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1859.]

LITTLE RAVEN AS A DEVOTEE.

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CHAPTER XVI.

LITTLE RAVEN was not only brave, but devout. One day seeking him in his own village, I discovered that with several other warriors he was shut up in a low lodge, by which two young sentinels kept guard. The weather was intensely hot; the lodge without a single aperture and covered with masses of buffalo robes. Beside it upon a little mound of fresh earth were the skin of a wolf and the horns of a buffalo. Soon eight perspiring, naked braves emerged and threw themselves upon the ground, utterly exhausted. They had been taking a vapor bath, to propitiate their medicines.'

That night the entire band including the women paraded the town, pausing before many dwellings and drumming upon a circular piece of buffalo hide stretched over a wooden frame, while they chanted a weird refrain. Early the next morning the braves started on the war path against the Utes; and this ceremony was an invocation to the whites to protect the squaws and children during their absence.

The language of the Arapahoes is harsh and guttural. Dubray, an old trapper who had spent several years among them, spoke it fluently, but thought the tongue of a tribe in New Mexico much more difficult. He said:

'I lived among the Apaches eleven years, and only learned two of their words. I will pronounce them; and if you can repeat either immediately after hearing it, I will give you fifty dollars!'

He uttered them deliberately, but though they were not composed of more than four or five syllables, I was utterly unable to remember them.

Philologists conjecture that the language of manual signs ori

194 INDIAN SIGNALS, PEACE OR HOSTILITY. [1859. ginated in the infancy of the race, before articulate words. Deaf and dumb persons from different quarters of the globe on meeting for the first time, converse readily by signs which seem arbitrary, but which must be founded upon the natural relation between gesture and thought..

There is a dialect of hands arms and features, in common vogue between mountain men and Indians. A trapper meets a dozen savages, all of different tribes, and though no two have ten articulate words in common, they converse for hours in dumb show, comprehending each other perfectly, and often relating incidents which cause uproarious laughter or excite the sterner passions. To a novice, these signs are no more intelligible than so many vagaries of St. Vitus' dance; but, like all mysteries, they are simple and significant-after one comprehends them. The only one I recollect requiring no explanation, is the symbol for Sioux Indians-drawing the finger across the throat, like a knife. It is an apt and epigrammatic delineation of their blood-thirsty character.

The Arapahoes or 'Smellers' are indicated by seizing the nose with the thumb and forefinger; the Comanches or 'Snakes' by waving the hand like the crawling of a reptile; the Cheyennes or 'Cut-arms' by drawing the finger across the arm; the Pawnees or 'Wolves' by placing a forefinger on each side of the forehead pointing like the sharp ears of the wolf; the Crows by clapping the palms of the hands in imitation of flapping wings; women by moving the hand down toward the shoulder to indicate their long 'flowing tresses; whites by drawing the finger over the forehead in suggestion of the hat.

General Marey's entertaining work, 'Army Life on the Border,' also states that to ascertain whether strangers at a distance are friends or enemies, some tribes raise the right hand with the palm in front, and slowly move it forward and back. This is a command to halt and will be obeyed if the approaching party be peaceful. Then the right hand is again raised and slowly moved to right and left, as an inquiry: 'Who are you?' The strangers reply by giving the sign of their tribe, or by raising both hands grasped as in friendly greeting, or with the forefingers firmly locked together in emblem of peace. If enemies, they refuse to halt, or place the shut hand against the forehead in sign of hostility.

1859.] EXPRESSIVE FEATURES AND GESTURES.

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All Indian languages are so imperfect that even when two members of the same tribe converse, half the intercourse is carried on by signs. Mountain men become so accustomed to this, that when talking in their mother tongue upon the most abstract subjects, their arms and bodies will participate in the conversation. Like the Kanackas of the Sandwich Islands they are unable to talk with their hands tied.

