The Fitzgerald leader. (Fitzgerald, Irwin County, Ga.) 19??-1912, December 02, 1897, Image 2

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• j | The Noble Red Man | # In His Western Home. How He Gets a Homestead From Uncle Sam, His - Dignified Mode of Life, His Sports and Pastimes. When I was allotting lands to In¬ dians in North Dakota I lived iu tents out on the Fort Barthold reservation about a hundred miles from a railroad or a civilized settlement. With me was a surveying corps in¬ cluding several Indians and an Irish¬ man, a German, a Spaniard and a mem¬ ber of one of the first families of Vir¬ ginia. We joyonsly entertained any¬ body who chanced to come by our way without regard to his present or pre¬ vious condition. One day a boastful stranger hauled up, with hungry look, in front of our dining tent and without so much as “good morning” for a preface, sprang off his horse and remarked: “A big syndicate is paying me $5 a day and expenses to sell land—no dif¬ ference what I get for it or whether I sell it at all or not.” He seemed about to follow this an¬ nouncement of his importance by ask¬ ing the price of a ‘bite’ when I re¬ plied: “Picket your bronco and sit down to a feast. This surveyingerowd con¬ trols all the country. I am working for a bigger syndicate than you are and it pays me bigger wages than you get just to give land away.” The invitation needed no repetition, but the statement that I was being paid to give land away required con¬ siderable explanation to the visitor. And the explanation may not be with¬ out interest to you. The Indians, you know, were long accustomed to have everything in com¬ mon: to graze their ponies on the } v£ W ffl . m &!!y."w/ l '''fiill \v ■ mm 1! * \ •' tiSi l\\j IUh ( h I, 'l > 0 i® - - LONG BULL IN HIS BE ORIENTALS. common plains; to get their wood from the common forests; to stack their tents where they pleased; to hunt or work and appropriate the com¬ mon reserve as freely as the fish use the sea. This was their old time and natural way of doing things. It violates every principle of the rights of property and was correspondingly conducive to savagery. It is the desire of the Government to get them entirely out of this state and to make them citizens. One of the means to this end is to divide up the reservations that they have held in common and to allot the lands in severalty. That is, to give each Indian a homestead, mark it off by distinct boundary lines, require him to build a house on it, teach him to cultivate it, and in various ways help him along until he is able to support himself and his family upon it. Of course the Indians have to be suffi¬ ciently advanced to be willing to do this before it can be done with auy degree of success. A jyirtion of land is allot¬ ted to every man, woman and child. When the child grows up, instead of finding the land around belonging to 4 I % 1 7 $ 1 i i u 1 1 7 IV " I W' - v THE PRIDE OF THE CAMP. everybody and nobody, he finds a distinctive tradt all his own. He is thereby taught the law of inheritance. The desire at onoes comes to him to leave to his children an inheritance at least as good as that which was left to him. He sees other Indians all around him cultivating their farms and earning for themselves the com¬ forts of life. A healthful rivalry is thus established aud ambition pre¬ viously unfelt is fostered. The Dawes bill, under which allot¬ ments are made, provides that tho In¬ dian shall beoome a citizen with all the rights thereunto appertaining within six months alter he has taken his allotment and severed his tribal relations. It provides also that the Government shall keep the Indian’s allotment in trust for him for twenty- five years. Then he is allowed to do . . ... .. wil\*he T . ■ that A bv An b AWsinth ahhs to ^Ai wAfnw i n tlnn aintmaA fnf hll «t 11 At after ? * an * a! the averawe A In t give ™ a hundred 1 1 1 e and A sixty acres „ temnted AAand of la for a week s rations. The next step after dividing out the lands and placing each Indian under lire own vine and ti g tree is to build a , / □I hi \\ WMlWmf 'Wl's ny 11 ) j.v.w THE HOMES OF THE HOHSKIS. school , , house, equip . it well, „ put . good conscientious teachers m charge of it, require every Indian of school age to attend it, and thus push on the work of civilizing the Indians right in the heart of the reservation. Ihe Indian school question has for some years en- gaged more than auy other the thought of those interested m Indian work. And “the Schools to the Reservations” was the policy of the last admiiiistra- tion, and will, I presume, remain the policy of the present