Word: tixier
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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...Osage. Already they had withdrawn well west of the Mississippi, and already they wore U. S. store blankets, not buffalo robes; but they still retained most of the shapes of their freedom and integrity. Their government was a neat interlocking of democracy and absolutism; their discipline in conference moved Tixier to admiration; their use of property was virtually without problems. Their wealth was in horses. The poor were the guests of the rich at their own desire; upon request, any hunter yielded up to half of any animal he had killed, including the choice...
...masterful horsemen at six. They swarmed with vermin. They kept droves of fierce, useless dogs who got at the meat supplies, bit legs. Each brave took as many wives as he could buy and support; there were no love matches. They were extremely lascivious. By their manner toward him Tixier concluded that sodomy was common. The only Osage who showed kindness to his wife offered her to Tixier for the night for $10. Tixier pretended not to understand...
...hunt, along the "woodless prairies" beyond the Arkansas River, their venison often spoiled for lack of fuel to cook it. Indian police whipped the noisy and the neck-craners into discipline when game was near. They were skillful shots; one bullet or one arrow per bison was usually enough. Tixier predicted the extinction of the bison; the Osage killed them at random, usually left 150 Ib. of excellent meat on each carcass...
...dancing with clayed faces, of solemn Homeric boasting, building up to war. Scalps were the premium, but the glory was in guile, and a leader was less honored for scalps than for bringing back his own warriors alive. Their religion and their warfare were profoundly related; one of Tixier's most moving passages tells of the last solemn ceremonies with the warbirds. Their apathy in easy times, their resourcefulness and stamina under stress were both beyond the measure of white...
...watercourses without which the surrounding territory was useless. In 1887 Indians held 139,000,000 acres, in 1933 47,000,000, much of it arid. Rural slums grew (and persist) near the agencies, where Government rations float the Indians just above starvation. As for the rich "oil royalty" Indians (Tixier's Osages) they amount to less than "one per cent of a people thousands of whom would look upon a hundred dollars a year as a substantial raise." Basis of reform is the Indian Reorganization Act, six years old. With its protection former hunting and war tribes are working...