you tell him about?"
"I tell him the world is round, but he keep all e'time say, Hush, you
fool! do you spose I'ze child? Haven't I got eyes? Can't I see the
prairie? You call him round? He say, too, maybe so I tell you something
you not know before. One time my grandfather he make long journey that
way (pointing to the west). When he get on big mountain, he seen heap
water on t'other side, jest so flat he can be, and he seen the sun go
right straight down on t'other side. I then tell him all these rivers
he seen, all e'time the water he run; s'pose the world flat the water
he stand still. Maybe so he not b'lieve me?"
I told him it certainly looked very much like it. I then asked him to
explain to the Comanche the magnetic telegraph. He looked at me
earnestly, and said,
"What you call that magnetic telegraph?"
I said, "you have heard of New York and New Orleans?"
"Oh yes," he replied.
"Very well; we have a wire connecting these two cities, which are about
a thousand miles apart, and it would take a man thirty days to ride it
upon a good horse. Now a man stands at one end of this wire in New
York, and by touching it a few times he inquires of his friend in New
Orleans what he had for breakfast. His friend in New Orleans touches
the other end of the wire, and in ten minutes the answer comes
back--ham and eggs. Tell him that, Beaver."
His countenance assumed a most comical expression, but he made no
remark until I again requested him to repeat what I had said to the
Comanche, when he observed,
"No, captain, I not tell him that, for I don't b'lieve that myself."
Upon my assuring him that such was the fact, and that I had seen it
myself, he said,
"Injun not very smart; sometimes he's big fool, but he holler pretty
loud; you hear him maybe half a mile; you say 'Merican man he talk
thousand miles. I 'spect you try to fool me now, captain; _maybe so
you lie_."
The Indians living between the outer white settlements and the nomadic
tribes of the Plains form intermediate social links in the chain of
civilization.
The first of these occupy permanent habitations, but the others,
although they cultivate the soil, are only resident while their crops
are growing, going out into the prairies after harvest to spend the
winter in hunting. Among the former may be mentioned the Cherokees,
Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, and of the latter are the Delawares,
Shawnees, Kickapoos, etc., who are perfectly familiar
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