Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/335

Rh one married! She did well—I have no right to complain—she is lost to me for ever! If a man's home exists in the heart of his friends, with the death and alienation of those friends his cherished home fades away, and he is again a wanderer upon the earth.

I do not know whether it was disappointment at so much death, mutation, and estrangement, or whether I bore the disease immediately in my own heart, but I was disappointed in my return home; the anticipations I had formed were not realized—a feeling of cynicism passed over me. I thought of my Indian home, and of the unsophisticated hearts I had left behind me. Their lives were savage, and their perpetual animosities repulsive, but with this dark background there was much vivid colouring in relief. If the Indian was unrelenting, and murdered with his lance, his battle-axe, and his knife, his white brother was equally unfeeling, and had ways of torturing his victim, if less violent, not the less certain. The savage is artless, and when you win his admiration there is no envious reservation to prompt him to do injustice to your name. You live among them honoured; and on your death, your bones are stored religiously in their great cave along with others of preceding generations, to be each year visited, and painted, and reflected on by a host of devoted companions. There is not the elegance there, the luxury, the refined breeding, but there is rude plenty, prairies studded with horses, and room to wander without any man to call your steps in question. My child was there, and his mother, whom I loved; a return there was in no way unnatural. I had acquired their habits, and was in some manner useful to them. I had no tie to hold me here, and I already almost determined upon returning to my Indian home.

Such thoughts as these, as I lay on my sick bed, passed continuously through my mind. A few of my early friends, as they heard of my return, came one after the other to visit me; but they were all changed. The flight of time had wrought furrows upon their smooth brows, and the shadow of the wings of Time was resting upon the few fair cheeks I had known in my younger days.