[Idah Meacham Strobridge, The Transformation of Camp McGary, from The Land of Purple Shadows (1909)]

 

THE TRANSFORMATION OF CAMP McGARY.

          UNJUST, because untrue, is the implication: "As dirty as an Indian!" How often ones hears this expression used by white Americans who travel in cars through Indian-land! Aye, and how often (although knowing better than to be such a sheep) have I, myself, made use of it! When you, or I, have said it, we referred to the bodily uncleanliness of our brothers, the First Americans. As to the dirt of the camp itself—the hogans, the wickiups, the teepees, are mostly, I grant you, dirty. It is dirt without any disguises; but wholesome and healthy in raising large families, if one is to base one's belief upon the living statement made by the fat, roly-poly bits of bronze that tumble about the place playing with the puppies, and emitting such gurgles of laughter that your own heart is set singing at the sound.

          We who are chiseled out of white marble do not take kindly to the lack of perfect cleanliness we sometimes find in our brother who is cast in bronze; but as it is mostly the dirt which can be cleansed with a bucket of water, or removed by a broom, let us try to forgive him. It might easily be worse—but it isn't. As to himself, Lo keeps his own body clean by way of a bathtub as thorough in its methods as your own.

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          Come with me. Let me take you with me across valley and plain—riding long hours, with the wind in your face and the love of life in your heart—away and away o'er the open road, to the range of mountains where, by the edge of the lake with its lava rim, lies old Camp McGary. Incidentally, I will tell you of Indians and show you their bath houses. It may be that you will say (when I have done) that I have told you how Lo bathes, and have but casually mentioned the old fort which was abandoned by our soldiers years upon years ago. Whichever way it may seem to you is immaterial. At least, let me prove that Lo in general, and Paiute Lo in particular, is often traduced. Come, and I will show you a beautiful bathing-place (and there are hundreds more that are to be found like it) where the folk of Caracalla's time, or any other luxury-loving old fellow of those other old times—though having more luxuriously appointed bath-houses —could never have been made cleaner.

          Away up near the top of a volcanic mountain (which is all blended blues and violets till you reach it, and all greenish-gray with sage, and mottled with mountain mahogany when you do) lies a lake, long and narrow, cold and clear. Soundings have never found bottom. It lies on the shoulder of the mountain—almost, but not quite, at the top. By the white people it is called "Summit Lake," but the Paiutes have a very much better name. It is the lake best beloved by the Paiutes; not because of its trout (yet where else are their like to be found?) but because the white man considers the place as one too remote for him to think it worth his while to encroach on his brown brother's domain. Also it is cool—deliciously cool there all through the hot arid Summer. I have known fresh snow to whiten the peaks in August. All the year the creek runs bank full, and cold as ice water; for

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the snows, melting, send a stream—such a stream of beauty and song—down through the cañon to fling itself joyously into the arms of the waiting lake.

          All up and down the high slopes are antelope and deer—not scattering ones, but large herds. Still higher, where the rocks are, live the big horn—the Paiute's favorite game.

          If you go there by the creek when the morning sun first finds it, you will hear the rush of wings—the partridge-like whirr which, if you are a sportsman, makes your trigger finger itch for the touch of a shotgun—and dropping down by dozens and scores come sage-chickens gray as the sagebrush that here grows tall as the willows, and wild gooseberry and rosebushes that border the banks.

          This was a favorite haunt of the brown man long ago. He lived here and found it good in the days when his name was a terror to the emigrant whose wagon crept down the valley beyond. This is the place his great-grandchildren seek today, loving it no less than did their grandsires.

          A little less than half a hundred years ago, men wearing the old-time soldier blue, marched here and, at the creek's edge, built around three sides of a hollow square the substantial stone and adobe buildings that made their shelter in the days when they went a-fighting the bronze men of the mountains. When they came, the brown man drew back and away—farther and farther, till there was no more need of soldiers to protect the scattered settlers, or the emigrant down below, winding his way Westward. When the bronze man melted away—like a campfire smoke blown by the wind—the man in blue went also. There was no further need of him. Only the houses he had builded, remained. Afterward—a very, very long time afterward—the bronze man came creeping back.

