Read Ebook: Hunting Indians in a Taxi-Cab by Sanborn Kate

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Ebook has 181 lines and 12271 words, and 4 pages

Tacomus bears the name of an old Indian Chief, who with his sons, first sold the land which is now the town of Dudley, to Governor Winthrop's representatives, in old Colonial Days.

The proud possessor of this impressive Brave says, "I felt that I had secured a great prize and an unusually handsome Indian. I also fondly thought I was the first to discover the value of our old tobacco signs for lawn decoration; but found later that a woman had seized the idea first, and about fifteen years before. Visiting her 'Breezy Meadows,' I noticed that she had placed two old wooden Indians near a veritable wigwam or tepee on her 'Adopted Farm!' So to her I take off my hat and courteously bow."

This complimentary allusion is intended for me, but I make no claim to this honor; it is difficult and risky to try to prove oneself the first in any line of discovery and no doubt there are scores of others who have rescued these statues from oblivion, by giving them a place of refuge.

It was the enthusiasm of this friend which suggested to me the idea of collecting the best surviving specimens of the Tobacco Sign Indian and I soon found that I must take a hint from the modern nature-lover, and do most of my hunting with the aid of the camera.

MY first wish for an Indian was to add to the effect of my wigwam. I've always been rather partial to the Indian race because there is a tradition that my great grandmother, Abigail Eastman Webster, had a slight infusion of Indian blood. She was a noble looking woman, I have been told, with rather a dark skin and large black eyes. Her son, Daniel Webster, possibly owed to her his swarthy complexion and wonderful eyes, like "Lanterns on a dark night," as the Websters were mostly of a florid complexion, and addicted to red hair.

I feared my dear old Indian might look too much like an advertisement as he carried a bunch of cigars in his right hand, so this was removed and replaced by a tomahawk.

Next I suspected my unnamed brave might feel lonely; any way he looked so, as he was from the busy Bowery of New York, so I begged friends to aid me in providing him with an attractive spouse.

Many hunted but in vain; at last there was a squaw reported from Leicester, Mass., but alas! she had lost both feet. With the usual pedal appendages she would have cost .00, "but seeing as how she was crippled, she might go for .00."

I bought her and she looks all right with her stumps of ankles set deep in the ground and heavy stones around them to keep her firmly planted. The couple seem very real and human to me and I am often startled in the twilight by coming on the pair without thinking that they are always there. I intend to put a Cupid in the bushes near by or behind a sassafras tree, to make it a little more exciting. I regret not giving them any names but may do so, if I can decide on something appropriate. I have a splendid portrait of Tecumseh, but that name does not seem right.

And what a long list there is; I will only give a few, as Massasoit, Squanto, Black Hawk, Pontiac, Red Jacket, Leather Stocking, Quizquiz, Katsa, Red Cloud, Many Horns, Spotted Wolf, Yeh-toot-sah, Yok-ki-e-to, and finally the name I like best, "Samoset," that good Indian who was the first to welcome the Puritans in 1621, saying "Welcome Englishmen, Welcome Englishmen!" He told the Pilgrims to possess the land, as those to whom it had belonged were swept away by a pestilence. So Samoset, it shall be and the woman? No "set" to her for her knees have no bend to them, "Squaw-without-feet" is true and sounds like some of their queer names.

I own that I am a bit superstitious about Indians and fancy I am liked and protected by them, after several unusual experiences which I take this opportunity to refer to the Society for Psychical Research. In California, years ago, just after I had put up my wigwam at home, I was barking as for the last twenty years with a chronic bronchial irritation and was urged to visit a remarkable healer who had "suddenly been controlled by the spirit of a cultivated woman, a medical missionary, who had been most successful in India but who had died after a few years of brilliant practice." Making an engagement two weeks in advance, which was necessary, owing to the great rush to be cured, I took a massage treatment and greatly enjoyed the talk of the returned missionary, which was all at once broken up by her place in the rubber's mind being usurped by a powerful American Indian who, through the medium, kept up a vigorous yet not rough rubbing, slapping and putting hot hands all about my throat; talking too as he worked, so enthusiastically. I think he was a pretty knowing individual for this is what he said. "Ugh! Ugh! Wah! Wah! This Squaw, she talkem heapum, she now quite bad off, but Ugh Wah! we patch her up! Will make her pokagee! Yes, Pokagee!" Then he left as quickly as he came and I noticed that poor Mrs. Seldon was breathing hard and was in a profuse perspiration. When she opened her eyes, she sighed and inquired in her own quiet, gentle way, "Have you had a good rub?" That evening, I went to a Reception for some of the Professors of Stanford University with the promise of being "Pokagee" still in my head and as one of the gentlemen was a teacher of the Indian languages and dialects, I ventured in a timid, hesitating manner to inquire "May I ask if there is such a word as Pokagee in any Indian dialect?"

