While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Chief Shenka was a Piute Indian like the first
Chief Winnemucca, whom the white men, who early traveled over the Rocky Mountains, met on
the broad prairie land of Nevada. He was one of Winnemucca's young followers. Of noble
appearance and always brave and trustworthy, Shenkah became the chief of a small tribe of
the Piute, after Winnemucca's death. When the Piute were at peace with other Indians and
with the white people, Shenkah was very friendly indeed, especially to the soldiers, and
our officers were much pleased when they could, on marches in search of lakes and rivers
round their camps and posts, get Shenkah for a guide. He hunted deer and other game for
them and they gave him a rifle and trusted him to make long journeys into the mountains.
He always returned, and never without different kinds of wild game.
After his old chief went far away to California with General
Fremont, trouble arose on account of a sad mistake which resulted in a dreadful war
between some of the Soldiers and the Indians. Chief Shenkah, leading his warriors, was in
that war from the beginning to the end, until, at last, a good peace came.
His daughter, Mattie, when about twenty years of age, told me
about her father. Mattie could read and write English slowly, and spoke it well enough for
me to understand her. She talked with a pretty musical tone, each sentence sounding
sometimes like a song, and sometimes her sentences were like poetry. This is what she
said: "My first memory is way back. It is like a shadow, a dream. I just see him, my
father! I have this picture of him, very sad, very sad, in my heart. I did not know much
then, not much as I do now. He was so strange, so different from all the rest. I know now
that he was strange because he was just leaving us-for always. Oh, I was such a little
girl! My father had been hurt in battle; he was very pale, and his eyes very bright, and
looking far away. I am sure he knew when he spoke to me that he could not live to see
another sun. He was lying down on the ground, and he took me and pressed me tenderly in
his arms against his breast. Chief Egan, my uncle, was kneeling by my father's side and
bending over us with tears in his eyes. At last my dear father spoke and said:
'Egan, my brother, the Great Spirit calls me away-I must go. I cannot take My, little
child with me-the Great Spirit does not call her to go now. I wish I could take her with
me to meet her mother; but I cannot. My brother, I leave her to you, be her father.' Such
words I am sure, for they pressed on my mem'ry, are the ones my poor dear father used.
They were wonderful and so have remained with me through all my years. My uncle, Chief
Egan, gave my father an answer, but I do not quite remember what he said, but he laid his
hand very gently on my head while my father added a few words which, like his others, have
always been in my mind: `My daughter, my little dove, you cannot know what this parting
means; to me it is a bitter one, but you and I will meet again; your good Uncle Egan will
be a father to you and you must be a good daughter to him. After a few minutes of silence
he gave his last words: "Now I go in peace."
This is all that Mattie could remember. She went away to
live with her uncle, who became a chieftain among the Piutes, and who led many of them in
the pursuits of peace and of war. He was kind and loving to his adopted daughter, and she
returned his love with childlike devotion and always treated him as a father.
It was perhaps two years after the death of her father when she
was carried to a camp called Howluk near the borders of Nevada. There had been just then
some battles between the white people and the Indians, and the Indians had been again
defeated. This war would not have come on if the white men and the Indians had spoken the
same language and could have understood each other, and when Mattie told me of it, she
said: "When will my red brothers learn that it is more than foolish to rise up and go
on the war-path against our white brothers. Even now we are reading and hearing of
war. We poor women and the innocent little children and the old and helpless are the ones
who suffer most. But now I know that the white men make war with their white brothers
also. Why is this? Why do they make war with each other and make us suffer? Oh, we suffer
so much; not only our bodies by hunger, sickness, cold, or heat, but our hearts bleed from
the moment our dear ones go away under the sound of the song or the band and the drum.
Then comes the terrible time of waiting-my breath seems to stop when I remember it. Then
there is the news of wounds and death to reach us at home; very few can follow the cry of
their hearts to run to the beloved one, because there are little ones to keep them at
home."
She went on to say: "I learned about wars at school in
Oregon, and, as you know, I was again and again in war myself, and it is horrid! I am no
coward-girl, and I am not afraid even when the guns fire; but I do not want war. Men who
are so wise as to make so many wonderful things should find a way to settle their troubles
without causing so much wretchedness and sorrow and tears. I am only a poor Indian girl,
and though I 've been to school many days, yet I know but very little. I am sure that many
of my white sisters, who know more than I do, think about battles and wars just as I
do."
