The whites of The region
had also turned out to witness the scene, which, though lacking
the wild aspect of the old assemblages on the plains in the early
'seventies, had yet a character of its own of great interest,
and of the most hopeful promise.
The crowd of Indians ranged before the marquee had lost all
semblance of wildness of the true type. Wild men they were,
in a sense, living as they did in the forest and on their great
waters. But it was plain that these people had achieved, without
any treaty at all, a stage of civilization distinctly in advance
of many of our treaty Indians to the south after twenty-five
years of education. Instead of paint and feathers, the scalp-lock,
the breech-clout, and the buffalo-robe, there presented itself a
body of respectable-looking men, as well dressed and evidently
quite as independent in their feelings as any like number of
average pioneers in the East. Indeed, I had seen there, in my
youth, many a time, crowds of white settlers inferior to these
in sedateness and self-possession. One was prepared, in this
wild region of forest, to behold some savage types of men;
indeed, I craved to renew the vanished scenes of old. But,
alas! one beheld, instead, men with well-washed, unpainted
faces, and combed and common hair; men in suits of ordinary
"store-clothes," and some even with "boiled" if not laundered
shirts. One felt disappointed, almost defrauded.
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