- When Indians attack a white settlement, a brave kidnaps a white baby to give to his wife as a replacement for their dead baby. The white mother goes to the Indian camp to look for her child and is captured by the Indians who plan to torture her. The settlers attack the Indian camp, destroying it completely and killing the braves, while the Indian wife returns the baby to the white woman and allows her to escape. The Indian wife mourns her baby at its grave, unaware of the destruction of the Indian camp.—<leecozad@alumni.usc.edu>
- From a line of broken hills of sandy formation, with dry arroyos where the buffalo trailed to the streams, came an emigrant train. First were scattered horsemen, leather-skinned frontiersmen, bearded to the cheek bones, long of hair, longer of rifle and longest of vision; men who held their own lives balancing lightly every hour of the day and who regarded red men as little more than wastrals or beasts of prey. Then rose into view the white arches of prairie schooners with ox-teams plowing stolidly along and swinging from side to side in their yokes to the "gee-haw" of drivers who could flick a fly at twenty feet with their whips. A solitary rider, a weather-scarred scout, wearing the coonskin of a fur trader, selected the camping ground, but urged his horse farther on in search of game. There were fresh traces of buffalo in a neighboring watercourse and these lured him from the band under inspiration of the chase. More than a mile away from his companions the scout came upon two wandering animals separated from the herd, but the wind was from him and they dashed away blindly, their noses to the ground. He chanced a long-range shot from the saddle and brought one stumbling to the ground. The shot was heard by a party of mounted bucks from a neighboring Indian encampment and also in search of game. When they rode up to the scene they found a lone hunter bending over his quarry, knife in hand, and predatory instinct proved stronger than discretion. They dashed down upon him, firing as they came, and making the usual display of ferocity intended to frighten their enemies as well as sustain their own courage in battle. The scout fell prone behind his prey and began to pick off the attacking party with such deliberation and accuracy that only half of the braves managed to escape. They had come upon a man known among them as "Bad Medicine." Among those escaping was a tall brave, Mountain Rock who had just lost his only child, and he did not participate in the excited account of the battle with Bad Medicine given by his companions. He found his squaw, Ravenwing, dressing the mourning cradle for her child with back quills and feathers while she cooed to the inanimate little creature she had brought into the world as if it was still throbbing with warm blood. She was talking to the cold corpse of her little one in endearing terms as familiarly and affectionately as if the child was still clinging to her breast. It had grown to her heart with tendrils not so easily broken as those of existence and full realization of its soul's departure was only beginning to dawn on her crushed mentality. Mountain Rock stood like his namesake, silent and cold for a while, then muttered "Baby's gone." "Baby's here," Ravenwing illustrated; she was so young that her voice was still that of a child. "Spirit's gone," he said gloomily. "For a little while," she told him. "It will come back again." She took up the tiny, bandaged creature and dangled a good luck totem before its closed eyes. "Baby, come again soon." "Spirit never come," quoth Mountain Rock solemnly. Then he strode away to don his war bonnet and join the council. The Indians themselves were responsible for the wanton destruction of buffalo before the white man had come to their hunting grounds. Hostile tribes had waged an endless war of destruction in search of food as well as useless ones on each other, much in the fashion of civilized people, and they had practically annihilated all peace-loving elements among themselves when emigration began in earnest. The red races had been further deciminated by smallpox and other diseases against which they had no other protection than amulets provided by crazy medicine men not yet operating under pure food laws, and bad whiskey was finishing them so effectively that it seemed a shame to waste good powder and lead. The last named agent in the elimination of the unfit was in operation, but Mountain Rock did not arrive at the council in time to partake, most of the supply being inside of big chief, Cow-Chaser, who was in process of addressing the meeting. "White man too late," argued Cow-Chaser, "Indian here first. First ones get all. Others get nothing." Cow-Chaser was in advance of his time, "If Indian let white man in, paleface gets same as redskin." This argument, ab initio and in referendum, meeting with unanimous and unqualified approval, it was thereupon decided that fighting to the verge of mutual destruction was more desirable than toleration for mutual benefit, and war was declared. The presence of Bad Medicine in the neighborhood was a sure indication that an emigrant train was not far distant. He had lived among the redskins and had adopted many of their methods of warfare, but his eyes were keener than those of any savage, his powder was better, and he wasted no ammunition. He was a dangerous factor, but an emigrant train, even when formed in corral for encampment and