In a letter to Mrs. Parish, a lady who was very much beloved by
the Piute Indians, she writes: "My uncle called all his Indians around him and spoke
to them in this way 'The white men are taking away from us all our land here in Nevada.
They are driving off all our ponies. The war-chief of the Piute was angry, and he had
already taken the war-path. He, Chief Shenkah, was m3' brother, as you know. He did not
succeed.
The red man and white man did fight many suns, many soldiers and
many braves fell in battle, and the young men are buried all along the creeks and rivers.
My brother, Chief Shenkah has passed on to the better land. We see very plainly that the
red men cannot fight the white men. We have not such good rifles and good horses as they
have. Our bows and arrows are nothing. And now the white men say Peace. They say, take a
home in Malheur, Oregon. There is good land, good water, and plenty of food over there.
The red man and the white man must eat bread together. I now say, this is good, let us go.
Egan is done.
"Young as I was, I do not forget the long ride we took to
Malheur. My people were very poor. Many of them were ill on the Way from the want of
clothing and good food; but as my uncle, Chief Egan, had decided that it was best to go,
the braves of the tribe kept up from day to day the weary journey- which a large number
had to go on foot, as at that time the pontes, which remained
to us after the war, were very few, and those we had were mostly thin of flesh, and many
lame. My good Uncle Egan never forgot me. He gave me all I needed, and I
had nice little mouse-colored pony to carry me. The pony was one of the best
among them all, and so he had to bear some goods as well as me. The bundles were put
on his back and tied fast before I was put up on top of them. As I have now seen an
elephant, I think that my little horse looked very much like a small elephant. His
legs seemed very short. I was a little afraid, but Uncle Egan kindly strapped me to
the load, and with pleasant words handed me a small whip and remarked that I was high up,
higher than all the other riders, so I was quite safe and proud. At times, as ponies
will, mine would stop beside the trail and put down his head to eat, then I would use my
whip, though he appeared to know that my whippings did not mean a great deal. Our ponies
seemed to know about everything much more than those of the white people. Some would not
let a white man mount them. They showed their disgust in a very plain way-hard to each,
and, being caught, hard to bridle, twisting their heads one way and another. Oh, how I
used to enjoy the fun watching a paleface in his vain attempts to subdue one of our horses
who was perfectly gentle with any of us Indians. Think of the saddling! By a wicked little
shake of his body the blanket would slip off, first on one side and then on the other, and
the saddle go forward or backward. The best part of the fun was to look at the white man's
attempt to mount an Indian pony; with the saddle on he would think all was right, and get
one foot nearly into the stirrup, when the nag would move just a little bit, then another
little bit, just enough to make his rider hop after him on one foot. To us children all
this appeared so amusing that we greeted the effort with shouts of laughter. Such things
happened to me when I was quite little. At school I learned that it was very unkind and
rude so to laugh-to laugh at any one; but I think the children could not well help it,
because here was a little animal which any Indian child five years old could catch by the
mane, lead to a log, jump on and ride wherever he pleased. Of course our little nags had
their likes and dislikes, just like ourselves. I think we were a little proud to find that
these white men, who brought such wonderful things to us, were not equal to us in training
and riding ponies.
"On that long march to Malheur we had an old donkey. His
name was Wee-choo. I was such a naughty Indian child that I enjoyed Wee-choo's mischievous
performances, as I afterward enjoyed what I saw in a regular circus. I used to give hearty
cheers for our old donkey. No white man or white woman ever could succeed in riding him,
though many frontiermen and boys tried to do so. At one time they came great distances and
had the ambition to ride what they called 'Egan's donkey.' At every race or Indian feast
this donkey was a source of great merriment. He would put himself in every ridiculous
posture and always managed to send a white man flying from his back.
"At one time there came a tall, longlimbed Irishman. His legs, if he ever could have
sat on Wee-choo's back, were so long that his feet would have touched the ground. He
looked like a grasshopper when trying to get on. The nearest he ever came to it caused him
to jump entirely over the donkey and sit flat on the ground amid the laughing and shouting
of the Indians. No one was ever badly hurt and Wee-choo was a great favorite with us. You
may understand that some soft old river-bed or other very sandy place was chosen for the
Wee-choo circus. With the Indians the old animal became so tame that no mother in our
tribe would hesitate for a Toment to put her child on his back, where he would sit up
straight, if strong enough, and hold to his mane. I remember the kindness of the children
to this old donkey. They gave him milk to drink after his teeth became too decayed to eat
grass or hay. We would grind his barley, corn or wheat, and soak it for him, and he
appeared to understand and appreciate our care."