administration. The Fort Barthold reservation is on sides of the Missouri River in the northern part of North Dakota. It contains about a million and a quarter acres and is as far from civilization’s haunts as any similiar-sized piece of ground outside of Africa. The nearest railroad train passes by nearly a hun¬ dred miles away. The nearest tele¬ graph instrument ticks at the same dis- tanae. The agency employs a few white men who have married squaws, and a missionary or two are the only whites on the reservation. There are three tribes on this reser- vation, the Gros Yentres, the Mandans and the Arickarees., j There is a sub¬ tribe of Gros Yentres known as the band of Crow Flies High. They long ago out loose from all other Indians. They had to be brought with troops from their mountain fastnessess down to the reservation. They call them¬ selves “Hosbkis” (huskies), which means “bad lands.” They still refuse to affiliate with any other tribe. It was to this unreconstructed band that I had to make allotments. Crow Flies High had been deposed as chief and Long Bull put in his place. Old Grow now calls himself Chief Medicine man. He still has great influence and is said to use all of it for the bad. The Indian chiefs are great sticklers for dignity. Crow Flies High has a superabundance. The first time his band came down to have a council with me he assumed marslialship of them although Lo^g Bull, dressed in full regimentals, was spokesman. They halted their horses and wagons within a few hundred yards of my camp and sent me word that they were ready for the conference. I replied that I was at my ‘ ‘tepee” and would be verypleased to receive them. Crow insisted that I should come to him and it was only after an hour or two’s parleying that he consented for his band to come to me. I was not afflicted with Crow’s spirit of dignity,|bat I knew that if the game was opened by my going to him, I would never get one of his band to. take au allotment without go¬ ing for him with a horse and buggy and giving him his dinner to come. Most of these “Hoshkis” are hun¬ ters, fishers, warriors, sports. They are gffeat jumpers; runners, boxers, wrestlers. „ They have a supreme and loftly contempt for an Indian who will spond his time working “just like a white man.” They believe in the sov¬ ereignity of leisure. Wherever a crowd of them meet, they test their strength in manly exercise. Whenever their horses come together their mettle is tested in a race. They are brave, bright, strong. They have their ten¬ der qualities, however, and the two little girls that they brought out from their tepee homes to show me as the ‘pride of the camp’—the only two chil- dren in the band that had been sent off to school—were as-gentle and pretty as Indian girls should be. . I induced them to decide to be “good Indians,” and there is hope in their future. They had heretofore refused to take allotments. They signified their will- ingness to me, but they were very slow to put it into execution. When one came for his allotment, frequently, he talked about this way; “What can I get?” He was given a great variety of laud to select from. “I want none of that >” 8aid he - “ lB tbere an y special pieoe that I can’t have ?” He was told of the P° rtion8 a l r0ad y allotted or re- aeryed - “Then,” he would cry trium- plmntly, “I want that or nothing!" and the allottiu 8 a S ent had a real nice time ohan » in K this notion. The average Indian’s god is his dm- ner. In influence with him the “Great Spirit ” doe9 not play even a poor sec- ond Yon may fail to get him to agree t 0 anything else, but if you will invite him to a meal he will foresake all things and come with you. Then you have at least a fair opportunity to rea¬ son with him and drill your persuasive powers. When an Indian who means busi- ness—and there are many such—is to select au allottment, he gets his pony, rides over the laud, decides upon the neighborhood in which he desires to live and then picks out the special tract that he wants with a view to its ■water supply, its nearness to wood or coal mines, its meadows, its plow ground and all of its conveniences. His decision once made stands, and it usually good. Too frequently, how- everj be selects a piece of land that isn * t good fol . a tlling iu the wide, wide wor ld. After the allotting agent tried in vain to induce him to select a j, e tter, he always comes to Mark Swain’s conclusion that “if he wants that kind of a thing, that’s just the kind of a thing he wants.”