defense, was an easier mark than the nearest settlement, Brownsville, where men of Bad Medicine's type were in force, and in charge of a hard fighter named Morgan. Brown, himself, as well as other adventurous spirits, had advanced beyond the natural protection of the town bearing his name and had struck into soil as an honest tiller of it, working for a living instead of trying to get what he needed for his wife and child at some other fellow's expense. It was decided, therefore, by Cow-Chaser and his band of braves to attack the weaker forces for immediate supplies before attempting the complete elimination of intruders upon their hunting grounds. Bad Medicine, true to his nature; he had already proven to be a fatal dose, was not relieved by the flight of those who had escaped, but followed them closely to the edge of the Indian encampment and there witnessed the council long enough to gather its full import. He mounted and rode back to the emigrant train in time to assure its formation in corral for defense, then dashed on to warn outlying settlers and arouse the Brownsville terrors. Some of the latter were bad enough to make murder a virtue and robbery a business, but they had the redeeming feature of bravery. As individuals many wore a local halo of romantic glory and as a body they were organized for defense against a cruel enemy, but in attack they rarely left any record of events, or redskins to misconstrue their motives. The main body of redmen reached the corral soon after its formation and before the cattle had been driven in from grazing, and the entire war party joined in stampeding the food supply of the whites on the hoof while skirmishers undertook the enlivening duties of braining settlers, burning their cabins and carrying off their wives for outrages unspeakable before slavery, or death by torture. A general attack on the corral followed, with circling tactics by the riding warriors, firing in on a stationary mask, but without serious loss on either side. The swiftly-moving redskins were good horsemen and furnished illusive targets, while the solid old prairie schooners presented a defense almost as impenetrable as a stockade, many of them being constructed for that purpose. The firing on both sides was incessant, but the circling party was gradually approached for a final desperate assault. Mountain Rock was in lead of a skirmishing party when he came upon Brown's log cabin apparently empty. They had already feasted on blood when they met with no serious resistance. Killing with the ferocity of wild beasts and the excitement of madmen, and entrance to the pioneer's home was effected without a shot. There was no one in but a two-year-old baby lying on the bed. A brave seized the child and was about to beat the life out of its frail body when his hand was arrested. Mountain Rock stood for a moment like a man in a trance. Far away at the encampment was his wife bent over the lifeless body of their own child. An idea seized him as a result of his mental vision, and he decided to carry the white child into captivity. Mrs. Brown had gone with a dinner pail for her husband in the remote fields when she was moved by an uncontrollable impulse to return. On her way back she encountered groups of frightened and fleeing settlers and guessed the worst. From the moment her fears were aroused there was no restraining her. She ran with all the strength at her command to her home, and a feather from a war bonnet before it brought the full horror of what she might expect to her face. She dashed into the room where she had left her child and turned sick, but while there was faint hope left, no mother's heart is daunted where her child is concerned. She found traces of the visiting Indians and followed these in a half delirious condition, every nerve and muscle in her body strained in the effort to learn the fate of her little one. The afternoon was waning, but she hurried on, impelled by a mind tormented, and pursuit led her straight to the Indian encampment. She was seen by the old men and women, and dragged before Mountain Rock, now in command. She knew of her fate in advance. A woman so comely was usually taken by one of the younger bucks as his wife, the penalty of any attempt at escape being torture more hideous than crucifixion, then traded to another when the first brave was tired of her and so on down to abject slavery beneath the Indian squaws and children who would lose no opportunity to inflict humiliation, to an end in horrible death with her mutilated body rolled in mud to express red hatred for the white race. Mountain Rock had given the white child to his wife in consolation for her own loss. At first Ravenwing refused to touch the offspring of the detested whites, but her maternal instincts were stronger than race hatred and she was holding the child in her arms and standing near her husband when Mrs. Brown was thrust before him for disposal. The white woman's wrists were bound behind her, she was on the verge of collapse and was being handled roughly by braves on either side of her, but she gave a wild cry "Baby!" and sprang forward with mad strength in an attempt to rescue her most precious possession. She seemed not to see the hideous faces daubed with paint all around her, naught but the cherub entrusted to her keeping, as she struggled breathless as a sullen day, her pale brow bursting with perspiration. Mountain Rock saw and understood. The worn and wounded woman would