Theodore Winthrop

“ God is not far from our lives at any moment. But we go for days and years with no light shining forth from kindling heart to reveal to us the near divineness. With clear and cultivated perception we take in all facts of beauty, all the wonderment of craft, cunning adaptation, and subtile, design in nature; we are guided through thick dangers, and mildly scourged away from enfeebling luxury of too much bliss ”

“ But I trust that the latter was content with grace, beauty, and rattlesnakes, and yielded the entire second-hand shirt to his less accomplished friend. Elaborate toilettes are a necessity of ugliness. Uplintz, fair as Antinoüs, would only deteriorate under frippery.
It had a fresh flavor of incongruity to talk high civilization on the Atinam, in a mud chamber twelve feet square, while two dusky youths of Owhhigh’s band, squatted on the floor, eyed us calmly, and, when their pipe was out, kept each other awake with monotonous moaning gutturals. ”

“ Thus a savage learns to believe that power includes steadiness.
Kamaiakan’s costume was novel. Louis Philippe dodging the police as Mr. Smith, and adorned with a woollen comforter and a blue cotton umbrella, was unkingly, and a caricature. He must be every inch a king who can appear in an absurd garb and yet look full royal. Kamaiakan stood the test. He wore a coat, a long tunic of fine green cloth. Like the irregular beds of a kitchen garden were the patches, of all shapes and sizes, combined to form this robe of ceremony. ”

“ Most of a savage’s prayers for bounty are made direct to Nature; when she refuses, she does so according to majestic laws, of which he, half reflectively, half instinctively, is conscious. He learns that there is no use in waiting and whining for salmon out of season, or fresh grasshoppers in March. According to inevitable laws, he will have, or will not have, salmon of the first water, and aromatic grasshoppers sweet as honey-dew. ”

“ Adieu, therefore, to the good fathers, and may they be requited in better regions of earth, or better than earth, for their hospitality. Adieu Kamaiakan, prudent and weighty chief! fate grant thee a coat of fewer patches, a nobler robe of state. Adieu the old lay brother. Uplintz and Kpawintz, my merry pair, continue foes of the rattlesnake, and friends to the blue-shirted Boston men. ”

“ It was rude indeed, — a cell of clay, — but a sense of the Divine presence was there, not less than in many dim old cathedrals, far away, where earlier sunset had called worshippers of other race and tongue to breathe the same thanksgiving and the same heartfelt prayer. No pageantry of ritual such as I had often witnessed in ancient fanes of the same faith; when incense filled the air and made it breathe upon the finer senses; when from the organ tones large, majestical, triumphant, subduing, made my being thrill as if music were the breath of a new life more ardent and exalting ”

“ Then we turn to our remembrances of what brother men have done, and standing among them, as in a noble amphitheatre, we cannot be other than calm and patient; we cannot fall back into barbarism and be brutal, though our present society be Klalams or Klickatats; and even when treachery has exasperated us in the morning, in the evening, under the quieting influence of Art and History, we can forgive the savage, and think of pacifying themes. ”

“ We generally recognize whether there is a man looking at us from behind what he chances to use for eyes, and when we detect the man, we are cheered or bullied according to what we are. It is intrinsically more likely that the chieftainly man will be an acknowledged chief among simple savages, than in any of the transitional phases of civilization preceding the educated simplicity of social life, whither we now tend. Kamaiakan, in order to be chiefest chief of the Yakimahs, must be clever enough to master the dodges of salmon and the will of wayward mustangs ”

“ No one ever saw a bustling or fussy Indian. Even when he begs of a blanketeer gifted with chattels, and beg he does without shame or shrinking, he asks as if he would do the possessor of so much trumpery an honor by receiving it at his hands. ”

“ When I woke, late as sunrise, after the crowded fatigues and difficulties of yesterday, I found that already my hosts had despatched Uplintz and Kpawintz to a supposed neighbor camp of their brethren, to seek me a guide. Also the old servitor, a friendly grumbler, was off to the mountains on a similar errand. Patience, therefore, and remember, hasty voyager, that many are the chances of savage life. ”

“ Horses and men grew confident, and Hope, late feeble in the knees, now with braced muscles went turning somersets of joy before us. Antipodes and Gubbins, unleashed, were hurried along by the whoops and whips of my younker guides; and Klale, relieved of responsibility, and inspired by gay companions, became sprightly and tricksy. Sudden change had befallen my prospects, lately dreary. Shabbiest had come as forerunner of good fortune. Then, speeding after him, appeared my twin deliverers, guiding me for the low price of a shirt totally buttonless. ”

