Dec. xi, 1909.] 
929 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
fortune to be present at what was practically 
the last of these drives. The winter began early 
that year and the season was a particularly hard 
one. Even along the river where the snow 
hardly ever falls the snow lay deep on the 
ground. The canon sides were many inches 
deep with snow and the deer left the higher 
ridges and came down into the breaks for food. 
This occurred before Christmas, and when the 
holidays were over, the Indians decided upon 
a drive. This drive took place in a locality 
where a box canon opens upon a broad timbered 
flat of several acres in extent. 
My own personal larder was well supplied 
through the instrumentality of my high power 
rifle, but the Indians with their inferior weapons 
were not so fortunate; in fact, many of them 
were in want, for, with usual Indian improvi¬ 
dence, they had made no provision for the win¬ 
ter. On the morning set for the drive the camp 
was astir long before daybreak. It was several 
miles to the box canon and the men with the 
guns, of which I was one, were supposed to be 
at their stations overlooking the canon sides be¬ 
fore the day had well begun. The other male 
members of the tribe were told off as drivers 
and scattered in several directions over a great 
extent of territory covering the immediate 
vicinity of the flat before mentioned which was 
the center. The women followed later with the 
horses and skinning knives. The deer, disturbed 
in their early morning feeding, moved toward 
the point of least resistance, many of them con¬ 
tinuing to feed as they went, so little disturbed 
were they. The drivers remained out of sight 
and did nothing to alarm them into breaking 
through and back. Deer are in this respect very 
much like sheep. If not hurried they will slowly 
move along and can be directed according to 
the drivers’ wishes. Of course I refer to deer 
under the conditions as they were there, and 
not deer in a scattered state. 
By midforenoon the flat was covered with 
deer. The drivers were becoming more reck¬ 
less in exposing themselves, waving red blankets, 
knocking on the trees with sticks and even shout¬ 
ing. The deer moved restlessly about, and now 
and then one attempted to break through the 
line of men, but was deterred by a waving 
blanket. There was but one opening for them 
and they took it, little knowing that it was a 
cul-de-sac prepared for a slaughter pen. Once 
in the box canon a cordon of men was stretched 
across the open end. Many of the penned ani¬ 
mals attempted to scale the almost perpendicular 
rocky heights, only to be driven back by men 
running along the crest. At a signal the slaugh¬ 
ter began. Whenever a buck, doe or fawn ap- 
. peared, for an instant it became the target for 
■a dozen rifles. Ere long the crack of the rifles 
was continuous, like a battle. Deer were fall¬ 
ing all around. It was not hunting—merely 
slaughter. Not an animal was allowed to es¬ 
cape. The wounded ones crawled off in the 
undergrowth, but were hunted out and killed. 
There was only one redeeming feature about 
the whole thing: nothing was allowed to go to 
waste. The Indians hunted for meat and hides 
and when a deer was killed there was nothing 
left after they were through, but a little heap 
of hair and possibly a few bones. Every en- 
trail was utilized. This was quite in contrast 
with a gang of game butchers who came into 
that country from civilization a few months 
later, camped at a great spring on the hillside, 
slaughtered deer and skinned out the saddles 
and hams until they had loaded a four-horse 
sled, rolled the carcasses into the stream until 
they dammed its waters, and then made their 
escape back to the heathendom from whence 
they had come. 
We lived close to nature in those days, and 
I have often felt a keen regret that the wise 
Government ever conceived the notion that it 
was best to educate and civilize the Sahaptin. 
Theoretically it was right of course, but prac¬ 
tically it was the greatest wrong that could be 
imposed upon the savage. The Indians who can 
adopt the mode of life of the white man are 
but a handful to the great number who sink 
beneath its blighting influence. 
I have had this forcibly impressed upon me 
a number of times, but never more so than 
when, one day an Indian in full savage panoply 
rode up to the door, and in his own language 
requested me to go and visit his sick child. He 
was a new arrival in the country and I did not 
know him. A ride of several miles brought us 
to his allotment. I entered the tepee while he 
was taking care of the horses and found a very 
sick child lying upon a bed of blankets, the 
mother kneeling beside it fanning away the flies 
with a willow branch. Imagine my surprise 
when she turned to me and in a well modulated 
voice said, “Doctor, I fear that our baby is very 
ill.” She then entered with me into a full dis¬ 
cussion of the case and gave me a far better 
history than many white mothers could have 
done. She listened to my instructions and 
showed an intelligent appreciation of the situa¬ 
tion. After I had completed the professional 
part of my visit I questioned her regarding her¬ 
self. She had been educated at Government ex¬ 
pense, had met and married her husband while 
both were attending college, and after their 
graduation had returned to the reservation. 
