The Way of an Indian

Way of an Indian, The

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Title: The Way of an Indian
Author: Written and Illustrated by Frederic Remington
Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7857] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 26, 2003]

Edition: 10
Language: English
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Produced by Eric Eldred

THE WAY OF AN INDIAN
Written and Illustrated by
FREDERIC REMINGTON
First published, February, 1906

Contents
I White Otter's Own Shadow
II The Brown Bat Proves Itself
III The Bat Devises Mischief Among the Yellow-Eyes
IV The New Lodge
V The Kites and the Crows
VI The Fire-Eater's Bad Medicine
VII Among the Pony-Soldiers

VIII The Medicine Fight of the Chis-Chis-Chash

I
White Otter's Own Shadow
White Otter's heart was bad. He sat alone on the rim-rocks of the bluffs
overlooking the sunlit valley. To an unaccustomed eye from below he
might have been a part of nature's freaks among the sand rocks. The
yellow grass sloped away from his feet mile after mile to the timber,
and beyond that to the prismatic mountains. The variegated lodges of
the Chis-chis-chash village dotted the plain near the sparse woods of
the creek-bottom; pony herds stood quietly waving their tails against
the flies or were driven hither and yon by the herdboys--giving variety
to the tremendous sweep of the Western landscape.
This was a day of peace--such as comes only to the Indians in contrast
to the fierce troubles which nature stores up for the other intervals. The
enemy, the pinch of the shivering famine, and the Bad Gods were
absent, for none of these things care to show themselves in the white
light of a midsummer's day. There was peace with all the world except
with him. He was in a fierce dejection over the things which had come
to him, or those which had passed him by. He was a boy--a
fine-looking, skillfully modeled youth--as beautiful a thing, doubtless,
as God ever created in His sense of form; better than his sisters, better
than the four-foots, or the fishes, or the birds, and he meant so much
more than the inanimate things, in so far as we can see. He had the
body given to him and he wanted to keep it, but there were the
mysterious demons of the darkness, the wind and the flames; there
were the monsters from the shadows, and from under the waters; there
were the machinations of his enemies, which he was not proof against
alone, and there was yet the strong hand of the Good God, which had
not been offered as yet to help him on with the simple things of life; the
women, the beasts of the fields, the ponies and the war-bands. He could
not even protect his own shadow, which was his other and higher self.

His eyes dropped on the grass in front of his moccasins--tiny dried
blades of yellow grass, and underneath them he saw the dark traceries
of their shadows. Each had its own little shadow--its soul--its
changeable thing--its other life--just as he himself was cut blue-black
beside himself on the sandstone. There were millions of these
grass-blades, and each one shivered in the wind, maundering to itself in
the chorus, which made the prairie sigh, and all for fear of a big brown
buffalo wandering by, which would bite them from the earth and
destroy them.
White Otter's people had been strong warriors in the Chis-chis-chash;
his father's shirt and leggins were black at the seams with the hair of
other tribes. He, too, had stolen ponies, but had done no better than that
thus far, while he burned to keep the wolf-totem red with honor. Only
last night, a few of his boy companions,