UC-NRLF B 3 us mo WILLIAM JON HENRY MILNER RIDEO WILLIAM JONES WILLIAM JONES Memorial Bust in Bronze by Edwin Willard Deming presented to the American Museum of Natural History by the Sculptor WILLIAM JONES INDIAN, COWBOY, AMERICAN SCHOLAR, AND ANTHROPOLOGIST IN THE FIELD BY HENRY MILNER RIDEOUT NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY MCMXTI s COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY All rights reserved June, 1912 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I A MEMORY 1 II EARLY YEARS 7 III COWBOY 17 IV HAMPTON AND ANDOVER 24 V SUMMER WORK 36 VI HARVARD 1896- 97 39 VII HARVARD 1897-98 49 VIII HARVARD 1898-1900 61 IX LIFE IN NEW YORK 72 X ON THE PLAINS 85 XI AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS 91 XII DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 103 XIII THE QUESTION OF MONEY 118 XIV THE PHILIPPINES 127 XV IN THE WILDS 145 XVI DANGERS 191 XVII THE LAST DAY 202 XVIII CONCLUSION . . 210 257763 WILLIAM JONES WILLIAM JONES From a photograph taken in Chicago, 1907 WILLIAM JONES A MEMORY IN the spring of 1900 about the time when the grass began to be green in the Yard at Harvard College, and the leaves of horse- chestnuts on Cambridge streets to appear as knobs like the tips of young horns two friends lay and sunned themselves in a warm corner between brick buildings. They were both young, both poor, and by all rights should have been thinking of their uncertain futures. Instead, they lay talking of the past, of boyhood, of things which they liked to remember and tell at haphazard, there in the spring sunshine on the new grass. Down a street leading to the Charles, people were beating carpets, so that, in the pauses of reminiscence, echoes galloped up like the sound of flying hoofs. One of these two men had a career already opening before him. He had won scholar ships, as a junior had distinguished himself WILLIAM JONES in the study of anthropology, and now could hope that, after taking his A. B. in the ap proaching June, he should go out and capture new honors in science. Close-knit, spare, and muscular of frame, he had a face entirely different, strikingly different, from the vague undergraduate type, a rather massive face, already full of character. Experience had written on it, and left it marked with kind liness, decision, and that clear, untroubled thoughtfulness which comes not from books, but from life in the open. His eyes brown as his hair, with specks of golden light in them had a habit of looking off into dis tance; at which times they turned impene trably sad, became almost the eyes of an Indian, and gave to his other features the look of stillness, far-off preoccupation, and sober dignity that is seen in the higher type of Indian countenance. But when they came back to close range, or suddenly met the eyes of a friend, they lighted up again with pleasant humor. The upper part of his face was re flective, melancholy; the lower, full of de termination, a fighter s. Any stranger would have known him, at sight, to be gentle and brave. Active in body, and with a spirited, searching mind, full of quiet fun and play- [2] A MEMORY fulness for which children especially loved him he gave always an impression of force concealed, animation below the surface, and courage held in reserve. This appeared also in his voice, which was quiet and low, and which he seldom raised above ordinary pitch, indoors or out. On this spring morning at college, he did something which to his friend had all the in terest of rarity. He spoke about himself. To reproduce his words is impossible, as it now is to convey the charm of what he said, his diffident way of raising and lowering his bright brown eyes, of plucking up a grass- blade with sinewy fingers, or waving them in a gesture very slight but very full of meaning. He remembered he said lying rolled in a blanket on the prairie, when he was a little boy. Something woke him, something wet and cold on his face. There was a gray mist over everything: just enough to show him that the cold object was a pony s nose, and that three ponies, side by side, were standing over him in hesitation. They did not wish to step on him, and had halted. The riders were three Indians, on their way home from some place where they had been drinking all night. The man in the center, who was the tallest [3] WILLIAM JONES and oldest, was also the most drunk; and his two companions, leaning from either side, propped him in his seat. All three were wail ing together some long lament, the mournful- lest thing ever heard. Their ponies sniffed at the little figure in the blanket, decided to go roundabout instead of over, and sheering off, bore away the three tall riders through the prairie dawn. It was like having seen the ghosts of the last Indian people. The boy in the blanket, now grown up, re called many other things about his native plains, and many other aspects noble and touching aspects of the people he was born among. He went on to tell of these: of the Indian s ancient customs; the Indian s life on the prairie in the old days; the Indian s lan guage of signs; beautiful myths, colored with camp-fire poetry, enacted by heroes, by cun ning supernatural beasts, or those witch- driving gods whose forked stick is the light ning; beliefs concerning the soul and the Great Mystery. He told other things, that would make any honest white man more or less hot with shame, that would cause one at least to understand how, when young Indian gradu ates from the eastern schools returned home again, their elders might laugh sadly at the [4] A MEMORY report of honest white men, alive and actual, off there. But all these matters were not told for the sake of being written down. A bell rang. The spring morning had be come noon. The two young men brought their holiday to an end, rose, and went else where. This was not the common way of talking among college men, who (in Cambridge at least, ten years ago) considered the habit of lounging on the grass as a kind of affectation; but William Jones was no common product of the colleges. His boyhood resembled the boyhood of Hiawatha with Nokomis; his career took him, as on an abrupt curve, through some of the highest complexities of our civilization; and when he had become the chief authority in Algonkin lore indispensa ble, humanly speaking, to the work he had chosen it was his fate to be sent off to the far corners of the tropics, there to meet death suddenly at the hands of savages. "I was born out of doors," he wrote, from the jungle. " Now it looks as if I shall keep on under the open sky, and at the end lie down out of doors, which, of course, is as it should be." He would not have desired any part of this [5] WILLIAM JONES book to be written. His friends, now scat tered into many places, have thought that the story of his short life should be recorded. Let friendship, therefore, be the excuse for this account, not of the scientist and his achievement, but of a young man who, every where he went among curators of museums, artists in their studios, plainsmen in their sad dles, or Indians in wigwams endeared him self to many persons lastingly. [6] II EARLY YEARS WILLIAM JONES was born March 28, 1871, on the Sauk and Fox Reservation, in what was then Indian Territory. The blood in his veins was a mingling of Welsh and English elements, with a strain from a clan of Indian rulers. This, briefly, is the story of his forebears. His great-grandfather came from Wales to this country, time enough to serve under General Washington in the Revolution. His grandfather, William Washington Jones, was born in Kentucky, went to the west with Daniel Boone, entered the army, fought in the Black Hawk war, and while in Iowa mar ried the daughter of Wa shi ho wa, a Fox chief.* A white-haired man, skilful as a hunter, William Washington Jones became well known as a scout, in the days when the prairie was still the Far West. By Katiqua, "The Sauk and Fox Indians, then and later, occupied lands in Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. By the Treaty of February 18, 1867, they were assigned a new reservation in Indian Territory, to which the main body of them were removed in and after November, 1870. Katiqua s people moved from Iowa to Kansas, in 1845. [7] WILLIAM JONES the Fox chief s daughter, he had three chil dren, of whom only one is living, a son, born in Iowa in 1844. This son Bald Eagle, as his mother s clan called him took from his father the name of Henry Clay Jones. He remained in the Indian lodges until he was a youth well grown; and then, washing to see something of the world, he journeyed out into a white community, went to school, learned the trade of blacksmith, and met a young English girl, Sarah Penny. "He could not gain the consent of her parents to a mar riage," writes one of Mr. Jones s friends, "un til he had proved himself capable of caring for her, as a white woman, in a good home. He went back to the reservation, opened a blacksmith s shop, prepared a habitation that seemed to meet the requirements, and then returned in less than two years for his reward. For years Mr. Henry Jones has been a leading member of the Indian council, an interpreter, a blacksmith, and a farmer," who has had the respect of his neighbors, both white and Indian. His young bride, when brought to the new-built house, may well have found her life strangely transplanted and transformed, beyond even the lot of brides. "But her years were few," our informant tells us. [8] EARLY YEARS "When her first child was a year old, she died, leaving her little son William, or Willie as she called him, to the care of his Indian grand mother." In a letter written at Harvard College on his birthday, William Jones has recorded the following memory. The passage would seem to have an added meaning, an after- significance, from the fact that death came to him also in the spring, though in a country where there is no return of our kindly seasons, nor division of days except by sunlight and darkness, nor any memory of things gone by. "My dear old grandmother used to tell me that I was born in the springtime, when the bluebirds were coming from the south and were looking about in the dead trees for holes to build their nests in. Grass was just com ing up, and with it the flowers. She used to tell me how she would carry me about, and a whole lot more things which I sometimes live over, though more often they seem but a tale. Then the summer went by, and the winter followed, and the next spring they laid my mother to rest. This is the way she recorded time, and that is the way it has always come to me. Others have told me the exact dates, but it has never been so pretty as the way [91 WILLIAM JONES my poor simple-minded, and possibly pagan, grandmother used to tell me. How strange that she too should have died at the same time of the year." Although on the government rolls his name was "William," and although to some of his friends he was "Wee lee," the child bore by tribal custom the name Megasiawa, Black Eagle. After his mother s death, his grand mother brought him to her lodge. Here, for nine years, she took care of her little charge. Katiqua could understand English, but would have nothing to do with the speaking of it; and so they two used always the Indian tongue. Their wigwam was of bark, with raised platforms along either side, on which were spread gay blankets or bright-colored mats of woven rushes. Outside, all round about, lay the plains with the wind sound ing over them. Indoors, "this golden-haired child of a white mother and two white grand fathers, passed the early years of his life, swinging by day in his little hammock cradle, or seeing life over his grandmother s shoulder from his perch on her strong back." Thus, through all that time of childhood which remains most vitally colored, and which would seem not only to form the basis [10] EARLY YEARS of all memories, but to give the imagination its lasting shape and texture, William Jones lived, and saw, and spoke, and thought as an Indian. It was in the ancient order, the prairie faith, and the old vanishing tradition that his grandmother nurtured him. She was an Indian of the highest Fox clan the Eagle was a chief s daughter born to lead, and with all the force of a strong character clung to the legends and customs of her tribe. What strange talk passed between her and the little boy, what rude poetic narrative by their evening fire, we can only guess at dimly. Glimpses of their life together appear in retrospect through the following notes, writ ten down long afterward by one who became the first and dearest of the boy s friends when he entered our white man s world. "Among other accomplishments this grand mother had the gift of healing, was what is known as a medicine woman, an office that does not necessarily encroach upon that of the more priestly medicine man. She knew the medicinal values of many roots and herbs, and could brew from them remedies for va rious disorders external and internal. These things the child sought in the woods and on the prairies by his grandmother s side, at- EH] WILLIAM JONES tended her while they and queerer potions were being compounded at home, heard and remembered much of the lore connected with them, and saw them applied at the sick bed or administered at the dance. "Preparations for the feasts and various tribal functions became a matter of familiarity to him, and as he followed his grandmother about the homes and in the sacred lodge, he saw and heard many things never intended for his child s eyes and ears, but which com ing as they did so naturally, made little im pression at the time, though in later years they became of great value in his scientific work. "Recalling these days in later life, he felt that he had been blessed in having had what he regarded as an ideal childhood. When with one who could understand his point of view, he loved to recall the happy days spent with his dear nokomis, 9 the evenings round the fire, and the nights snuggled beneath her blanket on the long hard platform. Though/ he would add, e it never seemed hard to me. "Unusually intelligent and quick to imi tate, the child learned without conscious effort, during these early years, the songs and dances of his tribe, and so thoroughly that EARLY YEARS scarcely a phrase of them was forgotten. He could seldom be persuaded to exhibit either accomplishment, but when he did overcome his diffidence and forgot himself, he showed not only a rare grace of movement in the dance, but those little spontaneous variations that one sees enacted only by the older Indian people. "He always insisted that he could not sing, and would seldom join even in a large chorus. In his first school some one had laughed at his singing and so disheartened him that he never regained confidence in himself. But some times out in the woods 6 where no one but you and the trees can hear/ he would lose his restraint, and when once under the influence of the Indian music, sing song after song with absolute fidelity to the Indian phraseology, marking time with anything at hand that suggested the sound of the Indian drum. "It was always a regret to him as well as to his friends, that he had not been able to conquer his shyness and learn enough of music to write out the songs he knew so well. A friend to whom he was willing to sing them tried to take down some of the simpler songs, but never succeeded in getting them quite as he knew they ought to be. One only a [13] WILLIAM JONES simple little one remains to bear the stamp of his approval the song he as a little boy sang to the snake, begging him to find the arrow he has lost in the grass. "As a little child he learned to imitate the call of the birds and squirrels, the wild prairie animals and the horses, and often amused himself, even in the East, by, as he said, talking to them. Any horse was of interest, and sometimes on the crowded streets he would stop to say just a word to that tired old horse. Whatever it was, the horse would prick up his ears and seem to understand. "He also had a trick of patting on his knees the different gaits of a horse trotting, can tering, loping, galloping or running so accu rately that one could almost see the action. Imitating the reports of different firearms was another form of amusement. Hark, he would exclaim, under his breath, do you hear that Winchester way over yonder? And sure enough from way over yonder would come the sound that one could hardly believe was made by a human throat. "He could not remember when he had learned to ride, probably like other little In dians, as soon as he was graduated from his grandmother s back; but he did have very [14] EARLY YEARS vivid recollections of the pony that shared his childhood and next to his grandmother was the dearest thing on earth, and never to be forgotten. "When the child was about nine years old the happy days with his pony on the prairies, and the wonderful tales told by his dear nokomis round the wigwam fire, came to a sudden end. The blow was a sharp one, the first, and as he used to affirm, the only real grief of his life, the first sorrow (so far as he could remember) to bring a tear. Without warning to him at least the beloved com panion of his days and nights lay dead in the wigwam. All was confusion and woe. The father whom he scarcely knew had come to take him away. He could not be comforted. New plans and new experiences had no in terest for him. For weeks and months he sorrowed; and for years yearned for the love and companionship that had so enriched his early life. A staunch loyalty and tenderness toward those he loved was a very marked characteristic. Though he could have had no memory of his mother, he treasured a little picture his father had given him, always remembered her birthday, and would often say I wonder if my mother knows this? [15] WILLIAM JONES His own birthday letter, already quoted, shows with what affection he dwelt upon the thought of his mother, and of the one who had taken his mother s place. His grief might have been mixed with wonder could he then have foreseen in what manner and after what strange transforma tion of self, he should revisit the country of his childhood. That childhood was to be come, as he said, "but a tale." He was to return as a white man, to find many things obliterated from the aspect of the prairies and their people; to learn that the old familiar smoke inside the lodges could seem unfriendly, smarting in the eyes of a foreigner; indoors or out, to hunt with scholarly painstaking after glimpses of all that life which the little Indian boy had seen flowing past him so vivid and copious. Meanwhile, he knew only his present loss. The chief s daughter was dead, the medicine woman gone beyond reach of magic. She had taught her young Black Eagle all that she would ever teach him. And now his father had come, to carry him from her wigwam. [16] Ill COWBOY IN his new home, the boy found many strange faces. His father had taken a second wife, a woman from among the Cherokees. There were new half-brothers and half-sisters to be his playmates. The change, however, was not enough to make him forget his loneli ness; so that presently, as this fact became evident, his father very wisely sent him to a school where he might live at a greater dis tance from old associations. At about the age of ten, accordingly, Wil liam Jones began to learn the white man s lessons, and to see the white man s world which he could claim, by proportion of blood and predominance of character, as his birth right. After a few months at Newton, Kan sas, where his mother s people lived, he took the next step of his eastward journey, and entered an Indian boarding-school at Wabash, Indiana. This school, maintained by the Society of Friends, was kept by an elderly couple, known as "maw" and "paw" to their large family of boys and girls from various [171 WILLIAM JONES tribes. Here the little Fox boy met his he reditary foe, the Sioux, with whom he learned to live amicably; although, as we shall see, he never quite uprooted the stirp and stock of tribal antipathy, even in later years. And here at Wabash, under the gentle rule of his teachers, he began conning our stubborn primer of civilized life, and picking up his lost connections. The education given him was of a sensible, efficient kind, part study, part farming. There were animals and poultry to care for, milk, vegetables, and eggs to look after, beds to make, food to cook, dishes to wash, and clothes to mend, as well as lessons to learn from books. These things the family of Indian boys and girls performed according to their best ability. Good-will was a work ing principle in the school, and cheerfulness, and mutual respect. "A certain pherry tree," wrote a visitor, "illustrates the spirit of the place. In spring it would be loaded with large perfect fruit, and so low that any child could pick his fill; yet though thirty children passed within reach of it scores of times every day, not one cherry was ever touched." The pu pils were honest, the farmer-teachers kind. In this environment the new boy, William Jones, made rapid headway, learning the Eng- [18] COWBOY lish that was literally his mother tongue, and doing well in all his study and work. After a three years course, he returned to the Indian Territory and his father s house. Born out of doors, and bred in the saddle, he now discovered that his schooling had become the means of still greater freedom. It had given him "the key of the fields." Like many Indian boys of his age and horsemanship, Jones found that the ability to speak English admitted him to the free company of cowboys, and all that a cowboy s life still meant, some twenty years ago. It was a rough life, in more senses than one; it was a good life, as he used long afterward to say, with emphasis. He saw, of course, the real thing, all in the way of livelihood; and as Jones was never a man to view real things in falsely-romantic colors (but spoke with scorn of persons who were "romance-mad" and "tearful" over the Indians), he came to know much about cattle men and their ways, knew intimately the good and the bad, the strong and the weak, the wholesome and the debasing. For three years he was a cowboy, and a cowboy of the old school. He loved to recall that period. "I wish," he wrote, shortly before his death, "I wish the Plains could have remained as [19] WILLIAM JONES they were when I was a kid. ... I went down into Oklahoma before leaving the States to take a last look. I cannot put into words the feeling of remorse that rose within me at the things I saw. The whole region was dis figured with a most repelling ugliness wind mills, oil wells, wire fences, go to so and so for drugs, go to another for groceries and so on. The cowboy and the frontiersman were gone. The Indians were in overalls and looked like bums. The picturesque costumes, the wigwams, horsemen, were things of the past. The virgin prairies were no more. And now they say that the place is a State ! Neverthe less you saw the stars that I used to see. Did you ever behold clearer moonlight nights anywhere else? Did you hear the lone cry of the wolf and the yelp of the coyote? I wish you could have seen the long horn and the old-time punchers. The present would-be punchers are of a different build." Spring round-up in 1889 was probably the last at which William Jones appeared as active member of a cattle "outfit." He was then eighteen years old, had seen a great deal of hard work and lively adventure. Had he been less modest, in after years, his talk on these matters might have filled a book, as the [20] COWBOY saying goes; and even his reminiscences, rare and diffident though they were, disclosed to his friends a wealth of prairie knowledge, a vigorous abundant experience, beside which any book ever written about the West would appear but the thinnest kind of secondhand fiction. He distrusted what he called "stiff incidents," and shied at the telling of them; although once to a friend, he unfolded the Homeric story of a "bad man" whom he had known, a fair-haired desperado, twenty years old, with blue eyes and the face of an inno cent boy, who showed unearthly skill at mur dering deputies with his pistol, carried a price on his head, and was killed only by a posse, with buckshot, through a hole in a ranch- house door at nightfall. Such narratives, however, Jones regarded as rather loud bits of by-play; the main scenes in his memory were as quiet as they were full of space, vista, and color. He told of daily happenings on the range, by the river-bottoms; the ways of cows and their calves; of ponies at work, of famous pony races in more than one of which he had been chosen to ride; of curious debates among old frontiersmen, and quarrels which they sometimes averted by appealing to him as to one who could read and write. He knew the WILLIAM JONES little prairie towns, and how his friends the "cow-punchers" took their pleasure there; the talk, devices and philosophy of gamblers in "back rooms"; the death-in-life gaiety of dance-halls. Through the whole miscellany of the plains our young cowboy rode care free, seeing it all with his bright brown eyes, learning both the worse and the better side of mankind, getting much permanent good from his experiences, and singularly little harm. His own part in the doings of this period, he seldom talked about; but not because there was anything to conceal. His friends recall one story of how, on a round-up, the men had all risen and gone to work at dawn; how the camp cook, in tidying up, shook out of Billy s blankets a live rattle-snake, killed it, and when the men returned for breakfast, called out "Look here, what this kid was sleeping with!" The episode might almost serve as a fable. "The most beautiful adventures," accord ing to some writer, "are not those we go to seek." And now to Billy the great adventure, of his life came of its own accord. He would have preferred, at that age, to go on riding the plains. His father, however, was a wise man who saw beyond the horizon of youth. In the mi COWBOY autumn of 1889, Miss Folsom came from Virginia to visit the Sauk and Fox reserva tion, and find pupils for the Hampton Insti tute. The father recognized this opportunity for his son, took a hurried journey of twenty miles to find him, and next day brought him into the Agency. It was the turning-point of the boy s life; for by sunset of the next day, along with ten other Indian youths, William Jones was reluctantly speeding East to begin his career. [23 IV HAMPTON AND ANDOVER JONES arrived at Hampton Institute on October 1st, 1889. He was a slender but manly youth, in cowboy clothes, high-heeled boots, and broad felt hat, with a silk hand kerchief hung around his throat. From a picture taken at this time, his features would seem to have been touched with something of unyouthful firmness, as though rough weather and rough fare had matured them before their time. The eyes appear wistful, but (even by the photograph) uncommonly fine, and deeply alive with thought. There were sparks of hidden light in them, so that they reminded one of the clear brown water in a brook, with sunshine at the bottom. His hair had precisely the same color: it was brown and somewhat wavy, tinged with dusky but living gleams like bits of outdoor brightness blown into it and caught there. Malaria, the chills and fever of the plains, made him appear less rugged than he was. Besides malaria in his blood, William Jones found more subtle ingredients to contend [24] HAMPTON AND ANDOVER with, youthful unrest, the roving habits of camp life, and the inherited love of action under the open sky. Indian and cowboy liberty maintained their spell over him. It was hard to be caged in a classroom, hard to bear anything so artificial as routine. At the Wabash school, he had been younger and more docile; now he had reached that age where the will is "the wind s will"; and at Hampton every hour was ordered and appointed: from the rising bell in the morning until taps at night, task followed task, study and work and drill, in a precise rotation that was sadly different from the old by-and-large methods of the Territory. His harness must have chafed him sore. Meanwhile, to fit the new life, young Jones had a new code of morals to formulate. This pagan boy, of mingled blood and mingled experience, had to feel and think his way toward spiritual manhood. A dawn of knowl edge among prairie myths, three years in the devout Quaker family, three more with the cattlemen, left his mind so constituted that, on arriving at Hampton, he courteously but firmly refused the gift of a Bible, saying that he did not believe in it and would rather not take it. Gradually, he found that the whole [25] WILLIAM JONES question of belief could not so easily be set aside. The Reverend J. J. Gravatt, rector of St. John s in Hampton, won the boy s respect and confidence. At last, in his third year at the school, William decided to unite with the Episcopal church. What that deci sion meant, to a shy boy who shrank in agony from any kind of public notice, and who had always eagerly hoped to regain his old free dom on the plains, appears in one notable declaration. "I understand myself," said he, "and I know that I cannot live a Christian life out there. I will not call myself a Chris tian and disgrace the name." The rite of confirmation was to him, in prospect, an act as irrevocable as that of any saint, a re nunciation of the world, the only world he knew and cared about. The bishop who confirmed him was a stranger, and after the service inquired about the youth with the spiritual face, saying that he had never seen a more glorified expression on a human face than the one this boy raised to him as he placed his hand on his head in benediction. No one, according to the old and hard saying, can save his brother s soul; no one, at all events, may hope to portray it; and it is enough to say that the boy had turned the [26] HAMPTON AND ANDOVER main corner safely. Succeeding years, further study, and intimate contact with many forms of belief and disbelief undoubtedly modified the man s convictions. We shall not spy after his creed, the path by which our friend went apart, like the old Indian at prayer, to "re main silent before the Great Mystery." For three years Jones worked hard at his books, at the carpenter s bench, and on the school farm, showing with both head and hands that he possessed more than average ability. Each year saw him steadily advanc ing. In the spring of 1892, he won the two senior prizes for scholarship, and was entitled to deliver the valedictory, an honor which he declined, because, he said, he was more white than Indian, had at best