At last, after the long and tedious journey, Chief Egan and his
Indians reached Malheur They were put on a large piece of land called a
reservation-something very few of the tribe knew anything about. It appeared to the people
something they did not like, some sort of prison.
Mattie said: "Had my uncle, Chief Egan, seen any other way
to provide for his people, he never would have gone there, and would never have used his
influence to bring them all to that place-. But what were they to do? All our land in
Nevada that was of any account had been taken away and settled upon by the white people.
Every place which we had held and where there was good soil and good water was taken and
fenced in as a white man's claim; and so we came to Malheur, Oregon. I have been told that
the word 'Malheur' means misfortune, and as soon as the people heard this meaning, it
added to their homesickness and sadness."
But Mattie was fortunate. She met Mrs. Parish. No white person
had ever spoken so kindly to her, nor looked so pleasantly in her face. Mattie's heart
went out to this good woman. She did not then quite understand her language, but she did
understand her gentle voice and kind manner. Again Mattie found a loving welcome from the
interpreter, Sarah Winnemucca, who soon became a sister to her and a teacher. Mr. Parish
was, at that time, in charge of all the Indians, and he was of such noble spirit and kind
ways, that he very soon made them feel that Malheur was not so bad for them as they first
had feared.
Mattie (her teacher, Mrs. Parish, says) looked very quaint and
nice in her manta dress; and how good and attentive she was in the school! She also
remembered the pretty flowers that Mattie brought her, and how radiant she was when told
that her good friend loved flowers, and put them into a vase on her desk. Mattie loved her
teacher more every day, and this loving little girl was dearest of all to her teacher.
Mattie loved to talk of those days when the Indians had Mr.
Parish for their good agent. One day, as the children came into the school-room their
attention was attracted by a great number of beautiful colored pictures hung on the walls
of the room-pictures of horses, dogs, cats, birds, trees, and many things which they had
never seen before. Mattie says that the little Indians were as happy as they could be when
they looked upon those pictures for the first time. The pictures were so attractive that
their schoolroom soon filled with children, children large and small, and the largest did
not know more than the smallest.
One day Chief Egan came in and said to the scholars: "You
must be very good children and obey the teacher; give good attention to what she says and
remember it as well as you can. The great father in Washington sent her to teach the
little ones, and this was good for us."
No Indian chief seemed to be more respected and loved by his
people than Chief Egan. Mattie remembered the day when she tried hard and at last
succeeded in lisping the teacher's name. The next day she learned to say "Good
morning," and all the children were soon able to say, "Good morning, Mother
Parish."
Mr. Parish one day brought in and hung near the teacher's desk a
clear-faced clock. It was the first one that these children had ever looked upon, and it
took them two or three days to get used to it, first, to call it by name in English and
then, little by little, to learn, as they all did, how to tell the time of day.
At this school Mattie had a little boy friend named Tayhue.
"Poor little fellow," she said, "he was so good and stupid, trying so hard,
as bard as ever he could, but somehow letters and words would not sound right out of his
mouth. No one could picture Tayhue's sounds. Well, he never spoke quite plainly in his own
language." Mattie said that one should see him now, that he has grown up into a very
nice young man and has married. He married little La-loo, and he declared that beloved her
from the time she tried to teach him what to say in school.
When Mattie could speak English she said to Mrs. Parish:
"You know I have no mother, so I had more love to give you than the other children.
Did you ever dream how very dear you were to me? As soon as yon thought that we children
could understand you told us about the Saviour. I would think of all you said to us when I
went home, and from your words there came most sweet and lovely thoughts to me,-indeed,
you woke up my soul."
Mattie describes the time when the large maps came and were shown
near the teacher's desk. She recalled particularly the great map of the United States.
There were many different colors to represent the States, and at first the children
thought that the land must be red, green, yellow, or blue, just as it looked to them on
the map. They had hard work to understand the picture of the ocean. Mattie had seen
several lakes, but not till by and by, when she came to San Francisco, did she see the
grand sight.
When Mattie grew up she became the wife of Lee Winnemucca, and
when I saw her, as I often did during the last year of her short life, she was always with
Lee's sister Sarah, doing what she could to help and comfort her people, for they had
suffered many trials and hardships during the Piute and Bannock War. She had not forgotten
her early lessons at Malheur, and by her sweet manners and loving spirit made every one
about her very happy.
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