in speaking before the public; he would have learned how to reason formally about matters of right and wrong and then present his determinations.
Would have learned, too, about the subtle relationship between man’s intentions and God’s permissions….
The sun was unseasonably hot for an October morning. It sat yellow in the water-clear east Oregon sky. Heated the dust, burned its way through his black clothing. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, poured some water from the canteen onto it, and wiped his eyes and brow.
… although he knew a too-narrow reasoning and abandonment of the dictates of the heart were not for him, either, any more than predestinarianism. They belonged to the papists, not to the more homespun -- even wholesome -- Methodism he had been reared up in.
These, and others like them, were the thoughts that followed him.
For several years Albert plowed his way back and forth across Iowa prairie, paying his father’s mortgage. That done, he and Harvey set forth, before it was too late. That was 1850. Still driving the oxen before them, the brothers fell in line with the others, day by day setting their feet in the mud or the dust, as the case might be, of the wide trail that headed west.
Fort Kearny, Scott’s Bluff, Fort Laramie, Register Cliffs, Fort Caspar, Independence Rock….
Eventually they mounted the broad, gentle slope of South Pass. Then onward, again, everything now flowing West. Nine hundred miles behind them. Nine hundred more ahead before they could watch the sun sink into the Pacific.
Now, as he thought back over those names, he figured his entitlement, if he had any, came by way of that litany of places passed -- and because of his not turning back. It was a natural enough thought, one shared by many. No one had gotten to Oregon the easy way. Unless you excepted the Indians.
The Superintendent lifted his hat and combed at his thinning hair, raking it with his fingers across the balding top of his head, working his way around the crown to be sure it was spread as well as could be. He adjusted his six-foot-three frame in the saddle, looking for some position he had not already exhausted. His life now, for the past few weeks, had consisted of just this: mounting Big Dan in the morning, moving him into line behind whoever was guide for the next leg of his journey, then lapsing into his dreams and recollections as the patient horses shuffled down the trail, reins slack, headed for the next reservation. At noon they would stop briefly, then move on toward the lowering sun, the line silent except for the occasional word from the Indian in the lead, the occasional click and stumble when a hoof caught against a rock. It was a time for dreaming -- or philosophizing -- or drifting.
How could he have guessed it was for them, the Indians, that he had harangued his oxen. At the time, he thought it was preparation to speak in the councils of white men. A legislature perhaps. A town meeting. That had happened -- in its way, but now he realized he had really been practicing for this: Big Talks. Telling his Indians what was meant. Not interpreting the ways of God in his heaven to men, but of the Big Tyee in Washington to tribes like these Shoshone Snakes who accompanied him today.
“You are my children. I rode here to show you my heart, to see your hearts, to talk with you about your affairs.” He had said that, only days ago, to them. “The time has come when a man is judged by his sense, not his skin. In a few years more the treaty will be dead. Then you must be ready to take care of yourselves.”
That might be. For the present the Snakes must leave the lands they were roaming and follow him, down to the new place being prepared for them at Yainax, on Klamath land. ‘Ready to care for yourselves.’ Did he say that? He thought of the Snake women and doubted they ever could be. Their beautiful beadwork, their decorations, trinkets cut by themselves from bits of tin, glinting from deerskin robes.
Deerskin frocks. In 1869! Deerskin sleeves, fringes. Their needles nothing but pointed bones, their threads sinews of animals. Likewise their children, deer-skin clothes covering their copper-colored bodies. These Snake women pure, chaste, not having known white men. Not like others he had seen.
The squaws carried their entire outfits for housekeeping piled on their backs. While the men rode, or smoked, and talked.
They lived on roots, fish, and grass-hoppers.
They must get ready to live like white people. And they would. He would help them.
It had happened at Grand Ronde; he had seen the results. There was a reservation that worked! In less than twenty years they had been transformed -- from Darwin’s wild beasts almost to civilized manhood. Not two weeks ago when he and Senator Williams visited the mix of tribes that had been swept up together at Grand Ronde out of the rich Willamette Valley, he had witnessed the letter the Indians sent to the President. They wanted little: land surveyed so it could be held in severalty, so each would know what plot was his. Not to be sent an army officer as agent. Continuation for a few more years of workers to teach them the ways of the white man. Above all, not to be moved to another, larger, more remote reservation. “We feel very bad when we are told we will be moved from here and sent to a strange place to live with strangers. Many of our Fathers and Mothers, our brothers and sisters, are buried here; our little boys and girls have grown to be men and women here. We love this land and do not like to leave it. If you intend to move us around and we can have no land of our own, no place we can call home, we might as well be wild and roving through the mountains.”
Now it was the Snakes’ turn to come in and learn to be settled. Notwithstanding the croaking of men who constantly accused United States agents of all kinds of soulless misdemeanors and crimes. And the croaking on the other side, too, he reminded himself, of the shamans, not willing to leave their country. Here were Chief Ocheo and his people, converging with him on Yainax. Even Weahwewa, the war chief, after days of talking, had seemed nearly ready to give in. One day he would. But not them, not the shamans.
He shrugged free of the webs of complexities and tried to think instead of what lay before him that day.
He would tell these people what he intended: first, to settle the financial affairs of the agency.
He thought of the sick man he had seen dragged face downward through embers. Back and forth over the fire. Treatment.
The man had recovered.
… second, to issue such goods as he had provided to him.
And he thought of the seance. “You meet them by the split rock. I see there the tree broke in it. They wait you there where the dead tree throws no shadow. They greet you.”
… third, to greet them for his own chief back in Washington, Ely Parker.
And now, at noon, they had come to it, and he saw the Klamaths. He straightened himself, gave up his thinking, rehearsed instead one last time what he would say to greet them:
… All I have belongs to you. I am ready to hear any and all complaints, settle any and all difficulties, decide any and all varied questions, to tell you about the white people’s laws, customs, habits, religions, &c,
In a word, I propose to remove the barrier that a condition has held between the different stations in life: Civilization may be yours. Manhood is the American standard of worth. The course is clear and open for you, Indian people, and for the whole family of man.
#11
Forty men, at least, had managed to make the trip from the Klamath Agency headquarters to meet up with him and his charges. Many of them had come on foot. But not Captain Knapp; not Meacham’s new agent. Ivan Applegate had made it from the commissary with gifts for the Snakes, and so had this Klamath man, David Allen, a chief to welcome the Snake chiefs. They had settled with him into the Big Talk about Yainax, the new place on the agency that was being prepared for them, about how it was going to be there with the school and the houses and all. The welcoming party had come the distance to meet Meacham, but this Knapp had evidently felt no need