only a fourth title to any such distinction, and would not claim that. Schoolboy honors seldom count for much; but seldom does a prize pupil wave them aside with so generous a motive. Jones was not a mere clever boy, the "head of the class" whose hand is always in the air sig nalling "I know" to his teacher. Three years at Hampton, under good discipline, had given him the makings of a man. And now he had to form a man s decision, and choose a forward course. At gradua- [27] WILLIAM JONES tion when he received one of the last diplo mas ever signed by General Armstrong William saw clearly that he must make him self an exception to Hampton s rule of going back to his own people. All his inclinations pulled him to go back. His heart was with the plains. His judgment lay uncertainly in the opposite quarter. It was a choice be tween the easiest way and the hardest. Our young graduate proved resolute in facing the hardest, and following it. He went north for the summer, to work on a farm where, at odd moments, he could study a little Latin and make himself ready to enter Phillips Andover. He had put behind him all chance of the old free life, and gathered his energy toward that hard-scrabble road, full of doubtful turnings, which we call the higher education. Andover he entered in the autumn of 1892. The school seemed at first to offer the wildest kind of liberty, after the strictly ordered life at Hampton. This liberty proved only ap parent, for William soon found that his work ing day was, in reality, more crowded even than before. His studies, also, were new and strange. The teachers conducted their classes on a different plan. "With study and tutor ing," he wrote, "I do not get time for much [28] HAMPTON AND ANDOVER outside reading. Polycon [Political Econ omy] is mighty interesting, but it requires a lot of time. . . . Geometry is giving me all kinds of tired feelings." Out of school hours, he had a cottage to care for, as a means toward the earning of his expenses. He found time for a little football enough to get one leg slightly injured but on the whole was too busy to take much play or exercise. "The journal letters begun at Andover," says the friend to whom he wrote them, "were his first attempt at any expression of himself. They began in homesickness and discouragement, were badly constructed and poorly expressed; but as the days went on, new experiences and new ideas crowded in, and in his intense desire to make another see and understand, he gradually formed a style of his own which developed into one of con siderable merit." His English had always been full of curious idioms and the colloquial isms of the West, and he was often much discouraged over it. "I shall always say 4 1 have went, " he would moan; "nothing else will ever sound right." His own little turns of speech were often quaint, as when once he wrote, being perplexed: "I don t know what to do! I m all wrapped up in a [29] WILLIAM JONES fix." And when walking with a lady whose sash had become unfastened, the young scholar addressed her, with more knowledge of grammar than of furbelows: "Excuse me, but your one of your personal endings is dragging on the ground." After his difficulties with the English lan guage, William rejoiced to find that Latin could be "very interesting" and Greek still more so. In his first year at Andover, he was able to help other boys with their Latin; in his second year, and throughout the rest of his course, he earned part of his expenses by tutoring in both the classical tongues. This was not bad for "a little prep at Andover," as he afterward called himself. All four years were full of hard work. Now and then a let ter gives a picture of schoolboy fun. "The dancing teacher had some girls for us yester day. Oh, no, I didn t get rattled ! But it was so much joy, though! Tell Billy [the friend who had given him admission to the dancing class, as a Christmas present] that he is the means of my having a mighty good time." Yet these light-footed interludes appear none too often; the boy s progress through Andover, though pleasant, was a steady march toward a serious purpose. In a brief summer visit to [30] HAMPTON AND ANDOVER his old home on the prairie, William had be gun to see his Indian people more clearly, to understand their part in the general human situation, and to feel strongly that he must do something for them. Just what, he could not tell; but the question filled his mind, as when he wrote from Andover to his former schoolmates at Hampton: "We hear of Indian problems and schemes for solving them. Many of those who origi nate these schemes are friends of the Indian, but know little or nothing of what he really needs. But we who come from the reserva tions know how the Indians are living, and perhaps if we should try we might find some way of showing them how to live better. We do not have to do something that everyone will hear and praise. The greatest good will be done by our showing our relatives and neighbors how to live by doing it ourselves in a quiet, honest way. We should never de spise them, but because we have seen and been taught, this should make us all the more willing to help them on to the better way." From indefinite desire to help, Jones gradu ally approached a plan which seemed to con tain equal promise and difficulty. He knew the Indians, their language and their life; now [31] WILLIAM JONES if he could become skilled in medicine, and so return to them, not only with a wider knowledge of modern affairs, but as a physi cian, he might truly serve his own people. Obstacles, not a few, stood in the way of this project. His income barely sufficed to clothe him. By February of his final year at school, he wrote: "I have in mind now only this. I am going to pass my final examinations for Harvard. But whether I go to the Medical School or anywhere else is a question. If I could earn a scholarship or earn anything at Harvard I would not hesitate, but there seems no chance. I will not pose as an Indian. I will not take a cent on that score. It isn t fair, besides it would be uncom fortable." The same spirit which prompted him to forego the valedictory at Hampton, now made him fight his own battle. It was a gal lant stand for any youth to take. Being a white man, William Jones could accept no favor, allowance, or suspension of the rules; but he would discard no obligations, for he took pride in his birth among the Fox people and the Eagle clan. His problem was complicated by the fact that he had begun, and only begun, to dis cover his real gifts. The discovery is best [32] HAMPTON AND ANDOVER told in the words of the person who chiefly brought it about: "While at Hampton, and later during a vacation, he had been en couraged to write out and make a little study of his Indian language, and one day while visiting the Public Library in Boston was shown the Eliot Bible there. One of the librarians very kindly allowed him to look through it, and to his great surprise and de light he found that he could read a great deal of it. The dialect differed from his own, but belonged to the great Algonkin family and had much in common with his own branch of it. The Hosford collection at Wellesley was brought to his attention, too, early in his Andover days; and many other things served to stimulate his natural interest in the eth nology of his people." April, 1896, found Jones therefore in a quandary. Two possible careers lay before him, neither as yet offering more than pos sibility. As to his own fitness, he felt no conviction or preference. Medicine appears to have come foremost among his thoughts, but only because friends were advising him in that direction. Dr. Bancroft, then at the head of Phillips Andover, had given friendly guidance throughout, and shown, above all, [33] WILLIAM JONES that he understood and properly valued his shy pupil. But even the weight of the Doctor s opinion could not settle this diffi cult affair. With graduation only two months ahead, Jones was both anxious to decide and unable. "Dr. Bancroft," he wrote, "strongly urges me to go to Harvard, spend three years there for an A. B. degree, and then go to the Medical School. ... I can see the general wisdom of his plan, but my case is so peculiar, so different from most others. Shall I go to college three years and then perhaps to the Medical? The one sure and strong argument for going to college first is that I am not at all sure that I am going to like medicine, and that perhaps my ethnology work in Indian may suit me better." Time alone could show. Meanwhile the boy worked steadily. Examinations ended, the machinery of school routine ceased run ning, and Class Day approached. The close of his life at Andover is told in his letters: "... I came home about midnight, as near dead as I ever was, tired physically and mentally, for I had been up late the night be fore, and early that morning, plugging Geome try. My room-mate left this morning for his home. Gradually the boys are leaving. I m [34] HAMPTON AND ANDOVER having pretty good luck disposing of the old things I don t want and can t take away. To-day was Class Day. Everything went off nicely, and the day was pleasant. The old Chapel was decorated with flowers, and the boys in their caps and gowns, and the fem- sems and other pretty girls seated in the seats behind them and along the sides, made the old Chapel look better than it ever did. I saw so many sisters and mothers looking on pleased at heart and doubtless proud of their sons," the motherless boy reflects. "I shall never forget this Commencement. ... I don t know that I ll get a diploma. I hope I do. "It was late last night when I left off this letter. Since then several things have taken place. Commencement is over, and I have my Phillips diploma. I am no more a student here. Somehow I feel turned out, and hardly know where to go. This afternoon a note came from Cambridge telling me that I have assigned to me $250 from the Price Greenleaf Aid. That certainly gives me life enough for one more year, doesn t it?" One year in college future enough, for hundreds of poor and cheerful young adven turers was future enough for Jones, as he put off his schoolboy cap and gown. [351 SUMMER WORK BETWEEN Andover and Harvard there in tervened a summer vacation, of which Wil liam took advantage to go West, to his father s "prairie place." Mr. Henry Jones had re ceived a commission to collect students for Carlisle, in other words, to canvass not only his Sauk and Fox neighbors but the Kick- apoos, Shawnees, and other Indians near by, wherever he might persuade a parent to send a boy or a girl to this great Indian school in the East. William Jones, as may be imagined, was overjoyed at being allowed to join his father in the enterprise. They went about together, visiting the different tribes. It is pleasant to recall, in this relation, what heartily admiring terms the young man used when speaking of his father. "We are great chums." And adding a little portrait: "I think he has a fine head. It always reminds me of Julius Caesar s, but with the tenderness and kindness of the youthful Augustus s head." Then, as though afraid of having [36] SUMMER WORK bared his own heart, he hastens to qualify: "I am likely to idealize people I like." The pair travelled to and fro busily on their errand, which took them through the heat of Indian Territory in August, at that season when the sun, a sharp red orb, goes down through dust like the smoke of general com bustion. No record remains of their diplo macy, except a few jottings in the boy s diary: "August 13. Eagle House. Sac and Fox xme night for two and team. "August 15. Kansas Sac village again. Met leading men. All refused. Sac village again. Got Leona Grey-eyes. "August 18. Father goes to Kickapoos. "August 19. Father returns no success. "August 22. We go to Shawnee. ... Go up the river to Jac. View s. Got Angela View, a Pottawattomie girl. "August 23. Kicking Kickapoos decide to send no children. "August 24. Osinakasi does not bring his children. "August 25. Sick again with malaria. . . . Go out after Sac girl in the afternoon. . . . Father returns. 2 Shawnee boys come to go to Carlisle." [37] WILLIAM JONES With this humble triumph, the diary breaks off. Before the end of August, having col lected seven or eight young hostages to edu cation, William came East with them, and left them at Carlisle. Of all the "sub- Freshmen" then travelling toward college, none, surely, had passed a summer more varied and picturesque, or had been so busy plucking up and transplanting the lives of other people. Jones himself had gained fresh experience, received many new impressions, and revised many old ones. He brought away some additional knowledge of the Indians and the plains, but above all, a profound sense of the changes which had swept and were still sweeping over the face of his native country. "Out on the bald prairie where I used to see only cattle and ponies graze," he said after ward, there were fewer and fewer traces of the life which he had known, and which he re called in all the coloring of boyhood memories. One remaining fixture, it appears, was malaria. William had fought against illness throughout his task as a fisher of men; and now when after establishing the little Indians at their school, he went on toward Cambridge, it was to the old accompaniment of chills and fever. [38] VI HARVARD 1896- 97 JONES entered Harvard College in the au tumn of 1896 with a "condition" in physics and a temperature of one hundred and four degrees. "The hottest man in Cambridge," he called himself, in language both literal and figurative, for his fever had prevented him from removing the "condition," and so, to his great chagrin, had spoiled the clean slate with which he hoped to start. He had better fortune in securing his quarters, a room in the Yard 26 Stoughton Hall which proved so much to his liking that he retained it throughout his four years course. Luxury, during the nineties, had not yet seeped through the college walls; and undergraduates living in the Yard still prac tised the simplicity of a former generation. Stoughton 26, at that time, was a severe room on the third floor, finished in painted panels which gave it the air of a ship s cabin, and which, as on board ship, concealed many odd cubby-holes and lockers. As one remembers it, the room contained none of that demented [39] WILLIAM JONES multiplication of details which undergradu ates then considered as decorative. It was always a plain study, a man s room, and like its occupant, made no display of Indian be longings; although to a friend, at the right season of talk, "Billy" would produce from his lockers the most romantic objects, bead- work, weapons, a tobacco-pouch fashioned from the head of a sorrel pony, all kinds of outdoor and wigwam things made by tribes men with an eye for color. At other times these keepsakes remained hidden. Here in his room our Freshman settled down, like other youth, to the mixture of work and dreams. Work predominated, for he un dertook six courses, and planned to get his degree in three years. Besides, there were term-bills to meet; and Jones, to help himself as far as possible, wrote from time to time little stories of cowboy or Indian life; not with much success, for we find him saying in discouragement: "I wish now I hadn t taken so many courses. It is too late to drop a course. Just the moment I begin a story, I fall behind in my work, and it is hard to catch up. I have material for three stories, but I haven t a moment to give one of them. I don t suppose I could get much, if anything, [40] HARVARD 1896- 97 for any of them." Malaria played its part in this despondency. He adds: "I am feeling wretchedly to-day/ Shortly after "Mid-years," 1897, he found a new impetus and made a new friend. On March 6, Jones might well confide in his journal letter, "It has been an interesting day to me"; for on this day he had met the man who opened the future to him, gave his am bition its final bent, and played the part of destiny at a turning-point. Mr. F. W. Put nam, Peabody Professor of American Archae ology and Ethnology, saw at once the young man s capacity and unrivalled fitness for Indian research. "My meeting with Profes sor Putnam was the very nicest talk I be lieve I ever had with an elderly man, excepting perhaps one or two with Dr. Bancroft. He took me right in, and told me just exactly what I wanted to know without the least possible questioning on my part except one or two times. I am afraid my dreams of ever becoming a doctor are all thrown aside. The field he opened out to me is certainly wide, with room enough for hundreds of intelli gent workers. There is an opening without any question, and so my little mind is sent drifting in another direction. What struck [41] WILLIAM JONES me most was the taking of courses that I entered upon when college opened and the ones I am taking now. For these were the very ones he suggested I must need, and then pointed out what others I must take next year, and so on. Don t you think it strange? My courses next year will probably be Eng lish, French, German, Spanish, Anthropology, and perhaps early colonial history. You per haps can t understand just now how these courses I have now fit right into those above. He told me to run in at any time I choose and see him. My boy, make yourself at home, he said, as he laid his hand on my shoulder, and come over to the house and see us there. Our little meeting couldn t have been more pleasant or successful." It is pleasant, also, to think that the relations here begun continued unbroken, and that this teacher won his pupil s lifelong affection. Other letters record, at random, what Jones did and thought as a Freshman. His first year at Harvard passed quietly and, on the whole, happily. Studies and plans came foremost. "Botany is great!" he exclaimed. "You and I will have some fun with it, if I can go up to camp next summer with you." To a friend who sent him a box of that most [42] HARVARD 1896- 97 Indian confection, maple sugar: "I hope," says he, "y u won t think this is a very, very quick answer to your letter, but I can t re sist the temptation to write just a word after the maple sugar box was opened. I fancy I see a little smile beginning. . . . Oh, he isn t going to work me for another box of maple sugar so easily as that! But now please may I have another some time? You know my weakness. Nothing strengthens it better than maple sugar." Sometimes there is an echo of cowboy days. : Your quotation from Lamb * would lead one to think he was a loser at poker. One likes to hide his dirt; especially a poker player; so that if that was his trumps, he wouldn t want to be called for a show down, so he would pass, hand in his checks and so lose the ante and per haps his bet. These are old Oklahoma phrases that come running back into my mind at the thought which your quotation stirs up; so don t think it s any Cambridge experience I m having." Now and then, as he struggles with much w r ork or his recurring fever, he makes characteristic apology for writing such idle things as letters. " Saturday evening . . * * Charles Lamb to Martin Burney, at whist: "If dirt was trumps, what a hand you d hold!" [43] WILLIAM JONES I have lots and lots to do, but I m not am bitious enough for it this evening, and so this is one of the ways I have to rest myself. Of course you don t mind?" As his Freshman year drew toward an end, Jones confronted a new decision. He had become a member of the Boston Folk Lore Society, and written a few articles for the Folk Lore Journal. The society was now anxious to help in sending him West for a summer among the Indians, and through Mr. W. W. Newell, offered him $110 toward such an expedition. As this sum would barely provide for a short visit, and as Jones would run considerable risk of increasing his ma laria, his friends who best knew the circum stances counselled him to decline the offer, and to spend a quiet vacation camping among the New Hampshire lakes. Jones felt strongly tempted to rest; but his ambition being now too thoroughly awake, he could not give up active service. "I have you bothered very much," he writes to one of his advisers, "be cause I am not so obedient as I might be. The truth is just this. Either I must drive everything possible in the way to the Medical School, and thus make it no matter of dif ference whether I go West or not; or else [44] HARVARD 1896- 97 familiarize myself with everything that is Indian and the best way for this, you know, is to go West and be among Indians. This is why I have been holding off so long, and it is not so easy to settle yet. ... I know there is malaria in Oklahoma, and what not in Iowa, but how else am I to get these things without braving something unpleasant? I am forgetting my Sac most woefully, and by next year I won t be able to say hardly a word. ... I don t see how I deserve such good fortune as a real vacation, and I know I shall be feeling all the time that I ought to be working." These considerations carried the day. In the following summer (1897) William lived among the Sauk and Fox Indians near Tama, Iowa.* These people, a branch of the Ok lahoma tribe, maintained their community apart in its ancient form, almost unaffected by the influence of white men. They fought stubbornly against all efforts of the govern ment to bring their children into school, celebrated the tribal rites of their forefathers, and clung to the old language, costume, and tradition. Our Harvard undergraduate came to them in the dress and with the bearing *See note, page 7. [45] WILLIAM JONES of a white man, but they welcomed him as Megasiawa, the Black Eagle, to whom the Eagle house was open. Here, says one who knew both guest and hosts, he revived the teaching and experience of his childhood here he heard and spoke again for the first time in years the language of his Indian peo ple. He knew then that he belonged to them and they to him. They in their turn recog nized in his sympathy and respect for them that he was their brother. Nothing, perhaps, shows this more plainly to one who under stands the race, than the fact that no effort was made to induce him to give up his "white man s ways" of life or thought. Instead they took him into their most sacred ceremonies just as he was, withholding nothing and de manding nothing, content that with his In dian heart he should keep his white man s head. For three months he lived with an old couple who claimed a distant kinship only that kinship is never distant with an Indian. He watched the daily life as it went on round him, listened by the hour to the tales the old men were glad to tell him, and in return im pressed upon them by life as well as by speech, the advantages of education, showing [46] HARVARD 1896- 97 them how to improve their farms and homes, and urging them, with some success, to send their children to school. Passages here and there in Jones s letters hint at the variety, as well as some of the difficulty, in his life among the summer lodges, "Tama. August 15, 1897. I am waiting for the Thanksgiving dance, which is to come off soon. The Indians have been holding their preparatory f eastings, prayers, and sing ing. When all the gens have done this, then the dance will come off. "The circus came, and I took Patoka and George to it. The old man was more than delighted, and it would have done your heart good to see his pleasant face beaming with pleasure. I m going to see him this after noon and talk it over with him. "You will be glad to know that I have gone so far without eating dog." Of all that Jones saw and learned during this visit, the real core and significance re main a secret. The Iowa Foxes initiated him into many ancient mysteries of their religion, which have never been disclosed to a white man. Jones committed to paper an account of these, with sketches, diagrams, and the [47] WILLIAM JONES full interpretation which probably no other man could have supplied. The document he then sealed. It will not be opened until the older Indians have gone to their fathers, taking their lore with them. For the present, and for his own purposes, William found that his summer s work bore two unmistakable results. He had learned first that his Indian people whose claims on him he had never forgotten admitted gladly his claims on them; and second, that his whole life from childhood had formed a con tinuous training, the purpose of which ap peared too manifest to be ignored. How best to fulfil this purpose, the young man could not as yet see clearly. But when in the autumn he turned East again, to begin the second year at Harvard, he knew that hence forth his studies would not lead toward medicine. He should return to the Indians not as a healer, but as the historian of their legends, the recorder of their language, and the interpreter of their most reverent beliefs. [48] VII HARVARD 1897- 98 "COLLEGE DAYS," at their wildest, are never quite so gay as they are painted, or at their other extreme so dull. The college days of a man who foresees their outcome, and turns them toward it with any constancy, often appear to him the happiest chapter in his life. The class-room, the laboratory bench, the late hours beside the green lamp, are all movements in a campaign; and even where no open battle is offered, he remains continually scouting and skirmishing, testing his own forces in minor engagements, winning humble heights, or at least discovering some of the masked batteries against which he must presently march. To him it is all pith and moment; but generally, and often in the same proportion as he becomes victor, the history of his operations will contract into a small page. Strangers, or even his friends, see only the main route he has traversed; his alarms and excursions leave no trace on the map; and when he has won his destination, he [49] WILLIAM JONES seems to have made a plain journey, leg over leg, as the dog went to Dover. It would be doing the memory of William Jones a poor service, to present him as a young man engrossed in the details of his own career. For one who worked so hard and well, he left an uncommon amount of space clear for friendship, fun, and human by -play. The letters already quoted will have falsified the man, indeed, if while they state in his own words the motives for a given decision, or carry his own narrative past a given point, they shall have pictured him as knitting his brows in self-absorption. His doubts and troubles he wrote down only when a friend had the right to know them. Happy at some good fortune, he turned quickly to share it in a letter. But the living man whom written words cannot recapture, the man with whom one talked, sitting on a window- seat or walking in the open was the most restful and refreshing of companions. He could throw off all shadow of work, to bask in wholesome idleness. With slow, quiet words, and bits of tranquil gesture, he would discuss any subject but his own affairs. And at that period of life, when youth is most busily competing for the future or playing its [50] HARVARD 1897- 98 private Hamlet, "Billy" Jones could lead an undergraduate dialogue farther afield, and invigorate it with more manly humor, than any of us knew the secret of doing. "Lead" is a mistaken term: rather, he en ticed our talk along with a word or a smile now and then; listened, agreed or disagreed shyly; often did no more than look on, his brown eyes lighted with a curious twinkle, which we in our immaturity let pass, but which now returns full of meaning. In his letters, and in them not often, he told of his own work and perplexity. "I am fear fully rushed now," he wrote, during his second year at Harvard. "I am not so sure about my six courses as ... at the beginning. Anthropology now is decidedly slow and stupid. I can t tell whether it is hard or easy, because I am not sure what it is driving at. I devote two or three hours a week to work ing up the notes of my summer s work, with Dixon. He is more than interested, and thinks the material in every way good." As may be imagined, Jones had great store of experience to draw upon for his work in English composition. "I have a fortnightly theme here . . . that was handed me to revise. The critic seems to think I can write [51] WILLIAM JONES a story if I try very hard. I wrote a de scription one day, A Round-Up on the Plains/ and the instructor told me to keep to such subjects, for that was almost half the theme. . . . One or two on Exposition and Argument, and then will come a theme on any subject we may want, Western story, Indian story, Love story, Blood, or any other subject. I wish I knew some love plot to work up. Indian stories are too stale for me now, particularly after I get done with this week s folklore writing. ... I handed in a thesis in my History X course yesterday on the Indian population, so that I am dead sick of Indian just at present." Respite was denied, evidently, for elsewhere he complains that he must "get to writing something for the Folk Lore Club, which has been chasing me for the last two months for something about poor Lo." Attacks came from unex pected quarters, and took his few spare mo ments. "A - is again in this part of the country. He dropped into my room to ask me to join his Aboriginal Society for the Advancement of the Indian Race. I told him I was flat broke, so that ended that. I didn t know it before, but it seems that there is a time when it is a good thing to be broke, [52] HARVARD 1897- 98 and this was one of them." Worse than all, the bugbear of public speaking began to rear its head before him. An audience of listeners was, of all things, the one for which Jones had least liking. "When there are so many men who want to talk," he once lamented, "why can t they let a man who wants to keep still, alone?" That they would not, many pas sages attest. "The Harvard Folk Lore Club wishes me to read a paper before it. Holy Smoke! I put them off. . . . Mr. Newell sent me word that he wanted me to deliver a lecture. ... I think I see myself speak ing!" As early as November, 1897, he was forced to consent, and "give a talk. ... It will be on ideas of death, the soul, etc., but there will be a discussion of general things. . . . I haven t had time to work up my notes. That will be my Christmas vacation work." Apart from these troubles, Jones led a quiet life at college. Athletics of the usual sort he was debarred from, not only by his work, but also by the injury received in playing foot ball at Andover. "My leg is bothering me again," he writes; certain ligaments had been torn, "and now I believe the bone is injured. It doesn t trouble me to walk, but just let me try to run, and you see me go off on