Thus the Greeks carry on long dialogues in silence; and the Italians when in fear of being overheard often stop in the middle of a sentence, to finish it in pantomime. It is even related that a great conspiracy on the Mediterranean was organized not only without vocal utterance, but by facial signs without employing the hand at all. How much more expressive than spoken words is a shrug of the shoulders, a scowl, or the turning up of the nose! The supple tongue may deceive; but few can discipline the expression of the face into a persistent falsehood; and no man can tell a lie-an absolute, unmitigated lie with his eyes. If closely and steadily watched they will reveal the truth, be it love or hate or indifference.

For three weeks after our return from the mountains Mr. Greeley lay prostrate with his lame leg. Indeed the injury was so severe, that a year later he still limped.

But on the twenty-first of June, he continued the then dangerous journey across the continent. In Green river he lost his

valise; but it was fished out by an honest emigrant and months later, reached its owner in New York. At Salt Lake he spent several days among the Saints: then pressed on through the present State of Nevada, (containing when he traversed it less than a hundred white inhabitants,) and across the Sierra Nevadas to California. There he was visited with the traditional annoyance of plains travelers-boils which covered his body, compelling him to return home by steamer instead of the Butterfield overland route.

After he left me Denver grew monotonous and I again started for the mountains. At Clear creek under the vast shadow of Table Mountain I found a new town springing up called Golden City. Of course its founders regarded it as an embryo Babylon. Golden City! How smoothly fell the unctuous syllables from the

196

HO FOR THE MOUNTAINS AGAIN! [1859

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lips. How suggestive of merchant princes and pockets full of rocks. The El Dorado which Pizarro sought was studded with golden palaces and paved with precious stones- the City of the Gilded King;' but our democratic El Dorado must be the city of the gilded people.

Two miles further, a few rudimentary log huts were named Golden Gate. The hill-road of three weeks before was already

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gloomy walls more than a thousand feet in hight.

The narrow pathway resounded with

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some slow and unelastic from weariness and disappointment; others keeping step to the jubilant song, 'I'm bound for the land of gold.' Horses oxen and mules strug gled on, heavily loaded with shovels, sacks of flour sugar and meat. Many exhausted animals lay dead or dying along the way.

The trail wound through grassy valleys, among enormous rocks, beside mountains with icy springs gushing from their sides, and up and down rugged hills studded with tall pines and whitestemed aspens.

These cheerful surroundings were succeeded by a dreary black

197

1859.] DEATH FROM THE MOUNTAIN FIRES. expanse. Fires had raged for two weeks and were still burning. It was impossible to check them, for the ground was half covered with dead fallen trunks, and thickly carpeted with successive layers of pine needles and pitch, which had accumulated for years and were like tinder to the hungry flames. The unendurable heat and suffocating smoke drove me far out of the road. In one ravine the miners had found three charred, blackened corpses. The victims were evidently running for a place of safety when the changing wind blinded them with smoke, and the fiery death overtook them. Their clothing was consumed; their gun-barrels, a caseknife and a quantity of gold dust were the only articles near them. Even their dog had been unable to escape, and his bones lay beside theirs. Several other corpses were discovered the same day; and the number of deaths from the fires was computed more than twenty. Who shall sing in saddest strain of the nameless graves which thicker than mile-stones, dot the old emigrant roads from Missouri to California, and wherever men have sought for gold form great cities of the dead?

On the route I encountered my friend Little Raven with his braves, returning from their expedition. Their buckskin quivers and rifle-cases were as white and their moccasin fringes as gay as ever; but the warriors were sad and taciturn, for the Utes had fled and their war path proved bloodless.

I dined under a tree with several hospitable Arkansans who were feasting upon raw salt pork. Cooking a slice to a crisp on the end of a long stick before the camp fire, I found it palatable; but when I asked for bread, they gave me a stone. I could neither bite break nor cut the solid biscuit; but after soaking in the brook one at last succumbed to my bowie knife.

In the evening I reached the diggings. A single month had changed them greatly. An incredible amount of work had been expended in seeking for gold. The same labor would have converted hundreds of miles of Kansas or Minnesota prairies into one continuous garden. Gregory Gulch now rejoiced in the hum and bustle of a city. Ravines were vocal with the crash of falling pine and hemlock, and the ring of hammer ax pick and spade. The women had increased to more than a hundred. Every mechanical trade and every traffic was pursued. A single 'town'

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