--some young or middle-aged, but mainly old men, from the West,
North, and occasionally from the South--parties of from five to twenty
each--the most wonderful proofs of what Nature can produce, (the
survival of the fittest, no doubt--all the frailer samples dropt,
sorted out by death)--as if to show how the earth and woods, the
attrition of storms and elements, and the exigencies of life at
first hand, can train and fashion men, indeed _chiefs_, in heroic
massiveness, imperturbability, muscle, and that last and highest
beauty consisting of strength--the full exploitation and fruitage of
a human identity, not from the culmination-points of "culture" and
artificial civilization, but tallying our race, as it were, with
giant, vital, gnarl'd, enduring trees, or monoliths of separate
hardiest rocks, and humanity holding its own with the best of the said
trees or rocks, and outdoing them.
There were Omahas, Poncas, Winnebagoes, Cheyennes, Navahos, Apaches,
and many others. Let me give a running account of what I see and hear
through one of these conference collections at the Indian Bureau,
going back to the present tense. Every head and face is impressive,
even artistic; Nature redeems herself out of her crudest recesses.
Most have red paint on their cheeks, however, or some other paint.
("Little Hill" makes the opening speech, which the interpreter
translates by scraps.) Many wear head tires of gaudy-color'd braid,
wound around thickly--some with circlets of eagles' feathers.
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