A POLITICAL COUP AT LITTLE OMAHA

THE struggle for Congressional honours in the Third District of Nebraska was to be a hard one. The white voters of the District were about evenly divided between the two parties, and therefore the necessary elective majority was to be found among the Omaha Indians, whose reservation lies in this district.

So this remnant of the Dark Ages became of pivotal importance in Twentieth Century politics; and it was here, in the wildest land of the district, that the decisive battle of strategy must be fought.

For practical purposes, the intelligent white voter ceased to exist, and there was only a slothful, ignorant band of semi-savages who should choose by chance the national representative of educated thousands.

The typical reservation Indian is primarily a stomach, and secondarily nothing in particular. Let him fill his belly and he is easily handled. This axiom had been taken as a basis for action by the whiphands of the Democratic Party, who, accordingly, scattered broadcast throughout the reservation considerable quantities of the meat of superannuated bulls; sat in the feasts with cross-legged condescension; smoked the reeking stone pipes; drank hot soup with the suppressed shudders of a revolting stomach, and called the brown men “brothers.”

This had all worked very well in the latter days of September, and there had been considerable rejoicing in local Democratic circles over the bright prospects for a sweeping majority.

It was not until the first of October that the opposition suddenly hurled a thunderbolt out of the blue sky of its seemingly serene inactivity. The Agent, holding his appointment under a Republican administration, announced at a weekly land payment that $100,000 of the considerable sum held in trust by the Government would be paid pro rata to the Omahas during the month. It was after this announcement that the local leaders of the Republican Party became active. They explained to their brothers how surpassingly good it was of them to bring about this payment. Would their brothers forget this at the November election? Of course not!

So it happened that the bull meat lost its power of persuasion and for several weeks there was not a brown Democrat on the reserve. Thus, at the opening of the big payment on a Monday morning two weeks before election, the Democratic candidate for Congress found himself staring Defeat in the face (which was brown) after having enjoyed several weeks of victory (which was premature).

The “big payment” has always been picturesque and is now fast becoming impossible. It may be defined as the spectacular bow of the Present to the Past, with which Civilisation lowers its proud plume and says to the Savage Age: “Sorry I swiped your land; take that and don’t feel sore!” Or words to that effect.

The opening days of the big payment were warm with the lazy warmth of the mellow, golden hours of late October. The untilled hills of the reservation thrust themselves up into the autumn glare, unashamed of their poverty of soil. The Agency building nestled forlornly in a creek valley surrounded by the yellow, wrinkled hills.

In the early morning a lazy string of vehicles began to pour into the Agency from the dozen or more roads that outraged the compass with their crazy windings, and seamed the bronze face of the prairie with ugly scars. Carts, buggies, waggons, carriages, some of glaring newness, weighted down to the axles with squaws, papooses and the inevitable mortgage; others in an epileptic stage of decay, with the weary air of having borne the weight of outlawed paper for many moons; ponies, long-haired, and emaciated with many unconsoling feeds of post and halter, carrying at once upon their sawlike backs their sweating, heavy masters, and (heavier than these) the seeming consciousness of long-dishonoured promissory notes; these constituted the grotesque Republican procession that streamed into Little Omaha, as the Agency is called, on that morning in October.

It was as a tribal exodus. The entire tribe of twelve hundred odd men, women, and children was leaving its shacks and tepees that morning, in search of the minted eagles of the Government, just as, of old, they moved in a hungry body upon the trail of the bison.

As the vanguard of this grand but dilapidated army of the primitive world closed in upon the Agency, it was met by the vanguard of the greater commercial army of civilisation, and a wordy skirmish ensued. These were the inevitable collectors who hang about an Indian payment like a crowd of crows scenting a carcass. One might have heard such a conversation as this above the tumult of the meeting races:

“Well, Big Bear, goin’ to pay that note to-day?”

“Ugh?”

“I say [voice raised a key], are you goin’ to pay that note—muska zhinga, wabugazee [money, note]?”