And the learned man replied at once, "Certainly."

"Please tell me what it means."

"It is used to express cured, or in perfect health."

"O, thank you," I said, "and just one more question--what tribe has that word?"

"The Pottawatamie."

And strange to relate my Astral Masseur had belonged to that particular tribe. I forgot to say that he spoke of his pleasure over the Tepee I had built on my grounds and said the Indians long ago loved to walk and hunt in my woods. And he added, "They like to go to Tepee now; seems like their own place."

Again a friend took me to one of the best known and most valued medical women in New York for a shampoo and a treatment of my face which certainly did need to be steamed and electrified. Imagine the general astonishment when another Indian spirit kindly "controlled" the masseuse, and he wished to encourage me about my heart as several doctors still in the flesh had been criminally or at least brutally frank about its condition and I was naturally alarmed. And he said "No need worry about heart; you no got bad heart, only what I call nervous heart. You got scared but you stay out doors and let books alone. When you go home go to the Tepee and stand by it, and some of us will go walk with you. We are often there."

Whatever that was, it did me much more good than the physicians, who frightened me into an abnormal and utterly useless despondency, but whose charges were so high as to increase my temperature and heart action. So me for the Medicine Man of Mystery--with thanks. Excuse this personal digression.

LIKE his prototype, the stalwart Red man, who once regarded this beautiful, broad land as his own, the Tobacco Sign Indian is now rapidly disappearing from all city streets by order of officials because the figures encumber places of business.

He has a distinct genealogy for it is believed that the wooden statue came first into existence in England as a Tobacco sign because Sir Walter Raleigh, who carried the plant back from his trip to America, told of the Indian's Pipe of Peace and the joys of smoking, besides enjoying it himself. Naturally the Brave himself should be used to advocate its use.

So, it became the symbol of cigar stores both in England and other countries, as the striped pole belongs to the Barber, who in old times used to bleed his patrons as well as shave them, and the frisky Goat called attention to "Bock Beer."

Soon all of these will have gone.

A great variety of such signs were found in New York, and several other cities while hunting in a taxi. The most common is the Brave gazing, with right hand over brow; next an Indian Queen or a young girl with a tobacco leaf or bunch of cigars in hand; Squaw with Papoose; Minnehaha, a very pretty girl, offering cigars; Punch and also Punchinello, this last extremely comical both in face and figure. The one whose photo you see here cost at second hand and the present owner would not sell it, she says, for twice that sum. And as we scoot here and there in all sorts of out of the way places, we see a Policeman, a Baseball Player, a Hunter in appropriate garb, a handsome Highland Chieftain. Cupid is not omitted; of course not, he is popular and found everywhere. Actors of the past generation have been honored: Edwin Forrest as Metamora, and the elder Sothern as Lord Dundreary. One of these pictures was taken in front of a cigar store in Worcester, the sign is nearly fifty years old and the Indian was formerly the Figure Head of a merchant vessel; if he could speak, wondrous tales of danger and wild adventure would come from his lips.

His owner would not take a fortune for him, so his future is secure. This one is believed to be the oldest Indian sign in New England as it is more than 75 years old. He is now kept inside the store for fear of injury.

THE Indian which has stood on top of Tammany Hall for nearly forty years deserves special mention. He was not placed in that elevated position as a tobacco sign, although a number of the modern chieftains display cigars and tobacco in their liquor stores. There is no significance connected with the figure in that direction. One of the oldest Tammany Sachems writes me that some one proposed an arched ornament for the then fine building in Fourteenth street in the year 1878, and the figure decided upon to complete the effect was that of the Indian Chief Tammenand, or St. Tammany, so called to make a little fun of the various Saints of other organizations, as St. Francis, St. Andrews and so on.

My friend further says that in England and on the Continent in early times, a favorite sign of tobacconists was first a colored boy, then later an Indian King or Queen. He adds, "I remember in my boyish days many Indian figures, in front of cigar shops; stalwart Indian Chiefs holding out a bunch of cigars, or an Indian Princess with a Tobacco leaf. Some of the latter were cleverly carved, ornamented dress and scarf with usually one breast exposed."

I read in a recent Daily, that a cook in New York, minus work and a place to lay his head, took unwisely three drinks and four knives and dashed out into the crowded street, throwing up a knife to show his dexterity as a juggler!

