moments, and was as suspicious or trustful as a child.
It is impossible when one sees a blanket Indian walking haughtily about in his buckskin, with his face painted in many colors and with feathers in his hair, not to think that he has dressed for the occasion, or goes thus equipped because his forefathers did so, and not because he finds it comfortable. When you have seen a particular national costume only in pictures and photographs, it is always something of a surprise to find people wearing it with every-day matter-of-course ease, as though they really preferred kilts or sabots or moccasins to the gear to which we are accustomed at home. And the Indians in their fantastic mixture of colors and beads and red flannel and feathers seemed so theatrical at first that I could not understand why the army officers did not look back over their shoulders when one of these young braves rode by. The first Indians I saw were at Fort Reno, where there is an agency for the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. This reservation is in the Oklahoma Territory, but the Government has bought it from the Indians for a half-dollar an acre, and it is to be opened to white settlers. The country is very beautiful, and the tall grass of the prairie, which hides a pony, and shows only the red blanketed figure on his back, and over which in the clear places the little prairie-dogs scamper, and where the red buttes stand out against the sky, and show an edge as sharp and curving as the prow of a man-of-war, gives one a view of a West one seems to have visited and known intimately through the illustrated papers.
I had gone to Fort Reno to see the beef issue which takes place there every two weeks, when the steers and the other things which make up the Indian’s rations are distributed by the agent. I missed the issue by four hours, and had to push on to Anadarko, where another beef issue was to come off three days later, which was trying, as I had met few men more interesting and delightful than the officers at the post-trader’s mess. But I was fortunate, in the short time in which I was at Fort Reno, in stumbling upon an Indian council. Two lieutenants and a surgeon and I had ridden over to the Indian agency, and although they allow no beer on an Indian reservation, the surgeon had hopes. It had been a long ride--partly through water, partly over a dusty trail--and it was hot. But if the agent had a private store for visitors, he was not in a position to offer it, for his room was crowded with chiefs of renown and high degree. They sat in a circle around his desk on the floor, or stood against the wall smoking solemnly. When they approved of what the speaker said, they grunted; and though that is the only word for it, they somehow made that form of “hear, hear,” impressive. Those chiefs who spoke talked in a spitting, guttural fashion, far down the throat, and without gestures; and the son of one of them, a boy from Carlisle, in a gray ready-made suit and sombrero, translated a five-minutes’ speech, which had all the dignity of Salvini’s address to the Senators, by: “And Red Wolf he says he thinks it isn’t right.” Cloud-Shield rose and said the chiefs were glad to see that the officers from the fort were in the room, as that meant that the Indian would have fair treatment, and that the officers were always the Indians’ best friends, and were respected in times of peace as friends, and in times of war as enemies. After which, the officers, considering guiltily the real object of their visit, and feeling properly abashed, took off their hats and tried to look as though they deserved it, which, as a rule, they do. It may be of interest, in view of an Indian outbreak, to know that this council of the chiefs was to protest against the cutting down of the rations of the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes. Last year it cost the Government one hundred and thirteen thousand dollars to feed them, and this year Commissioner Martin, with a fine spirit of economy, proposes to reduce this by just one-half. This means hunger and illness, and in some cases death.
“He says,” translated the boy interpreter, gazing at the ceiling, “that they would like to speak to the people at Washington about this thing, for it is not good.”
The agent traced figures over his desk with his pen.
“Well, I can’t do anything,” he said, at last. “All I can do is to let the people at Washington know what they say. But to send a commission all the way to Washington will take a great deal of money, and the cost of it will have to come out of their allowance. Tell them that. Tell them I’ll write on about it. That’s all I can do.”
That night the chiefs came solemnly across parade, and said “How!” grimly to the orderly in front of the colonel’s headquarters.
“You see,” said the officers, “they have come to complain, but the colonel cannot help them. If Martin wants a war, he is going just the best way in the world to get it, and then we shall have to go out and shoot them, poor devils!”
I was very sorry to leave Fort Reno, not only on account of the officers there, but because the ride to Anadarko must be made in stages owned by a Mr. Williamson. This is not intended as an advertisement for Mr. Williamson’s stages. He does not need it, for he is, so his drivers tell me, very rich indeed, and so economical that he makes them buy their own whips. Every one who has travelled through the Indian Territory over Mr. Williamson’s routes wishes that sad things may happen to him; but no one, I believe, would be so wicked as to hope he may ever have to ride in one of his own stages. The stage-coach of the Indian Territory lacks the romance of those that Dick Turpin stopped, or of the Deadwood coach, or of those that Yuba Bill drives for Bret Harte with four horses, with gamblers on top and road-agents at the horses’ heads. They are only low four-wheeled wagons with canvas sides and top, and each revolution of the wheels seems to loosen every stick and nail, and throws you sometimes on top of the driver, and sometimes the driver on top of you. They hold together, though, and float bravely through creeks, and spin down the side of a cañon on one wheel, and toil up the other side on two, and at such an angle that you see the sun bisected by the wagon-tongue. At night the stage seems to plunge a little more than in the day, and you spend it in trying to sleep with your legs under the back seat and your head on the one in front, while the driver, who wants to sleep and cannot, shouts profanely to his mules and very near to your ear on the other side of the canvas.