“Unkazhee!” (Don’t understand.)

“Damn your black hide, Big Bear, you can talk as good as I can! I say, [voice raised to a shriek] if you don’t pay that note, I’ll come over to your place and take every dodgasted, straw-bellied shonga [pony] you’ve got!”

“Gad up!”

And the delinquent debtor put the whip to his long-haired, shambling mortgages and disappeared in a cloud of dust.

The Omaha is a genius for contracting debts. At the beginning of the big payment, the aggregate debts of the tribe were roughly estimated at $200,000, the living representative of long-digested groceries, starved ponies, shattered vehicles and forgotten alcoholic debauches.

The Government, in the wisdom of blindness, had caused large placards to be posted at the entrances to the Agency grounds, bearing this order: “No collector of any description shall be allowed within a radius of half a mile from the pay station.” Accordingly, the burly Indian police strutted about in blue clothes and brass buttons obstreperously hustling the white creditors over the half-mile line, where they lounged in disconsolate groups along the dusty highway, playing mumble-peg, pitching horseshoes, and verbally sending the entire tribe to the devil.

“Be cussed if I don’t hate to see the Twentieth Century kicked downstairs this way by the Dark Ages! Cussed if I don’t!” Thus a little wiry, pale-faced undertaker was heard to exclaim. His name was Comfort and he appeared to be a positive misery both to himself and to the delinquent relatives of the many good Indians he had laid away.

Beside the little undertaker, there were lawyers, bankers’ clerks, grocerymen, liverymen, middlemen, butchers, doctors, and a half dozen politicians, there for the purpose of whipping the brown voters into line. There were men like wolves, bears, dogs, goats, roosters, beetles, scorpions. The little undertaker was the scorpion; a middleman was like a bear; there was a banker’s clerk like a goat; and a thin, angular, tall politician, with a body appropriately like an interrogation point, who slunk about like a hungry wolf.

By ten o’clock the last stragglers of the tribe had arrived and the Agency grounds were filled with circles of sweating, brown men, women, and children, passing the stone pipe, tranquilly awaiting the coming of the Agent, whose name, upon a reservation, is a shout.

By 10:30 the Agent appeared, riding down the dusty road from his residence. He was preceded by mounted police of pompous bearing, who shouted “The Agent! Make way for the Agent!” to the circles of their tribesmen who sat in the dust of the highway.

A short while afterward the loungers at the half-mile line heard the voice of a crier at the door of the pay station, calling the first name on the roll in the golden autumnal silence.

“Nuzhee Mona! Geegoho!” (Rain Walker! Come here!)

Then the fact that Mr. Rainwalker, a leader of the tribe much indebted to the white man, was about to be paid, became volatile as ammonia, and the fluttering of time-yellowed legal paper was heard along the waiting line of creditors.

“Owes me $6.46 with interest for four years!”

“Me $25 and interest—outlawed!”

“I’ve got the old cuss’s note for fifty!”

“I buried his fourth and sixth wives,” squeaked the little undertaker, “seven and nine years ago, respectively!”

Such exclamations ran down the line like a volley in different variations of vocal emphasis.

“Wonder how he’s votin’,” mused the hungry wolf of a politician.

“To the devil with politics!” roared the bear of a middleman; “I want the rent back I advanced him!”

At that moment Mr. Rainwalker was seen to leave the station, mount his pony, and proceed down the dusty road toward the half-mile line. It had doubtless occurred to him that during past winters it had been necessary to eat, and he was coming forth to make peace with the groceryman.

At sight of the approaching debtor, the lounging line of creditors sprang to its feet and stood at attention. The grocer, who spoke the Omaha tongue fluently and had a snug fortune laid away in consequence, walked rapidly in advance of the others and met Mr. Rainwalker at the line, followed by the straggling crowd of expectant creditors like a trailing cloud of hungry crows.

