40 HOW THE TAMELESS IS TAMED. 



morning, the object of very particular attention. I 

 think it wift interest my readers if I relate to them 

 here the means which the Redskins employed to tame 

 them. In the first place, they fasten to the horse's 

 back a light load of two pieces of wood, with the view 

 of teaching him a lesson of servitude. The haughty 

 independence of the animal is immediately aroused ; but, 

 after an unequal conflict, in which the Indian supplied 

 the place of strength by cunning, the poor horse was 

 compelled to feel the iiiutility of further resistance, and, 

 throwing himself on the ground, mutely acknowledged 

 his defeat. An actor on the stage, portraying the despair 

 of a vanquished prince, could not have performed his 

 part with more dramatic vigour. 



The second lesson consists in forcing the animal to rise 

 by the pressure of the bit. At first he hesitates to 

 obey ; he lies full length on the ground ; but under the 

 combined influence of bit and whip, he neighs, he leaps to 

 his feet, and bends his head between his two fore-legs. 

 He is then completely subdued ; and, after undergoing for 

 two or three days successively these humiliations of slav- 

 ery, is turned out at liberty among his tamed congeners. 



I cannot but compassionate the magnificent animals 

 thus trained by the Pawnees, and whose free wild life 

 has been transformed into a miserable servitude. Instead 

 of traversing at will the vast and almost boundless pas- 

 turages of the West, speeding from prairie to prairie, 

 descending from the hill into the plain, cropping the 

 flowers and grasses, quenching their thirst in the running 

 brooks, they are condemned to a perpetual slavery, to the 

 bondage of the yoke, to a life of hardship, and a wretched 

 death. 