one leg." [53] WILLIAM JONES His lameness gradually wore away, for later he was able to say "An hour every day in the gym and a half-mile run round the track, is the limit of my exercise now. It will be increased as time goes on." He took care after this fashion to keep himself in good physical trim; often went to church on foot, eight miles to Boston and back; and some times played truant, stealing a winter holiday on the eve of examinations: "I have been working so hard that I got where I could not sleep. This morning I got Charles, and we walked all the morning as fast as we could out through Allston and round by Belmont and over the hills behind Cam bridge. We got back at one, in time for luncheon. I came over to my room and went straight to bed, just as if it were eleven o clock at night, and slept till five." At an other time, with another friend, Jones made a significant little pilgrimage, honoring the memory of the Apostle to the Indians: "We took a beautiful walk out to John Eliot s grave, the little town and the site of his church and home." The life thus pieced together reveals a pattern sober enough, even for the busiest of undergraduates, a tame pattern, surely, to [54] HARVARD 1897- 98 one who had lived as a plainsman. The scholar s gown would show dismally beside a cowboy s trappings or an Indian s blanket. Jones was none the less happy, and indeed, was never touched by the common under graduate discontents. "Here I am," he wrote, as a Freshman, "here I am at Harvard, where a man is measured for what he is, and not for what society has made him." Through his four years there, and through the nine remaining years of his life, he felt for the college a sentiment unknown to care-free or sophisticated youths. Homesick he proba bly was, with a mind so fond of dwelling on a past so different; but of homesickness there are only hints. "To-day," he notes, during a lonely Christmas recess in Cambridge, "I stopped at a book store and saw a book of drawings by Frederic Remington. I fell in love with it on the spot, but it had a price beyond my reach. There are so many things in that book that bring back to me a thou sand reminiscences of the days before I was brought east." It is droll to consider that this young man, who had known hardship and danger, and was at bottom the soul of quiet courage, could be as timid as a boy. Once, while at college, [551 WILLIAM JONES Jones found to his dismay that he must pay a call, and face no less dreadful creature than a girl. This, apparently, was worse than pub lic speaking. He hated the necessity, and put it off. At last he called; to his relief, present fears proved less than horrible imagin ings; and there followed one of his first essays on the method of womankind. "She has a nice little way of breaking in, when you tell her anything that interests her, and will go on by herself. She makes these little side tracks so interesting that you almost forget what you meant to tell her, and behold you find that both are talking about something entirely different. Thus we found that an hour and a half had gone by." Bashful in all such matters, Jones could be ready enough upon occasion. And now an occasion drew near, with the spring of 1898. Men who were at Harvard during that spring term, remember well the great wave of excite ment which came flooding into college, and swamped all personal or academic questions. At first, as we hurried to late breakfast in Memorial Hall, there came the news that the "Maine" was sunk in Havana harbor. The fact stared out from black headlines on the newspaper stall, which stood in the transept, [56] HARVARD 1897- 98 directly under the torn battle flags of an earlier generation. Before many days, the black letters grew larger and larger. The spring winds to judge by the rumors they brought all blew from Cuba. And by the time that the young apple trees behind Grays were white with blossoms, the country had rushed into war. We all forgot our books. Lecturers forgot to lecture, and talked to us like Dutch uncles. Professors of psychology, of history, of literature, urged us to keep cool, saying in chorus: "Don t enlist! This war will be either short or long. If short, you would be raw recruits, a needless trouble and expense; if long, wait, and drill!" It was good advice, but youth will be served with other doctrine. Awkward squads some of the awkwardest ever formed already were tramping all day long behind the gymnasium. A 95 man opened a recruiting office, into which went undergraduates, and out of which came Rough Riders, whose story is told else where. Various men left college for the war, some of them never to come back. Flags appeared in the Yard, hanging from the window of this or that study, wherever a room-mate had gone. The outbreak stirred and shook us all. [57] WILLIAM JONES Jones, like many Bothers, had seen it coming far ahead. "Perhaps," he had written in February, "the war cloud will roll over, but if anything does come like war I may want to go into the army. There is nothing serious in this last; it is only a dream, which might be realized in case war does come. I haven t told anyone else." The cloud grew, however, and spread nearer. "If I am needed, and can be of any use, as I told you before, I want to go into the army. It will be hard of course to leave the pleasant life of a great university, much harder still to leave friends; but the words of General Armstrong come into your soul, Put God and Country first and your self afterward. ; By April, the question absorbs all his thought. "I feel the country has done a disgraceful thing to plunge into this war, but I haven t the heart to remain comfortably here without doing something to help get her out of the trouble she is in. ... This is the hardest thing I ever tried to do." Within three days, the decision became still harder. To the same lifelong friend, who had undertaken his education, and helped him at every turning, Jones wrote as follows: "Mr. Roosevelt has sent word that he wants ten Harvard men to be with him in his troops [58] HARVARD 1897- 98 of cowboy cavalry. Men have come to see if I would go." He tells how he seized the chance, and continues: "I do feel it my duty to go. ... If any cavalry troops are to see fighting, these cowboy regiments will see it. ... You have prepared opportunities for me to see noble and beautiful ideals. I have thus far enjoyed innumerable blessings and have gained a host of friends ... all these things only through you. So I ask you as the same good and brave mother that you have always been to me, to let me go into this war. If I come out alive you will be prouder and all the happier because I fol lowed what I thought was my duty to my country. . . . You, perhaps, may realize what thoughts come through my mind as I think of being in these troops of cowboys. I would thousands of times rather be with those fellows than in any regiments of college men." With all these motives, and more which we may only guess, Jones did not go to the war. He stayed at home and went about his work, an infinitely harder course to follow, but a course which he felt he could not desert with honor. He stayed, recognizing a fact which more than one young man of courage has overlooked, that his life and even his [59] WILLIAM JONES bravest desires are not always at his own disposal. The early summer of 1898 Jones spent at Hampton, where he saw the trans ports come back to Old Point Comfort, bring ing sick and wounded men. "Among them," says a friend who was with Jones at this time, "was a classmate, a splendid, handsome fellow who, racked with pain and hardly ex pecting to live until his family could reach him, said, I tell you, Billy, it has paid. This made a deep impression upon Will, and he felt he would gladly have changed places, just for the glory of it. ..." One day, reading a list of the dead and wounded, he looked up at the friend who knew what an ordeal he had passed, and said, "There, but for you, might be William Jones." He paused, and added, "I almost wish it were." And afterward in Cambridge, as he and the same friend were passing the soldiers tablets in Memorial Hall, he asked, with a laugh: "Do you realize, that for you I gave up my only chance for fame? Had he foreseen, he might not have spoken so. The close of his life showed what we all knew that he could stay in his duty without considering danger or renown. 60 VIII HARVARD 1898-1900 DURING his four years at Harvard College, Jones became a member of the Signet, Folk Lore, Andover, and Hasty Pudding clubs, wrote articles and stories "Frederic Rem ington s Pictures of Frontier Life," "Anoska Nimiwina, a legend of the Ghost Dance," "A Lone Star Ranger," and other pieces for The Harvard Monthly; became an editor of that magazine in 1899-1900; won the Harvard Advocate Scholarship "for excellence in Eng lish Composition"; w r as twice appointed Win- throp Scholar; and at the last, won honorable mention in American Archaeology. Other youths have done as much or more. The list of achievements good in any case, and strange enough as sequel to that boyhood in Katiqua s wigwam may briefly certify that Jones worked his way through college with more than average distinction. It is not what his friends remember best. As there pass, in the review of memory, the crowds of men whom one has seen at college, many of the most conspicuous among these will take a [61] WILLIAM JONES transitory shape, and reappear but as men pressing on to succeed, cloaked already with success, and muffling their other aspects and lineaments; only here and there a man re turns as he was, familiar, complete, clear, his face still the face of youth. This remains the man we knew; as though our last talk to gether had been yesterday, or all the missing letters had gone back and forth for years. We have not met since, but there is no change; here stays our friend. It was always so with "Billy." Hard working and competent though he was, he reappears not like one of those half-hidden figures in transit, but with his old presence, the kindliest and most likable of boys. As he crossed the Yard, when the bell rang and crowds filled every path, there was little in deed to single him out from the rest of us. One friend who came to know him only in Senior year, had often seen his active, muscu lar figure, and without having heard his name, had remarked the face as uncommonly full of character. It seemed a Celtic face to this passer-by, who may have gathered his im pression from some Welsh trait. Of "Billy s" Indian blood one never thought, and seldom was reminded, even on close acquaintance. [621 HARVARD 1898-1900 Those wonderful brown eyes of his were not the eyes of a modern white man; they con tained more depth, distance, meditation, and (especially when you came toward him un- perceived) were like Indian eyes in their ex pression of steady sadness. To meet them, was to know that this young man observed closely, felt strongly, thought much, and kept results to himself. Jones was, above all, an observer. His prairie training had given him the habit of seeing, and his sight was very keen. I re member that once, as we came back together from a long winter walk, he suddenly peered ahead through the dusk, saying "There s a cat in that tree." The tree stood across a wide road, against the blackness of a field, so that to me at least the very branches made little more than a conjectural mass. Any cat there would be like the "black cat in a dark cellar" of metaphysics. Billy s remark seemed to be either pretence, or the prologue to some mysterious trick. We went under neath the tree, and stood on a fence, before I could see what he had seen from the dis tance, a cat lying flattened along one of the dark boughs. On another evening, between late spring [63] WILLIAM JONES and early summer, we happened to cross the Yard from Stoughton toward Sever Hall, when a slight rustle in the foliage called our attention overhead to the top branches of an elm. Something black flitted through pieces of starlight, and vanished among leaves. I guessed at a bird, and should have thought no more about it. "Wait," said Billy. "That s an owl. He s flown into the ivy on Uni versity." Sure enough, the ampelopsis cover ing the front of that building began violently to shake in patches, as though Minerva s bird were trying to find a perch in the Faculty Room. "He s after young sparrows," Billy explained, even before the noise reached us, or the squeaking of tiny victims among the vines. He had foreseen the whole transaction in the dark. His past life made him all the better com pany, because the moments when he spoke of it were moments of perfected friendship. Also, at this period, it gave sometimes an un expected turn to events. A small band of us, now widely scattered, amused ourselves by walking to town, dining in some smoky den, and walking roundabout again to Cambridge. Once, during a night s entertainment of this sort, we happened to pass a miserable little [64] HARVARD 1898-1900 "museum," by the door of which stood one dressed as an Indian, in fringed buckskin, with long hair flowing on his shoulders. " Go in," said somebody, "and talk to him, Billy." Our friend demurred, but presently ap proached the grimy fraud, and spoke in an unknown tongue. He gave the good old-time western greeting, a request for a chew of tobacco. "Aw," replied he of the buckskin, "I don t remember none o that stuff been too long East here." "Perhaps," Billy suggested, "we don t speak the same language." "That s it, I guess." The other visibly snatched at this relief. "What was your Agency?" "Pine Ridge." "Oh," said our spokesman. "Then" and readily addressed himself as to a Sioux. The man fidgetted under his fringes, and again pleaded his long residence in the East. We had turned away, when one of our party, who had missed the dialogue, asked if the fel low was really an Indian. "I don t know: he may be," answered Billy, in his charitable fashion; and then, by [65] WILLIAM JONES an afterthought, stepped back into the gaudy entrance of the museum. Speaking in Eng lish, and with a manner of great courtesy, he let fall a few innocent-seeming words. "That so?" replied the buckskin man, well pleased. Jones came out and rejoined us, laughing. "If that fellow had been an Indian," he explained, "there d have been a fight." Besides enlivening the dullest of streets with such episodes, Jones could find means of breaking for us, as nobody else could, the deplorable regularity of things at college. On a fine afternoon, for example, when noth ing clouded the June sky except a shadow of approaching examinations, he might appear with a proposal to go behind the scenes at Buffalo Bill s. We were not long in accept ing. Three of us it may suggest something of the variety in Billy s friendships, to say that one of the three is now a captain of artillery, another a surgeon at the head of a children s hospital three of us went with him into the green-room of the Wild West show, a green-room open to the sky, car peted with trampled grass, and crowded with dressing-tents, horses and harness, Cossacks, gatlings, buffaloes, Indians, and Rough Riders [66] HARVARD 1898-1900 whom Jones had known in "the Territory." Here we sat atop the Deadwood Coach, be hind the canvas screen of the arena, and felt the bird-shot hopping on our hats as Miss Oakley and the great Baker shivered glass balls in air with their rifles. Here we met cowboys who welcomed us, in part as Billy s friends, in part because they had fought alongside Harvard men at San Juan. Mc- Ginty, rider of the bucking horses, treated us most handsomely on Billy s account. Horses were put at our disposal, both in joke and in earnest. A great many feathered Indians were standing around, aloof and silent. Some body proposed going up to them and opening talk. "No," answered Billy, with unusual curtness; then made the same objection that he once offered to the late Mr. Remington s Hiawatha pictures: "They re all Sioux." Through friendship with the driver, we be came passengers in the Deadwood Coach, and when our turn came, trundled into the arena past a long line of mounted Sioux, painted in wild colors, grinning viciously, and each man patting the revolver on his hip to give us a foretaste. The band struck into The Arkan- saw Traveler, the eight mules into a full gallop. After one unmolested circuit, we [67] WILLIAM JONES heard a "Yi-yi-yip!" from behind the canvas, and saw the varicolored ponies, bodies, and tossing feathers of the Sioux burst forth from cover. A cowboy, sitting inside with us, pumped his Winchester out at them, but they swooped alongside yelling, and fired blank cartridges through the window close enough to burn our cheeks. One yellow-painted sav age, on a white pony, had a sharp wooden spear, used in a former "act" to prod buffalo with. This he jabbed into the coach, hitting our future surgeon accurately in the deltoid muscle. "Hi yi!" cried the Sioux, at every jab. "Hi yi!" cried the surgeon, doubling into a ball in the farthest corner. When the flurry was over, somebody asked "What were you saying Hi yi for, Nat?" "I couldn t think," was the answer, "of any other remark!" This quaint confession seemed to give Billy more delight than anything else in our afternoon performance. Intermissions like this were not frequent. Our college working-days followed each other in an even round. Jones was busier and steadier with his books than the rest of us, arid accomplished a great deal more. His free moments he passed in various quiet ways, walking, reading, discussing books or [68] HARVARD 1898-1900 life at large with the other editors of his col lege magazine, or perhaps guiding a few mem bers of the Carlisle football team (when they visited Cambridge for a game) to the house where the author of Hiawatha lived. Though fonder of listening than of talking, Billy told stories admirably; indeed, his love of story telling came by inheritance; and sometimes not to any but close friends he would unfold narratives of former days out West, using in the Indian mode a slow and eloquent gesture in place of adjective or verb. To one man of his college acquaintance, he explained the language of signs, so that, meeting in the Yard, they two might amuse themselves by a secret conversation without words. In the summer vacation of 1899, Jones re visited his birthplace. He made but a short stay, for Oklahoma was at its hottest, and his old fever threatened to return. He suffered not only from lassitude but from disillusion. "I m going to get out as soon as I can/ he writes in August. "It s too hot, and there is too much malaria. Indians don t look like Indians any more. When I went away they used to look so well in their Indian costumes; but now they are like tramps in trousers and overalls which they don t know how to wear. [69] WILLIAM JONES Indian women are better looking because they have not changed their dress so much." Senior year at college, beginning soon after, passed quickly and happily. In June, 1900, Jones was graduated from Harvard, and by the middle of July was taking a well-earned holi day in the White Mountains. His immediate future lay straight before him. He had sub mitted to the Secretary of Columbia Univer sity an application for a scholarship, by aid of which he could hope to proceed as a grad uate student. Indian ethnology was to be his subject, and Professor Franz Boas his chief instructor. His good friend Professor Putnam transmitted the application to the Secretary with the following letter: "Harvard University, "Cambridge, Mass., July 12, 1900. "DEAR SIR: "Mr. William Jones has been a student of good standing, and he received his A. B. this year. He has taken courses in American Archaeology and Ethnology during the past three years, including one year s work in my Research Course, when he made a study of and wrote a thesis on the Massachusetts In dians. Mr. Jones came to Harvard from the [70] HARVARD 1898-1900 Indian School at Hampton, where he won the esteem of his teachers, who have continued to take an interest in his work. He has had to work his way through college with such assistance as he has received. For two years he held the Winthrop Scholarship in this Department, and he received a prize from Harvard for English Composition. "He is certainly worthy of holding a Scholarship at Columbia, and I sincerely hope it will be bestowed upon him that he may continue his chosen research under Dr. Boas. :< Yours very truly, "(Signed) F. W. PUTNAM." Recommended thus, as well as by his own record, Jones entered Columbia University in the succeeding autumn, and was appointed President s University Scholar during his first year of graduate study. [71] IX LIFE IN NEW YORK IN June, 1901, Jones received from Co lumbia the degree of A. M. ; in July, an ap pointment as University Fellow in Anthro pology for the ensuing year. Meantime, Dr. Boas (then head of the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History) had obtained for Jones a commission to carry on field work in the West. This work, which was to occupy the summer months of 1901, consisted of "lin guistic and ethnological investigations among the Sac and Fox Indians, and if circumstances should demand, among closely allied tribes." The Museum provided part of the necessary funds, the National Bureau of Ethnology furnished the remainder. "In your work," Jones s appointment read, "you will en deavor to collect as much information as possible on the language and customs of the Sac and Fox, and obtain as many specimens as you can illustrating the ethnology of the people. Your collections are to be sent [731 LIFE IN NEW YORK to ... the American Museum of Natural History." Jones lost no time in starting for his field. The ink which enrolled him as Master of Arts was hardly dry, before he had settled among his former friends, the Iowa Foxes. From Tama, Iowa, he wrote in June: "I am writing this on my knee just outside an Indian summer lodge. The time is about half past six of a Sunday morning. I have not had my breakfast yet. The breakfast, how ever, is cooking. One reason why I am up so early is because I have not yet become used to the smoke in my eyes. The women are the early risers. They make the fire, and while the men sleep are preparing breakfast. Isn t that fine? But the women enjoy it, and why shouldn t they be let to do what pleases them? "How many people can you count on your fingers who have written you before break fast? You deserve a nice long letter, but I am not promising one here for several rea sons. In the first place, I hear the clank of dishes and the rattle of pans and spoons and knives and forks, and I know not what minute I may be called to come and eat. Again, the men and boys are rising, and it won t be long [73] WILLIAM JONES before some one or many will be looking over my shoulders to see what manner of marks I may be making on this paper. You know yourself such is not conducive to an easy letter." For letters, indeed, the young scientist now found little time. He was "not always where there is a post-office at hand"; he lived amid the interruptions, the coming and going, the visits and discussions of an Indian neighbor hood; and waiting on the moods of this chief or that medicine man, he could never choose his own time to begin work or to break off. We may picture him as sitting beside some red kinsman, asking and answering questions, exchanging confidence, and seizing every pro pitious moment to hear the ancient stories told. These were the tales of his grandmother Katiqua s people, from remote generations. No man could understand or record them so fully and truly as Katiqua s grandson. But the interpreter, though perfect and anfailing, could not command the living sources of legend to flow at his own pleasure. A tale, well begun, might stop again and again at the caprice of daily events. Letters describing these interruptions, or a journal with the barest jottings of them, would in part repay [74] LIFE IN NEW YORK us for the loss they caused. Even to his best friends, however, Jones could send only a chance message. "I began this letter on a Friday, and now it is Monday. I am on a long Indian story, and am writing you this when my informant is not at hand." "The character of my work," he explains elsewhere, "is such that I have to keep at it, though many times it is barren of results." The summer expedition was, in the main, highly successful. From the Iowa Foxes, Jones went to his native prairie in Oklahoma, where he not only levied further scientific tribute among his relatives, but enjoyed far better health and spirits than during his visit of two years before. He lived, for part of the time, in the lodge of an old Indian who claimed a double kinship by marriage and tribal adoption, and who could impart much hereditary lore. To the young man s delight he was given the use of a fine pony, a pony famous through no mean exploit, for it had led the great Oklahoma rush over thirty miles of wild riding. Jones often sang the praises of this mount. Meanwhile, he enjoyed his work and did it well. In August he wrote: "I am expecting to be in the field until the 20th of September, perhaps later. I have gathered a [75] WILLIAM JONES heap of stories in the Indian language, and that means a pile of work for me this winter when it comes, to get them ready for the Government to publish. . . . Malaria has not got hold of me, . . . but then I am not going to play with fate, for the game is not over yet." Jones returned well and sunburnt to New York in the autumn, and changed himself back from plainsman and Indian to Uni versity Fellow at Columbia. His quarters he took up in Lenox Avenue "not very near Columbia," as he said, "and a long way from the Museum; but I have a good room to sleep in, and a good table to eat from, and so am quite contented with my lot." In November he joined the Harvard Club, where, a few weeks later, he helped to give "a reception to our victorious football eleven . . . and a merry time we had of it. I met in with a lot of fellows I know." His friends in New York, it would appear, saw more of Jones throughout the winter than before, although he was busier than ever. "I have been work ing away like a Trojan," he writes in Decem ber, "preparing a paper to be read next week at Chicago, where a host of scientific men meet. Its subject is Customs and Rites [76] LIFE IN NEW YORK Concerning the Dead among the Sauk and Foxes. One of my Columbia professors is to read it; owing to unavoidable circumstances the author cannot be present, etc. The man is tickled over the part I have shown him, and he thinks it will do. Christmas Day was a quiet one for me. I loafed in my room during the morning, and in the afternoon I went to the Museum of Art to feast my eyes and de light my aesthetic sense. In the evening I went to dine with a college class-mate of mine. . . . His family are in New York now; they are from an old Virginia line, and they are very nice. They interest me very much. . . . About the dinner, it was de- liciously good to eat, and I ate till I had a goodly fill and was as contented as a well-fed broncho. I must tell you I ve just finished writing my speech. They won t hear my little bleat, but they will catch the idea of it. I am doing a pile of work this recess." While Jones was thus employed, a great happiness had befallen him. His friends noted the effect, without guessing the cause, until six months later he told them of his engage ment to Miss Caroline Andrus, of Hampton, Virginia. From now on, his labors had a new enthusiasm and a new purpose; and though [77] WILLIAM JONES fate cut them short, we know what happy devotion sent him on, like the Greek hero, to things "higher and harder." "Busy!" he exclaimed, with gusto, in a letter written shortly after New Years: "I am up to my ears in work! But I can go at it with a vim. ... I am up here at the Library [of Columbia], busy over the trans lation of the Sauk and Fox tales that must be done before many months roll round. I am planning to do one story every day. Besides the tales there is the ethnological material that must be written up too." Thus the win ter passed, day after day of hard study and application, though not without some variety, or some chance, now and then, of seeing an old friend or making a new. "February 6, 1902. A week from Monday night I am going down to a Mission on the East Side and talk to a men s club. Morrow and I have a friend who does church work in that section. The man s name is Paine. He is a Harvard man of the class of 97. He wants me to tell about the West, cowboys and Indians. The more graphic and exciting the better, he says. There will be about twenty-five men. ... I have done several talks this year, and am getting lots of the [78] LIFE IN NEW YORK scare and fear driven out of me. But my knees are pretty limber yet, and my voice insists on clinging deep down in my bosom. "February 18. You should have heard me last night making my speech! I told the man in charge I would try to last half an hour, and what do you think! It was an hour be fore I got warmed up, and the room was as still as death, with the eyes of the men and boys riveted on me. When I let up, the men fired questions at me in a way as if they had been really entertained. I was told after ward that it is seldom anyone has been able to keep the boys as still as that. I told them about cowboys and Indians, and livened up the thing with a stiff incident here and there, and I suppose that that was what took. "March 12. This morning I have devoted to an Indian story, translating it into read able English. ... I went to the Princeton Club for dinner, and later to the Sportsman s Show. I had a good meal at the former, and was very much amused and entertained at the latter. The Indians at the show simply go through stunts like children who are in the game for the fun there is in it. I go down town again this evening. This time it is to the Academy of Sciences, to hear W talk [79] WILLIAM JONES on the Condition of the Indians. I hope to see some one there whom I know and who will know the speaker, because I should like to have words with him for about one minute. "March 13. I heard W- - last night, and after the talk was introduced to him. Dr. B introduced me, and you will smile at the exchange of words and moods. It was something like this: "Dr. B . Mr. W , let me intro duce Mr. Jones. "Mr. W , with a dead man s look of indifference Glad to meet you. Then he looks away and half turns round with ribs toward introduced. "Dr. B . Mr. Jones, you know, is the Sauk arid Fox who "Mr. W spins round with face full of surprise. He grabs hand of introduced, and with a tight prolonged squeeze exclaims Oh! Oh! Yes! Yes! I