Mr. Rainwalker had a large, round, pockmarked face that looked for the world like a pumpkin pie overbaked by a careless cook, with a monstrous nose in the centre of it. He sat placidly upon his pony, that had all the salient points of a starved cow, and dozed luxuriously at the shortest halt. The old chief seemed the visible body of an optimistic joke, sitting upon the bone heap of a tragedy!

The grocer had barely collected the greater share of the old man’s check, when he became the centre of a noisy, gesticulating crowd of creditors. It was the chatter of the crows about the carrion.

“You know you promised me that you would settle that note!” said the goatlike bank clerk in his bleating voice.

“How about that rent money I advanced, Rainwalker?” roared the bear-like middleman.

“I want my money for them wives I buried for you—two of ’em!” squeaked the scorpionlike undertaker, holding up two explanatory fingers and thrusting his thin, pale face into the mÊlÉe.

“Ugh!” the old man answered rather unsatisfactorily.

“If you don’t pay me,” shrieked the incensed little undertaker, “I’ll go right out on the hill and dig up them boxes, by God!”

“Muska ningay!” (no money) said the old man. “No pay ’em chil’n’s money tall. All time lie to us. Goan votem Dimmiticrat, guess.”

And with this statement, bearing with it the fate of a national representative, the old chief kicked the tenacious slumber out of his pony and rode back to the Agency.

“Eh?” ejaculated the politician; “Votin’ Democratic, eh? Well, I’ll be cussed! It’ll snow us under! Why in thunder do they refuse to pay the money to the minor children? I tell you, gentlemen, it’ll snow us under!”

“Drat politics!” squeaked the little undertaker. “Wisht I’d a-buried ’em all afore now. Cussed if I don’t go right out on that there hill and dig them boxes up!”

The day wore on with an alarming recrudescence of Democracy among the red men (who are not red, but chocolate). In the afternoon, the little undertaker chased White Horse, another leading man of the tribe, into the brush and returned with a broad grin upon his face.

“Beats the devil!” ejaculated the thin politician, “where a body sometimes finds merriment! How’s he votin’, Comfort?”

“Votin’ Democrat—the whole cussed posse of ’em! But I don’t give a cuss—Democrat or Republican money’s all the same to me. I got $15; one of his kids I planted five years ago; died of Cuban itch; four-foot pine box! He, he, he! I don’t give a cuss how they’re votin’.”

That night there was a meeting of Republican politicians at the Agency office. A most alarming landslide had begun that day, bearing disaster to the ranks of the Grand Old Party.

“Some more of those confounded departmental rulings!” exclaimed the Agent to the company present. “It’s this grandmotherly solicitude for the Indian that makes him an irresponsible scamp. Why, if the Government had turned them all loose to sink or swim a decade ago, Natural Law would, by this time, have solved the much mooted Indian question. But what are we to do?” And the Agent stroked his Van Dyke beard in perplexity.

“We’ve got to do something,” said the lean wolf with the body like a question mark; “and there’s only one thing to do—get Meekleman here. You remember how he wheedled them into line four years ago. If there’s a man in the world who can bring them around, it’s Meekleman. And we’d better get McBarty here, too. The two of them may be able to kick up a successful powwow.”

Charles D. Meekleman was a Nebraska politician who was almost a statesman, and had held important positions in Washington official circles. McBarty was the Republican candidate for Congress. It was decided that they should be sent for at once.

It was Friday evening when the two great men arrived; and upon Saturday morning they came forth and allowed themselves to be gazed upon freely. McBarty was a heavy-set, middle-sized man, with an earnest expression of countenance, and the rather bewildered air of a candidate being led forth to sacrifice for the first time. Meekleman was tall, superbly built, clad in the faultless manner and bearing about him that air of refinement which had won him from his rural constituents the name of “Gentleman Charlie.” The manner of his shaking hands with any comer was most consummate flattery; and although it was done with an air of magnanimous condescension, there was something masterful in his eyes, looking down kindly from his heavy brows, as from a battlemented tower, that established the utmost confidence. He had the happy faculty of disposing of a boiled potato at a farmhouse with a refined dignity acquired over many a French dish at the banquets of the distinguished; and the manner in which he addressed a bunch of squaws and bucks as “ladies and gentlemen,” was surpassingly suave.

