Hamlin Garland

“ Laughter abounds in a camp. The men joke, tell stories with the point against themselves. ridicule those who boast and pass easily from the humorous to the very grave and mysterious in their faith. It is this loquacity, so necessary to the tribe, which makes it so hard for a redman to keep a secret.
In short, a camp of Indians is not so very unlike a country village where nothing but the local paper is read and where gossip is the surest way of finding out how the world is wagging. ”

“ I was like a coyote who comes into the camp to spy out the meat rocks." This remark caused a ripple of laughter, which Big Elk ignored. "As I forded the river I glanced right and left, counting the wooden teepees," (He made a sign of the roof) —"and I found them not so many as I had heard. As I rode up the bank I passed near a white woman and I looked at her with sharp eyes. I had heard that all white women looked white and sick-like. ”

“ There are in both villages the same group of old men with stories of the past. of the war time. to whom the young men listen with ill-concealed impatience. When a stranger comes to town all the story—tellers rejoice and gird up their loins afresh. It is always therefore in the character of the eager listener that I visit a camp of red people.
Big Elk was not an old man, not yet sixty, but he was a story teller to whom everybody listened. ”

“ I asked where the agent was, and he pointed toward a tall pole on which fluttered a piece of red and white and blue cloth. I rode that way. There were some Cheyennes at the door, who asked me who I was and where I came from. I told them any old kind of story and said, 'Where is the agent?'
"They showed me a door and I went in. I had never been in a white man's teepee before and I noticed that the walls were strong and the door had iron on it. 'Ho!' I said, 'This looks like a trap. Easy to go in, hard to get out. I guess I will be very peaceful while I am in here." ”

“ We heard that these men killed for money like the soldiers who came to fight us, and that made our fathers despise them. I have heard that the white boys were taught to hate us in the same way, and so when we met we fought. The whiteman considered us a new kind of big game to hunt and we considered him a wolf paid to rob and kill us. Those were dark days.
"I was about twenty-two, it may he, when the old man agent first came to the East bank of the Canadian. ”

“ You have been blinded." I slept uneasily that night, but I was awake early and rode away to the agency. I remained all day among them. I talked with all the Cheyennes and in signs I conversed with the Arapahoe—all said the same thing. 'The agent does not lie. He is a good man. Nevertheless I looked the ground all over and at night I rode slowly back to the camp, "Again I said: 'I will not go to war against these people,' and again my warriors cried out against me. ”