Our store was first in a tent and then as business grew, we built us a wooden structure, and in between the Santa Fe trips I’d be around there for a spell. Some of the Arapaho got to dropping by with skins to trade, and game if they had any extra. And that’s when I noticed how much an Indian stunk. Get three of them indoors and you could hardly breathe for the aroma. We just couldn’t tolerate their presence inside the wood building, so the Indian trade was carried on outside in an open shed. Their goods wasn’t worth much anyway; by the time they got around to bringing in a haunch of fresh venison, it was half-spoiled and crawling with maggots, and the hides was poorly dressed and stiff as lumber.
After you had seen that soda fountain in Missouri, and them cunning boots that a fellow like Angelo could turn out, and Mrs. Pendrake in her hoop skirt with the understructure of whalebone, you just couldn’t avoid noticing that Indians was crude, nasty, smelly, lousy, and ignorant. You know I was predisposed in their favor, and it wasn’t easy for me to admit the truth. But I got to hating them now, which is why I felt shameful, so I never owned up to my partners that I had any more connection with redskins than the next white man. I didn’t have too much to do with the retail workings of the store anyway, so it was easy to slip aside when the Arapaho showed up to trade.
The site of Denver was on their old hunting grounds, but they didn’t cause trouble over it. In fact, I recall once in the early days a chief called Little Raven rode over from the Indian camp and gave a speech to an assemblage of white citizenry. Actually, he come twice: the first day his interpreter fell down drunk, so they had to postpone until the next morning, when the chief returned and give a long speech after the mode of Old Lodge Skins, which amused some people but burned up others, for they was anxious to get back to panning gold rather than listening to the wind of some dirty old Indian. Little Raven was a broad-faced, wide-built fellow, with big brass earrings and his hair hanging free. The gist of his remarks, after the lard was melted out, was as follows:
“The Arapaho welcome the white men to this place, which has belonged to the Arapaho since the time that …” (a long account of how much the spirits love the tribe, with various examples of history of the mythic variety).
“The Arapaho like white men and think of them as brothers” (an account of this, largely to do with getting free coffee with lots of sugar in it).
“The Arapaho are made happy to see the white men getting the yellow metal, if the yellow metal is what pleases them so much. Our mother the earth provides all things for all men, and each people has a part of the land which it calls home, a part which it has watered with its own blood. You white men are now camped upon such a place, and the Arapaho to whom it belongs welcome you in peace and friendship. They hope you do nothing bad. They also hope you will not stay too long.”
They gave Little Raven a cigar, and a meal which he ate with a knife and fork, and then he went back to his camp. Not long after that the Arapaho warriors rode off west to fight the Ute, and in their absence a bunch of drunken miners went over to the Indian village and raped several women. The Arapaho made some angry talk when they got back, but never did anything concrete about it.
Now I had not heretofore been a great admirer of civilization, but I figured that was because I had no hand in building such of it as I had come in contact with. I didn’t care much for Missouri, if you recall, couldn’t see it made sense. It was different with Denver, which growed before your very eyes. There was a real town there by the following summer, for people kept arriving from across the plains and while not many of them struck significant gold, and others got busted, by God, and went on home, there was a good deal who stayed, too, and permanent buildings replaced canvas and a newspaper begun to publish, and it wasn’t long before they stuck up a church—whose pastor, I might mention, I done my best to avoid along with the Indians, but in them days you had to have a church to make a real town.
So it didn’t look like we was going to leave as soon as Little Raven hoped. Speaking for the person I had turned into, what with being a partner in business and making enough money to buy me bright clothes and take a turn with the Spanish girls in Santa Fe, I thought it swell that white enterprise was reclaiming the Indian wastes. You take the sorriest cabin, it was a triumph over the empty wilderness.
That was what I thought at that time, anyway.