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Quieter now, and wiser. What use was it to take up arms against a foe that could not be counted, so great were the numbers? Back came the brown man, and to the empty and deserted buildings of the fort.

          Would you see it today? The walls shows the wear and war of the years and the elements, but the name of the old fort survives—Camp McGary. Still are the buildings inhabited; but those who go in and out of the officers' quarters, or greet you at the door of the guard-house, or whom you meet on the parade ground, do not wear the soldier-blue. The Indian brother has sole possession of the walls which were upreared against his arrows, and by those who strived for his undoing.

          It is here the Paiute today is happiest when he hunts and fishes; here he lives, and loves, and—yes, bathes !

          Down by the creek-edge, fragrant with the breath of sweetbriar and mint and plum-bushes a-bloom, is something that attracts your unaccustomed eye. Bent willows, stripped of their branches and leaves, have been thrust—each end—arch-like into the ground, forming the framework of a tiny dome-shaped structure whose uses you are yet to learn. Willow bands hold it together—tied at their crossings with the willow hoops with thongs of buckskin or bits of bright cloth. This one is perhaps four feet in diameter; not more than two-and-a-half high. In one side there has been left an opening—large enough for a grown person to crawl through. The floor is smooth and clean, and beaten hard. At one side is a deep hollow in the ground—bowl-shaped, and plastered with a sort of cement. There are four or five large stones lying near —smooth and clean. Such is Lo's bathtub. His bathroom is the wide sapphire sky, the sage-scented hills below, and the cedar-sweet heights above, the rim of

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the silver lake at one side, the rippling stream at the other.

          Hark! Hear the songs of larks and linnets!

          It might be worse.

          And now Lo, himself, comes down to the place that of old knew the bugle call; that today is echoing to child-laughter—the laughter of Indian children. When Lo reaches the framework that the white man has named for him "a sweat-house" he unwraps the blanket from his body, and winds it about the small willow hut, fastening it down tightly everywhere that no cold air may pass through, except at the very small doorway. Then he proceeds to build a fire of the half-dead roots of a sagebush near by. Soon he has a great bed of red coals, and into them he rolls the big smooth stones that were lying near the sweat-house. While they are heating, he sits on his heels, and looks away off into the valley and meditates—sits silent and as motionless as—well, an Indian. Once in a while he arouses himself and rises to add more fuel to the campfire ; to again squat on his heels and—with folded arms—look long and steadily toward the great white plains. You might easily take him for a figure cast in bronze, he is so still. He has not forgotten, though he sits so quiet you begin to think he no longer remembers what he came down to the edge of the lovely bloom-bordered creek for. By and by he rises, and fills the bowl-shaped hollow in the floor of the sweat-house with water which he brings from the creek—fetching it in a basket marvellously woven of willows by some woman of his camp.

          Then, at last, when the stones are as hot as the fire may make them, they are rolled into the earth-bowl which he has filled with water. There is a hiss of rising steam—Lo's raiment drops from him as by the

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touch of a magic wand, and he stands bronze-brown and naked as when God made him. He stoops—crouches—and now has slipped under the curtained doorway, which he tightly fastens, and—Lo is taking his bath. Bathing himself in the fashion known to all nations as the most thorough and cleansing.

          Lo stays there longer than his white brother could endure those clouds of uprising hot vapor. So long does he stay that you fall to wondering if after all he may not have succumbed to the suffocating heat.

          But no; after a long—a very long time, there is a movement of the blanketed doorway, and a bronze statue emerges therefrom—a statue glistening like polished copper. Lo comes forth shining with the perspiration which has cleansed every pore. There is a rush to the creek's edge—a plunge into its deepest pool (ice-cold from the melting snows which have gone to its filling), and when Lo comes forth, his body is all aglow from the quickened blood which now courses through his veins; and he is made fresh-skinned and clean by a bath which knows no betters.

          "Dirty as an Indian?" Lo, I beg your pardon!