—Claude N. Bennett, in Atlanta Journal. A HORSESHOE RACK. Making: the Best of Thing’s In the Moun¬ tains of West Vii*glnia, In the mountains of West Virginia, where there is little money to spare for the small things of life, are to be seen, says the New York Tribune, many evidences of making the best of things. Tin cans, traditional diqt of goats about Hew York, are here made into hanging baskets. They ai^ cut into strips lengthwise, fastened in po¬ sition by wire and the whole is lined with a moss to prevent the escape of the earth. New uses are also found for the old n h_ I A HOKSESHOE BACK. horseshoes. Instead of having holes in. posts to hold the ends of the mova- bars of the fences, or the more awkward double posts, with cross¬ pieces of wood joining them and hold- the bars, One thrifty man has nailed horseshoes to the posts and rests the bars on them. An idea of 77L* I (i TH * ■J [ill- Ci l\ fed (■ mi f. A.' 3 i i - -fey SIZE. THE BIG KLONDIKE NUGGET—ACTUAL this and a further suggestion is given in the illustration. The old shoes are nailed upon the side of the oottage and hold the “alpenstocks” of chestnut and pine used in mountain climbs. Beneath the sticks is a “sand table,” which nffordj endless amusomeut to the little children on rainy days, ‘THE IrtlSH JOAN OF ARC.” Interesting’ Young: Woman With a Mis¬ sion Now In This Countrj". Miss Maud Gonne, who has come to America in tho interest of the Irish cause, is one of the most interesting young women that ever came to these shores, ner life has been one of love 0 f oountry, the poor people of her country and romance. She now liveB in France, where she edits « newspaper devoted to war for justice to Erin and where the imaginative Frouohmen h ave given her the title of tho “Joan 0 f Arc of Ireland.” She is a convert to Irish nationalism from the camp of the Unionists, and she declared upon reaching America that there was but 0 ue object iu life for her—the rights of the commoners of her native country, Miss Gonne is the daughter of Colonel i V) m V y y If ■ J ft-' t '-W' - V / ■ MV w j. - 4 MISS MAUD GONXE. Gonne, who was an attache of tho English embassy in St. Petersburg. Sbe was reared in the society which would accompany such a position, but as a young girl the stories of the life of O’Connell, the Liberator, came un¬ der her attention, and at the age of nineteen years she had resolved to de¬ vote her energy and years to the cause which had been his. She has been in active battle for eleven years, has worked among the lowly fin London and tho dungeons and organized many societies for the improvement of tho Irish peasantry. Sugar From Potatoes. An extensive economical revolution is in sight, if the claims of Dr. Prinzen Geerlings turn ont to be what the doc¬ tor asserts they are. Dr. Geerlings, a Government official of Java and form¬ erly Professor of chemistry at the Uni¬ versity of Amsterdam announces tho discovery of a simple method of con¬ verting potato starch into sugar. He has lodged his description of the method with the French Academy of Science, so as to secure priority for his invention, although he is not quite ready to make the details public. GOLD NUG GET WO RTH $583. It Weighs Thirty-Four Ounces and Was Found in the Klondike Gold Fields* Michael Knutsen is one of the few miners who have come out of 'the Klondike region with a sack, His chief distinction among the miners rests in his being the possessor of the largest nugget yet found in that dis¬ trict—a solid chunk of gold that weighs, according to Dawson City quotations, nearly $600. Knutsen’s nngget weighs a fraction over thirty-four ounces Troy, -and came into his possession two days be¬ fore he got out of the land where famine stalks. This nngget is somewhat irregular in shape, but very solid. It is light yellow in color, and nearly four inches in length in its largest part and about three inches in width. It . was weighed aud found to he worth ex¬ actly $583.2§,. . . Qgaytpaaa % STV'N X z Vi .1 Si : m m 'y £ ■ BB8 8CS38B rj ' * - -1 TT TriTrn V Ice For Dairy Purpose#, It is not alone for crea uieries that ice is important and necessary, The farmer’s wife who sets her milk in pans the old-fashioned w.»y cannot do her butter justice unless she has an ice house to go to for ice tto keep her butter firm in hot weather. Hhe is usually obliged to adopt such make¬ shifts in as hanging her butter suspended a pail in the well or putting it in the cellar, which, though cool enough, is often too filled with odors to be a proper receptacle of butter,—Boston Cultivator. Cleaning the rouUry-IIousev There is much less consideration given the roosts and uests than any other portion of the poultry-house. With the desire to save labor the roosts are nailed to the walls and