Three Years on the Plains | Page 4

the idea of his unfitness to defend the town
against the threatened Indian invasion, and did the wisest thing he
could, and resigned his commission on a plea of "sudden
indisposition." The doctor walked the street as bold as a lion, but acting
also with the shrewd cunning of the fox. And now, my young friends,
instead of weaving a bloody romance in the style of the "Dime Novels,"
depicting the terrible massacre, which might have happened, with so
great a wrong to provoke the hostility of the poor Indians, I am about to
tell you how the town was saved, and how the doctor outwitted them. If
you pause here, and guess, I think you will be far from the mark in
reaching the shrewdness of the surgeon, who had not been bred among
the hills of old Vermont for nothing.
As I said, at Auburn there is a State prison, and when the convicts die,
their bodies, unless claimed by relatives or friends within twenty-four
hours after death, are at the disposal of the surgeon for dissection.
As good luck would have it, a negro convict died at the time of our
story; and the doctor conceived the idea of getting out of his difficulty
by transferring the dead body of the negro Jim to the despoiled empty
grave of Onondaga! This done, he easily persuaded the Indians to go
back and find the body of their chief all right: and so he succeeded in
humbugging the weak-minded Indians, while the bones of old
Onondaga were duly prepared and hung up to show students how
Indians and all men are made of bone and muscle. The doctor thought
he had done a good thing; but when I went into the office and saw the
horrid skull grinning at me, I was thankful that the spirit of old
Onondaga could not say of me, "You did it!"

II.
The most notable of the chiefs belonging to the Six Nations were
Hiawatha, Thayendanega (or Brant, his English name), Sagoyewatha,
or Red Jacket,--the most intelligent of the chiefs, and who is said to
have been the uncle of General Parker, a full-blood Chippewa, and at
one time Indian Commissioner at Washington. (Parker served as an
aide of General Grant during the war. In early life, he was a pupil at the
normal school, in Albany; and was reckoned quite a proficient in music
by Prof. Bowen.)
Most of these tribes, inhabiting the country bordering on the Mohawk
River, Onondaga Lake, Skaneateles, Owasco, Cayuga, Seneca, Ontario,
and Erie, migrated at an early day to Green Bay, and to the Straits of
Mackinaw. As remnants of the Onondagas were passing through
Auburn, they often slept on the floor of our kitchen, and they never
stole anything or did us any harm. One day, they were passing the
American Hotel, and, as usual, begged a few sixpences of all they met.
A gentleman sitting on the porch said to one of them, "No, you'll spend
it for whisky."
"Oh, no," he replied; "give it to my wife,--he's a Methodist woman!"
I met a tribe of Chippewas at Marquette, a short time since, on Lake
Superior, whither they had migrated from Green Bay. An-ges-ta, the
chief, was a tall, noble-looking fellow. He wanted the church to help
his people, who were very poor.
Said he, "We lived in Green Bay a great while, but when I looked into
our cabins and saw so many of them empty, and into the graveyard, and
counted more graves than we had living, my heart was sad, and I went
away farther toward the setting sun!"
He made an eloquent speech to the Prince of Wales on his visit to the
West, and it was pronounced a fine piece of natural oratory.
A few remnants of the New York tribes are living not far from Buffalo,
on a reservation, where they cultivate farms and have schools and

churches.
Such were the Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, Mohawks, and
Chippewas. Only one band is left in New York State now, that of the
Onondagas.
The present generation of grown people have read with delight the
beautiful novels of J. Fenimore Cooper, Esq., but they have been
disappointed in not finding any living examples of his noble heroes. As
a general thing, the Indian of our day is an untidy lord of the soil, over
which he roams unfettered by any laws of society, and often--in his
wild state--not controlled by its decencies or in possession of its
privileges. But I think this is the fault of Christians more interested in
foreign pagans, while neglecting these heathen at our own doors.

THE FIDELITY OF AN INDIAN CHIEF.
The following story about an Oneida chief is told by Judge W----:
Early in the settlement