"The
Hog" Bestrode A Little White Pony, Scarce Able To Bear Up Under The
Enormous Burden, Though, By Way Of Keeping Up The Necessary Stimulus,
The Rider Kept Both Feet In Constant Motion, Playing Alternately
Against His Ribs.
The old man was not a chief; he never had ambition
enough to become one; he was not a warrior nor a hunter, for he was
too fat and lazy:
But he was the richest man in the whole village.
Riches among the Dakotas consist in horses, and of these The Hog had
accumulated more than thirty. He had already ten times as many as he
wanted, yet still his appetite for horses was insatiable. Trotting
up to me he shook me by the hand, and gave me to understand that he
was a very devoted friend; and then he began a series of most earnest
signs and gesticulations, his oily countenance radiant with smiles,
and his little eyes peeping out with a cunning twinkle from between
the masses of flesh that almost obscured them. Knowing nothing at
that time of the sign language of the Indians, I could only guess at
his meaning. So I called on Henry to explain it.
The Hog, it seems, was anxious to conclude a matrimonial bargain. He
said he had a very pretty daughter in his lodge, whom he would give
me, if I would give him my horse. These flattering overtures I chose
to reject; at which The Hog, still laughing with undiminished good
humor, gathered his robe about his shoulders, and rode away.
Where we encamped that night, an arm of the Platte ran between high
bluffs; it was turbid and swift as heretofore, but trees were growing
on its crumbling banks, and there was a nook of grass between the
water and the hill. Just before entering this place, we saw the
emigrants encamping at two or three miles' distance on the right;
while the whole Indian rabble were pouring down the neighboring hill
in hope of the same sort of entertainment which they had experienced
from us. In the savage landscape before our camp, nothing but the
rushing of the Platte broke the silence. Through the ragged boughs
of the trees, dilapidated and half dead, we saw the sun setting in
crimson behind the peaks of the Black Hills; the restless bosom of
the river was suffused with red; our white tent was tinged with it,
and the sterile bluffs, up to the rocks that crowned them, partook of
the same fiery hue. It soon passed away; no light remained, but that
from our fire, blazing high among the dusky trees and bushes. We lay
around it wrapped in our blankets, smoking and conversing until a
late hour, and then withdrew to our tent.
We crossed a sun-scorched plain on the next morning; the line of old
cotton-wood trees that fringed the bank of the Platte forming its
extreme verge. Nestled apparently close beneath them, we could
discern in the distance something like a building.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 62 of 251
Words from 31483 to 31988
of 129303
