Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/442

 "Friday Fitzpatrick" had been lost when a mere child, during a fight which arose between the Arapahoes and Blackfeet, at a time when they were both on the Cimarron, engaged in trading with the Apaches, New Mexico Pueblos, Kiowas, Utes, Pawnees, and Comanches, some distance to the south of where the foundry and smelter chimneys of the busy city of Pueblo, Colorado, now blacken the air. The lost Indian boy fell into the hands of Mr. Fitzpatrick, a trader of St. Louis, who had him educated by the Jesuits, an order which had also given the rudiments of learning to Ouray, the head chief of the Utes. "Friday" was intelligent and shrewd, speaking English fluently, but his morals were decidedly shady. I used to talk to him by the hour, and never failed to extract pages of most interesting information concerning savage ideas, manners, and customs. He explained the Indian custom of conferring names each time a warrior had distinguished himself in battle, and gave each of the four agnomens with which he personally had been honored—the last being a title corresponding in English to "The Man Who Sits in the Corner and Keeps His Mouth Shut."

"Six Feathers," "White Horse," and "Black Coal" were also able men to whom the Arapahoes looked up; the first was as firm a friend of the whites as was "Washington"—he became General Crook's "brother"; others of our mess were equally fortunate. Being an Arapahoe's "brother" possessed many advantages—for the Arapahoe. You were expected to keep him in tobacco, something of a drain upon your pocket-book, although Indians did not smoke to such an extent as white men and very rarely used chewing-tobacco. If your newly-acquired relation won any money on a horse-race, the understanding was that he should come around to see you and divide his winnings; but all the Indian "brothers" I've ever known have bet on the wrong plug, and you have to help them through when they go broke. "White Horse" was a grim sort of a wag. One day, I had him and some others of the Arapahoes aiding me in the compilation of a vocabulary of their language, of which the English traveller, Burton, had made the groundless statement that it was so harsh, meagre, and difficult that to express their ideas the Arapahoes were compelled to stand by a camp-fire and talk the "sign language." I am in a position to say that the Arapahoe language is full of guttural sounds, and in that sense