Tracy.]
I suppose it was the fact that he was an Indian that first
attracted me to him. As the years passed we became great friends,
and I loved nothing better in an idle hour than to smoke a pipe
with the General in his poky little office at Police Headquarters.
That was about all there was to it, too, for he rarely opened his
mouth except to grunt approval of something I was saying. When,
once in a while, it would happen that some of his people came down
from the Reservation or from Canada, the powwow that ensued was my
dear delight. Three pipes and about eleven grunts made up the whole
of it, but it was none the less entirely friendly and satisfactory.
We all have our own ways of doing things, and that was theirs. He
was a noble old fellow. His title was no trumpery show, either. It
was fairly earned on more than one bloody field with Grant's army.
Parker was Grant's military secretary, and wrote the original draft
of the surrender at Appomattox, which he kept to his death with
great pride. It was not General Parker, however, but Donehogawa,
Chief of the Senecas and of the remnant of the once powerful Six
Nations, and guardian of the western door of the council lodge, that
appealed to me, who in my boyhood had lived with Leather-stocking
and with Uncas and Chingachgook.
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