Seeing no opportunity to utilize the education 
with which they had been supplied, and the 
Government making no opportunity for them, 
they gradually drifted back into _semi-savagery. 
On our return—it was necessary for him to 
return to the office with me for medicines—I 
took him to task for reverting to his aboriginal 
condition when he had such an opportunity for 
doing good to his people. He smiled and re¬ 
plied: “You think it strange that I should re¬ 
turn to the ways of my fathers after the good 
kind Government has lavished upon me a fine 
education, but you must bear in mind, doctor, 
that I never desired or requested the Govern¬ 
ment to take me away from my people and edu¬ 
cate me. Practically I was taken from my 
parents by force, as wild as a young coyote, 
and virtually imprisoned during, all the years of 
my schooling. After I returned from college 
the same Government that had rendered me un¬ 
fit for the life God intended me to live made 
no effort to find a place for me in the life it 
had expended hundreds of dollars fitting me for. 
In substance they said to me, ‘Go back and show 
your people the way to live,’ never realizing 
that it would be impossible for them to follow, 
even if I did point them the way. When I be¬ 
came fully cognizant of my condition I lost no 
time in getting back to that condition where I 
could live my life untrammeled by the restraints 
of what you are pleased to call civilization.” 
Who can say that he was not right? I cannot. 
The most striking and pitiful reversion to type 
that ever came under my observation was that 
of a young woman who had been educated by 
the Catholic sisterhood. After her graduation 
she had been employed in the same school as a 
teacher for several years. Tuberculosis, that 
scourge of the savage races, claimed her and 
she came home in the hope that the mountain 
air would effect a cure. Her parents were un¬ 
educated, but had learned enough thrift from 
the teaching of the Catholic missionaries to build 
themselves a house. It is true that they still 
lived in a tepee and kept the house only for 
show purposes, but when the daughter returned 
she fitted up one of the rooms for her own use. 
Upon my first professional visit I met her in 
this room. It was arranged in faultless taste 
and the fittings were spotless in their purity. 
Her own garments were perfect and spotless as 
well. There was not one trace of the tawdry 
finery so dear to the savage heart. Her language 
was perfect and her voice had nothing of the 
Indian guttural. We discussed her malady and 
she showed an intelligent appreciation of the 
subject, speaking of many things in connection 
therewith that were even new to me, isolated as 
I had been from the centers of medical thought. 
She knew that her cure must come from the 
great laboratory of nature and not from the 
bottles of the chemist’s shop. Our conversa¬ 
tion turned upon many things, happenings in 
the great outside world, books and authors, 
politics and things of which I knew nothing. 
Her conversation would have graced a drawing 
room of literary people. 
I visited her frequently during the time she 
remained under my care. During the summer 
she was able to be much out of doors, but with 
the autumn and the rains she was forced to re¬ 
main indoors. This aggravated her malady and 
before spring returned and dressed the earth in 
new green again, she was confined to her room. 
About this time I detected a gradual letting go 
of the little refinements of civilization. The 
room was less tidy, her hair was at times un¬ 
kempt, her language began to suffer change and 
an Indian word would creep in occasionally. 
By midsummer she had to all intents become an 
Indian again. The neat dresses were! discarded 
for the calico slip, the bedding was never 
changed, her conversation was now practically 
all in Sahaptin. It was impossible to induce her 
to speak in English. When she finally died it 
was as an Indian in a tepee in the yard on a 
bed of Indian blankets, 'surrounded by all the 
squalor of the real savage. 
It is not my intention to decry the Christian¬ 
izing of the Indian, but it is a curious fact that 
as you inoculate the savage with the theology 
of the white man you increase his fear of death. 
I have never seen a true savage who expressed 
the slightest concern at approaching the dark 
portal. Instinctively he looks upon the dissolu¬ 
tion as a purely physiological process in no wise 
to be feared. The savage seeks to protect his 
life much as an animal seeks to protect his, 
being possessed of the same instinct of self 
preservation and obeying it in the same way. 
When death becomes inevitable he views the 
approach with equanimity. When ill, he may 
employ the white man’s medicine man, but when 
in extremis he turns to his tu-at. This is 
equally true of the Christian Indian. His Chris¬ 
tian teaching is all right while he is in good 