have been nothing to him but a representative of the oncoming storm, one of the flakes of snow that was to cover the red autumn leaves of his race, but her spirit seemed to impress him. She was one of the unconquered on their way to mighty achievements, the grasp of her soul was that of liberty-loving people; in the flash of her eyes was the fire of a torch destined to light the way of humanity; she had the indomitable courage of proud intelligence brought into collision with brutal ignorance. The worst that could occur for an attractive white woman in the hands of redmen arose when the captors holding Mrs. Brown began to dispute for her possession. This meant instant death for the captive, or outrageous torture upon the return of the war party. Mountain Rock indicated death and the unfortunate woman was dragged away, but she burst from her captors and ran to the child. She pressed her lips upon the little one's cheek, gazed long into the eyes of Ravenwing, then bowed in submission to her fate. Mountain Rock frowned, assumed a heroic pose and reserved the helpless woman for slow torture. She was thereupon taken to a prison tent and thrown in upon the bare ground. The horrible torture inflicted upon white women by Indians of the plains was a matter of common knowledge among frontiersmen, but it was not needed to stir up the Brownsville terrors. They were a wicked lot of whites on their own account and regarded the policy of treating redskins as civilized beings with contempt. Indians soon learned to kill off a few settlers as a preliminary to profitable peace negotiations, but Morgan's band of whites held that the only way to impress the noble redskin was to destroy him and all he possessed. At the very moment a band of braves were driving pegs into the ground for the purpose of tying Mrs. Brown to them with outstretched feet and hands, so that she could be leisurely beaten and mutilated until there was no more life in her, the bold bad men of Brownsville were preparing for a hot fight with the main war party, having been informed by the scout that the emigrant train was corralled and surrounded by hostile redskins. A srnall band of whites, outnumbered ten to one by the entire Indian force, left Brownsville under the joint command of Morgan and the scout at night. They were fully aware that they were endangering the settlement they were putting behind them and their own lives as well by abandoning its shelter, but many of them were bent on protecting property paid for more than once because of innumerable treaties, and they were not wholly unreasonable in getting the country into such habitable shape that millions of other emigrants might follow and condone whatever was offensive in acts of those who bore the early hardships by living in peace and comfort secured by them. Throughout the night the emigrants fought with courage superior to that of their assailants. Wounded horses were killed to shelter firing parties, and bundles of bedding, sacks of corn, bags of flour and whatever was available for breastworks was employed for that purpose. The Indians lighted the dry grass and sagebrush, and the wind carried the flames down on the corral, setting fire to the wagons. There was no water to extinguish the flames, but they were smothered by blankets and clothing, and, in the end, the attempt to fire the train reacted against the attacking force, depriving them of cover for close approach. At dawn the Indians were compelled to resume their circling tactics on horse, and they were so occupied when the Brownsville terrors arrived. Morgan approached by a detour to gain a commanding position, and secured a point of view that laid the entire scene before him, including the Indian village in the distance. The latter offered strategic suggestion for men compelled to deliver a decisive blow without an open engagement. Morgan drew his small force farther around the valley to an advantagous base of operations for offensive or defensive tactics as the case might require, and led a direct attack on the encampment of the enemy after sending Bad Medecine around for a flank movement and second surprise to give the impression of skirmishers from a large body of men. Many of the tribe were still in the wigwams, though a few braves had been occupied since the break of day in preparing for an orgy of torture almost as refined as that enjoyed by the citizens of Rome during a period of ancient civilization. Twigs and boughs were already smouldering near the contrivance of pegs and thongs used to fasten a naked prisoner to the ground during torture, as one of the few pleasures of the noble red man was to build a small fire on the stomach of his captive and sit around enjoying the agonized writhings and screams of his victim. No brave had, however, donned a war bonnet or worked himself up to fighting condition, the combined attack was a complete surprise, and the carnage that followed would have satisfied a Roman, German or other Emperor compelled to destroy his fellow beings in order to brace a tottering throne. No quarter was given to any living creature and the work of destruction included camp equipment and wigwams. Morgan set fire to everything that would burn, then divided his command to ambush the line of communication between the emigrant corral and the Indian village. Smoke signals were among the most important used by Indians; they were largely guided in conduct and movement by sign language, and the sight