Rough Riders | Page 7

wrote telling me he was an American Indian, and that he
wanted to enlist. His name was Colbert, which at once attracted my
attention; for I was familiar with the history of the Cherokees and
Chickasaws during the eighteenth century, when they lived east of the
Mississippi. Early in that century various traders, chiefly Scotchmen,

settled among them, and the half-breed descendants of one named
Colbert became the most noted chiefs of the Chickasaws. I summoned
the applicant before me, and found that he was an excellent man, and,
as I had supposed, a descendant of the old Chickasaw chiefs.
He brought into the regiment, by the way, his "partner," a white man.
The two had been inseparable companions for some years, and
continued so in the regiment. Every man who has lived in the West
knows that, vindictive though the hatred between the white man and the
Indian is when they stand against one another in what may be called
their tribal relations, yet that men of Indian blood, when adopted into
white communities, are usually treated precisely like anyone else.
Colbert was not the only Indian whose name I recognized. There was a
Cherokee named Adair, who, upon inquiry, I found to be descended
from the man who, a century and a half ago, wrote a ponderous folio, to
this day of great interest, about the Cherokees, with whom he had spent
the best years of his life as a trader and agent.
I don't know that I ever came across a man with a really sweeter nature
than another Cherokee named Holderman. He was an excellent soldier,
and for a long time acted as cook for the head-quarters mess. He was a
half-breed, and came of a soldier stock on both sides and through both
races. He explained to me once why he had come to the war; that it was
because his people always had fought when there was a war, and he
could not feel happy to stay at home when the flag was going into
battle.
Two of the young Cherokee recruits came to me with a most kindly
letter from one of the ladies who had been teaching in the academy
from which they were about to graduate. She and I had known one
another in connection with Governmental and philanthropic work on
the reservations, and she wrote to commend the two boys to my
attention. One was on the Academy foot-ball team and the other in the
glee-club. Both were fine young fellows. The foot-ball player now lies
buried with the other dead who fell in the fight at San Juan. The singer
was brought to death's door by fever, but recovered and came back to
his home.
There were other Indians of much wilder type, but their wildness was
precisely like that of the cowboys with whom they were associated.
One or two of them needed rough discipline; and they got it, too. Like

the rest of the regiment, they were splendid riders. I remember one man,
whose character left much to be desired in some respects, but whose
horsemanship was unexceptionable. He was mounted on an
exceedingly bad bronco, which would bolt out of the ranks at drill. He
broke it of this habit by the simple expedient of giving it two
tremendous twists, first to one side and then to the other, as it bolted,
with the result that, invariably, at the second bound its legs crossed and
over it went with a smash, the rider taking the somersault with
unmoved equanimity.
The life histories of some of the men who joined our regiment would
make many volumes of thrilling adventure.
We drew a great many recruits from Texas; and from nowhere did we
get a higher average, for many of them had served in that famous body
of frontier fighters, the Texas Rangers. Of course, these rangers needed
no teaching. They were already trained to obey and to take
responsibility. They were splendid shots, horsemen, and trailers. They
were accustomed to living in the open, to enduring great fatigue and
hardship, and to encountering all kinds of danger.
Many of the Arizona and New Mexico men had taken part in warfare
with the Apaches, those terrible Indians of the waterless Southwestern
mountains--the most bloodthirsty and the wildest of all the red men of
America, and the most formidable in their own dreadful style of
warfare. Of course, a man who had kept his nerve and held his own,
year after year, while living where each day and night contained the
threat of hidden death from a foe whose goings and comings were
unseen, was not apt to lose courage when confronted with any other
enemy. An experience in following in the trail of an enemy who might
flee at one