“ Kamaiakan could not leave the field to Skloo the ambitious, nor to Owhhigh the crafty, when he returned from Squally rich with goods, the proceeds of many a horse-theft. Absent a week, and Kamaiakan might find that for another, and not for him, were the tawny maids. Kamaiakan must stay. A nobleman on the climb must keep himself always before the vulgar.
But a follower of the chief had just ambled up on a pony, leading his sumpter horse. Him Kamaiakan despatched up the Atinam, where he had heard that a camp of his people had halted on their way to the mountain berry patches. ”

“ A roof crushes and fevers one who has been long wont to sleep beneath the stars. I preferred my blankets without the cabin, sheltered by its wall from the wind that seemed to prophesy a storm of terrors growing on the mountains and the sea, to the luxury of a bunk within. ”

“ For with these possessions a man may safely be a comrade of rudest pioneers, and toughen himself to robust manliness, without dislinking himself from refinement, courtesy, and beauty of act and demeanor. Nature indeed, wise, fair, and good, is ever at hand to reintroduce us to our better selves ”

“ But yet, after all these years, coming at last to a wayside shrine, where men after their manner are adoring so much of the Divine as their minds can know, we are touched with a strange and larger sympathy, and perceive in ourselves a great awakening, and a new and wider perception of God and the godlike, and know that we have entered upon another sphere of spiritual growth. ”

“ The missionaries, coming forth from their service, welcomed me with quiet cordiality. Visits of men not savage were rare to them as are angels’ visits to worldlings. In winter they resided at a station on the Yakimah in the plains eastward. Atinam was their summer abode, when the, copper-colored lambs of their flock were in the mountains, plucking berries in the dells, catching crickets on the slopes. ”

“ Antipodes had shaken to pieces whatever stitched bag he bore. I seized this moment to make repairs. Among my traps were needles and thread of the stoutest, for use and for presents. The fascinating squaw of Weenas, if she had but known it, was very near a largess of such articles. But the wrong-doing of Sultan Olyman lost her the gift, and my tailor-stock was undiminished. I made a lucky thrust at the one eye of a needle, and began my work with severe attention. ”

“ As his name imported, this new-comer claimed to be identified with civilization. “No Indian name have I,” he said, “I am Fudnun, a blanketeer.” He was a resolved renegade from Indian polity and sociality. He had served with the Hudson’s Bay Company. He had even condescended to take lessons in cookery from the pale-face squaws of the Willamette.
While Ferdinand was thus announcing himself, and communicatively making good his claim as a blanketeer, the envoy of Kamaiakan returned. He had hastened up the Atinam, and come to Camp No-camp. ”

“ They could exhibit some results of good advice in potato patches, but polygamy was too strong for them. Kamaiakan, chiefest of Yakimah or Klickatat chiefs, sustained their cause and accepted their admonitions in many matters of conduct, but never asked should he or should he not invite another Mrs. Kamaiakan to share the honors of his lodge. Men and Indians are firm against clerical interference in domestic institutions. Perhaps also Kamaiakan had a vague notion of the truth, that polygamy is not a whit more unnatural than celibacy. ”

“ Ferdinand I, blanketeer. Siks nika copa Boston tyee; friend I to Boston chief. Nika nanitch cuitan, closche yakah klatawah; I’ve seen the horses, they’ll go well enough. Nika kumtux Dalles hooihut, pe tikky hyack klatawah; I know the Dalles trail, and am ready to go at once.”
Excellent Ferdinand! What fine apparition, what quaint Ariel, doing his spiriting gently, wooed thee to these yellow sands of Atinam to be my deliverer? Sweet youth, thou shalt have a back-load of trinkets to carry to thy Miranda when we part. Fudnun the blanketeer, let us go.
My new comrade showed Boston energy. ”

“ For this gift, within his greasy garb there beat a grateful heart, or possibly, a heart expectant of more, and he volunteered to guide me a little way into the trail. Moral: always give a testimonial to dreary old grumblers in ole clo’, when you meet them in the jolly morning, — possibly they may requite you when you meet at sulky eve.
First, Shabbiest must ask permission of his companion. “My master,” he said ”