The two great men strolled leisurely, arm in arm, down the dusty road to the pay station, stopping often to shake hands with the Omahas, and radiating smiles like small human suns. When they had reached the pay station, Mr. Meekleman approached the Agent, busy signing checks, and said in his big, clear, slow voice, that it might be heard by the lounging Indians: “Major, I wish you would announce to the gentlemen that I want to talk to them this evening over at Fire Chief lodge. Tell the gentlemen that I am very much grieved for them, and that I shall endeavour to right their wrongs;” and he raised his heavy brows and condescendingly smiled upon the brown loungers, while the Agent instructed a policeman to make the announcement.

That evening a party consisting of the Agent, Messrs. Meekleman and McBarty, and several local politicians, proceeded on foot to Fire Chief lodge, which is a large octagonal shack placed in a lonesome valley a mile distant from the Agency.

“Brace up, Mac!” said Meekleman, as the two walked along the lonesome prairie road. “To-night I shall have the honour to make a man of you—the Honourable James McBarty! Have a cigar and try to keep cool.”

“Yes, thanks. I was just feeling a little surprised at the lonesome road that seems to lead to Congress—that was all. Do you really suppose we can win them over?”

“Well, you shall see,” returned Meekleman. “Follow my suit and don’t make faces at the soup; for one really must drink soup, you know, to be Congressman from this district. I say, Mac, did you ever smoke killikinick? Well, anyway, I advise you to smoke it to-night till the back of your neck aches. Ha, ha! There is really no royal road to Congress, Mac!” And Meekleman slapped the candidate upon the shoulder and filled the great prairie silence with jovial laughter.

As the party neared the lodge, from which the light of the fire within streamed out through the windows into the moon haze, they heard the sound of the drum and the singing that accompanies an Indian feast; a wild melodious flight of notes, threaded with the snarl of the drum like the beat of a fevered temple, rising in ecstasy, like the wail of a fitful night wind in the scrub oaks of a bluff, and falling suddenly to die in a guttural note like the burr of a wounded rattlesnake. A barbaric music filled with the sounds of Nature and old as the wrinkled prairie!

“This,” said Meekleman, stopping near the entrance to listen to the deep, beautiful voices within, “This, McBarty, is the Indian of romance. Now for the bitter truth—and the soup!”

As they entered the long, narrow passageway leading into the lodge, they saw before them a large octagonal room with a wood fire blazing in the centre. About the dusky walls the huge, perverted shadows of the singers flitted in grotesque dances as they swayed in the ecstasy of song. A circle of brown men sat about the sputtering fire over which a large iron kettle steamed forth the scent of beef. Near the circle sat the smaller circle of drummers about a washtub with a cowhide stretched across it.

Within the larger circle near the fire, sat a squaw, cutting bits of beef from a quantity of ribs that she held conveniently in her lap.

“Shade of Mrs. Rorer!” exclaimed the would-be Congressman in a whisper to his companion; “is that the soup?”

“Hist!” returned Meekleman; “one should be willing to suffer for his country!”

At the entrance of the great men, the singing ceased abruptly, and the singers turned their sullen, brute-like eyes upon their visitors and grunted.

“Are there any of the leading men here?” asked Meekleman of the Agent. Rainwalker and White Horse were both present.

“Ah!” said Meekleman, pointing to an unusually homely old Indian; “who is that black scamp with the big face and the remarkably stupendous nose?”

“Rainwalker,” replied the Agent; “a leader; it would be well to make peace with him first.”

Meekleman approached the old chief with his soft, white hand extended and his face the picture of rapture.

“Well, well, Rainwalker! Here you are! I’m glad to see you, Mr. Rainwalker! How well you look; I needn’t ask about your health; your complexion could scarcely be surpassed!”