ve heard. I and and and . . . ! "Then followed a shower of words. . . . We talked for a few minutes on some things I wanted to know about. After the meeting I was lugged away by my friend Deming, who took me down to his studio for an hour or [80] LIFE IN NEW YORK more. ... He and I may do some work together some day. "The wind is wailing outside as it does on the plains, and it strikes a chord of lonesome- ness in my soul. The wind is always wailing, singing, screaming, and murmuring out there, and when once you get used to its sound you never forget it. It reminds me of my past, with all its curious episodes from Indian camps and cow camps and then on into white folk s schools. Perhaps it is fortunate you are not here now, for I am in very much of a reminiscent mood, and might torture you with tales of all kinds. "March 21. The enclosed card [an invita tion to a meeting of the Sequoya League] will tell you where I was last night. I had the pleasure of meeting a man I had been want ing to meet. The man is the illustrator and artist SchreivogeL He does things western, especially where Indians and soldiers are fighting. You have seen his pictures, I know. They are like Remington s, only far better. This statement has reference only to the pictures in action. In atmosphere and cow boys and ponies Remington is king, it seems to me. Well, the man and I exchanged jaw breakers/ to use the Western vernacular, for [81] WILLIAM JONES a long time. Deming and I went over to gether. I dined with him and his family at his studio. Afterwards he and Schreivogel and I went over to a German place and swapped stories and good German beer through clouds of smoke. "The Sequoya League is a pretty name, and that so far as I have been able to discover is its best thing. An interesting young Apache was there, and he and I scraped acquaintance. He is one of the Geronimo prisoners. I hope to learn something of him, and have asked him to come to the Museum to see me. "April 19. I have just come from Co lumbia, where there was a big blow-out mak ing a President out of Professor Butler. There was a host of learned men in garments of various colors and of various degrees. I ought to have strutted about in a Master s gown, but chose to be unostentatious and went in my ordinary clothes. I joined the crowd, and there were fine looking men in abundance and handsome women were a plenty. President Roosevelt was there, and it was fun now and then to see him smile toothfully at a joke. Presidents of the col leges were there, too, and chief among them was the very dignified Charles William Eliot, [82] LIFE IN NEW YORK who made the best short address of the day. Music sweet and soothing broke the monotony of the speeches. "I have not done much this day. I went down town to do a little purchasing, and dropped in on Deming. I smoked a cigar with him, while he talked about pictures and other interesting things. He is a bully fellow." Mr. Edwin Willard Deming (well known for his portrayal, on canvas and in bronze, of the real beauty and true spirit of Indian life) became one of William s best friends in New York. His studio in MacDougal Alley heard many a long talk on Indian manners and be liefs, saw many an ancient tale put into ac tion, and many a prairie game, when Jones, donning wolf skin or buffalo horns, romped in play with the artist s children. It is one of the best traits which his friends recall, that wherever Jones went, he made the young people love him. His letters are full of mes sages to them. Though his chosen work demanded more and more from him, Jones never lost his habit of reading. He ranged through all conditions of good books, prose and verse, fiction and philosophy. In stories he took a special de light, rendered all the keener by his profes- r QO i [ 00 \ WILLIAM JONES sional knowledge of story -telling. "Yes," he answers a correspondent, "I have read and have had read to me Stevenson s letters. I like them very much, though I always had a strong suspicion that there were others which could have revealed more of the man himself. Stevenson is one of the men I can read at any time and all times. No one could beat him at a story, and no one had the same ease and grace." Later in this busy year he writes: "The day has been a most restful one. In the morning I started a story, and read a lit tle from the Psalms of my Modern Reader s Bible, a little verse from the second series of my Golden Treasury, and much more from your Kim. In fact I do a little reading almost every day, but not all, in all the above works; and very little it is, but enough to keep me in touch with the human side of literature. It is a tremendous temptation to fall away from good reading when one has every hour full from 8.30 in the morning until 10.30 and 11 in the night." The second year of graduate study closed like the first: Jones was not only re-appointed Fellow in Anthropology, but sent West, on much the same terms as before, to spend another summer among the Sauk and Foxes. [841 ON THE PLAINS JONES reached his field in June, 1902, and living among the Indians, began once more to collect "specimens" and preserve legends. His letters, written at odd moments and odder places, tell of bad weather, delays, and dis appointment, mingled now and then with success. "Tama, Iowa, June 22-29, 1902. I leave town this afternoon and make my home in the lodges. ... I am going to an Indian dance to-night. . . . Night before last an Indian told stories till after midnight, while the room was thoroughly fumigated with tobacco smoke. In the room was made a bunk for me and an other for the yarn teller. The air was thick enough to be hacked into blocks. I thought I should die, but the thing to do is not to show discomfort, for I am a guest and must now do as the Foxes do. Most lodges are well venti lated, but that was a house, one of the few good ones on the reservation. You would have laughed to see me rise this morning and do my dressing under a blanket. ... I have [851 WILLIAM JONES worn out all the soft places on my body. . . . But the whole thing is a bully outing, and I do not mind so long as I do not come in bodily contact with creeping insects. I use ether in my hair and clothes. ... I had a narrow escape this morning from a delectable bite of cooked dog. . . . Last night I entered the Ghost Dance Lodge, where a parasitic crowd of Pottawattomies, Chippewas, Winnebagoes, and others were dancing. Of course I took no part in the dance, but I wondered several times what I would do if an Indian came dancing up to me in the place where I was. That, you know, is a sign for the one seated to rise up and dance. At one time the boom of the drum was so lively and the singing so excited that the Indians were dancing like mad and whooping war-whoops like warriors in a fight. "Last night I slept in a room where a man had the floor and I had a sofa. Part of the time he slept, part of the time he lay awake puffing a pipe, and very much of the time he sang bully Indian songs through a husky nasal voice. He succeeded in keeping me awake. He got up very early and roamed about indoors and out. "Toledo, Iowa, July 17. When we started [86] ON THE PLAINS from Tama for Toledo we went into the face of a fearful windstorm, so thick that we could scarcely see ahead of us. It began to rain as we entered town, and just as we drew into a feed stable and under a roof, a tremendous downpour came. The place we drew into is a great big place, covering, I should say, an acre. It is a place for putting up teams. Up at the entrance, where it is light, I am writing this. The thunder is cracking outside, and the lightning is flashing about the sky; a regular cannonade is on. My Indian friend sits about two feet from my left elbow, his legs crossed, his back humped, and his chin in his hands; he looks as if in deep thought. A let ter from my father yesterday says he may start for Iowa the last of this week. We are great chums. I think he has a fine head. I am going to take some pictures of it, front and side views. It always reminds me of Julius Caesar s, but with the tenderness and kind ness of the youthful Augustus head. You know the ones I mean. I suppose this is all imagination on nay part. People who claim to know me say I have strong likes and dis likes, and that I am likely to idealize people I like. I do not know, but you will know when you see him. [87] WILLIAM JONES "August 4. Father and I are having an interesting time in the Camps visiting the people. The Indians are extremely hospi table, and they entertain with ease and grace. Maple sugar is one of the great foods, and you may imagine my state of feeling when I catch sight of it. "August 13. I went to the camp last evening and spent the night there. The lodge is one of the flag-reed kind, shaped like an Eskimo snow hut, and I tell you the wind did blow against the lodge and the rain beat against it as if to soak it through. "August 15. Last night fell a tremendous rain, and the water splashed through the lodge. ... I fled in town to-day, for the chief is holding a dog feast, and I am not keen for a bite. ... I should probably have to pass round the dainties, for when the Bears are feasting the invited clans, the Eagles are attendants. The chief is from the Bear clan, and the chief s herald or runner or spokes man is an Eagle. "September 19. Kansas somewhere. The weather has been extremely cool in Iowa, and now as we pass through Kansas I am begin ning to come in contact with the familiar air of the plains. The air now is becoming [88] ON THE PLAINS warmer. To-night as we go into Oklahoma it will be even yet warmer. Familiar types be gin to board the train, but the most familiar will not show up for about six hours yet. Now and then I hear the smooth, long-drawn-out drawl. When we get into the Territory I shall hear heaps of it, and will begin to look for faces I know. The civilized part of this plains country is extremely homely to me. The houses are painfully ugly, and the trees and grass about them seem to be pitied. "Shawnee, September 22. It is interesting here. Sometimes when I have nothing to do, I drop into these gambling resorts and see the various gambling devices and notice how they are played. The men who drop in to gamble interest me too. I have seen all kinds of men . . . well dressed men of the city, slov enly dressed men of the farms. There are the broad-brimmed hatted cowboys in high-heeled boots. Indians in varying costumes are at the tables, too. The ages of the gamblers vary from old gray-hairs to youths with the down yet on their faces. The faces of some are gentle and show gentle, pleasant breeding, and the faces of others are severe, brutal, and untrustworthy. I don t know that I told you that everybody drinks. [89] WILLIAM JONES "Sauk and Fox Agency, Oklahoma, Octo ber 1. I am doing nothing more than loaf about this lazy place. I have not struck the sort of Indians I want. Though I happen in with a lot that are of no use to me, yet I am having a pleasant time in one way and an other. I meet up with old faces, faces that were full of life when I was a child, and are now on the other side of the hill of life on the downward slope of that hill. I visit old friends, and they are cordial. I go from house to house. The dogs do not bother me, which is a wonder, for there are heaps of them. "November 14. I am travelling north, and . . . glad that I am on my way. It is growing dark on the prairies, a sort of thing I like to see, because, somehow, it sets my mind to recalling past scenes of childhood when this country was worth while living in. Somewhere along this road we will eat supper. There is a beautiful moon, and the view is beautiful out on the prairie." The scene quickly changed. Not long afterward, Jones returned to New York and began his third year in the graduate school at Columbia. [90] XI AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS JONES had intended to "go up" without delay for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The winter of 1902-1903 found him working harder than ever, holidays and all. After long hours at Columbia or the American Mu seum, he spent the evenings over his doctor s thesis, "plugging away" with great anxiety. "I begin to see the monster," he wrote, when at last his subject grew into form. The com bat was deferred, however, by a change of plans. His Indian material promised well, and his instructors urgently advised him to make his treatment of it thorough and de liberate. He therefore put off his degree till another year. Meanwhile, to lose no time and to explore all possible sources, Jones made a short visit among the Indians at the Carlisle school. Here, in February, 1903, he reports himself as "having a pleasant time, in a way, with the Sauks and Kickapoos. They are ex tremely cordial. I have a room where the Indians drop in, and they gladly give almost [91] WILLIAM JONES any help I ask. We had a regular story telling bee last night, and I learned volumes of things I had not known before among the Kickapoos, but which I had suspected. March 2. I had Indians all about me yester day. To-day the Kickapoos have been in my room, giving me a good deal of information. Both the boys and girls are as nice to me as they can be. The teachers are cordial, too." For the rest, Jones passed his third year of graduate study much as the first and second, though his work increased. It was a red letter day usually a Sunday when he man aged to see a friend or two. Theatres he could visit seldom, and then only "for a change, to rest my head," perhaps in some theatre where "bad acting predominated."- "But I don t mind that," he writes. "I get nearly as much entertainment watching the people, to note how the acting strikes them. Queer people get into the boxes, and I like to see the joy they get out of their self-sufficiencies, and the way they exchange salutations. ... It is the kind of audience that hisses the villain." Next might come an evening at the house of a professor, "with other students, being taught Chinook"; a long talk about Indian life and Indian pictures with Mr. Deming; an after- [92] AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS noon conference of the learned at the Museum; a quiet hour at the Harvard Club; or a smoker, at which "anthropologists round these parts assemble, to burn up the Doctor s cigarettes and cigars, and drink his beer, and eat his foods." In the spring, the authorities at Carlisle made a very generous reply to a request from Jones, and sent a Kickapoo boy, with whom he could do "language work," and study as in a living book lent from some inaccessible library. Jones, worn with other studies, had threatened to "rush him as fast as he will let me"; but in point of fact, he treated most carefully and kindly this young volume of old knowledge. "The Kickapoo lad arrived," he writes on May 11, "and yesterday I took him out to Bronx Park to see the animals. In the evening I thought it was my duty to take my man to Grace Church. It was pretty warm for my friend, and he did not have to urge me to go out into the cooler air. We went to the Demings studio. May 13. My Kickapoo and I are at it pretty much all the time. He is full of information. May 15. This even ing I took my Injun for a long walk up to 125th Street to see the sights. ... We bought tickets to see Joseph Jefferson in The [93] WILLIAM JONES Rivals to-morrow night. My Injun and I are getting piles of stories. He is a jim-dandy, just full of yarns, and a very nice boy, too." When the year closed at Columbia, and the young Kickapoo had gone home, Jones con trived to see his friends at Hampton. Here he took a holiday of some weeks. A letter written aboard ship on his return to New York, contains a highly characteristic pas sage: "June 23. After breakfast I went into the smoking-room. . . . Three men were telling tales of experience, and between whiles dis cussed subjects of many kinds. One man in terested me particularly. He was from North Carolina. He had been in the Rockies in the early days, and some of his yarns were of ex periences out there. Since then he had seen service on the sea. He was a storehouse of information. He talked with good sense and much detail in politics, law, government, ag riculture, and betrayed a fine sense of humor. The old fellow did not speak the King s Eng lish, but his words were racy, to the point, and pat. After a while two well dressed young men came in and sat down at my right. Pres ently they began talking about psychology and biology, and I felt like booting them out [941 AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS of the room; but it soon seemed that their discussion was to be in an undertone and so did not interfere with the more interesting tales." In New York, Jones had a few hurried days, buying "a six-shooter, a cowboy hat, a rubber coat," and other articles of outfit. The Amer ican Museum was sending him west again, on a more difficult mission: he was to travel through the region of the Great Lakes, and the farther country on both sides of the Canadian border, wherever he might find Indians living the old life or recalling it. His commission was a roving one, his journey, in some measure, a journey of discovery. The Indians would be scattered, especially during the summer season; and even in their settle ments, they would show varying degrees and effects of contact with white men. Jones could not choose beforehand the places most fit for his purpose. He could only go and see, experiment, scout and learn. From Sault Sainte Marie, he began his search by going to Kensington Point, the scene of the annual Hiawatha play, where he did an errand for the Museum, and made friends with certain visiting Indians. The play itself he dismissed impatiently, saying [95] WILLIAM JONES that he had never seen "so much pretension of knowledge about Indians with so much ignorance." Jones took far greater pleasure in the company of an "old Hudson s Bay employe, George Linklater. He is Scotch and Indian. He knows pretty much all the coun try between here and Hudson s Bay, and can speak the various dialects of the region. He has given me an interesting tale or two of his experiences. I may propose his name for a probable companion in the trip to Labrador.* He is the type of the old frontiersman of our country, the sort I imagine my grand-daddy and his kin were." Grand River, Manitoulin Island, Spanish River, were the first places where Jones tried to find a few Indians knowing the old life. The rest of what he called his "summer gad ding" took him north-about round Lake Superior, through Manitoba, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, down to his old friends and kinsmen the Iowa Foxes. "Thessalon, Ontario, July 8. Lake Huron looked still and quiet. I wanted to go out on some rock and sit. The nights are beautiful now. Last night I turned in at two in the morning. Kabaoosa, the Indian, and I sat * A proposed expedition, which Jones never made. [96] AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS out in front of his house and talked on and on. He told me tales, and I exchanged, and thus the hours of the night flew by. We be came good friends. . . . This man Kabaoosa is of the family that gave Schoolcraft the material from which Longfellow made his Song of Hiawatha. Kabaoosa gave me In dian versions of things used in the poem. "Nepigon, Ontario, July 17. I met some Indians from Albany River. They came down in canoes. We had a great time talking to each other. They don t always understand me, and I don t always understand them, but we manage to get along pretty well. The Indians speak a mixture of Cree and Ojibway. Often I can understand a whole streak, and then at times I don t get a bit. "I am constantly overcome with the things I see in this grand Lake country. I want to see even what is more wild, back up in the forests, lakes and rivers. "Fort William, Ontario, July 22. I went straight for the Indian reservation, which is about two miles from here. I found the peo ple exceedingly mild and kind, which was only in keeping with what I have found among these Ojibways all along. I never saw In dians so willing, so kind in their hospitality. [97] WILLIAM JONES I met an old French half-blood, Penassie by name, who took me round among the people. He will make some things for me, traps to catch bear, skunk, mink, and so on, and other things in the way of games and the like. "Mine Centre, Ontario, August 3. Most of the boarders, at least they who make their presence felt the most, are English. I came near to being rude several times. They talk about things in general in such a superficial manner, and about all the earth in such a condescending way, that it is not always easy to remain within hearing. But their intona tion, and their style of pronunciation, and the way they do it, are enough to limber the stiffest. Actually I laughed twice at table, even though I was a stranger to those present. I could not contain myself. One Englishman tickles me even to look at him: he is a glorious freak. "Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, August 7. I drove out into the country to-day and saw the Indians of Long Plain. They are Ojib- ways, and a primitive lot. ... [A certain official] went along. He was no use to me, and I am sorry not to have taken an Indian. Some Sioux have a village two and a half miles south of here. They are Santee Sioux. [981 AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS They came here after the Minnesota massa cre, and have been here ever since, afraid to go back. They are different from Ojibways. The jib way is the more aggressive, more conservative, and more pagan. The Indians were very cordial to me to-day. The [certain official] was dumbfounded to see me talking away to the Indians in a tongue unknown to him. I doubt if he understands me yet. He has learned that I was brought up on a cow ranch, among Indians, at Harvard and Co lumbia, and I am sure he does not under stand. "August 8. I visited the Sioux this morn ing. The poor things feel they are exiles, I am sure. I talked with one old man, and he learned I had seen some of his people. His feelings were pretty strong, and his emotion was deep. I gathered a good deal from his broken speech and vague gestures. It sur prised me to find he knew nothing of the sign language, which the western part of his people knew so well. "Dunseith, North Dakota, August 16. This town lies flat in a prairie valley. . . . The nights are quiet, only the wail of the wind as it sweeps past the corners. I was re minded of the old Indian Territory last night [99] WILLIAM JONES as I lay half awake thinking of many things, and hearing the cry of the wind. Many a night have I gone to sleep with the wind lulling me. I wish I could explain why it is and in what way the wind affects me so. I used to miss it at Hampton and at Andover, but I think I was weaned of it at Harvard. It cries a little in the day time, but not so much as at night. . . . "I got to Dunseith yesterday at noon, and called on the Indians I came to see in the afternoon. They live in a very pagan manner among the hills north of the town, called the Turtle Mountains. ... I passed the Agency on coming out here. The agent met me on the way. He eyed me in the characteristic manner agents use when I first approach them. Their first attitude makes me feel like a rattlesnake or something to be shunned. But they collapse into their own forms again when they know that my mission has nothing to do with their affairs. [This agent] turned out to be a very pleasant old man. "Churche s Ferry, N. D., August 21. I got some very nice things from the Turtle Mountain Ojibways. I made friends with several, and it was a bit touching the way some of them bade me good-by. [100] AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS "I got fond of Dunseith. The wide sweep of the prairies I got from the hills must be the reason. It is a magnificent sight, and I do not know when I have seen quite the like, unless it was in old Oklahoma before the opening. At evening at the time of dusk a huge feeling of vastness would take posses sion of me. I had begun to understand why the Indians were so fond of the particular place where they are now. It seems that the tribes used to gather in the hills about Dun seith and hold great ceremonies. Coyotes yelp at night yet, and it was a satisfactory sensation to listen to the old familiar sound I used to go to sleep to. "September 29. The frost has nipped the birch and poplar and red oak, and I wish I could describe to you the beautiful soft yellow of the birch and poplar leaves, and how rich the crimson is on the leaves of the oak. We paddled by miles and miles of color on both sides of us. It has been a long time since I have eaten so much wild meat. "Tama, Iowa, October 15. [Among the Foxes.] I arrived here this morning, and it seems like coming back to a place where I have always lived. People greeted me in a very generous manner, and the Indians were [101] WILLIAM JONES even more demonstrative. I had the chief and his head men at dinner with me, and we talked in a pleasant way almost all the after noon. . . . You should see how people look and stare when Indians come and greet me and go round \\ T ith me." A few weeks later Jones was in New York again, helping at the Museum and the college. He spent the Christmas holidays of 1903 at Hampton, Virginia. [102 XII DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PRIVATE examination and public ceremony did their best, on June 8, 1904, to change William Jones into a Doctor of Philosophy. It is enough to say that he received his de gree, in the company of many other studious young men and women, a cloud of professors, chairmen, and grand marshals lending dignity and security, while fiddlers played the Salut d* Amour. Jones took the process with a good grain of humor. From his thesis, or disserta tion "Some Principles of Algonkin Word Formation" he said that he gained pleasure. "It is different from temperamental writing. I am always put on my guard, must not make statements that cannot stand alone. Good discipline, no doubt. But the thing is really amusing. Think of it, a grammar on an In dian tongue that will never be used on this green ball except, perhaps, by a few special students who may only finger over the pages and chuck it aside with the most indifferent feeling in the world." At the same time he had worked his hardest, "anxious to do it f 1031 WILLIAM JONES fully in as brief a manner as possible," and wishing, for the sake of his readers, he "had a style that would rivet their eyes till the last page was read!" His preparation was "the severest affair I have ever gone through. . . . I am deep in mire trying to fill my head full of all kinds of knowledge." His oral examina tion before a long table of wise men so dazed and excited him that he could "hardly recall even the questions asked, to say nothing of the answers I made. The moment I would pull myself together, my mouth would be come as dry as a powder-horn, and I could hardly speak. I was skinned alive ... a very formal proceeding." He had faced the ordeal seriously, he was glad of his success. "And now I am to be classed in that group of men known as Doctors of Philosophy. The title is only a term, but it means a heap." It meant to him, above everything, a prompt and lively sense of gratitude toward those friends who had given him his start. "Now that the game is over and I have won, it is only natural that I should think of them first of all." But he did not set too high a value on his winnings. Never, when he could pre vent, would Jones allow himself to be called Doctor. [104] DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY His own attainment, the sincerity of his purpose, his respect for all true scholarship, admitted no trace, even temporary, of the scholar s pride. Jones loved plain Anthropos the man better than Dr. Anthropologist. Born and reared in the open, he did not en joy what is called the "educational" atmos phere. "I whiled away about two hours," he writes, " beating the air with my pedagogical friends at the Sunday dinner table. I wonder if I have ever described them to you? You know people very often betray their profes sion by the style of the garment and the man ner of wearing the same, by the speech and by the attitude toward things in general. The class-room, like the motion to adjourn, takes precedence before all matters for talk. These dominies talk class-room at breakfast, the same at noon, and heat it up for supper. There is no harm done, the excitement is innocent enough; but like a boiled potato three times a day for seven days in the week, it actually tends toward monotony." And again: "I am touching on a side of life which I feel a great hunger for. I long for the com panionship of fellows I used to know in my last year at college, like Henry, and Colonel, and Bill. It is like green pastures when I get [105] WILLIAM JONES with Bill and the Colonel at odd hurried moments, these days. My scientific friends (classmates and fellow-students) are all right, it is only myself sort of out of gear." Jones had made, and continued to make, warm and lasting friendships among the men of his profession: always with men who, like him self, did the most thorough work, but who like himself, at the close of day could brush off the class-room chalk or the Museum dust, and cheerfully rejoin the outer world. " When ever Jones and I finished our afternoon," said one of these colleagues, "and went out for a smoke and a glass together, there was no longer any such thing as Anthropology on the face of the globe." After getting his doctor s degree, Jones worked as hard as ever, in the city heat, on a grammar of the Fox language, on the proofs of his thesis afterward published in the "American Anthropologist" and on many preparations for the field. He kept long hours, yet managed to see his friends, dine with them, beat them at revolver practice in a shooting gallery, paddle canoes with them up the Hudson, and snatch a brief holiday on the Maine coast, though even there he began writing a treatise to be read (by somebody [106] DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY else, we may be sure!) before a congress of scientists in St. Louis. His own summer read ing was in a book which interested him greatly, "Varieties of Religious Experience,": by the late William James. The close of July found him travelling westward by train, in high spirits at the sight of green country, and of people who looked "as if they lived close to the earth and its doings." His letters, penciled in haste, hold many a thumbnail sketch of his fellow pas sengers and of