A Musical Aborigine.
Thetrain from the East, bearing a long string of loaded coaches, had stopped at Wallula for dinner and amid the din of the sounding gong in the hand of a burly negro, the passengers alighted to partake of the Willis’ bill of fare. This was an important hour in the day for the little band of Umatilla Indians who gathered around the station to sell their curios to the tenderfoot passenger.
The captain of these remnants of a once mighty nation was Hawkeye, a fine specimen of the Indian genus homo. Hawkeye leaned on the corner of the station dressed in a becoming Indian garb, looking every inch a warrior.
Some of the passengers were walking up and down the platform, among them being a man from Boston accompanied by his 19-year-old daughter, who was a most enthusiastic observer of the country they were passing through and the people whom they met.
Hawkeye soon took her notice, and after scanning him critically, she cried out, “Oh, see, papa, the noble redman of the woods. How grand he does look! What nobility is expressed in his countenance and what grandeur there is in his mein. What a life of adventure has been his and how, if he could but talk, how he could tell us of the enemies he slew in battle and how he chased the grizzly bear to his den and the panther to his lair.”
The Indian was taking in all this flowery oratory, and expectorating a huge mouthful of tobacco juice, he ejaculated, “Ugh, if white squaw give Hawkeye four bits, Hawkeye will sing ‘Everybody’s Doing It.’”