Mr. Rainwalker turned a shade lighter with pride and grinned, returning the great man’s salutation with a large bunch of beef-scented silence.

Meekleman sat down cross-legged in the circle and took the circulating stone pipe in his turn, smoked heroically and drank large quantities of hot soup. The sullen faces of the firelit circle brightened. Old Rainwalker began to talk in his own tongue, staring meanwhile meditatively into the fire. For several minutes his deep musical voice ran on with occasional dignified pauses and gestures indicating that he spoke of the great white man beside him. Meekleman gave an Indian youth a coin to act as interpreter.

“He says,” said the youth, “that you all time walk with good people and eat good stuff, but you are not too good, he says, to smoke and eat with us, he says. He likes you pretty much, guess.”

The old chief talked again for some time, and then lapsed into dignified silence.

“He says,” continued the youth, “that you have lived in the same lodge with the Big Father at Washington, and you can get the money for the chil’ns, he guess. That’s what he says.”

“Tell my dear brother,” said Meekleman, “that my heart is warm toward my brown brothers, and that the children shall have their money. Tell him that I played with the Big Father when he was a little boy, and that I know the Big Father would be terribly angry if he knew that the children had been refused their money. Tell him that I will see that they get it.”

This short speech translated, sent a murmur of joy around the circle. White Horse arose from the opposite side of the circle and brought a cup of hot soup to his white brother as a special favour.

“And now,” said Meekleman, arising majestically as befitted the erstwhile playmate of the President, “I shall introduce to you Mr. McBarty. He will go to Washington for you and he will do many good things for the Omahas.”

Mr. McBarty came forth and fell to shaking the brown hands of the grown-up children. He started with Rainwalker, who carefully rubbed his left hand upon his blanket before presenting it to the future saviour of his race. Then after having shaken all the hands, including that of the squaw who stripped beef from the ribs, the potential Congressman fell heroically upon the soup and the killikinick.

An old Indian placed cross-legged near a wood fire with the feel of hot soup in his belly, invariably becomes reminiscent. Old White Horse sat staring into the sputtering flame with his face as expressionless as a stone statue of Buddha, and his voice began in a low, musical tone, rising as his memory quickened, and modulated with great oratorical skill, for which he was noted in the tribe. His words translated ran thus:

“These new times are not like the old times. When we old men were young and the bison still bellowed on the prairies, we were strong and swift and wise. Now we are weak and slow and not wise. I cannot understand. It is all like a day when there is fog everywhere. When we were young and fought the Pawnees and the Sioux, there were no bigger, wiser men than Nuzhee Mona [Rainwalker] and Shonga Ska [White Horse]. Look at us now! We are old and slow and we cannot see far to-day. Once when I was young I found a sick bison bull wandering in the hills. He was weak and half blind and he had lost the trail. We are weak and half blind and we cannot find the old trail. I cannot understand.”

“Ah, ah, ah!” A groan ran about the firelit circle, intent upon the old wise man’s word.

“We cannot find Wakunda [God] any more. He is not in the valleys any more, nor on the hills. We cannot talk to the big white Wakunda. What can we old men say to our foolish people when they need wise words? Every day they are more like badgers. They eat much, drink firewater, and are very foolish. But we have these white brothers and we will listen to them. Their wisdom is the new wisdom; we will listen to them.”

“Ah, ah!” assented the listeners.

For an hour the circle sat staring into the flame, thinking of the old times. Then without a word, Rainwalker and White Horse arose and passed out of the lodge and the others followed.

“Well,” said Meekleman to McBarty, as they walked along the lonesome road toward the Agency, “I have the honour to address the Hon. James McBarty!”

The other did not answer for several minutes.

“Meekleman,” said McBarty at length, “don’t you suppose I can do something for these poor devils?”

“Ah, McBarty,” returned Meekleman, “I am afraid you will never be a politician!”

Upon the following Monday morning when the tribe gathered for the continuation of the big payment, the news began to circulate that the great white man had gone to see the Big Father at Washington about the payment of the money to the minor children. As this news was authenticated by White Horse and Rainwalker themselves, it was readily believed, and in one day four hundred brown votes swung over to the Republican faith again.

