THE INDIAN COUNTRY.

It was late upon a fine glowing afternoon in July that we first crossed the Indian frontier, and issued from the forest upon a beautiful prairie, spreading out, as far as the eye could reach, an undulating carpet of green, enamelled with a thousand flowers, and lighted up by the golden rays of the setting sun. Occasionally a grouse, frightened at our approach, would bustle from among the high grass, and fly whirring over the tops of the neighbouring hills.

We had ridden for more than an hour over the green waste. The heat of the afternoon was yielding to the cool breezes of sunset; the sun itself had just hid its crimson disk below the prairie hills, and the western sky was still glowing with its beams.

The deer, which, during the scorching heat of mid-day, had nestled among the thick groves which dot the prairie, now began to steal from their hiding places, and were seen bounding over the green sward, or standing buried up to their heads among the tall flowers, and gazing wildly and fearfully at our party.

At a distance, too, we could perceive the gaunt form of a vagabond wolf, sneaking through the grass, and stealing snake-like upon his beautiful, though timid, co-tenant of the prairie.

An exclamation from our guide attracted our attention to a solitary Indian, mounted upon a horse, and standing, statue-like, upon a distant hill directly in our route.

Although we had often seen straggling Indians in the frontier towns, they had in general so degraded an air as to attract but little attention. The appearance of this one, however, standing alone on his own soil, where he was bowed by no feeling of inferiority, must, we thought, be as noble as the soil of which he was the master; and we pushed forward to gaze upon him. He remained unmoved, neither advancing a single pace to meet us, nor retiring on our approach. He proved to be a Shawnee; one of the remnant of that brave tribe who, under Tecumseh, had made such a desperate attack upon the whites near the banks of the Wabash.

Some years since, they had been removed from their old hunting grounds, and stationed about ten miles beyond the boundary which separates the state of Missouri from the territory bearing the same name. They had left the graves of their fathers, the home of their childhood, to seek in a strange land that freedom which they could no longer enjoy in the homestead handed down to them by their unfettered ancestors; but not before the sapping influence of their communion with the whites had exerted its sway over them, and reduced them to that abject state which distinguishes the civilised from the savage Indian.

A feeling of disappointment, mingled with sorrow, came over us as we rode up to this solitary being. At a distance our fancies had painted him possessed of all that was noble in the Indian character; but a nearer view dispelled the illusion. He could not have been older than thirty, but intemperance had left its mark upon his features. His hair was thick and matted, and hung nearly to his eyes. His legs were covered with leggings of deerskin, ornamented with a yellow binding. Over a dirty calico shirt he wore a long surtout coat, with immense brass buttons; and upon his shoulder he bore a very long and heavy rifle.

He saluted us with the usual guttural salutation of “ugh!” and, turning round, rode slowly ahead of our party. His horse was one of those tough little Indian ponies celebrated for hard heads, hard mouths, hard constitutions, and a fund of obstinacy which it would puzzle Satan himself to overcome. He wriggled through the grass with a sideling ricketty pace, that would have wearied any other than an Indian; and, between the incessant drumming of the heels of the rider into the ribs of his steed, and the jerking, hitching pace of the animal, I could not well determine which underwent the most labour, the horse or his master.

He had not ridden in front of us long before we saw, at a distance, another of the same class galloping towards us. He came forward over the prairie at the full speed of a lean raw-boned nag; and we hoped to find in him a character which might redeem the first, but in this we were disappointed.

He was short and broad; dressed in a dirty calico shirt, and an equally dirty and ragged pair of pantaloons. On his head was cocked, with a very knowing air, a something which once might have been called a hat. On his shoulder he carried a long rifle, while he plied its wiping rod lustily upon the flanks of his horse until he reached the party.

After gazing at us with some curiosity, he rode off to our first acquaintance. A short conversation then took place, after which they thumped their heels into the ribs of their horses, and scampered off over the prairie; rising at one moment over the top of some ridge, and then again disappearing in the hollow which lay beyond it, until at last we lost sight of them behind a grove which jutted out into the prairie.

So,—these are the Indians! This is a specimen of the princely race which once peopled the wilds of America, from the silent wilderness which still borders the Pacific, to the now humming shores of the Atlantic! We were disappointed, and did not reflect that we were looking only upon the dregs of that people; that these were but members of those tribes who had long lived in constant intercourse with the whites, imbibing all their vices, without gaining a single redeeming virtue; and that the wild savage could no more be compared with his civilised brother, than the wild, untamed steed of his own prairie could be brought in comparison with the drooping, broken-spirited drudge horse, who toils away a life of bondage beneath the scourge of a master.

Upon their departure we urged our horses forward; for the creaking of the prairie insects warned us of the approach of night, and the place of our destination was yet some miles distant. A rapid and silent ride of an hour brought us to the wished-for spot.

It was a single log cabin, built in the edge of the wood, and inhabited by a white man, the blacksmith appointed by the United States to take charge of, and keep in repair, the arms paid as an annuity to the Shawnee tribe; a measure of government highly pleasing to the Indians, who detest labour of all kinds, and would willingly travel a hundred miles to get another to perform some trivial job, which they might themselves accomplish with but a few hours’ labour.

The house of the blacksmith bore all the marks which characterise the backwoodsman. It consisted of two small cabins, formed of rough unbarked logs, and united to each other by a covered shed. One or two heavy vehicles were standing in front of it. At about a hundred yards’ distance was a large field of Indian corn. Two cows, two horses, and a cozy bevy of pigs, who were snuffing and grunting from a deep mud-hole a few yards from the house, made up the live stock of the establishment, and were all that were considered necessary for the comfort of a backwoodsman.