This Was One Of The Many Proofs That We Have Had, That No
Matter How Good An Education The Indian May Receive, He Will Return To
His Blanket And Out-Of-The-Pot Way Of Living Just As Soon As He
Returns To His People.
It would be foolish to expect anything
different.
But those Cree Indians! The coffee had been good, very good, and they
wanted more, so the very next morning they brought to Colonel Palmer
an old dried scalp lock, scalp of "White Chief's enemy," with the same
ceremony as they had brought the hand. Then they sat around his tent
and watched him, giving little grunts now and then until in
desperation he ordered coffee for them, after which they danced. The
men gave them bits of tobacco too. Well, they kept this performance up
three or four days, each day bringing something to Colonel Palmer to
make him think they had killed a Sioux. This became very tiresome;
besides, the soldiers were being robbed of coffee, so Colonel Palmer
shut himself in his tent and refused to see them one day, and an
orderly told them to go away and make no noise. They finally left the
post looking very mournful, the men said. I told Colonel Palmer that
he might better have gone out on the hills as I did; that it was ever
so much nicer than being shut up in a tent.
Bettie is learning to rear higher and higher, and I ride Pete now. The
last time I rode her she went up so straight that I slipped back in my
saddle, and some of the enlisted men ran out to my assistance. I let
her have her own way and came back to the tent, and jumping down,
declared to Faye that I would never ride her again. She is very cute
in her badness, and having once discovered that I didn't like a
rearing horse, she has proceeded to rear whenever she wanted her own
way. I have enjoyed riding her because she is so graceful and dainty,
but I have been told so many times that the horse was dangerous and
would throw me, that perhaps I have become a little nervous about her.
A detail of soldiers goes up in the mountains twice every day for
poles with which to make the roofs of the log quarters. They go along
a trail on the other side of the creek, and on this side is a narrow
deer path that runs around the rocky side of a small mountain. Ever
since I have been here I have wanted to go back of the mountain by
that path. So, when I happened to be out on Pete yesterday afternoon
at the time the men started, I at once decided to take advantage of
their protection and ride around the little mountain.
About half a mile up, there were quantities of bushes eight and ten
feet high down in the creek bed, and the narrow trail that Pete was on
was about on a level with the tops of the bushes.
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