On Tuesday, a week before election, there was not a brown Democrat on the reserve. This state of affairs continued on through the week until Friday evening, at which time no word had come from the Big Father.

The Democratic candidate for Congress, Judge Roberts, had arrived at the Agency during the week to battle in person against the impending calamity. All week he and his retainers led the forlorn hope. But on Friday afternoon, when the news so impatiently awaited by the Indians had not yet arrived, the all but lost cause began to gain a foothold in a persistent rumour that hinted that maybe the Indian had been fooled after all. Maybe Meekleman didn’t intend to intercede for the Indians at all; and accordingly, one by one, the brown men wondered, doubted, wavered and lost hope, until by Saturday evening, when the pay station closed, there had begun a restless, slow, and certain movement among the Omahas toward the Democratic ranks.

When Monday morning came, twenty-four hours before the opening of the polls, the political condition of the Omahas could have been summed up in one laconic conversation:

“Well, cuggie, [friend] how are you voting?”

“Dimmiticrat, guess!”

McBarty strolled leisurely about among the Omahas with an enigmatical smile upon his face, seeming to be unconscious of the crushing defeat he was, apparently, about to receive. The day wore on and hour by hour grew the triumph of the Judge, who now already felt himself the “Gentleman from Nebraska.”

At five o’clock in the evening the two candidates were seen talking together at the door of the pay station.

“Well, Mac,” said the Judge, “it’s looking a little dark for you. I swear, a week ago I would have sold my chances for a cent!”

McBarty repeatedly looked up the dusty government trail leading north from the station with an expression of anxiety.

“Well,” he said, “allow me to congratulate the Hon. John Roberts of Nebraska!” He smiled gravely as he shook the hand of his rival. “All I regret now,” he added, “is that I drank that soup!”

“Thanks!” replied the Judge. “It really seems a shame, however, that one should go to Congress at the hands of these savages, eh?”

“Yes,” said McBarty, taking a long gaze up the trail; “it is a shame, to be sure!”

At that moment a little farce was being enacted a mile up the road. Within the covering of a wild plum thicket at the side of the trail a saddled and bridled horse was lariated to a stake, and a man sat near by upon a rock, repeatedly tapping the horse on the flanks as it galloped about in a circle.

“Lather up there!” cried the man, as he nipped the horse with the whiplash; “lather up there!” And the horse dashed about the circle until its flanks were dripping and its mouth was white with foam.

At length the man took out his watch, saw that it was 5:30 o’clock, and untying the lariat, he mounted and put the spurs to his already jaded animal, dashing at a furious pace down the dusty old trail toward the Agency.

A few moments later McBarty and the Judge caught sight of a furious rider dashing toward them in a cloud of dust.

“Who do you suppose that can be riding so fast?” said the Judge.

“Oh,” said McBarty, smiling broadly, “that, Judge, is merely my election coming up at the gallop!”

Amid dust and yelling and a general spectacular confusion the horseman dashed up to the door of the pay station, threw his horse on its haunches in stopping, and cried: “A telegram from Washington for the Agent!”

In a few moments a great crowd of Indians had gathered about the horse and rider. The Agent, with a smile upon his face, rushed out of the station and seized a bit of yellow paper that the rider held in his hand. Breathlessly the crowd of Omahas waited.

“Listen!” shouted a crier in the Omaha tongue, standing by the Agent, who was reading the telegram. “The Big Father at Washington sends this word to his brown brothers: ‘The children’s money shall be paid!’”

For a moment following the shout of the crier, there was a great silence. Then a roar went up from the Omahas—a wild, hoarse shout of joy! Judge Roberts turned pale, and extending his hand to McBarty, said: “Well, you have won. Allow me to congratulate the Hon. James McBarty of Nebraska.”

And when the next morning’s sun arose, the polls were besieged by a throng of brown Republicans.