fleeting scenery. Among these passages, two reveal their writer in opposite moods, both strongly in character. The first episode came when Jones met some Jack-in- office at a railway station. "Do you suppose I could get anything from the stupid Eng lishman behind the glass window? I asked politely, and was as considerate as one could be. I wanted to know, first, the fare from Sudbury to Garden River. He said he did not know if it cost one dollar or a thousand. I began to boil under my white hat, but kept steady, and asked him to tell me the distance between the two places. He threw a time table out at me. I was pretty well heated, but contained myself, \vent to a seat, and began to work the table out; got to a point [107] WILLIAM JONES that stuck me, and so went to the bear to get a little light. He began his performance again. I let fly a piece of English and asked him out on my side of the window. He did not come, but he got jolted into enough decency to give information." The second episode took place in a railway car. "Across the aisle was a mournful looking girl of about eighteen, with a doleful aunt with two or three children. They spent the time crying, the aunt and niece, and talking about one departed. . . . The seat in front of me was vacant. After many risings and sittings the niece, a pretty brunette, came over, and in many ways sought attention from the man in the white hat behind. Finally she asked how far to a certain station; I looked in my schedule sheet and told her. She sighed a deep sigh, and told a pitiful story of a journey she was making, and how long it was seeming. She got a telegram last night, she and her aunt, that her little brother was drowned, and for them to come. She was starving for sympathy. I talked with her, and used all kinds of devices to turn her mind away to other things, but of no avail. She was a pretty little thing, with jet black hair and deep, mellow eyes that talked volumes. She was [108] DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY simple-minded, with a delightful, naive man ner, a poor girl, and had some store position in Sault Ste. Marie. It tore my heart to see her in so much grief. I wish I could have lightened her burden." Our traveller now began the summer s work, visiting his Indian friends, old and new, on either side of the Canadian border. "It is a pleasure to come back here," he wrote, "and have the people welcome me in the de lightful way they do." Garden River he had a hard time leaving, the Indians were "so cordial, so entertaining, so friendly." Jones met with many "genuine story-book char acters," both white and red, who told him freely the strange narrative of their lives. He saw with delight the various panorama of outdoors, where "lofty islands stand in bold relief against a mist and cloud of back ground on the lakeward side, and on the other, hillsides of tall evergreen"; or "country where one can get as lonely and disconsolate as one pleases ... distance after distance, dreary wastes of stunted growth, and what remains of dense forests, where fires have passed through and left tall, bare trees stand ing dead." The Ojibways beyond Thunder Bay made him welcome once more; and once [109] WILLIAM JONES more he "dwelt at court" in the old chief Penassie s log house. Jones pitched hay for his host, or watched his hostess while she traded pickerel and suckers for eggs. He gave medicine to the sick, wrote state papers for the tribe, attended their long night coun cils. Penassie was "chock full of all kinds of lore," so that inside his house there was much talk, much writing down of tales told slowly and broken by the arrival of Indian gossips. The telling was marked, however, "with very fine artistic skill. I have one tale in particu lar," Jones wrote, "which keeps me guessing all the time. All of the stories are naive and unconscious. I don t know if my narrator (old Penassie) is an artist, or if it is the genius of the O jib was that makes these stories so good. Suggestion is resorted to with fine effect, and it is never studied. For artistic effect I have no Sauk, Fox, or Kickapoo story to come up to the standard of some I m now getting. ... Of course I m taking the stories down in Indian . . . already more than two hundred pages of text, and I am sure of as much again." Thus the days were busy; not so the nights. "The old chief one evening took me out to walk with him and showed me some of his realm. In a moment [110] DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY of extreme friendliness he let fall some re marks to the effect that he wished I would come and live here, take to myself a wife and be one of the people; that he would give me some land and allow me all the rights of his people. The poor old man, of course, is ignorant of the big world outside. . . . The village is as silent as a graveyard at night; lights are out early. The chapel bell is about the only thing in the village to interrupt the silence." By nine o clock in the evening, Jones had usually undressed under his blan kets, in a corner opposite "the royal bunk," where he could hear, in the darkness, the chief s family telling their beads. Up Rainy River to Pelican Lake a "rather hard and barren" journey brought Jones into the wilderness, where he camped among some pagan Bois Fort O jib ways. These gave him so much valuable information that he was "kept busy day and night," besides, as he said, "having the time of my life." The Indians vied with each other to have their spoken words recorded, so that the young doctor s note-books were filled up at wonder ful speed, until November brought the north ern winter. "The Indians seemed," wrote Jones, "to dislike my leaving. They gave me [mi WILLIAM JONES a dance for a send off. They had tried to get me to dance on various occasions before, but this time I gave in to please them. Inci dentally I got onto 5 a new step. I have another which . . . looks like a ghost-dance step with back bent forward, arms free and swinging back and forth, and the dancer mov ing sidewise one way and then back again, now receding, now coming forward. It is an eye opener, and I hope to spring it on you some time when no one s around. The women have a cunning step which I should like to know. Their skirts are so low that I cannot see." From Bois Fort and these parting festivi ties, Jones "came out through ice and snow" to the Agency at Leech Lake. There he found a "warm hazy Indian summer" still lingering; good company and "very delight ful" surroundings; a helper in Joe Morrison, "an old Carlisle boy and the best interpreter" he had met among the Ojibways; cordial visitors, Indians from Bear Island, who took him to see a medicine dance of the Midiwi win ; altogether, a chance to round out "a vast amount of excellent myth material," so full, indeed, and recorded with so much fidelity, that Jones might well permit himself, as he [112] DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY almost never did, to feel "very satisfied" with his own part of the work. Already, he had done for jib way lore what no other man could do. His only comment was: "The language of the texts is very pure, I am sure." Late in November, Jones travelled to Okla homa, for the purpose of revisiting the Sauks and Foxes. From Shawnee, he wrote: "The air is soft and the sunshine warm, a great contrast to the northern woods. The wind wails just the same as it used to when I was a child. The wind cries on these plains in a way different from anywhere else. Last night the train stopped several times on the broad prairies, and at once my ear caught the old familiar moan. It started up a thousand recollections." He stayed in this home coun try for a few weeks, to complete his account of the Sauks and Foxes, their language and their material culture, by collecting whatever he could find concerning their religion. This done, Jones went "over into the Seminole country after two slabs of stone bearing on them the figures of human foot-prints"; and then, bringing to its end a highly successful expedition, he turned back toward the white man s world. Most of the difficulties under which our [113] WILLIAM JONES friend worked, are of necessity omitted in this account. Some of them may be gathered from the following letter, written in the sum mer of 1904: "My dear Deming: I am glad to get the letter that came this morning and another that came about six or eight days ago. . . . "I ve had the finest kind of luck since my last letter to you. The old chief has given me some dandy tales, and now I m getting some good things on the old time religious worship. I could do more and faster work but for a mob that lives in the loft overhead. His grandson married a young woman of very uncertain morals but with a goodly host of relatives by blood and otherwise. She and the crowd occupy the upstairs of the cabin, and it s like a thunder storm by day as well as by night. Damn their lazy hides, if I had but an inch of authority I d fire them p. d. q. They sponge off the chief, and do it in the most cold blooded manner. Sometimes they get up energy enough to move to the bush to pick berries, and you should behold the caravan four women, two men, two children is the least number. I don t mention the dogs. They get good money for the berries 50 cents for a small pail holding three or four quarts. [1141 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Instead of buying food and clothing they blow it in for booze. They sober up before they arrive on the premises, that is sober up enough to make what they consider a proper entry. But the look of booze is all over them. The old chief is perfectly straight and never drinks, and it s only his good easy nature that pre vents him from having the whole gang pulled. But they stood too long on that good nature last night. They had been on a debauch of several days, and last evening when the old man had told off his beads and gone to bed, here the damned outfit came, and they seemed to try to stamp the stairs through. They were having a regular rough house time of it up there, while the young wife of the grandson was doing a stunt of her own. The old man s ear caught the sound of her whistle through the din above, and he rose to find her signal ling to a lover out in the moonlight. Without any ceremony whatever he grabbed the young woman, turned her face the other way, and booted her up the stairs. Of course she was surprised. She once made an attempt to hit the old man with a lacrosse stick. I don t know but that she did land him one over the ear. But about the same time the old fellow dashed a cup of water in her face, and you [115] WILLIAM JONES should have heard the yell that went forth from some one. Blood! blood! Go get Simon ! Simon is a policeman. The girl and the old man then started for Simon s. The old man is about 70, but he gave the girl a run for her fun. She tried to pass him, but her wind gave out. * Come on ! Run ! Run ! yelled the old man. But the run did no good, for Simon s ears were deaf to both. To-day is calm, but the storm will break out when the young husband returns home. He went off for a two-weeks trip to fish. The old man came back mad as a hornet. You could have heard a gnat breathe upstairs after the rumpus; it was as silent as the tomb. I shall lie about here for another week, and then I ll pull for some place on the Rainy River. . . . "... I think I ve enough trout, whitefish, pickerel, and pike to last me for a while, though I might go the trout and whitefish a little longer. I refuse sturgeon, but I don t know why. . . . The Smith and Wesson is all you say it is. Crows inside of a 100 yards get it where they ll never get it again, or else they get out in a hurry never to return. The chief s wife would have cooked a crow for me the other day! I made myself clear, you bet, that she needn t cook any crow for me. The [116] DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY chief said they were good, for he d always eaten them ! But we had no crow. "I am glad that all is going well with you in the way of work. It s good to hear that Mrs. Deming and the girls are well. Re member me to them, won t you? . . . Give greetings to Mr. Hall, and much luck and good health to yourself. " Yours sincerely, "UNCLE BILLY." The year 1904 closed very happily for Jones. He reached Hampton and his Vir ginia friends, his nearest and dearest, in time for the Christmas merry-making. [117] XIII THE QUESTION OF MONEY "AN honorable poverty," according to Gibbon, long sufficed to keep the Roman soldier hard and valiant. More than one young man of science, in America, has been loaded with the same austere benefit. The young men follow their profession through, make the usual sacrifices, and put the best face on the matter. But sometimes it is a pity. Sometimes, were the poverty a little less, the honor might be greater, not to the men, but to the national cause in which they are engaged. There is grievous loss, at any rate, when a man like Dr. Jones young, full of power, full of promise, given by nature incomparable qualities for a certain work, anxious to justify his long, costly training when such a man must wait, and forego, and cast about. Jones was ardently willing to put forth "that one talent which tis death to hide." Our American republic is both a stingy and a careless master. One instance, well stated by Mr. Dillon Wallace, may indi- [118] THE QUESTION OF MONEY cate the nature of our loss. "Doctor Jones desired very strongly," writes Mr. Wallace,* "to accompany the last Outing expedition into Labrador, that he might live there for two or three years with the northern Nas- caupees; but funds necessary to meet the expenses were not forthcoming, and he was forced to relinquish his plan. Had he lived to return from the Philippines he would un doubtedly have done this neglected work in ethnic research among the most primitive North American Indians of to-day. There is no one else half so well fitted as was Doctor Jones to do it, and it is now improbable that it will ever be done, or at least thoroughly done, and the world is so much the poorer." This research in Labrador was not the only work which Jones was ready for, and failed of. The year 1905 brought him much disappoint ment and uncertainty. He had accomplished great results, but only on temporary commis sions, renewed from year to year. Jones naturally wished to see his way toward per manent appointment, to stay in his Algonkin field where he was most needed, and staying there, to earn such a living as would make possible his marriage. He was always brave * Outing Magazine, June, 1909. [119] WILLIAM JONES and hopeful; many active friends were watch ing his career, wishing to further it; but as one of them said, "the whole ethnological situation of the country" was clouded, the outlook far from bright. A place in the Bu reau of Ethnology at Washington might have enabled him to devote his life to a study of the Algonkin stock. No such position was ready. The late George Rice Carpenter, of Columbia whose name is gratefully remem bered by many young men would have per suaded Jones to write an Indian novel, or a collection of essays, presenting Indian life as viewed through Indian eyes. In time, Jones might have written such a book, who knows how wonderfully? But time was lacking: once again, our loss. Meanwhile, he could earn a living, and little more, by doing con stantly the hardest kind of work. There were moods of discouragement. A year before, Jones had been offered, and had seriously considered, a position as Indian agent; and once it was only half in joke that he proposed "if things cannot and will not turn up, to go West and grow up with the country." These moods were not the man. Out of dragging disappointment he writes "I am really enjoying my work . . . writing [1201 THE QUESTION OF MONEY up my Sauk and Fox stuff." He was "quite content" with his Ojibway collection of texts. As for the future, the lack of professional openings this door to which he had been so carefully led, only to find it locked he felt that "the whole situation [was] exceedingly absurd." He could always see humor, even in a personal situation. Thus, when obliged to "declaim," before brother scientists, "on the religious concep tion of the Manitou among the Central Algon- kins," he reported the meeting as follows: "There were four speakers . . . and the au dience was about eight, making two apiece for each blower. The thing seemed at first as though it was in for all night. The first speaker up was a German, and he droned away a full hour. I squeaked for ten minutes and then slept through the other two speeches. I simply did what the other eight did. We all woke up at the end, and found it nearly eleven o clock." Such dormouse entertainment was not for him. We have a better picture of the man off duty, as he appeared to a friend who knew him well, and who saw much of him at Mr. Dem- ing s studio in McDougal Alley. The place was like home to him. "Uncle Billy," our WILLIAM JONES informant writes, "had his own ring of the door bell; and when he gave it, there was a wild scramble among the little Demings to see who would get to the door first. Often he had to wait until they were untangled. Mean while, Uncle Billy was thinking up a way to add to the confusion; and as soon as the door was open, there would come the loud roar of a lion, or a buffalo would charge through the little people, rush to the fire place, where he would find some convenient cast off buffalo horns, which he would appropriate, and com mence chasing little Demings (as he called them, Little Wolves ) all over the studio, butting them. They played until The Sky Woman (as he called the mother) announced dinner, which offered a relief to the shattered nerves and the fractured quiet of the big, weird barn silence in the Deming studio. Uncle Billy was tired first, so he had to pay the forfeit, a good-night story after dinner; and then the little ones were packed off up stairs, and Uncle Billy with the others rested and wondered at the peaceful quiet. But Uncle Billy loved the romp most! "The children loved Uncle Billy s Fraid Heart story best of all; and when there was turkey or chicken for dinner, the Fraid THE QUESTION OF MONEY Heart had to be carefully divided so each child would have his share. "The summers were long when Uncle Billy had to be in the Field. The letters were eagerly looked for and read aloud so the little people would hear too; and when Fall finally came, and the expressman threw trunks and bags marked W. J. at the studio door with out any word or information, not one child left the house longer than was necessary for fear Uncle Billy would come while he was away." In the year 1905, neither the children nor his older friends were to see him return to New York. Severe illness kept Jones in hos pital through part of June, and this, with other misfortunes, delayed the start of his final Ojibway expedition until August. The re mainder of that year he spent among the Indians. First came Canadian Ojibways, who were "extremely nice" to him, and of whose hospitality, "the Indian form, softened by French influence," he said that he had never seen the equal. They were Catholics, so that for their Friday meals there was much fishing to do, often before breakfast, when "the water was quiet and a haze dimmed the high prom ontories of the cape and islands." A clever [123] WILLIAM JONES woman, Melisse by name, gave Jones "great help" in the interpretation of tales and legends, the North Shore material which he had gathered in the foregoing season. The region was rich in legend, poor in ceremony. Civilization had relaxed the old habits, a fact upon which Jones commented quaintly: "these people do not observe some of the rules in use among the wilder tribes. Women, particularly, gabble at will." Nevertheless, he writes, "I could get a fine collection of stories if I remained here; but I must be off to wilder people who dance and do magic." These he found at Bois Fort, along with many "fine cosmic myths" the story of the Great Otter which nightly sparkles in the northern sky, the tales of Nanabucu, of Hell Diver, and the sacred origin of things told in an old chief s lodge, in Jones s tent under a hill by Lake Vermilion, or in the canoe of his friend, Ten Claws, the hunter. Snow and ice drove him, once more, out from the wilder ness; but not until he had "a very big collec tion of tales," about which he could say "It is pretty good stuff, and I am proud of it." November and December he spent at the Leech Lake Indian Agency, revising this and former collections, measuring his own ac- [124] THE QUESTION OF MONEY curacy by the variants of Indian interpreters, reading proof sheets of a dictionary of tribes for the Bureau of Ethnology, and, in his few leisure moments, trying to see and plan his future. This last was the hardest work, but Jones determined to be patient. "If what I know and what I can do is of any value," he wrote, "I ought by spring to get some sort of a position." The hope was not fulfilled. By mid-winter of 1906, Jones had returned to New York, but found no prospect of permanent employ ment in Algonkin research. The Carnegie Institution offered him, indeed, another grant (which he accepted) to continue the prepara tion of his O jib way papers. Still, everything was temporary, everything uncertain. And then suddenly Jones came to the cross-roads of his life. Dr. G. A. Dorsey, of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, came to New York and gave him the choice of three expeditions, to Africa, to the South Sea Is lands, or to the Philippines. Here were three regions open, all at once, and all, to an an thropologist, full of good hunting. Jones at first refused, rightly. For a long time he tried in every direction to get Algonkin work. His friends then felt and now see clearly that [125] WILLIAM JONES here if ever was a man who knew our North American Indians, and who, by blood, and training, and predilection, ought to stay where he had begun so brilliantly. There was no help for it. As a last resort, Jones consented to undertake the Philippine expedition. Since he had the O jib way material yet to complete for the Carnegie Institution, it was judged best that he should go to Chicago, finish there his contracted work, and while broadening his acquaintance with scientific men and methods, prepare himself for a new and alien field. In June, 1906, therefore, Doctor Jones went to Chicago, and began his connection with the Field Museum. [126 XIV THE PHILIPPINES DOCTOR JONES lived in Chicago for about a year. Except that he found pleasant com panions at the Field Museum, and soon, as was his habit everywhere, made friends of them, there is little to be recorded about this period of his life. He kept long, busy hours in the Museum, near which he had his lodgings. "You know," he writes, "the part of the city I am in is like an inland country town with lots of open air and space; and so I never go down town into the dust, cinders, rush and noise, only when I have to. The Museum, you know, is on the Lake. There are green plots, with trees often. For example, a maple comes up to my window. To smoke I must go out of doors, which in one way is a hardship, but in another quite a recreation; for the lawns, and groves, and lagoons, and big Lake are all there." The Philippine expedition * took shape slowly, with much postponement. "My work out there (in the Philippines) will probably be * Organized by Mr. R. F. Cummings. [127] WILLIAM JONES with the pygmy black man called the Negrito. He is the wild man of the islands, wild in the sense that he lives in out of the way places, and not that he is ferocious. The main thing holding me back at present is a piece of work I am doing for the Carnegie Institution. It will be devoted almost entirely to the transla tion of jib way myths and traditions which I collected at various times in Canada and Northern Minnesota. I will present the tales as they came from the lips of the narrator, and my manuscript will be so arranged that both text and translation can be published at the same time, with the Ojibway on one page and the translation on the other. Of course you know this is rather for science than for popular reading, and it is better so; for much of it is naive and unrestrained, and it wades with childish simplicity through what so- called civilized people term indelicacy. The work should have one feature that may be of popular interest. The background of the Song of Hiawatha is the mythology of the Ojibways. Now by means of these tales one can pick out just what is Indian and what is the poet s fancy." It was with regret that Jones left this work unfinished, and made ready, at last, for his [128] THE PHILIPPINES voyage across the Pacific. Though being sent on most generous terms, he felt the break in the main design of his training. "I wish I had something here" said he. But even such a wish, even the natural sadness at leaving his friends, could not tarnish a bright zeal for his profession, an old strong love of active service. Chance words may not be taken for pre sentiment. Yet more than once, during these last days in America, Jones spoke or wrote of things to be done "by the time I get back, if I ever do"; and in July, 1907, he revisited his birthplace the old prairie of the moaning wind to take, as he said afterward, "a last look/ He sailed from Seattle in August, on the ship A Id Maru. From this point onward, we have only let ters and a diary.* Jones landed in Manila on Friday, the 13th of September, and began at once to collect his outfit for the field. "Manila, October 6. It is very difficult to get hold of any information to go by, for the knowledge of the ethnology of the islands is yet pretty hazy even in the minds of those who are working at it. And others who have * Unless otherwise designated, the extracts given are from Dr. Jones s letters. [129] WILLIAM JONES been about, and should have something to tell, are more content with some cock and bull tale which in time goes as gospel truth, where upon it then forms a basis of opinion. Some army officers can locate places where they have seen naked natives, who can fight, and who can run to fight again. That is good as far as it goes. It is the same old thing we have become familiar with in our country: army officers have been stationed for years among some of our most interesting Indians, and yet know nothing about them." At last, in that city of conflicting talk, Manila, Jones learned his route would lie round the north end of Luzon, by sea, to Aparri at the mouth of the Cagayan River, in Isabela Province; thence up the river, southward, among the hills and the wild hill- people. "Aparri, Nov. 4, 1907. My dear Doctor Dorsey: I am leaving for the Abulug River west of here, not for work but in company with an expedition of inspection. I will re turn in a week and go to the Ilongots south east of Echague at the headwaters of the Cagayan. The why and wherefore of this I will relate after my return from Abulug. I met Cole and found him doing grandly. [130] THE PHILIPPINES "Ilagan, Isabela, Nov. 20. When I sent off that hurried note from Aparri I had no idea that it would be this long before I could get a letter off to you again. When I left Vigan after the visit with Cole I met on board the boat, bound for Aparri, Mr. Brink, the Assistant Director of Education. He was on his way to visit the schools of Northern Luzon and of the Valley of the Cagayan. He asked me to accompany him and his party on this tour, and so I accepted the invitation. I am glad I did it, because it has enabled me to see where I am better than any information I have yet been able to derive from written or oral source. From Aparri we went to the Abulug country. We . . . got as far as the Apayaos. Before coming to the Apayaos we saw and met mixed blood Negritos. Their hair was curly, frizzly, and russet brown. Sometimes there was one with the short, woolly kink. They squatted together in clus ters, or one behind another. As a rule they were as lean as dry bamboo, and the hags were as wrinkled as shrivelled potatoes. They were as homely as toads. They bivouacked at night under a straw lean-to. . . . The sleepers mind the stones and pebbles about as much as I do the comfortable bed of a [1311 WILLIAM JONES hair mattress. In the morning, about when Sirius is rising high enough for the Pawnee to lug in eating sweet corn and barbecue in the Morning Star rite, a small fire is kindled; then the old man hogs it. He can t circle it, but he lies as much around it as he can, and the rest hug up wherever they can find room. At daylight, or rather when the dawn lightens up the Eastern sky, they are astir. They were hunting, and so had venison and meat to eat. . . . They sing a pretty hum, about as loud as the buzz of a humming bird, and they dance a pleasing pantomime. In fact the girls do a wave of the arm and hand and a movement of the body which are very vol uptuous. It was art in the way it was done, and in the way it wrought an effect. The boys dance a step not unlike a * hoe-down* or cutting the pigeon wing. Beyond the Negritos towards Cole s country were the Apayaos, a fine looking type of men and women. At first sight they remind one of our American Indians. I got about two days [distant] from Cole. Then we withdrew by the path we came, or rather down the river up which we came in barangays. A barangay is a dug-out with a bamboo floor, and over the floor an oval shed of the same material. [132] THE PHILIPPINES "My objective point is Echague, where I expect to strike out and return to. Worcester advised me to select the region over here to work in. He suggested that I take up first the llongots who are south of Echague. These people, as you know, are supposed to be Malay-Negritos . " * Two fragments, found long afterward among the Doctor s papers, may well be inserted here. They indicate the sort of welcome which he, as a notable visitor, received in "educational circles" at Bangued, Abra, during the travels mentioned in the foregoing letter. Senorita Lutgarda Astudillo addressed to him the fol lowing speech: "Mr. Jones, Ladies and Gentlemen: "We the people in Bangued come to bid you a hearty welcome our most distinguished visitor to our place. We are very glad to see you. Perhaps you are anxious too, to see our place and the different tribes of people. "It is strange for you to see perhaps an unknown girl who comes to crown you now with a wreath of flowers as a sign of joy we * The rest of this letter was filled with cordial praise of a colleague then in Northern Luzon, Mr. F. C. Cole of the Field Museum, who, Jones said, had "gone after a collection with pretty