Theodore Winthrop

“ Those ridges far away to the northeast must be passed to reach Weenas. Beyond those heights, to the far south, is Atinam and “Le Play House,” the mission. Thus far time and place have made good the description of the eloquent Owhhigh.
Presently in a small plain appeared a horse, hobbled and lone as a loon on a lake. Have we acquired another masterless estray? Not so. Loolowcan uttered a peculiar trilobated yelp, and forth from an ambush, where he had dodged, crept the shabbiest man in the world. Shabby are old-clo’ men in the slums of Brummagem ”

“ Having therefore put in my fact, that on a morning of August, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, sunrise did its duty with splendor, I have also done my duty as an observer. The simple statement of a fact is enough for the imaginative, who will reproduce it for themselves, according to their experience; the docile unimaginative will buy alarm-clocks and study dawns. ”

“ What you white man want get ’em here? Why him no stay Boston country? Me stay my country; no ask you come here. Too much soldier man go all round everywhere. Too much make pop-gun. Him say kill bird, kill bear, — sometime him kill Indian. Soldier man too much shut eye, open eye at squaw. Squaw no like; s’pose squaw like, Indian man no like nohow. Me no understand white man. Plenty good thing him country; plenty blanket; plenty gun; plenty powder; plenty horse. Indian country plenty nothing. No good Weenas give you horse. No good Loolowcan go Dalles. ”

“ Light flushed upward from the horizon, meeting no obstacles of cloud, to be kindled and burnt away into white ashiness. Light came up the valley over the dark, surging hills. Full in the teeth of the gale it came, strong in its delicacy, surely victorious, as a fine scymitar against a blundering bludgeon. ”

“ Meantime Loolowcan had driven up my horses. I ordered him to tie Antipodes and Gubbins together by the head, with my long hide lariat. The manner of all the Indians was so intolerably insolent, that I still expected trouble. My cavalry, I resolved, should be well in hand. I flung the bight of the lariat with a double turn over the horn of my saddle and held Klale, my quiet friend, by his bridle. My three horses were thus under complete control.
The roan was brought forward. But again an evil genius among the Indians interfered, and growled a few poisonous words into the ear of Olyman. ”

“ Treachery People cloddish, stagnant, and mundane, such as most of us are, pretend to prefer sunset to sunrise, just as we fancy the past greater than the present, and repose nobler than action. Few are radical enough in thought to perceive the great equalities of beauty and goodness in phenomena of nature or conditions of life. ”

“ Olyman doubled his demand for his horse. I refused to be imposed upon, with an incautious expression of opinion on the subject. The Indians talked with ferocious animation for a moment, and then retired to the lodge. The women and children who had been spectators immediately in a body marched off, and disappeared in the thickets. Ladies do not leave the field when amicable entertainment is on the cards.
But why should I tarry after negotiation had failed? I ordered Loolowcan to mount and lead the way. ”

“ These habitations were structures of roughly split boards, leaning upon a ridge-pole.
Five foul copper heads and bodies of men lurked among the plunder of that noisome spot. Several squaws were searching for gray hairs in the heads of several children. One infant, evidently malecontent, was being flat-headed. This fashionable martyr was papoosed in a tightswathing wicker-work case. A broad pad of buckskin compressed its facile skull and brain beneath. If there is any reason why the Northwest Indians should adopt the configuration of idiots, none such is known to me. ”

“ As daylight grew older, it was strong enough to paint detail without sacrificing effect; the hill took its place of neighborhood, upright and bold, a precipitous front of warm, brown basalt, with long cavities, freshly cleft, where prisms had fallen, striping the brown with yellow. ”

“ Worldlings, whether in palaces of Cosmopolis or lodges of the siwashes, do not burn incense before the absolute stranger. He must first establish his claims to attention. No one came forth from the lodges to greet us. ”

“ Squalid were these huts of squalid tenancy. Architecture does not prevail as yet on the American continent, and perhaps less among the older races of the western regions than among the newer comers Bostonward. ”

“ A roundhead Klickatat woman would be a pariah. The ruder sex are not quite so elaborately beautified, or possibly their brains assert themselves more actively in later life against the distortion of childhood. ”