THE INDIAN IN LITERATURE TEN KATE. 523 



relating to Indians bear the stamp of a master who knew the West 

 and its inhabitants well. Among other things he wrote Pony Tracks, 

 Men with the Bark on, Crooked Trails, Frontier Sketches, and The 

 Way of an Indian. I shall say only a few words about the last- 

 mentioned work, which was published in 1906 in New York, and 

 was illustrated by its author. 



It relates to the life story of a Northern Cheyenne Indian which, 

 in the main, might as well be the life story of a thousand other 

 Indians of the prairie and mountain tribes from forty to fifty years 

 ago. Although a severe critic in a position to judge of Remington's 

 description of the Cheyennes and their ways would probably find 

 cause for a few remarks, I think that on the whole Remington is 

 right, and that the mentality of White Otter alias Fire Eater, the 

 hero of the story, and of his comrades corresponds very well to that 

 of the average fighting Indian in bygone days. 



Whether we follow young White Otter on his first raid into the 

 Crow country, from which he returns with a scalp and a few stolen 

 horses, or see him starting on other expeditions, performing daring 

 deeds leading to high honors among his people, the vivid descriptions 

 by Remington are equally fascinating and Indian in spirit. The 

 end of the old warrior and chief is tragic. At dawn, in winter, 

 while Fire Eater and his followers are encamped in a remote canyon 

 of the Big Horn Mountains, they are suddenly attacked by United 

 States cavalry. In the confusion Fire Eater loses his hitherto in- 

 separable " bat-skin medicine," an amulet which has protected him 

 almost from boyhood. As the teepees are burned, all searching for 

 the precious object is in vain. Fire Eater's youngest wife is killed 

 and he retreats with his little boy into the snowy mountains a " vic- 

 tim of his lost medicine." The child dies from exposure, after which 

 Fire Eater, deserted by his own people, at last " sat alone waiting 

 for the evil spirits which lurked among the pine trees to come and 

 take him." 



Two little books of Edward S. Curtis which must be mentioned 

 here are Indian Days of the Long Ago and In the Land of the Head- 

 Hunters, published in New York in 1914 and 1915. Both are illus- 

 trated with excellent reproductions of Curtis's photographs, and are 

 more particularly intended for youthful readers. The plot of each is 

 wholly Indian. In Indian Days the story of KuKusim, a Salish 

 boy, is told interwoven with abundant ethnologic material. The 

 Head-Hunters are the Kwakiutl and neighboring tribes, about which 

 much valuable information is given. The latter book found its 

 origin in " an outline or scenario for a motion-picture drama." 

 Hence it is, I presume, that this work has here and there something 

 theatrical and unreal. It has, for instance, a curious effect on a 

 reader versed in things Indian to listen to the declamatory rhetoric 