much the eye of a Harrington, the taste of a Simms, and the care of an H. I. Smith." [133] WILLIAM JONES show you. This girl that I mentioned is the ninth descendant of the Tinguians. These Tinguians were the pioneers of this town. "Permit me, then, Mr. Jones, to place this wreath of flowers on your thoughtful head. It is the custom here to crown our friends when they celebrate their birthday and to crown distinguished visitors, therefore I place this crown upon your head. "May you live long and may you be so happy in the Philippines that you will never want to leave them." The learned stranger was then greeted by a chorus who knew their "Herald Angels," and were not afraid of parody : "Hark! the High School class proclaim, Jones has come to the Philippines. Welcome glad to him we bring, Greetings true to him we sing. Joyful all ye people rise, Join the triumphs of the skies, With the High School class proclaim Jones has come to the Philippines. Hark the High School class proclaim Jones has come to the Philippines ! " We cannot tell what was passing, at the moment, inside that "thoughtful head" un der its floral crown; but we may be sure that [134] THE PHILIPPINES our friend missed no detail in the little comedy. At Echague, a small "Cristiano" town on the Cagayan River, Jones reached his last outpost of civilization. The fringe of our white man s world is always ragged ; and it was without flattery that Jones described what he saw there. "This," he wrote from Echague in November, 1907, "is the end of things, in a way. There are lines of bamboo shacks standing each side of the passageway to sug gest streets; there are several Chinese shops, dingy and squalid, and a native store here and there, more dingy and more squalid than the Chinese places. At present I am in the quarters of a Lieutenant of the Constabulary, and . . . am alone. The Lieutenant is at Ilagan, attending court, and may be gone ten days. . . . There is one other white man in town, but he, too, is gone; or rather, I should say, one other American, for there are several Spaniards. It is a great place for marriages and funerals. One morning there were five at one time, all in the Roman Catho lic church, which is a tumble-down af fair. . . . Off one corner at the front is a scaffold, and perched aloft is a stand where two boys rend the air pounding bells. I al- [135] WILLIAM JONES ways associated the chiming and tolling of bells with churches, but since coming out to the Islands I find church bells can make pan demonium as well. "The padre is a well fed lump of putty, with a total lack of spirituality in his look. These dispensers of spiritual guidance are a queer lot. One night we rode into a barrio, a little town part of another, where a church fiesta had been going on during the day. Arrangements had previously been made to have dinner (evening meal) at the house of the padre. When we rode up we heard loud talk ing and the opening of bottles. Ascending the stairway from the ground, we worked our way through a crowd and entered the smok ing room and the sitting room beyond. The long table was loaded down with food, and Spaniards filling themselves like swine. A padre came forward to greet us; he had a heavy load, and it was with effort that he could steer his course toward us; it was as much effort for him to stand. He had on a loud talking drunk, and looked like an untidy butcher in an untidy butcher shop. The white ecclesiastical garb he had on was smeared with about everything he had rubbed against. . . . The leader of our party was [136] THE PHILIPPINES Mr. B , a fine type of American, not only for stature, looks, bearing and dignity, but also for character and quality. He is a man of theological training ... a Presbyterian, I believe. The contrast between these two men of God was wide as the east is from the west. Another fat padre had a seat at a round table, gambling at cards with five or six low born rascals. He made some insulting re mark to a Spaniard, who replied by slapping him on the cheek. The revulsion in my mind was not so much at the debauchery of the two padres as at the thought that it was to such as these that so many well disposed peo ple went to confession and sat for spiritual guidance, even innocent maidens." Christmas in Echague was "like a circus day. The pueblo was in gay attire in the morning, which was as warm as a July morn ing in Hampton. The church was packed so tight that the door was blocked, and a crowd waited outside. ... In the afternoon where were many cocks slain in the pit, and much money lost and won in the fight. The local band went to the door of each tienda (shop) and played its weird music, in this way beg ging money for the church and getting a drink of bino at the same time. In the even- [137] WILLIAM JONES ing the lieutenant and I attended a small dance in a room about twelve by twelve. The Span ish dances were pretty. . . . When the Fourth of July comes round, imagine it Christmas. Then you will have an idea of what Christmas is like out here. ... A soldier leaves to morrow, and will take this, God speed him!" Soon after New Year s, 1908, Dr. Jones was off into the wilds, ready for "the so-called unknown" at the head- waters of Rio Grande de Cagayan. This stream, which rushes down in boulder-broken rapids through jungle from the hills, was to be his only guide indeed, for all but the first stage, his only means of approach into a country without maps, with out trails, without a name. Two govern ment officials under escort, and a few Filipino traders in fear of their lives, had formerly gone as far up as Dumubatu, where, five days of hard travel from Echague, rude houses strag gled along the river bank. The traders car ried up red or blue cloth, salt, pots, knives, brass wire; they fetched in return wild honey and beeswax, coarse mats and tampipis, rice, venison, or wild pork; and with these, a little information, scant and vague, about the men with whom they had bartered, the Ilongots from the high wilderness beyond. These [138] THE PHILIPPINES Ilongots were little naked brownies, with crinkly russet hair, and often a crinkly russet down of beard; with broad cheeks but narrow chins, so that their faces had a cat-like, ef feminate contour: nervous, vivacious men, ready to laugh at nothing, ready to cry; head- hunters, armed with wooden shields, light spears cruelly barbed, bows and arrows, and bolos with deep-bellied blades. They lived in transient clearings on the mountain slopes, or fishing-camps beside the river, far down in gorges of huge white rock overhung with jungle, gorges into which the sun struck briefly at noonday, to heat the boulders among the rapids, or light a pool where crocodiles lay waiting. It was up this river, to find these Ilongots, that Dr. Jones started in a season of low water, April, 1908. With him went a native servant, and Dona his German hound. For arms he carried only a Luger pistol, using eleven cartridges to the clip. "Up the Cagayan, April 10. I am writing this at various places and times, in order to have it ready when I can catch someone going down the river. I left Echague last Sunday morning with my man Lorenzo,* Dona, and * A Filipino servant, incapable, whose place was afterward better filled by Romano Dumaliang. See page 153. [139] WILLIAM JONES two bull carts laden with various kinds of plunder, such as chow, note paper and books, articles for barter, and clothing. That after noon ... we came to a small barrio called Pangal. It lay in among banana trees, and was a tempting place to rest. A sick youth was down with fever, and I did a little minis tering. The next morning we took three basket sleds, each of which was drawn by a carabao.* These three took us to another town farther up the river called Majatungut. We were entertained in the house of the teniente (Lieutenant), who corresponds to the Mayor of a town in the United States. It was full of people, not when we entered, but after we entered. I ate eggs, chicken and rice, with a host of eyes glued on me and my mouth. I have acquired the siesta habit, and so take my mid-day sleep. I took it there, and at three o clock we pulled on to the next town, called Inamatan, where we put up with an other teniente. This man had a big house, and he needed it to hold the multitude of men, women, boys, girls, cats, dogs, chickens, hogs and carabaos that lived under and round it. I know now what a tiger feels like at a show, where he is fetched out upon an arena, with * Water buffalo. [140] THE PHILIPPINES crowds of faces looking down upon him from everywhere. Eyes were riveted on me from the moment I entered until I don t know when. They were still looking when I fell asleep on my cot. The next morning we pulled out early, and crossed the river for the second time. At a town called Masaya- saya . . . the teniente gave me breakfast. In another hour we were off, and crossed the river again. This time we pulled into a town called Quinalabasa, where I was again enter tained by the teniente. A man has suddenly shown up who is going to Echague, and so this will have to go unfinished "[From the diary.] Saturday, April 11. The soldiers * passed on their way to Echague this morning. ... I asked [one] about the expedition, and this was the brilliant exploit performed that they came to some houses, and seeing no people there set fire to the houses; then they came back. He said that all the people had fled up the river. I asked how he knew where they went when he saw no one. His reply was a sickly grin and a bowed head. "The Ilocanos are now certain that it is futile for me to try to see the Ilongots. I told * Native Constabulary. [141] WILLIAM JONES them to take me near where the first Ilongot town is, unload me and my stuff, and then to come home as fast as they desire. Lorenzo wanted to know what we were going to eat and how we were going to live when all alone. The question seemed an interesting one to the Ilocanos. I answered by saying: let me see but a single man; that I would wave a piece of red cloth, jingle some bells, and show some beads; that this would fetch not only him but others. Whereupon laughed the Ilocanos, who understand me less now than when I first came. "[From the diary.] April 15 and 16. We found the six Ilocanos and two banquillas in waiting. ... It was 8.30 when the polers pushed off. . . . The river was pretty low, but the men kept to one side or the other be cause in such places it was generally easier poling. Rapids became more frequent the farther we ascended. . . . All of us got out where the rapids were swift, and the Ilocanos pulled and pushed the boats over into smooth water again. . . . "Farther we ascended, more pleasing and varied became the scenery. First on one side and then on the other the banks rose in walls of white rock. ... To the right of a turn [142] THE PHILIPPINES in the river beyond were two very deep cav erns in the high walls. A confused rumbling went on inside, and now and then a large bat would appear at the entry way, and as sud denly vanish into the darkness of the place again. "The sun went down with the round moon high in the eastern sky. Big bats flew over us on their way up the river, now dipping, now rising. . . . We kept on in the clear moonlight till we came to this island in the river. It is long and narrow with nothing but rock and gravel. We are camped near its upper end, just below some swift rapids. The night is calm. Some sort of a bird with a whooping cry is calling in the jungle. The Filipinos are lying on the barren rocks by their fires, the Ilocanos near theirs, the Yogads and Lorenzo near ours. Bernaldino * said it will be a good thing to push on after a little sleep so as to arrive among the Ilongots before sunrise. . . . "We slept till two in the morning, and in half an hour were on our journey. I went in the banquilla with Bernaldino. The moon gave us a clear night to travel by. Surging * Bernaldino Panganiban, a trader who had met Dr. Jones by chance on the river, and was now guiding him to Dumubatu. [143] WILLIAM JONES low in the southern sky loomed the great dragon. Beyond either bank the deer called to each other with their bleating bark, and now and then rose the plaintive squeak of a carabao trying to low. . . ." [144 XV IN THE WILDS "THE sun was now up," continues the diary on April 16, 1908, "and in a half hour Ber- naldirio began to halloo and tell who he was and with whom he came. He got out near where the first house was, but on going up to the place found no one there. We made no attempt to see anyone at the next place we passed, for it was there that the soldiers had done their burning; the place is called Alipai- yan, and in a grove of palms. In an hour we drew up to a place where we could see booth- like structures high up on poles about a half mile from our left. Presently we beheld peo ple scurrying away, but after much halloo ing Bernaldino succeeded in halting two. He went to where they were, and after a short talk came back to the river with them follow ing behind. I took them for women at first, due partly to their feminine features, light build, their walk, and to the way they did their hair in a knot at the back of the head. But on a nearer view I found them to be young men; each had a bow and some arrows [145] WILLIAM JONES in one hand, and in the other some fresh hog meat strung in small pieces on bejuco. They had just come in from an early morning s hunt. Bernaldino had them to wade out to the boat where I was and give me their hands. As the first extended a finger from the right hand which clutched his bow and arrows, he used the other to help him beg for the cigarette in my lips. His companion came up for the same thing, and I let each have a cigarette. They hurried back to the shore, where they quickly pushed a bamboo raft out into the water and poled up-stream behind us; as they came, they hallooed to people in the jungle on the left, who answered back. In a half hour I could make out some houses high up on the left bank; and as we drew near I could see people appearing by the bank. Presently down the trail to the water came a man, who took a step or two and then halted; then came another hesitatingly; now two, and then others. On their making out Bernaldino and hearing the sound of his voice, they got courage and came on down to the water. By the time we came up about 50 men, women, and children were assembled at the landing place. "Dumubatu, April 16. Please don t ad- [1461 IN THE WILDS dress a letter to me at this place, for it will never get here! It is far up the Cagayan, at least five days from Echague. There is no way in but by the river; by that way one goes out; when one gets to it one has to wander in the jungle to find it. It is the most out-of- the-way place I have yet run into out here, and probably the people are the wildest. I have a nice, cool little house to dwell in. It is thatched with palm leaves of the betel nut, and stands off the ground about seven feet. I have a far view in various directions. There is abundant game everywhere around. I wish I had a shot gun. The river is full of fish. "May 7th. My dear Doctor Dorsey: I ve a chance to send this to Echague by a Yogad on his way there. May it reach you in good season, and find you in the beneficent keeping of this pretty good old world. I ve no idea where you are, save only a vague notion that perhaps you may be under the cool canvas out upon the deck of some lone steamer somewheres east of Suez, or mixing in the naked, spindle-legged throng of some heat-smitten city in that direction. With the notion is a guess that perhaps in the next forty days and nights your boat will come steaming into Manila Bay. I wish I might [147] WILLIAM JONES be there; but as that cannot be, this goes to greet you. "I am at present with a group of Ilongots living far up the Cagayan, at a place called Dumubatu. On the map there is a spot giv ing one the impression that it is a definite locality, at least as definite as an Indian vil lage. But don t be deceived thereby. There is no such thing as a village. At the particular spot where I am stands a house, high up on poles and the tall stump of a tree. It is thatched with palm leaf. In front is a door way which is connected with a stepladder. An opening on one side looks downstream, another upstream, the door faces the river. The house stands on a high bank which is pretty steep. The jungle hides the house from the river, but objects on the river are easily and quickly seen. This house is con nected with another about a 100 yards upstream by a narrow difficult path, with another about 200 yards downstream by a still worse path. About 100 yards beyond this third house is another. It will take a half hour to get to the next house downstream. By crossing and recrossing the river for two hours more, yes three hours or more, but keep moving, you can see what constitutes [1481 IN THE WILDS Dumubatu. Generally where there is a house or two, or possibly three, there is a family of people more or less closely related by blood. These various units living here and there along the river for four or five miles consti tute one political group of Ilongots. An other group lives in the same scattered fashion up the river, about a day by balsa from here; it is called Panipagan. A short way from there is a third, called Kagadyangan. South west of here, but in the hills is a fourth; it is called Tamsi. A difficult trail leads to that group; a crawl when it leads upwards, a slide when it takes a downward course, and a tight rope walk over precipices; along some slides, one has to claw the rocks and hang on by the eyelids, so to speak. These four groups make up one division of Ilongots, and are my present subjects for study. They are friends, and of one culture. Beyond them toward the south and west are other Ilongots who are their enemies. "May 8. It has been many weeks, several months, in fact, since I have had any word. . . . Can it be that my mail lies in Manila a long while before it is forwarded? ... Of course, I am out of all communication now save when hunters or fishermen come up this way and [149] WILLIAM JONES stop at my place. At present there is a man and his son, two Yogads, who belong down the river, who are visiting me. The father returns to-morrow, and will take this. . . . I have been very fortunate so far in being able to send out word. It will be a little more difficult as I proceed up the river and get deeper in the mountains. I am having an easy time as things usually go. I have plenty to eat, and live in a pleasant shack, and have the Ilongots friendly towards me. My food is eggs, chicken, wild hog, venison, bananas, sweet potatoes and what else do you think? Can you guess? Can you shut your eyes be fore going further down the page? Well, it is wild honey, which my friends bring me in bamboo tubes. It is clear honey, and most pleasant to my tongue and palate. ... I fetched along two boxes of hard-tack, each box weighing twenty-five pounds; and nothing is better than eating several hard-tacks crushed, with the crumbs swimming in honey! Of course, I always have rice, but it gets a little monotonous. ... I forgot to mention fish, which is so abundant in the river. Sometimes I have a wild dove or pigeon. I never saw such big ones; about the size of a crow, some are. . . . [150] IN THE WILDS "My house is unlike any you have ever seen. It stands high up off the ground on poles. It has one room, and a hearth in two corners, one diagonally opposite the other. The walls reach up to your waist, and the roof then begins from all four sides and meets at a point above. The roof is thatched with palm. My floor is a screen of bejuco splints. The walls are bamboo screens. I have three openings; one is a door, the others are win dows. Leading up to my door is a stepladder, which my friends pull in or throw down at night ... for I always have one or more Ilongots. They like to come, and so I let them. They sleep on the floor, according to custom, and always have a fire burning on the hearth, to keep them warm. The weather has been insufferably hot, ... so from ten o clock in the morning until about three or four in the afternoon, I remain in the shade of my cool shack, with always visitors in. I am beginning to talk a little Ilongot, not enough to hurt; but my speech is growing day by day. The rains have begun to set in. ... If this paper is a bit smelly, it is because of the smoke from a roasting frame, where I am having a pile of venison cured. . . . "May 25. An American by the name of [1511 WILLIAM JONES Biltz is visiting me, and returns down the river in a day, taking this with him to mail. He is the school teacher at Mayoyao. I be came well acquainted with him among the Igorotes. He came up simply to see me, eat some fish and venison, and while away a part of his vacation. At the same time he came to fetch me a few necessities, things to eat, and junk for barter. ... I am still at what is called Dumubatu, but I am expecting any time to go upstream to a place called Pani- pagan, an Ilongot place. It is not on the map, and there is no other road to the place but the river. I shall go up on a balsa, a raft of bamboo poles laid lengthwise. ... It has a little platform to sit on, and the raft is poled by two men. I have about 250 pounds or more of impedimenta, which will be distributed among other balsas. "I dislike the idea of leaving my house, which I have become very much attached to, and these wild people have told me that I must not go; but if I do, to be sure to return as soon as possible. . . . My house is high up, but then it is low compared with others. When it is crowded with my little brown friends it becomes a little shaky. The people at Panipagan are preparing a house for [152] IN THE WILDS me, and will come for me as soon as it is done. . . . "[Diary.] Thursday, June 30 I gave red cloth, salt, needles and thread to my friends, and I have provisions to last indefinitely. Joaquin [a trader] came this noon with a box of stuff. ... He seemed in a tremendous hurry, and said he was going back to Dumu- batu. ... In the party was one named Romano * who evidently came with the idea of staying with me; for he had clothes for that purpose. He speaks a little English, and was recommended to me by his companions. I will give him a trial. "About July 12, 1908. My dear Smith:- Your letter came to me some time ago; but at the time, as I still am, I was out of all communication with the big world. When you know this, you will be a little indulgent with me for not having sent you a letter sooner. You have my sympathy in the be reavement of the death of your father. It is late getting to you, but it is as sincere as if it had gone to you months ago. "Look on the map of Luzon and find the * Romano Dumaliang, of Echague; a youth of seventeen years, who remained a loyal servant to Dr. Jones. As will be seen later, he played the man at a crisis. [153] WILLIAM JONES crooked line representing the Cagayan River. Find the dot marking the place of the town of Echague. Then follow the course of the River upstream to somewhere in the neighborhood of Southern Isabela Province, and you will get a general location of about where I am. The region is unknown, and the present map ping of it is based largely on pipe dreams. I am sojourning with a Negrito-Malay people called Ilongots, who dwell in lofty booths on poles and in the forks of trees. The native name of the place where I am at present is called Kagadyangan. It is on a mountain; and commands a sweeping view of large spaces up and down the River and far and wide on each side. The River winds between high walls of white rock in places along here; and in the shelters of these walls the Ilongots often dwell for long periods at a time when they want to live on fish and pass an easy life. Back on the hillsides behind some of the shelters are clearings where the people raise camote, cane and rice. This shows that some of the shelters are more or less permanent dwelling places. The houses are thatched with long grass or with palm leaves. They are floored with bejuco splint. "I live in these houses with them, am with [1541 IN THE WILDS them on hikes, hunts, and fishing. I behold them in all sorts of moods when happy and sad, contented and dissatisfied, hungry and sated with food, sober and drunk, generous and stingy, and so on. Think of the lousiest Indians you ve ever seen, and you will have a partial notion of how lousy my friends are. . . . Society is pretty simple, and gov ernment is largely according to custom. They raise rice, corn, squash, beans, tomato, greens, tobacco, bananas, gabi, and some other things in timbered clearings. They hunt deer and wild hog with the bow and arrow, and use nets and traps for catching fish. They hunt in parties and with dogs. After a killing the meat is divided equally all round. They raise chickens, and here and there a wild hog is penned and fattened, either under the house or close by. I ve met one woman who makes a rude kind of pottery. She told me she learned it from her mother. She is a gray- haired, wrinkled old woman of about sixty. As far as I can learn she is the only woman among this particular group of Ilongots who makes pottery. The people boil food in pots as they do in iron kettles, and over as big a fire. "My friends wear no footgear. The women [155] WILLIAM JONES wear a short skirt of one piece of cloth, and the men a narrow clout to hide their naked- ness. They file the front teeth, and do a little tattooing. They take heads, breast-bone, heart, and a finger from a slain enemy, but do not keep any of these things as trophies. They have few formal ceremonies, though they do many things ceremonially. "This is a rough, random sketch of some of the things these people do. I expect to con tinue with them four or five months longer, and then I will go to another region of probably the same people. Then after that I hope to pay some attention to Negritos not in con tact with Malays, or with those rather who are not so very much in contact with Malays. Those that I ve seen live in their peculiar kind of way but speak Malay. "I ve been very well thus far. Of course I ve been in the highlands pretty much all the time. And before coming to this neck of the woods I was among the Igorotes. Give us a little time and you can come to Chicago to study Philippine ethnology! And when Lau- fer comes home from Thibet, there will be some more. We are going some, don t you think? "My trip oversea was uneventful, but my [1561 IN THE WILDS two weeks in Japan is still a pleasing dream. That land has had good press agents, and they have accomplished what they set out to do, but in their accounts of art, temples, and war, they forget to tell much about the people. True, there is much beauty in Japan, but there is a good deal of the other thing. Cos tume is odd, architecture quaint, language unintelligible, manners highly conventional; all these things have deeply impressed the European, and he has accordingly written about them, and generally from a distorted point of view. Forget the idea that all Japs are brave. I saw a boat load of panic stricken people one day near Tokyo, and their wild behavior changed my former impressions con siderably. And it seems a mistaken notion to speak of Japan as a young nation. She is an ancient land, and the marks of it are everywhere. "Well, this is enough for now. It s your turn to talk. Tell me about yourself, what you are doing, about the New York Museum of Natural History, and other things in gen eral. How is Wissler? Remember me kindly to him. Say to him that I will write him one of these days. Say howdy to Mead and Orchard. Is Happy Bob still around with his [157] WILLIAM JONES dust broom in hand? Good old Bob! Don t forget to say a kind word to the Demings, Mr. Hall, and to Mr. Frazer. "Remember me to Mrs. Smith and the girls. "July 14, 1908. Kagadyangan. The peo ple came down to Dumubatu with their balsas (bamboo rafts), and brought me and my impedimenta. In two days we reached Panipagan. We should have reached the place sooner, but the men wanted to catch fish. They caught the fish with nets which were thrown from the balsas. One man stands in front and the other drives the balsa into position. With many balsas it is pretty certain that fish can be got. It was great fun, and they enjoyed it pretty much all the way. They kept at it even at night. The moon was big and bright, and we had many fish to eat. Some women were along. They did not throw the nets, but they helped push the balsas. They are strong, like Indian women, from continual work. I was at Panipagan but about two weeks. I lived in the house of the head man. He was extremely hospitable, and I never lacked for food . . . but the house was alive with roaches, and they got into everything. The people hated to see me [1581 IN THE WILDS leave, but I had to get out of that house. . . . The town was full of sick, lame, halt and whatnot. I gained something of a reputation as a healer, and the people have an idea I can perform miracles. I have had wonderful luck in one or two instances, and am on the wave of popular approval. When it came time for me to come here I had willing hands to carry my impedimenta. The carriers were mostly women, or rather the women carried the heaviest packages and the men the light, easy ones. It was no easy work for the women either, for after crossing the river it was a long climb up a steep mountain. I made payments in cloth; the amount was a fathom, that is, the distance between the hands when the arms are held out. It was regarded as big pay! and both sides were pleased, they and I. I gave a handful of salt to all around, and that added joy to pleasure. Salt is a great thing to have, and with it I ve got much food. I have read of salt being used as money, but never before appreciated how valuable it could be. "The country is wonderful here, the most picturesque of any that I ve yet come upon. The river winds through places where the banks are of solid rock; the walls rise several [159] WILLIAM JONES times higher than the church tower at Hamp ton. The mountains are wooded, and in ap pearance are not unlike the mountains of New England. The river has almost an east and west course through this particular region, and in consequence one ridge after another can be seen afar. Down the ridges from the east pours the light in the morning, and from the others at the west it lingers at evening time. At night the Cross hangs in the south ern sky, rather low and not long visible. "About August 8, 1908. Dear Bill: Your letter written on the 9th of January found me on the 26th of July. I can give you but a general idea about where I was at the time and where