the nests are fastened in jilace so as to become a part of the building itself, the conse¬ quence being that it is impossible to thoroughly clean the poultry-house and rid it of vermin; for as long as there is a crack in which a louse can hide there will be liability of rapid in¬ crease of the pests, a single female laying enough eggs in a day to furnish the foundation for a million in a week. Every roost should be level, that is, all the i-oosts should be the same height, and should be so constructed as to permit of being carried outside to be cleansed. The nests should not be joined, but separate,. soap-boxes being excellent, open at the ends, so as to compel the hens to walk in rather than fly upon the nests from the top. If the roosts and nests are taken out¬ side they should be lightly brushed with kerosene and a lighted match ap¬ plied. The fire will run over the sur¬ face without doing any harm. The roosts should be treated in the same manner. If properly constructed the roosts and nests can be 'taken out and replaced iu a few moments, leaving an empty poultry-house, which can be easily cleaned. —Farm and Fireside. Ttaisins: Seeillinji Apple Trees. The best seed is usually that from au ungrafted tree, though if it stands near or the branches cross with some good grafted variety, a part of the seed may result in new varieties, some of which may prove worthy of cultiva¬ tion when allowed to bear fruit. But most people only grow seedlings as nursery stock to graft with known varieties. To do this, take the seed as soon as it comes from the apple, as a very little drying prevents it from germinating quickly and results in a feeble growth, while a little more dry¬ ing kills the germ entirely. If the ground is not open or ready for sow¬ ing the seed, bury them in dry sand and place where they will not dry up, | Vet avoid the other extreme of allow- ing the sand to gather moisture enough to sprout the seeds. Select a piece of light, sandy soil and sow the seed in drills.. Keep the land mulched and water if necessary, as the hot summer sun may kill many plants if this is not done. When the trees are as large around as lead pen- cils transplant to about two feet apart or more, and allow them to grow until large enough to, graft,. This may be done when a half inch in diameter, but most orchard,* s would prefer a larger size than that. In transplau - ing it is desirable to remove to a bet- ter soil, but when they are moved after grafting the soil should not be too rich at first, or the growth of the graft ifiay be more rapid than that of the stock, and a weakness result at the point of union. The same rules are- applicable to growing all seedling trees, but the seeds of stone fruits,, like the peach av.d plum, do- not lose their germinat- ing power quite as quickly by drying up as do those of the apple and pear, - The ■Woman’s, Horse. If there is anything that gives me a severe attack of “that tired feeling” and drains my cup of sympathy to the dregs, it is the farmer’s wife who is al¬ ways telling that she can’t go anywhere because she has no horse to drive. From the frequency of the remark I’ve almost concluded that these women comprise three-fourths of the popula¬ tion of Michigan. > Two- of my greatest objections to farm life are the abominably early hours at which the average farmer gets up- in the morning, and the wretched horses that he often owns. I really don’t know which is the more entitled to commiseration—the wo¬ man who *has no driving horse at all or the one who is com¬ pelled to drive an old plug of an equine that cannot set a pace higher thau three miles an hour. One drove by just a few minutes ago, and she is the direct cause of this arti¬ cle. Shewasvpretty and stylish, but I’m willing to make affidavit before any judge in the State that the horse over which she held the ribbons has a ringbone, a spavin, a severe case of heaves and is blind in one eye. Her look and the way she used the whip, plainly said she was in a hurry. The look and action ofltlie horse said also that he was not in a hurry, In a eou- test between the two I’ll stake my wager on thehorse, I watched them over the hill and ovt of sight and fell to counting up ho% many of her type I knew. The list is appalling. To be sure there are many women too timid to drive a horse with any “life,” but there are also many perfectly competent to manage a spirited animal if only they .had a chance to try. There was much excuse for the “man in the case,” when horses were valued in the hundreds, but at present prioes it seems as if every family might own one just for the “wimrnen folks;” one that