370 ON THE FEONTIEE. 



should die facing his enemies ; but if that cannot be, 

 then he must be killed. To-night, when all are asleep, 

 his own tomahawk will send him home. Are not the 

 women singing the death-song of the brave ? None will 

 know the hand that held the weapon. His youngest wife 

 will be watching by her chief, but she will never say. In 

 the morning all his arms and possessions will be laid by 

 him ; food and water for his journey ; dry wood be piled 

 around his wickee-up, and set on fire ; we shall go hence, 

 and no Indian will camp here again for ever I " 



Here was a custom that was quite new to me; so I 

 made further inquiries, thinking I might have happened on 

 an exceptional case, but it was not so. I ascertained the 

 custom in question was one of the oldest and most impe- 

 rative of all the tribal regulations of the Apache- Yumayas, 

 that it was a privilege that belonged of right to the dignity 

 of chiefship. 



The successful termination to the efforts made to bring 

 the Apache-Yumayas on a reservation may incline the 

 reader to suspect that during the course of the preliminary 

 incidents we had needlessly troubled ourselves with fears 

 and precautions ; had, in fact, done those Indians injustice 

 in thought, and disquieted ourselves and others in vain, by 

 our doubts of their bona fides. But it must be kept in 

 view that the savage mind is not as the civilised ; that the 

 American indigene, with all his cunning and finesse, is as 

 liable as a child to sudden, apparently irresistible impulses ; 

 which, however, are very different from a child's in then- 

 intensity and force. Savagery is civilisation's childhood. 

 To the wild, unregulated mind of a savage, a tempt a- 