I am now. If you look on the map for the Cagayan River of Luzon and follow the crooked line of the River into what is supposed to represent the mountains of South ern Isabela Province, you can say that some place in there is where I am. The country is unknown, and so the mapping of it is based largely on the pipe dreams of first the Spanish and then our haughty officers. I am sojourn ing among a wild naked folk generally called Ilongots. They are a mixed race of Negritos and Malays. The Negritos are pigmy blacks, and the Malay you probably have heard more [160] IN THE WILDS about. Taft calls the latter "our little brown brothers," but few Americans are yet ready to accept the relationship, especially when it refers to the Cristiano Filipino. The Ilon- gots inhabit isolated spots along the sources and head waters of the Cagayan and the mountains on both sides. A district where a given group lives has a name. When your letter came to me I was at what is called Kagadyangan; it was on the Cagayan. I am now at a place called Tamsi. It is west of the River and in the mountains. You won t find these names on the maps because the makers of maps know nothing about them yet. Your letter was fetched with a bunch of other mail by some Filipinos who came to trade with these Ilongots. These Filipinos follow in my wake; they have been doing it since I came among these people. They were afraid to do it before. They fetch salt, cheap cloth, knives, and pots. They get in return chickens, bees wax, wild honey, mats, baskets, and various sorts of foods. Some are here now, and when they start for Echague, Isabela, I will give them this to take there to mail. Your letter was delayed at the Bureau of Science by a self-conscious clerk. It takes about three weeks of steady travelling to go from here to [161] WILLIAM JONES Manila. Though it is not far as the crow flies. "I am living a pleasant existence. My happiness would be increased by the posses sion of a good rifle and a shot gun. I ve a Luger revolver which is the prettiest arm I ve ever had; it shoots with tremendous velocity but it has no stopping power except when it catches the recipient where he lives. I was very foolish when I left the States by faith fully following the advice of Philippine offi cials whom I met out there, men who claimed to know the islands and the conditions pre vailing here. So I left my equipments that I had in the northern woods. The out of door life here is unlike anything we have at home, and the wild man here is not the camper that the Indian is. But we get along pretty well. On the hunt and hike I take more pains with my sleeping place. I do it in the Indian way, and let them sit up the greater portion of the night hugging their tiny little fire, so small that my hat could almost cover it. These people take no particular pleasure in a night. It is a period of time the sooner over with the better. They do as much if not more sleeping by day. "But when I m in a given district for some [162] IN THE WILDS time, I live more comfortably than among Indians. Their houses are bamboo structures thatched with long grass or palm leaf. They stand high on lofty poles or in the forks and branches of trees. The Ilongot is not at peace with all the world, and so his dwelling serves the purpose also of a watch tower or fort. It always commands all possible approach, and often commands a view of large distances. With the kind of warfare these people wage against their enemies, it is a difficult house to get to. The long ladder leading up to the entry way is either pushed down or pulled in at night. At dusk the people often set sharp pointed bamboo sticks in the ground round about the house, planting them thick and setting them to point in every direction. The points are so sharp that they are deep in the foot or leg of a trespasser before he knows what he has run into. They are the best keep off the premises signs that I ve ever seen. When Taft says that peace reigns throughout the islands, wink the other eye. I m in an ideal spot, far from officials of any sort. And it is given me the pleasure of seeing a whole lot of things at close hand. You know the saying about the mice when the old cat is somewhere else. [163] WILLIAM JONES "I ve never been in a place where deer were so many; but venison is not the refresh ing bite as at home. Do you know the wild carabao, sometimes called the wild buffalo? That animal offers the best sport of anything out here. It is a fighter all the time, will often give chase like the grizzly on general princi ples. It s all day with a man if he wounds one and the animal is between him and a tree or a place of refuge. I had the great pleasure of killing a whopper one day. It would take pages to tell of the thrilling joy an Ilongot and I had in doing it. I caught the animal below but a little back of the horn on the right side, and it dropped like lead. I used a dum dum and the ball lodged in the brain. It was great sport, and about 200 of us ate nothing but carabao for three days. I can t describe the meat. It is reddish like beef salted down; rather strong tasting and is far less delectable than beef, buffalo, moose, and caribou. Wild hog is the best of game meats, wild chicken is the best of birds, and the big dove the next. The Ilongots supply me with camote a kind of coarse sweet-potato, wild tomatoes about the size of large marbles, bananas of various flavors, from sweet to those that taste like squash, rice, wild honey, and a few other [164] IN THE WILDS foods. Thus you see I am not quite starving. Yet despite this variety, I d like now and then something I ve been brought up on. It doesn t quite reach the creases between the ribs, it doesn t give bottom, as we say in the west. They have a soupy drink called basi. It is made from sugar cane and looks and tastes like bad vinegar. It is a stand-off be tween basi and beer in the matter of putting one in the proper mental and physical state. If one can drink much beer, one can drink much basi, and vice versa perhaps. After a big killing, or a big catch of fish, or when entertaining visitors, much basi flows. It be gins to run about an hour before meal time, continues throughout the eating, and after if any is left. That is the time my friends tell me how much they love me, what a good man I am, how sorry they will be when we part, and some more idle talk. Of course like peo ple elsewhere they find it convenient to forget all about what they have said when they have slept off the effects. "... I am due [in Manila] about January. It will be for a brief stay, to ship away some stuff to the Chicago Museum, reequip, clean up, and see how much English I still know. I may go over to Hong Kong to do some of this. [165] WILLIAM JONES "I haven t the least idea what is going on in the big world beyond the mountains. I am wondering who the men are that have been nominated by the big parties, who won the track and field sports, baseball, and the boat race. Are the Japs still Cocky? "This would have been still longer, but I find the man who is going to Echague is soon leaving. So here go all sorts of big wishes for you and Henry and the Colonel. I m glad you showed them the other letter, and you may do the same with this, and others, if they find it worth while reading. "Tamsi, August 21. [Diary.]. Inamon * has the following account of the way he slaughtered a house full of people in Sinadipan. There were a number in the party, and they divided themselves into five to take in the five houses they were to attack. The house he went to happened to be full three men and several women. The men lay asleep about one hearth. He disposed of two with ease, the first as he lay asleep. The sound of his grunt woke a man who lay next to the corner of the house. As he rose Inamon * Inamon, the Kapunwan or oapitan of Tamsi, a local hero in whose house Dr. Jones was then staying. Note this creature s be havior during the typhoon, pages 174 and 175. [1661 IN THE WILDS dealt him a blow on the head, splitting it open above the forehead. A man who lay on one side of the hearth gave him much trouble; by him he was wounded on the lower arm and wrist. It was not till he had chopped his lower arm and knocked his bolo aside that he finally disposed of him. He ripped up a woman. ... He grabbed a child that called to its father and dissevered its hand. He slew the women about the hearth as they screamed in terror. He said that when he finished the blade of his bolo was as dull as the back. When he had finished, he called to his companions to come over and cut off the heads. "About August 25, 1908. My dear Dr. Boas: I am writing from the country of the Ilongots at a place in the mountains of South ern Isabela ... an Ilongot district called Tamsi. It lies in the mountains, a day s journey afoot west of the Cagayan River. . . . There is nominal peace among the four dis tricts, but it is not of a kind to establish much confidence. Individuals of one district will kill any individual of another if the oppor tunity is given; and in turn these same in dividuals are marked for slaughter by all of the others. Dumubatu is on pretty good [167] WILLIAM JONES terms with all the other three districts. Pariipagan and Kagadyanan are intimate. It seems desirable to have some enemies, and so there is no attempt to have peace with places like Kabinanan, Ifugu, and others up the River, and with others off toward the west in the direction of Nueva Vizcaya. . . . "Village life as I know it in America is wholly absent. . . . The dwellings here at Tamsi are nearer together than at the other places. As a rule here on the high slope of a mountain stands a dwelling in the midst of a clearing of deadened trees left standing. On one side may be a dense growth of sugar cane with the camote patch near at hand; on the other is the ground where the corn had stood but is now green with growing rice. . . . Another dwelling stands yonder, farther down the mountain, in the midst of another group of white and gray barren trees. Down at the foot of the mountain is a third. ... A thin trail leads from one dwelling to another. On coming to a brook, it may come up immedi ately on the other side or not be found again for some distance up or down the stream. The bed of a stream is often the best way to travel. "The dwellings stand off the ground. . . . [168] IN THE WILDS The older dwellings are pretty filthy dens and are full of ants and roaches. A heavy line of deer and hog skulls and jawbones hang from the top girders of the older houses. They are not trophies. They are kept because it is said that if thrown away the hunter will not have good luck in hunting. Low structures are set on the ground for the people to flee into in times of heavy wind. . . . " . . . Night to these people is not a period of time to be especially enjoyed. Not long after they lie down to sleep, some one be comes chilled and so rises to feed the fire that has burned low. Another rises, and then an other, till at last round about the fire they sit, chewing betel nut and talking and laughing. Then one by one they fall back to sleep, only to rise again later, repeating this over and over till the break of day. Then up they rise one at a time, and sit as if fixed to their seats. When not gazing blankly into space, they are scratching their lousy heads; for of all the lousy people that I ve ever seen these are the lousiest. As if by accident, some one finally rises to the feet. Another catches the sug gestion, and in the course of an hour they are all off to their various occupations. Any time between eight and ten the women return [169] WILLIAM JONES with rice and camote; and if the men have gone to hunt or fish and have been lucky they come with what they ve got. As soon as these things are cooked, the first meal of the day is eaten. . . . "They hunt deer and hog with the bow and arrow. . . . The game must pass within twenty yards for a man to be certain of hit ting it; even then his arrow often flies wide. Most of the marksmanship I ve seen thus far would be poor shooting among Indians. An Ilongot is content to have the arrow hit any where; the point of the arrow is that of a harpoon with a thong attached to the shaft; this shaft becomes caught in a tangle of grass or in the thicket, and then the victim is held until the dogs come up and bring it to bay. . . . "They fight with the bow and arrow, spear, bolo, and shield. . . . They cut off the head of the slain, chop out the bosom, bone and all, down to the lowest ribs; cut out the heart, and dissever a finger. . . . The companions of the slayer hack the body with bolos to gain second honors. The slayer wears the beak of the red-bill standing out from the forehead with prongs of wood reaching overhead. His companions wear the tail feathers of a rooster in a tuft on the head. But in either case the [1701 IN THE WILDS man must be unmarried, otherwise he does not wear the symbols. ". . . There is a great deal of singing. One class of songs is sung when chopping in the clearings, another when planting, and so on with other activities like hunting, fighting, putting babes to sleep, and praying. In fact about all the songs I ve heard are prayers. I ve heard none sung merely for fun; it sur prises me in view of the fact that this folk is so light-minded. . . . ". . . The Ilongot easily gives expression to his emotions. He is a loud talker and is fond of animated conversation. He will break in on a man who is talking, drown him under with a louder voice. In an assembly all try to talk at the same time; it is a din of confused voices. They use much gesture and exclamation, and follow it up with facial and eye expression. When these seem inadequate in telling of an incident considered interesting they will act it out in pantomime. It is not the fashion to practice restraint. I ve never seen a people more given to nonsense; they swing into it without any effort whatever. They laugh as loud as they talk. Their wit runs on things obscene, the favorite kind on sex and the sexual desires. They cry easily. [171] WILLIAM JONES They readily lie down before an obstacle that seems formidable. I have seen little that would make me think that they ever steal. But they lie as easily as they breathe. It was at first annoying to have them smile good naturedly when I caught them in a barefaced lie. They say it is nothing, that it is the way with all men everywhere. On the other hand they condemn those who lie to them. . . . "About August 25. ... I am glad my Fox texts are finally out. I am getting some complimentary notices from my co-workers.* My O jib way will be much better if I ever finish that work. A man is here to take my letters to Echague. That is great luck. . . . "Tamsi, October 4-10. [Diary.] The night was very warm, despite the rain that fell at intervals from dusk till this morning. At about seven it began to rain rather heavily. At the same time a northwest wind began to blow f . . . with increasing velocity. ... As * One of these wrote: "Your Fox texts have come to hand, and everyone who sees them is delighted. They are the first collection of Indian stories I have ever been able to read through at a sitting merely for the fun of the thing. You have certainly set a new stand ard of rendering, which those not thoroughly acquainted with an Indian language will find it impossible to follow, and those who have such knowledge will find it difficult to equal." t Three typhoons swept over Tamsi between October 4 and Octo ber 15. 1908. [in] IN THE WILDS the wind increased, limbs began to crack and fall; here and there down crashed a deadened tree. At the sound of the roar of the wind and at the sight of the falling timber, people began to leave their houses and to betake themselves to the low storm shelters. They carried out their pots, baskets, weapons, and other petty possessions. The pots they laid on the ground out of range of any possible falling tree; the rest they took into the shel ters. Inamon and Lima waited for Romano and me, but as we seemed slow in starting they began to be excited. . . , Inamon began to grow peevish. His behavior showed him to be very much frightened. Presently he began to scold his wife . . . and hurled ugly epithets at his little daughter. ... I then told him and his wife to go. I had Romano put the bags and effects into shape and then to follow. ... I stayed partly to see the wonderful scene that was taking place. The mountains dip into a hollow north of Tamsi, and through this gap the wind was rushing. The course of the wind was from the north west, and it came with a roar like that of a railway train over a bridge. Throughout the clearings the limbs were snapping and trees were falling. At every heavy crash the women [173] WILLIAM JONES set up a wail for the rice that was being de stroyed. Finally I had to give up dodging the wood that came flying about where I stood, and join the people in the shelters. . . . By noon the wind was playing havoc. . . . When I went from one shelter to another the rain cut my face like hail. ... It was with an effort that I could keep my feet. . . . The wives and mothers of the absent hunters kept wailing, saying that they were slain by the storm. All the women wailed for the rice, cane, and fruit in the fields. The wailing was not loud but in low tones, sometimes with tears and as often without. The men wailed in the same tone, but what they said was gen erally a complaint against the storm. The shelters were dark enough inside even when an end was open, but when both ends were closed tight, it was as black as night there. . . . The people could not stand the sight of what was going on outside. And when a crash was heard they would cover their faces and wail. ... I went down to a shelter where Inamon was, when the storm was pushing over the granaries and sending down big trees. He sat hugging a few coals that were almost dead; he shivered as if he were suffering from cold; but as a matter of fact he was much [174] IN THE WILDS frightened. His manner somehow struck me as funny, and I broke out into laughter. Don t laugh, don t laugh! he exclaimed. This is no time to laugh. We shall surely die. Presently I pulled out a cigarette and also gave him one. He would not light his. Presently he said with much emotion Do fling that away. It troubles me to see you smoking. It angers the storm. Don t you hear it rage louder when you smoke? I did as he asked, and he was much relieved. The lamentations and cries going on at different places close about me, showed me that I was in a cluster of shelters. . . . Mothers, wives, and sisters were weeping for the absent who had gone into the mountains to hunt. Alas, Dinampul is dead, he is dead! wailed Alan. And in this wise wept others. And the men groaned in a low quavering tone. . . . "I had a rather sleepless time where I was. The place was crowded, the smoke was thick, and the naked folk smelt. Mice persistently nibbled on my shoes or on the belt and holster of my revolver, which I used for a pillow. And so I spent much of the time watching the fire and the tangle of naked legs that stuck out on all three sides of the hearth. The dogs had the other side. . . . [175] WILLIAM JONES "The unkind weather seems to have taken the life out of the people. . . . They keep whining. . . . They seem ready to lie down and quit. . . . Since the foul weather set in this house has been a general gathering place for the greater part of Tamsi. The people come out of their shelters and lounge about in here till after the morning meal. When their bellies are filled they depart. Their aspect is most repelling. Hands, faces, and bodies are smeared with blotches of various kinds of dirt ; and their stiff hair is dishevelled. As they sit and scratch their lousy selves they seem more like beasts than human beings. These women suckle puppies. I saw one woman giving suck to two, one at a time, while she wove a bag and gossiped with an other woman. "Tamsi, November 11. Blue skies have appeared once more and the mountain brooks are running with clear water. This gives me a hope that the Cagayan is becoming shallow enough to permit Filipino traders to come up and trade again. Therefore I am writing this to have it ready for the first party that drops in. It has been many weeks since I sent my last letter. . . . "Alikod, January 4, 1909. See the time [1761 IN THE WILDS that has elapsed since I wrote the last sen tence at Tamsi. I waited to finish the letter when some one would take it to Echague, but days, then weeks, finally months passed; and I was alone with my naked brown friends. Rains came, not in silent, gentle, soothing showers, but in torrents and loads; it con tinued night and day, day and night. The brooks filled, and the great River became swollen. No one could come to or go from where I was. I had no knowledge of what was going on where people read papers and wrote letters. Last evening a messenger came from the Constabulary officer at Ilagan in command of the district, to find out where and how I was. He came with a bundle of mail. In it was a bunch of lovely letters. . . . "Alikod, Nueva Vizcaya, probably Janu ary 4, 1909. My dear Dorsey : If I had known or had some sort of word that you were to be at Echague and would probably not come up because of the high water, I would have taken to the mountains, then into the plain, with my Ilongots and gone to see you. I ought to have foreseen some such event, because I could have done it and at the same time helped you to meet your dates farther on en route. My men would have had to run [177] WILLIAM JONES the chance of a scrap with their enemies, but that s part of the game and that is why I m sitting in. I wanted you to come to the Ilongot country and see the people and their stamping ground, because I take them to be the wildest Malays in Luzon. If you had got here I would have seen you safely back to Echague by the overland route. It would have been stiff hiking, a little slow, but noth ing more. . . . Your Lalloc letter of Octo ber 8 ... came to me last night by a mes senger whom Captain Bowers sent to find out where and how I was. When it began to set in and rain in lively earnest I gave you up, because the river went up to its widest banks, packed up my impedimenta and came on to Alikod. I may be able to get to Ifugu, 2 days farther up, because Alikod is keen to take me there. If I can go the visit will be but for a few days, because I want to gather up my stuff and take it to Manila at the first op portunity. ... It takes a long time to move along the line I m going, because the districts are so afraid of each other. . . . "I am sorry Cole had to go home. I ll stay and see what I can do. ... I believe the culture of these so-called wild tribes of the Islands will go fast, and what is especially [178] IN THE WILDS needed are men who know how to collect. Take these people, for example. When I first came among them, you had to hunt for the one who had commercial cloth; bark cloth was abundant. Filipino traders followed in my wake, and now they all have cloth. They had no matches when I came; they used noth ing but flint and steel. I had a time to find a man using flint and steel when I came away from Tamsi. This is a far off place where I am now, and I am making my fire collection before the river goes down and the Filipinos arrive. If it were possible for these people to have guns, the story would be the same; their bows and various kinds of arrows would go enseguida. I believe as soon as head hunt ing is put down it will be difficult to get good spears, shields, and the various accompani ments. . . . "Alikod, January 8. ... You see fair weather is coming on once more, and at such a time the young Ilongot s fancy turns to longings for a head. The young bucks are especially anxious to go. Let me tell you of an experience I had when Bowers s messenger fetched me my stuff. His carriers were mostly from Panipagan, a place which owes Alikod five heads. The next night the Alikod youths [179] WILLIAM JONES implored me to let them carry out their heart felt wish and take the six or eight heads which were in their midst. They wanted to do it while the Panipagan folk were asleep. But it would have been a cold blooded mur der; and the visitors were guests in my house; they were people whose hospitality I had en joyed, and therefore I could not stand for what Alikod asked. But I obtained a deal of first hand knowledge on what these people call warfare. "Alikod, January 18. I ve just returned from Ifugu. It was an entertaining trip, profitable in some particulars and disappoint ing in others. Without my knowledge, Alikod had sent for Inamon, the head man of Tamsi and reputed one of the best fighters among all the Ilongots. I got a force of 25 eager young bucks and they got 3 women to carry the chow. It delighted their hearts when I put them under the command of Inamon, which was exactly what they wanted. You should have beheld that bunch of men, armed with all their fighting material and keen for a scrap. We did not see a soul in Kabinanan territory. We spent one night on the road when fires signalled round about us. The thrill was exhilarating, but we were not mo- [180] IN THE WILDS Jested. That day and night, the cautious, picturesque manner with which we moved next morning into Ifugu, gave me many a detail of the way these people fight. You ll hear it all one of these days. Well, we got into Ifugu without a fight. Festivities fol lowed, the most interesting being the making of peace between Ifugu and Alikod. Some Kabinanan people were there; they sought shelter in Ifugu, and it was well they did. I saw my first head ceremony, but the head was not there. My Filipino * was scared out of his wits, and was afraid that I was coming to Ifugu with my stuff, f I would, but must turn back downstream because it is too slow moving along this way; furthermore my col lection is gathering and I am compelled to keep it with me. . . . "If I could move according to my desire I would have my collection at the Museum by this time. Travelling from district to district is exceedingly slow, and I am dependent en tirely on the disposition of my hosts. Did Bowers tell you how he got as far as Tamsi, and could get no farther? He would not have got as far as that if it had not been for me. * Romano Dumaliang, see page 153. t I.C., to set up headquarters at Ifugu. [1811 WILLIAM JONES Climatic conditions hinder me less. Bear in mind that I am moving as fast as conditions will permit. It is not like among the Igorot where there are trails. There are no trails here. " Kagadyangan, January 31. Bernaldino came yesterday and leaves in the morning. I was off on a hunt and did not return till a few minutes ago, and will end this letter written at different times. ... I am gathering my stuff and having a couple of house models made. In 20 days I am due in Dumubatu. . . . I am well. Remember me to all the workers in the Museum. ... P. S. So Harvard won the football game too! Baseball, boat race, football! "Please send five dollars to the fund for President Eliot according to the enclosed pamphlet. The Filipino trader promises to be back in two weeks, and I ll try to have a good letter for him to take back. "February 1. My dear Simms: You can form some notion of where I was and still am when I tell you that the Constabulary once tried following my track, but got no farther than a second town. I helped them to get there; but at that point the Ilongots quit them cold, whereupon they beat back for [182] IN THE WILDS home and comfort. The rains began to set in, and one of the officers wrote me with what speed they went. Don t get the impression that I am in an inaccessible territory. Far from that. Only it is hell for people who are in a hurry, can t wait, and wish to see action and things hum. The officer in command has been in the Islands for 8 or 10 years, but evidently it will take longer to teach him the ways of the East and the costumbre of the naked little brown people. ... I ought to arrive in Manila during April. I don t mean to tarry there any longer than it takes to ship my plunder and re-equip; for I wish to keep moving as long as I am in condition. . . . I ve never been lonesome. The fascination of the wild life in these wild hills, and ceaseless occupation in one thing and another have made the days slip by only too rapidly. It seems that I came only yesterday. Indeed, I am going with reluctance down into the Cristiano towns where men go in bare feet, shirt-tails, and trousers rolled up to the knee; where women stride along with a hip and shoulder swing, bosoms raised, and a mouth ful of a 12-inch cigar. You know the familiar sight. ... I don t know when I shall come home. ... I had an entertaining letter from [183] WILLIAM JONES Lewis. He is the third to tell me that there had been no play since I came away. I hardly know how to take this kind of thing now. Is it that I was a little frivolous? that I interfered in the steady industry of the shop? I was never regarded as a very gay creature. On the contrary, I have been told that I was too sedate and serious. Some have said that I should have been a parson, that in fact I re minded them of a preacher in this town or one in that. Well, I hope all work will be done by the time I come riding in on the cars. . . . Perhaps the journey home by way of Europe is less exhausting. I hope to have Japan on my way when I go, whether it be via Europe or the Pacific. Whatever your notion of me, I am still a colt and green pastures and still waters are good to my sight and ever alluring. You know what some one has said about You go this way but once. 5 My gait is never fast, but I like it rich with vision. . . . "February 25, 1909. My dear Dorsey: I am on the Cagayan, going downstream and heading for Mayoyao and Manila. The cholera is on at Echague and the other towns below, and is said to be moving this way. Accordingly it may be best for me to hang up [184] IN THE WILDS at Dumubatu till I hear that the plague is checked. Word was sent to me that it was raging among the paisanos up to a town or two below Echague. This is to be regretted, but I am glad to know about it here. I can keep at work here all the time, but in a Cristiano barrio I might be compelled to champ the bit with all this stuff with me. Before the cholera, a pest came and took off all the ponies and carabaos. Previous to that came the typhoons which you got a touch of. The Ilongots would say that surely the moun tain gods must have it in for the valley. I believe the wet season has at last come to an end, and the change will be welcome for no other reason than that it is a change. The river is still pretty full, but it can be travelled by lashing two