ean be always availa- bl a for shopping or visiting, and one that the children may' safely handle. It needs a reliable, good-tempered steed for such an all-around use, but such animals can be found, and they are not necessarily old, broken-down plow horses. It costs just as muchj'o keep a homely,, disreputable sag as one in which the owner can true some pride. Brown Bess, my osrn driving horse, est of is a family friend end the grcall auf| pets. We are all proud fond of Jher, and should' any accideim befall her I fancy thsy’d be as much grieving as thoughone of the family was injured. The average nan likes to own a horse that he knows no woman can control. Not i very high ambition, still one that Do sensible woman will object to if ony she be allowed a prej sentable stee<, of her own. That sen; of ownership i How much it mei Bicycles and horseless carriages rival horseflesh, but they can lie* ing supplant the ribbom it. There is a joy mettlesoi^B in ho^B over a steed that no mere uacliinery can comlH evfl inspire. There is a thrill that witl|M when your pet measures speed the keeu “other pleasures fellow's” of life. that is one of tlJ| 48 So, my sisters, persuadej“3 Once^B keep a horse for your use. und^J realize the pleasure of pride ership ing you’ll in a horse l>e that ooutcut is worth^^B witqj^^H never one. Learn to harness and care fov^H yourself. It’s a very easy thing to a few lessons will make you proficient, and by so doing you will learu the lit¬ tle peculiarities of disposition that are as common to horseflesh as to men and women. Horses are quick to know and love their master, and by this personal contact you will win an affec¬ tion that is worth having.—Detroit Free Press. Farm and Garden Note». When the fowls are restless and con¬ stantly picking their feathers they are infested with vermin. When the manure is hard and a por¬ tion is white it indicates a healthy con¬ dition of the digestive organs. When the edge of the comb and wat¬ tles are of a purplish red and the move¬ ments sluggish there is something wrong. In working two horses harnessed to¬ gether, care could be taken to have them as nearly matched,as to strength, as possible. As a remedy for roup in its first stages try burning tar and turpentine in the poultry house after the fowls have gone to roost, A white calceolaria is one of the.new floral acquisitions. It is a native of Chili and makes a beautiful plant fon* the window garden, Some white varieties of corn arebet- ter than the yellow and some yellow varieties better than the white. Color has little to do with quality, Timber tkat is p i ace d iu or upon | the ^ a ahould flrgt be thoroug lly sea . ag y, win tben laat murfl longei than if t ia ' wben us e A . farmer „ #_ does ot . have to skl11 n a 8 , ^ ee P io get , , *“ , e average m° lle y lender in dealing with farmers does not treat them thus humanely, Sunflower seed is an excellent food for fowls and can be raised cheaper than corn. It is fattening and the fowls a bright, lustrous plumage. When young poultry, especially ducklings, appear to have a sore throat and swallowing is difficult, it is the, symptom of the large gray lice on the, neck If in need of some cheap power-for pumping, churning, shelling corn-,, making cider, etc., get a good wind¬ mill and utilize a few of the thousands horsepower going to waste all around you. Fowls which are fed and cared'for regularly will thrive much better on the same food than another flock w^iieh is fed irregularly as to both time- and quantity. They will lay much better and will be more free from disease. Speaking of cows, a contemporary tells of one that in “ten months” gave ’ up “8075 pounds of milk,” yielding “432 pounds of butter,” a fact which speaks volumes in, favor of thoroughbreds as j [compared, with scrubs. According to experiments; made, it has been found that as between cot¬ tonseed meal and linseed; meal the former is superior for feeding farm an¬ imals, bust the difference, between these cattle foods is not of special im¬ portance.. As a rule, says Gardening, all her¬ baceous plants should be cut down to within a few inches of the ground be-, af-j fore taking them up late id the fall ter frost has destroyed their foliage. planted This is as in true the of those ground that are of traus-j those open as that are housed during the winter. An old-fashioned is flower, commonly very seldonj kncijyj seen now, one onoe as Blackberry Lily, It has flow] ra small, bright orange, lily-like that are “spotted like a pard,” not! the seeds when ripe resemble so much as a big ripe blackberry, is this which gives the plant its c son name.