of a column of it in the direction of their encampment drew the entire war party from the attack, the plucky emigrants actually attempting pursuit. ''Here they come," Morgan called to his handful of men. Wait until they close in and drop all you can before they locate us." He had chosen a position commanding a defile where the onrushing body of horsemen could not scatter, and he waited until the leaders were in close range before firing a shot. The heavy odds against his small, dismounted band were overcome largely by the selection of advantageous positions and the artifice which drew the Indians into a crowded gorge, but the incessant and deadly fire from the repeating weapons of the Brownsville terrors accomplished wonders; it rained Indians until their advance was checked. Those who wheeled about were met by a terrible cross-fire from Bad Medicine's detachment, then a wild yell of triumph came up from the valley. The hard fighting settlers who had held the savages at bay all night cut off their sole avenue of escape, and the reds got what they intended to give the white, no quarter. The conduct of the terrors was too near that of the savages themselves to be particularly edifying. They shot into prostrate bodies with well-founded suspicion that crafty braves could drop as though dead and rise again, and they left none of that band to slaughter women and children one day and ask government protection the next. Pale-faced poets of noble-redman proclivities would have had nervous prostration over the conduct of half-crazed Brown during the indiscriminate killing for revenge that followed. He had been at work in the fields when he first caught sight of a few braves in war paint and had gone to his house to prepare for an attack only to discover in traces of the redmen and in the absence of his wife and child that the worst he could imagine had happened. Believing that they had been dragged away to furnish entertainment for a lot of savage decadents, to be staked out and burned or mutilated before relieved by an ignominious and horrible death, he had accompanied the retreating settlers from outlying districts and had joined the Brownsville terrors. He was among the most violent of these engaged in destroying the Indian village, and after the encounter with the main body, when the ground was strewn with painted red fiends, he went about with a club taken from one of them, braining those who moved or gave any sign of shamming death. The social instinct that restrains a man from injuring his community or its members, together with all that is humane in the progressive race had vanished for the time from his nature. His insane fury, that of a mind temporarily unbalanced, was as short lived as the Indian wars would have been if they had been left to those on the firing line, but the silent and deep-seated hatred of the aboriginal decadents was one felt by all white men on the border. He knew as all others did who were on the ground that there was about as much nobility and fine sentiment in a plains Indian as one would expect to find in a hungry wolf. When it came to a question of race survival, he gave as much consideration to the poetic claim of soil occupancy as European nations accorded the Chinese nation. After the battle, when scouting parties of white terrors had returned from putting a few finishing touches on the elimination of red ones. Brown sank into a fit of gloom from which he was suddenly aroused by the discovery of his wife and child in hiding. He was so completely overcome that he cried like a child. Not until he had returned home and the emigrants had gone on their way, and the Brownsville terrors returned to celebrate, did Brown recover sufficiently from overwhelming joy to hear his wife's story. Mrs. Brown had noted the empty mourning cradle carried by Ravenwing and had grasped the fact that the white child had been given to the Indian mother as consolation for her own loss. She knew that squaws were ordinarily crushed to a low point of degradation, but Ravenwing was young, and the soft light of maternal affection still shone in her eyes. Mrs. Brown had, therefore, concentrated the entire force of her mind upon an eloquent look into the eyes of the young mother, trusting to the sign-interpreting habit of the race to make herself understood. During the night Ravenwing had effected her release and had accompanied her to an Indian burying ground known as Silent Hill, where her own babe had been given a last resting place on an Indian bier raised from the ground on four posts. Ravenwing still carried the mourning cradle, that she would do for months, according to the custom of her race, but her heart was where her child's form lay. She had restored Mrs. Brown's baby and had sank down on the ground in tearless lamentation. Even as the white woman was telling her story in the gathering twilight, Ravenwing, her life spared by her act of humanity, was kneeling on the crest of Silent Hill, stretching her arms heavenward, imploring the Supreme Mother to restore the little creature that had nestled at her breast, begging in profound grief for what had taken deep root in her maternal love, as in vain as her race had lived, unaware that she was a widow, indifferent to the tribal extinction, but knowing well that unsatisfied affection, a short story for a man, is for woman a lifetime tragedy. - The Moving Picture World, March 9, 1912
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