rafts together side by side. It was risky farther up where the rapids are swifter and rocky curves more frequent. But I passed it all without a loss of a single thing. "... On coming back to the river I found that the districts had been pretty well knocked out by the typhoons. They are gradually recovering, but not sufficiently to enable me to get the stuff I wanted. What I have is representative, but it would have been of [185] WILLIAM JONES better quality had I been able to take it out six months ago, or if the typhoons had not been so destructive. They say that these storms were the worst in their memory or that of their fathers. Be that as it may, I never saw anything like em. Though the sight of trees going down, timbers flying, and houses crashing to ruin was somewhat disquieting, and though the prolonged din and roar of the tempest became at length a weariness to the spirit and the flesh, it was yet a wonderful thing to behold all nature awake and in anger, an experience thoroughly worth while withal. The rains that followed became as feeble trickles, sort of a gentle dew from heaven. Still I am not metamorphosed into a duck or frog. "I tell you what, but I dislike leaving this field. I am departing with a reluctant heart, but I feel the silent call of the coast east of here, and realize that I must go. Things are happening all the while, not that they never happened before but because I had not yet tapped the broken sources of things, and could not see or hear what I was blindly groping for in the dark. Ground that refused to give way is now loosening all around. You ve had the experience many more times than I, and so it [1861 IN THE WILDS is nothing new to you. I simply make men tion of it to have you know at what stage psychologically I ve arrived in the life of these people. "Well, at last I ve come upon the tales. They are curious creations, and some will at once remind you of North American variants not only as to incident and literary elements but as to the cosmic ideas they display. I will put the little collection together and send them on to you to publish wherever you think best. Still yet am I unable to discern if the Ilongot has the manito in the Algonkin, Sioux, or Pawnee sense. His anitu is a real, tangible thing which he names by the mean est words he can think of. In fact the Ilongot is very uncomplimentary toward his gods. He will go through the list with you, telling what good points and what bad points this and that god has, and at the end he will curse the whole lot and say they are no good. A rather interesting attitude this, psychologi cally. ... I am sending my boy Romano down to Echague with this and other mail to-day, and to have him bring back word about the plague. . . . "Dumubatu, March 19, 1909. My dear Doctor Dorsey: I thought I had sent you [1871 WILLIAM JONES my last letter from this bunch of Ilongots, but here goes another because I have a chance to send it. I am still here because the men have not made balsas enough to raft me and my all down to Echague. When Bowers left here last fall he cleaned up all the balsas; and though the river has fallen two months earlier than last year the men have not been able to build other balsas. The bamboo material is just far enough away to make it risky to go for it. As I write a bunch of men have gone out to search for two youths who went for bamboo yesterday and have not returned. You see the weather is growing more torrid every day, and the sun can now shine for a whole day at a time. As a result every Ilongot house is on the watch for prowlers looking for heads, and ambitious youths are off looking for the same in other districts. As Captain Bowers said at Tamsi when the Ilongots re fused to do his bidding because what he wanted involved a taboo: This may be good ethnology, Jones, but it makes me tired! He said he had seen many foolish people in these Islands, but the Ilongot was the worst of them all. Well, I don t know that I would agree with the sentiments he expressed, but he is probably correct when he thinks the Ilongot [188] IN THE WILDS exasperating from a practical point of view. I shall need about 15 balsas. I ve sent for Panipagan and Kagadyangan to come down with 8, but I don t know what is keeping them. I would not bet on it, but I believe I shall be out of here in 10 days. "I ve just returned from a visit of nearly a week in the mountains at the west. . . . What wearied me was to hear of my Alikod friends off on a head hunt, their objective being Gumiyod. This place is southwest of Ifugu, in the mountains, and is said to be a large district. I tried getting there once, but my friends balked on account of the rains, the prospect of lack of food, and the report that a war party of Gumiyod was in the neighbor hood of Alikod. They wanted to get on the trail of the party and cut off its return. Please don t entertain any notion that I am seeking for adventure. Naturally there s a little risk, but so there is riding in the cart behind the old grey mare. The point is this warfare among the wild men of Luzon is rapidly being checked, and this is practically the only terri tory where the mice have free play. And so all I ve desired and still desire is to observe and note what happens. . . . "Smith sent me word that the cholera was [189] WILLIAM JONES being checked in the down stream towns. Hence all that is keeping me is the lack of rafts, but these I can get in time. "If I remember it, this is the time the winds sweep down 57th Street, the chief janitor is economical with his coal, and the pipes gurgle lazily. I hope none of you are frozen, that all are as well as I am." 190] XVI DANGERS JONES was not the man to harp on diffi culty in his own life. Whatever hardships appear in the foregoing narrative, it is plain that he encountered them all alike with patient courage. Yet even by the few glimpses given us, we may see clearly one fact: that Jones well knew how bloody, childish, and bestial were the folk among whom he ate and slept, and that he made not even the simplest movement rashly. In deed, we may see more: that while in his let ters he told only what was comfortable and pleasant, he let his diary confess, by sugges tion here and there, to darker things. The letters present his Ilongot companions as "little naked brownies, very kind" to him. The diary shows them otherwise. It is in the diary that they act from day to day their real parts, furtive, ungrateful, unclean. It is in the diary, not the letters, that we see them housed with vermin in their huts, huddling beside mangy dogs in the ashes, tearing with their filed, blue-black teeth the flesh of a [191] WILLIAM JONES dead sow that stank, talking and performing the wildest obscenity. It is the diary which records their greed, their lies, their experi mental threats and arrogance, followed by "the same old cringing, the same old apologies and evasions." The letters do not mention that houseful after houseful of drunken blus terers, met by a kind but unshaken fortitude, gave in, left off their loud menaces, and kneeling, repulsively stroked their conqueror on the arms and legs. Nor do the letters tell how Jones, one day at Alikod, facing alone two hundred highland warriors greedy for plunder, informed them that their young men were weaker than women, that he was ashamed of them and disappointed, that they could go now and relieve him of their society. All this, more than this, our dear friend met and suffered and dared, but never told: it is jotted down in memoranda which he thought nobody else would see. Not fear, but re flection and the sense of humor, caused him to add "If these people would only stop to think, they could bring almost any kind of pressure against me." Besides these intimations of his moral sovereignty, the private journal contains our only hint that Dr. Jones had received fore- [192] DANGERS warning; that at night, in the tangle of naked legs and half-sheathed bolos round the hearth, lighted by fire or the smoking rosin stone, he slept with his head pillowed on his revolver, or on the flanks of Dona his hound. The diary, but no letter, speaks out as follows: "Saturday, June 20 [at Panipagan], While at tiffin a man came in with a chicken. It was given to me because it had flown near my head when I was out among the people yes terday. I don t remember the time, place, or hen; but they said it really happened, and that the bird was destined for me. I took it, and gave the man some salt." "Friday, August 28 [at Tamsi], The Alikod people had an interesting story to tell me last night. They told me that when I was in Panipagan a plan was set to kill me; that I was to be made to pass a place where a tree would be felled upon me; that the tree was felled but missed me; that the man who was commis sioned to carry this out was Kandag, . . . and that when the attempt failed, the man had fetched me a chicken. I said that I had been given a chicken by a man who claimed it had flown by my head and was therefore destined for me. They gave this the laugh." Jones knew the risk he ran by day and [193] WILLIAM JONES night. He was not foolhardy. His Indian caution more than matched the wiles of these head-hunters, his sleep was infinitely lighter than theirs, his footfall more wary. "I came," he says in the diary, "upon a family resting in the shade of a booth, and was on them before they knew anything about it. I ve done this so many times that I am now curious to know if it can be connected with poor hearing." In another passage he laughs to scorn the night guards of the jungle tribes, the sentinels of their war parties, and their scouts. We may be sure, on the other hand, that although Jones felt his watchfulness to be superior to theirs, he did not relax it. All up and down the Cagayan, from village to trackless village, he had won great authority, which he used without fear, single-handed, whether leading a band of spearmen through the dense kogon, or presiding at conferences, or checking massacre. But that authority never made Jones careless or secure: he main tained it by vigilance, and pursued his policy of quiet friendship. He was there to work, to be with and of the people at all times, in dan ger and out: to work and watch and learn and record. This he did, wisely and faithfully. Even when lying sick in a hut, he observed [194] DANGERS with the minutest care how arrows were made and bowstrings twisted. What Dr. Jones himself thought of his life and labors, we read in the following letter. One of the last he ever wrote, it would seem strangely enough to review all his experience under the approaching shadow of the close. "February 25, 1909. Dear Marlborough, Your letter of November 10th came to me about a month ago. I will answer it now and have it ready to send when the chance comes. It was good to hear from you, Marlborough, a happy reminder of past associations of the Academy and the college and the lads we used to know. I wonder how the men are doing, how they are faring in the game, how many rest content with only the ante, what ones keep opening and who stay, and who keep raising the limit. As for me, I am just so so, moving along in an even gait, sort of a dog-trot. You know I was no intellectual light, no winner of scholastic honors and the other worthy prizes. Therefore, I m doing no miracles, nor clouding the air with dust and sand. After we had done our playful stunts, drunk the punch and beer, and took our leave-takings, I went down to New York and became connected with the Museum of Natu- [1951 WILLIAM JONES ral History there. I was with the institution for 4 years, and then with it and the Carnegie Institution for 2 more years. All the while I put the springs, summers, and falls mostly in the wood and lake country of the North, and wintered in the big city which I came to love for reasons hard to define. Then a couple of years ago I went to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, to come on the chase out here. I had a pleasing journey through Japan and down the China coast, lingering here and there, and became infected with the something that makes those who have been there to desire to return, despite its filth, plagues, and all the other horrors. My work makes me lead the life of a gypsy, but it suits my heart nevertheless. I was born out of doors, and the only sheltered life I have had was when you and I came to know each other. Now it looks as if I shall keep on under the open sky, and at the end lie down out of doors, which, of course, is as it should be. I don t know how long I shall re main on this side of the spinning ball. My stay is indefinite. The plan was for me to journey also to other islands away from this Archipelago, go to India, and the good old Lord only knows where else. My prayer is [196] DANGERS that I may have the health and life to do it. I ve been in the Islands about 19 months. Thus far my head seems clear, heart and lungs in good working order, so far as I know. Therefore, when you come out to the Islands, I shall very likely be somewhere around. My address is always with the Bureau of Science, Manila. And if you send word there telling where you are, I shall get it some time. Don t become impatient if you don t receive an im mediate reply, for I am generally, as at present, out of the reach of mail and tele graphic communication. For that matter, it does not necessarily mean that because one lives near or along a mail and telegraphic route, one will get the letters and telegrams sent to one. This is the Philippines and not the U. S. A., so smother your wrath and act as if you don t give a darn, whether you feel like it or not, when a letter or telegram goes astray. "I am still up the Cagayan River in East ern Luzon sojourning among the wild folk called Ilongots. I was further up the River, but am now heading down stream. It is no use for me to give names of places, for none of them are on the map. The people who made the map of this country were a cheerful lot. [197] WILLIAM JONES They did it on their imagination because it was a little inconvenient to come up and do a pretty picture of the real thing. I am heading for Manila, but I have word that the cholera is doing mischief in the Cristiano pueblos down stream. I ve a lot of plunder on my hands, things which these people make, and rather than run the risk of being held up where church bells are tolling for the dead, I ve decided to remain where I am for a while. Hence it will be April or May before I can reach Manila. I don t mind being here. In fact I enjoy it. I ve been among these people now for about ten months, having their presence day and night. On the whole, I ve had a pretty good time. It is not so much the society of the Ilongot that has enchanted me, but rather the free life in these wild, rugged hills and silent gloomy jungles. The Ilongot interests me only in an objective sense, for what he has and does, the way he lives and dies, his relations toward his fellow men and how he adjusts himself to the narrow world about him. There are no trails in the country of these people, and it is all foot work. In going from one district to another, the way is up and down mountains, along and over bogs and boulders, through dense thickets [1981 DANGERS and tall razor-bladed grass, up and down streams up the ankle or to the waist. Deer and wild hogs are abundant. Where the country is open I can get a little hunting like at home. But the greater part of the hunting is with dogs. The dogs jump the game and the men lie in wait for it to pass at an exit and send an arrow into it. I ve had some carabao hunting, but steel nosed bullets are only ticklers. Unless you catch the beast where it lives your shooting is only target practice. A 30-30 soft nose would do the trick, for it has the smashing power to stop the animal. Be on your guard if you hunt the animal when you come out here. It s a fighter all the time, and an ugly one at that. When it throws up its head on seeing you, it is coming, and coming like hell. So what you do, do it P. D, Q. But it s fine sport, and very satisfying when successfully over. The military haven t subdued this neck of the woods yet. That is one reason why I made a bee-line for it. My friends still hunt heads as they ve done since days far back in time. When you come and we are in the shade of a cool verandah with a little pizen and rolled dusky leaves, I ll tell you a whole lot of this life and country. I am looking forward to [199] WILLIAM JONES seeing you now. I shall have a lot to ask. My memory is poor, but a few things still hang on "And so you are married and have a growing daughter. Well, that is pretty fine, Marlborough. You and Don and some of the others are pretty lucky. Occasionally I get an announcement of this man and of that getting married, but it is always a long while after the event. For I have grown used to getting letters in a bunch after I come in from a long trip. It has been bad in one sense. A great deal of work is then piled on my hands, and many of these letters have gone astray and have never been acknowledged. Lastima ! "I am glad to learn that you were along when the soldiers made that march from Riley in 1905. I remember the newspaper account of it. I wish the Plains could have remained as they were when I was a kid. I hope you passed through the least civilized section of it. I went down to Oklahoma be fore leaving the States to take a last look. I cannot put into words the feeling of remorse that rose within me at the things I saw. The whole region was disfigured with a most re pelling ugliness windmills, oil wells, wire fences. Go to so and so for drugs, go to an- [200] DANGERS other for groceries, and so on. The cowboy and the frontiersman were gone. The Indians were in overalls and looked like bums/ The picturesque costumes, the wigwams, horse men, were things of the past. The virgin prairies were no more. And now they say that the place is a state! Nevertheless you saw the stars that I used to see. Did you ever behold clearer moonlight nights anywhere else? Did you hear the lone cry of the wolf and the yelp of the coyote? I wish you could have seen the long horn and the old time punchers. The present would-be punchers are of a different build. "I would write a little longer, but I must stop to do other letters. I ve a messenger going to the Cristiano towns and I want him to take the mail. I thank you for your letter, Marlborough. Don t let it be the last. Pass a kind word along to any of our old friends we have and tell them howdy. And may the Lord be merciful to your sinful soul, and bring you safe to Manila, where we can open a cool bottle and another in memory of other days and of friends 5,000 miles or more away. "Yours very sincerely, "WILLIAM JONES." [201] XVII THE LAST DAY BALSAS bamboo rafts were needed to bring Dr. Jones and his ethnologic freight down river to the friendly huts at Dumubatu and the Cristiano town of Echague. Two hamlets, Panipagan and Kagadyangan, had promised and failed to bring these balsas, had promised again and failed again, until even the doctor s patience had been taxed. At last, on the evening of March 28, 1909, he received a fresh promise that the rafts would be ready, and an appointment to meet their polers at Pung-gu landing, above the rapids of that name. Morning broke darkly on March 29th, with a drizzle of rain. By ten o clock, however, out came the sun to set the river and the green jungle shining. Dr. Jones wrote the final entry in his journal, and put off from Panipagan, where he had spent a troubled night, to paddle up the two miles of broken water to the rendezvous. With him went his faithful boy Romano, and a Dumubatu man as boatman, a trusty fellow named Gonuat, [202] THE LAST DAY or Ganwat. Romano was frightened. He afterward said that his master had for some time slept badly. The very boat they sat in was of ill omen, a banquilla borrowed from one Pascual Batag, a trader whom people dreaded because, it was said, he could poison by a touch. The time of year was an uneasy time: the spring, when cutters of bamboo distrust the jungle, when the head-hunting fever sends each ambitious lover abroad for a trophy. The fear was not yet dead that cholera might come upstream; and the last words the doctor wrote in his journal describe an enigmatic barrier bamboo poles and shaved bejuco vines festooned across the river to ward off, it would seem, the ap proach of deadly sickness from below. About noon, the travellers reached the ap pointed place by Pung-gu rapids. Here the Cagayan runs through a narrow gorge of grayish rock, which in the tropic sun glares white. The river itself, at this season a fast, deep, smooth, foreboding body of water, beautifully blue, passes between clustered boulders on the one hand, and on the other a small crescent beach of gray sand, towered above and cut off by a pointed crag two hun dred and fifty feet high. This crag stands [203] WILLIAM JONES like a huge flat-iron set up on its heel. Boul ders, piled ashore by many a freshet, flank its base up-stream; boulders and sharp kogon thicket, down-stream; so that the gray sand beach has little or no exit but by the hurrying river. One who visited the place afterwards,* observed that its isolation made it an almost perfect trap. In company with Dr. Jones, his boy Ro mano, and the honest Gonuat, came three unwilling natives, Maging, Dinampul, and old Takadan, the Kapunwan or captain from one of the dilatory villages. What then troubled the minds of these three, we can never know; or what words had passed be tween them and a certain Tolan, a messenger who had run off through rain and gathering darkness, the night before. The party landed below the flat-iron rock, and awaited the com ing of the rafts. Only four came. The num ber was in itself a flagrant broken promise, like many foregoing promises. On the rafts or with them came more than twenty savages, each bearing shield and spear, bow and ar rows, the itan or head-taking bolo. A little tree grew, if it does not stand till * Dr. S. C. Simms, who ascended the Cagayan and brought back Dr. Jones s collection to this country. [204] THE LAST DAY this day, on the beach at Pung-gu. Near this tree the assembled Ilongots built a fire and cooked rice and fish. Dr. Jones ate heartily, with the same good appetite as of old. Gonuat the boatman did likewise. But young Ro mano Dumaliang could not eat, though pressed with invitations. "I felt something was wrong/ he said afterward. "I did not know why I was suspicious, but my heart was fluttering." Instinct, a sense of evil round about, whatever it was that oppressed him in the hot noon air between crag and river, Romano could not eat. "I said to the doctor: Let us go now, and let the Ilongots come afterwards with the balsas/ "The doctor replied: No. Why do you want to go now? If we go now they will not come with the balsas. So we will wait until they prepare the balsas/ ! The mid-day meal was finished. Most of the company squatted on the beach, near their weapons. Romano and Gonuat retired to the poisoner s banquilla, which waited at the water s edge. Dr. Jones remained to con sult, laughing while he talked, with the aged captain Takadan. He laid his hand on the old man s shoulder, bidding him come down [205] WILLIAM JONES in the banquilla as far as Dumubatu, where he should receive gifts whenever the promised boats arrived. There was in this crowd of brown men a fellow named Palidat, whom Jones had cured of a sickness, "a man," says Romano, "whom the doctor considered his good friend and to whom he had given many presents," a man who had won renown by killing the mother of an enemy. This Palidat drew near while Dr. Jones and old Takadan were speaking. He patted the doctor on the shoulder, and smiled. "We shall bring more balsas to-morrow," said he; and at the same instant, reaching swiftly, drew his bolo and struck for the white man s neck. The blow must have come like lightning out of that clear noon. Even so, Jones dodged quickly enough to catch it across his forehead. Dazed, blind with rushing blood, he sprang back toward the river, and fumbled behind him for the Luger pistol. Lives have hung on trifles before now, but no braver life or kinder heart ever hung upon a button. The button of the holster flap was fastened. While Jones tugged it loose, the squatting cowards jumped up and rushed at him, [2061 THE LAST DAY twenty and more to one. In the press, a certain Yapogo sliced him across the right arm. Another sturdy brute, Gacad by name, speared him below the heart, dealing a mortal blow just as the doctor drew his weapon. Maging also, his fellow traveller of that morn ing, had thrust the point of a spear butt through the wounded arm. Jones, barely able to stand, began firing, but could neither see nor swing revolver. The Ilongots sprang apart, so that the eleven bullets flew harmless among them. Meanwhile to their everlasting honor out from the banquilla tumbled boatman and servant, vainly attempting a rescue. Gonuat drew his bolo, fought, was overpowered, and flung back, striking his neck so violently on the gunwale that he remained half stunned throughout the rest of that day. Romano Dumaliang, the terrified youth of seventeen years, clutched a bolo blade in his naked hand, grappled with the tall Maging, and while wrestling in the water, got a spear through his hip. Between them, these two faithful servants dragged their master into the boat, which they pushed off from shore. The Ilongots ran, flinging spears after them. Dr. Jones contrived to put another clip of [207] WILLIAM JONES cartridges into his revolver, and gave it to Romano, who fired with his hand bleeding, shot Yapogo dead through the head, and sent all the others diving into the kogon grass or the river. Some ran along the heights and sent down poisoned arrows. As soon as Pung-gu rapids caught the boat, the fight was over. The ill-fated banquilla shot down-stream, bearing three almost senseless men. The time of day was somewhere after two o clock. Dr. Jones, with death upon him, cared first for his bleeding servant, Romano, and bound up the boy s wounds. As for himself, he said that he should not die, but conjured Romano to steer well through the many rapids, lest the dug-out strike a water-level rock and leave them a prey to crocodiles. Later, as they sped down the deep canons, and as the doctor felt his strength to fail with the failing light, he gave Romano his watch as a parting gift, explained how all his papers and collections should be cared for and sent down to Echague. By what account we possess, the doctor ap pears to have suffered little pain. At any rate, he made no mention of suffering. In deep twilight the boat reached Dumubatu. Romano, following orders, went up among the [208] THE LAST DAY hovels and called the people, who came down to the shore and set a guard roundabout; for the doctor s only fear had been that those Ilongots up-river might descend and take his head. About an hour later, Romano put some question to his master, who lay still in the boat. He received no answer. Jones had quietly closed his eyes forever, while the great stream ran silent underneath him, and tropic stars burned overhead. The guard of savages wept bitterly upon the shore 209] XVIII CONCLUSION THE body of William Jones was rafted down upon a balsa to Echague. There, on Thurs day evening, April 1st, 1909, it was buried in the Municipal Cemetery, two lonely Ameri cans reading over the grave those words con cerning man that is born of woman. All up and down the wilds of the Cagayan River now less wild for his presence there remain the signs and traces of our friend. Stilted booths which before held nothing but deer skulls and hog bones, now contain what is left of his free-handed giving, ornaments, cloth, metal, tools, and whatever else im providence could not consume. Tamsi has dogs named Dona, after his famous hound. Panipagan and Alikod now call their babies Lomano, honoring the young Romano who caught a bare blade in his bare hand. A Governor-General of the Islands wrote: "Dr. Jones took the chance that you and I know it is necessary to take in performing such work [210] CONCLUSION as he was doing, and lost! It seems like the irony of fate that he should have been made away with by Ilongots after he had done so much to help and protect them. Such re cent legislative and administrative measures as have been adopted, calculated to better their condition, were based directly on the informa tion which I received from him. In fact, when I first heard of his death and learned that it was ascribed to Ilongots . . . with whom I knew that he had lived on friendly terms, the idea immediately occurred to me that the real murderers might not improbably be the Christian natives whose abuse of the wild people he had reported." It was their benefactor whom these people slew, without reason or motive, as boys might kill a squirrel. Enough has been said. It is not the busi ness of this narrative to tell how Dr. Jones s murderers were captured, tried and sentenced to death by the Court of First Instance, given a foolish clemency by the Supreme Court of the Islands, and allowed by their native con stabulary guard to escape. Dr. Jones asked the government for nothing, but went forward by himself, and gave his service like a good American. Nor does this book care to praise a man who [211] WILLIAM JONES never looked for praise. His record speaks. Jones would have it so, and rest content to be remembered by a few. He lived fearless and upright, in obedience to the Great Mystery. "The valiant never taste of death but once." WRITINGS OF WILLIAM JONES EPISODES IN THE CULTURE-HERO MYTH OF THE SAUKS AND FOXES, The Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XIV, Oct.-Dec. 1901. SOME PRINCIPLES OF ALGONQUIAN WORD-FORMATION, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 6, No. 3, Supplement 1904. (This was the thesis written for doctor s degree.) THE ALGONKIN MANITOU, The Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XVIII, July-Sept., 1905. CENTRAL ALGONQUIN, Archaeological Report, Toronto, Canada, 1905. AN ALGONQUIN SYLLABARY, Boas Anniversary Volume (New York, G. E. Stechert), 1906, pp. 88-93. MORTUARY OBSERVANCES AND THE ADOPTION RITES OF THE ALGONQUIN FOXES OF IOWA, Congre*s In ternational des Americanists, Quebec, 1907. Fox TEXTS, Publications of the American Ethnologi cal Society, Vol. I, 1907. NOTES ON THE Fox INDIANS, The Journal of American Folk-Lore, April-June, 1911. ALGONQUIAN (Fox), AN ILLUSTRATIVE SKETCH, Hand book of American Indian Languages [Bulletin 40, Part I, of Bureau of American Ethnology (Boas), pp. 735-874], 1911. INTERUBRARY LOR 1 4 1985 UNIV. OF CALIF.. BE LD 21-50m-l, 33 A YC 69324 57 37115 257768