A MAN OF THE WORLD.
A number of idlers usually assembled in front of our tents during the fine sunshiny afternoons, to sing their songs and smoke their pipes, and regale themselves by listening to the adventures of their neighbours, which they had heard recounted a hundred times before. Among them was a tall thin Indian, with a wrinkled, hard-looking face, and a head covered with a profusion of long knotty hair, which he occasionally combed by raking it with his fingers. He seemed as if he had been smoke-dried for a century, until his flesh had hardened into gristle, and looked as if further shrivelling was an impossibility. He had a very small, busy eye, which twinkled with an incessant play of humour. It overcame even the grave disposition of the oldest warriors, and surprised them into as broad a laugh as was ever known to proceed from the mouth of the most scape-gallows Indian of the tribe, or even from the broader mouth of that vociferous character, the Black Bear.
He usually made his appearance at the door of the tent a little after sunrise, and continued in its neighbourhood during the whole day, though he shifted from the fire to the tent door, as the process of cooking and carrying the meals within went forward.
His usual dress was an old buffalo robe, worn almost bare of hair; and in his hand he carried a long-handled pipe, as antiquated as himself. He was one of those poor but merry dogs, who are found in all countries—taking the world as it goes, laughing at care, and free from all of those disturbances which fret their fellow men. He had never held any property of his own, he had never burthened himself with a wife, he had never built a lodge to shelter him. He was a perfect man of the world, and supported himself by visiting his neighbours. The lodges of the whole tribe he looked upon as his own property; the children of the whole nation were equally under his charge. His bed was his time-worn buffalo robe; and the abode in which night surprised him was his usual resting place, until the next morning sun awakened him. He was a welcome visitor at the stately dwelling of the chief, and in the less noble though to him equally prized wigwam of one of the lowest of the town; for in wealth they were all superior to him, and he thought that a poor devil like himself, with scarce a tatter to his back, had no right to sneer at the goodwill of any individual, who, however needy, was better off than himself. Notwithstanding the apparent easiness with which he slid through the world, his life had not been without its spice of adventure. Nor had the lapse of fifty years flown over his head, without bringing in its train a host of those mishaps, both by “flood and field,” with which the history of a savage is ever teeming. These he was accustomed to relate in the different lodges, to the assembled group of old and young, with a degree of humour which completely enraptured the women, and rendered him a welcome guest in every dwelling in the town.
He was sitting as usual, one fine afternoon, at the door of the tent. After finishing his pipe, he related an account of his having been chased by a party of Sioux Indians, across the prairie which lay between the Elk Horn river and the Missouri, on his way to the Otoe Agency. After laughing heartily, the interpreter translated it for the benefit of the rest.
