A Winter Among the Piutes [pp. 293-298]

A Winter among the Piutes.
to shield any Indian from an occasional cold
blast, much less one like him, in the chill
decline of life.
It happened on one occasion that he came
up from the warm valley below to visit us at
our camp on the mountain. It was after a
light snow-fall —a snow which, in the Indian
village below, was only a warm rain. I
watched him as he picked his way along
bare-footed through the snow, carrying his
moccasins in his hand, to save them from
being wet and spoiled. I saw that the old
fellow now and then shivered, but he never
lost patience, or was in the least disconcerted. He seemed to take any little hardship,
like this, as a matter of course. No doubt,
in his time, many a shiver had called for a
far greater exercise of patience than this,
and through it quite likely his sensibilities
had now become somewhat blunted, so that
in no case could he feel anything very
acutely.
But aside from and better than all that,
our aged brother proved himself to be perfectly honest and trustworthy, for many a
time, when we were abroad in quest of mineral, we left him in charge of our effects at
camp, arid on our return never missed a
thing. And furthermore, it is safe to say of
himn that he never quarreled with his destiny or with the author of it, as those in civilized lands do, who take their lives in their
own hands and cut them short by suicide.
(For that matter, seldom, if ever, was an Indian known to commit downright suicide.)
Alas, that there should be any of our countrymnen to give currency to such an atrocious
saying as, "There are no good Indians but
the dead ones "-a saying that, to say the
least of it, is calculated to blind one's perception of the truth. Why should the impression prevail, that the native Indian and
the white man of our country are natural
born enemies, and that we are here only to
fight and kill each other?
At any rate, in the present case, ours was
an honest struggle to live in peace with our
Indian neighbors; and we found them, in
many respects, not very unlike what any
community of two hundred white men would
have been under the same circumstances.
Nor did the number of those who seemed to
manifest the baser traits of human nature
appear to be in undue proportion.
To be sure, there were some who were the
most shameless of beggars; some who came
to us oftener than need be, and hung around
our camp with looks that seemed to say,
"Give a poor dog a bone." To such we
were sometimes obliged to run the risk of
seeming uncivil; and when in their lingo
they said "Shot-cup" (Victuals), we replied
by saying, "Cotsshot-cup, Indian piqweay (No
victuals, Indian go away)-you can refresh
your stomachs on grass seed and lizards."
I have alluded to the policy of feeding
them generously. As for hospitality on our
part, it was really of a dismal sort, and it became more and more dismal as the winter
wore on, and finally it became apparent that
if we would save ourselves from starvation,
it would be absolutely necessary to eke out
our already failing store of provisions by the
most rigid economy. We had beans among
our stores; and bean porridge, with water as
the prevailing ingredient, we found well
adapted to purposes of economy, and at the
same time, apparently agreeable to Indian
stomachs. To be prepared to serve our Indian guests, we kept the camp kettle filled
with the watery mess. A family of the old
New England Pilgrims might have been
forced to keep their porridge in the same
way, and for reasons very similar-for as the
legend runs, theirs was bean porridge hot,
bean porridge cold, bean porridge in the pot
nine days old. But the oft-repeated calls of
our would-be guests never allowed our porridge to attain the age of nine days before
being eaten. The rising smoke of our camp
fire, far up on the mountain side, was to
them a hint that the Merry-cats were at
home, and its light in the evening seemed
to draw them, just as a candle may draw
dorbugs on a summer night.
Pah-Wichit, the chief, made an occasional
visit to our camp. One of his visits in particular impressed itself on my memory. PahWichit was no wild, painted-faced savage,
like some of his red brothers of the North.
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