In his excited condition, he happened to cut his own hand; the sight of blood made him more wild, and glaring at one of the wooden Indians who seemed to be staring at him, he attacked him fiercely with heavy hacks and thwacks until hurried away by a passing policeman.

This last fleeting statue even figures in one of the World's funny series of the trials of the "Newly Weds." That two toothed baby, who, with all his pranks never ceases to fascinate, wanted one of these Indians to take home and only closed his mouth when his adoring and long-suffering Dad had bought one and carried it along with them, with his befeathered head sticking out one way and legs the other. No doubt there are many capital jokes connected with this subject, but the first one to look up an odd theme has a hard hunt for facts. I know that a well known Steel Magnate gave a beautiful church to the town where his mother lived, at her request.

And not entirely satisfied, she next begged him to get a statue of some Saint to make the gift perfect and adorn the grounds. He promised, and soon a long box came directed to his mother but alas! it proved to be one of the wooden men, of which we are talking. Her son was fond of practical jokes!

A friend has told me that the Indians of Oklahoma resent these representations of people of their race and want to suppress them all. It is difficult to find any in many of our large cities; photographers write that they have been obliged to hunt not in a taxi or auto, but by groping in store lofts and dark attics and that then the figures must be taken "down and out" to get a right light on them.

Every man to whom I have appealed for aid in making my story interesting, through pictures, has been most courteous and amiable. I have written to absolute strangers--often to a Post Master for the name of a skilful photographer in his town, another perfect stranger, and have always been answered promptly and sometimes with enthusiasm. Several have refused pay, saying they had got real pleasure out of the work and were sorry there was nothing more to do. Sometimes they were obliged to crawl out on a roof and shovel away snow to rescue the poor Indian.

TO show the genuine interest shown in my collection I will offer one letter from a business man in Worcester, Mass:

"Dear Miss Sanborn:--I have come across these figures and think you may use them. They are good examples of their craft and are quite clear. First Punch, he is over eighty years old and is whole from his knee down. I haven't taken his face because he would have to be got down in order to do so, but if you say you do want it and can wait a week for it I am perfectly willing to take same and not have the other one show; really he has a strong face and I can, no doubt, get a good clean picture, front view.

Am going to tell you all I can remember about them; if it is of no use to you, no harm is done.

First: The Squaw, stands in front of a store; her owner has had same about ten years; she has a lovely face as you see and originally came from Boston.

Second, Punch, formerly owned by a German, claimed there were but two like it in this country.

I desire also to heartily thank Mr. Jacob Riis, who is one of the busiest and kindest men in New York. He allowed me to use his description in his last book, "The Old Town," of an Indian who was a chum of his in childhood and he writes me that he has sent home to Ribe for a special picture of the Sign he describes. Here is his story of his friend.

"We boys in the Old Town were strictly prohibited from smoking under the School rules, which prescribed the rod for every offence. In consequence, we did it on the sly, thinking it manly and fine. At his desk at home, Father smoked all the time, and so did everybody else. Many a pound of Kanaster have I carried home from the tobacconist's shop, the one in Gronnegade, with the naked brown Indian smoking a very long pipe.

"From the moment the 'Last of the Mohicans' fell into my hands, I looked upon him as a friend and brother. There was something between us which the grown-ups knew nothing about. He must be acquainted with Uncas and Chingachgook and Deerslayer, for he was of the good Delawares and not of the wicked Hurons.

"He swings from his hook yet, and I confess to a nodding acquaintance when I pass him in the street. His pipe is still the biggest part." In one of Mr. Riis' letters he says, "Certainly you may use the Indian in the Old Town and here is a picture of him. He is fixed now on the wall. In my childhood he swung from a hook smoking his long pipe. You merely see the hand that holds it in this picture.

"Good luck with your book and with all your work.

"I am glad you have a farm. It is the only way to live."

Faithfully yours, JACOB A. RIIS."

HERE'S a New York Politician's opinion about the Indians he knew. "Say, Spielberg, were you in the Assembly at Albany in 1901?"

"No, this is only my second term. Let me explain how they do things up there. I went there, full of enthusiasm for the public service. Being a new member, I scarcely expected to get on one of the big committees, but I thought I was entitled to something. The Speaker put me on the Indian Affairs Committee. The only Indians I knew anything about were the braves of the Tammany tribe, but I was willing to learn. I read the works of J. Fenimore Cooper so as to get posted on Indian Affairs. When I got a pretty good grip on the subject I waited for a meeting of my committee, but couldn't find any. Near the close of the session I went to an old member of the Legislature and asked him if there were any Indians in the state and if so what was I supposed to do for them.

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