Running Elk

"Running Elk" by Rex Ellingwood Beach is a novel that explores themes of adventure, identity, and the intersection of cultures in the American West. The story follows its titular character, an Indigenous man named Running Elk, as he navigates the challenges of life on the frontier, grappling with his heritage while facing the complexities of a changing world. Beach's vivid prose captures the rugged beauty of the landscape and the intricate dynamics between Indigenous peoples and settlers, highlighting the resilience and spirit of its characters. Overall, the book offers a compelling narrative that reflects on personal and collective journeys in a time of transformation.

• Short story

								
Up from the valley below came the throb of war drums, the faint rattle
of shots, and the distant cries of painted horsemen charging. From
my vantage-point on the ridge I had an unobstructed view of the
encampment, a great circle of tepees and tents three miles in
circumference, cradled in a sag of the timberless hills. The sounds
came softly through the still Dakota air, and my eye took in every
sharp-drawn detail of the scene--ponies grazing along the creek
bottom, children playing beneath the blue smoke of camp-fires, the
dense crowd ringed about a medicine pole in their center, intent on a
war-dance.

Five thousand Sioux were here in all their martial splendor. They were
painted and decked and trapped for war, living again their days of
plenty, telling anew their tales of might, and repeating on a mimic
scale their greatest battles. Five days the feasting had continued;
five mornings had I been awakened at dawn to see a thousand ochered,
feathered horsemen come thundering down upon the camp, their horses
running flat, their rifles popping, while the valley rocked to their
battle-cries and to the answering clamor of the army which rode forth
to meet them. Five sultry days had I spent wandering unnoticed,
ungreeted, and disdained, an alien in a hostile land, tolerated but
unwelcome. Five evenings had I witnessed the tents begin to glow and
the campfires kindle until the valley became hooped about as if by a
million giant fireflies. Five nights had I strayed, like a lost soul,
through an unreal wilderness, harkening to the drone of stories told
in an unfamiliar tongue, to the minor-keyed dirges of an unknown race,
to the thumping of countless moccasined feet in the measures of queer
dances. The odors of a savage people had begun to pall on me, and the
sound of a strange language to annoy; I longed for another white man,
for a word in my own tongue.

It was the annual "Give-away" celebration, when all the tribe
assembles to make presents, to race, to tell stories, and to recount
the legends of their prowess. They had come from all quarters of the
reservation, bringing their trunks, their children, and their dogs. Of
the last named more had come, by far, than would go back, for this was
a week of feasting, and every day the air was heavy with the smell
of singeing hair, and the curs that had been spared gnawed at an
ever-increasing pile of bones.

I had seen old hags strangle dogs by pulling on opposite ends of a
slip-noose, or choke them by laying a tent-pole on their throats and
standing on the ends; I had seen others knock them down with billets
of wood, drag them kicking to the fires, and then knock them down
again when they crawled out of the flames. All in all, I had acquired
much information regarding the carnival appetites of the noble red
man, learning that he is poetic only in the abstract.

It was drawing on toward sunset, so I slipped into my camera strap and
descended the slope. I paused, however, while still some distance
away from my tent, for next to it another had been erected during my
absence. It was a tiny affair with a rug in front of it, and upon the
rug stood a steamer-chair.

"Hello, inside!" I shouted, then ran forward, straddling papooses and
shouldering squaws out of my way.

"Hello!" came an answer, and out through the flap was thrust the head
of my friend, the Government doctor.

"Gee! I'm glad to see you!" I said as I shook his hand. "I'm as
lonesome as a deaf mute at a song recital."

"I figured you would be," said the doctor, "so I came out to see the
finish of the feast and to visit with you. I brought some bread from
the Agency."

"Hoorah! White bread and white conversation! I'm hungry for both."

"What's the matter? Won't the Indians talk to you?"

"I guess they would if they could, but they can't. I haven't found one
among the whole five thousand who can understand a word I say. Your
Government schools have gone back in the betting with me, Doc. You
must keep your graduates under lock and key."

"They can all speak English if they want to--that is, the younger
ones. Some few of the old people are too proud to try, but the others
can talk as well as we can, until they forget."

"Do you mean to say these people have been fooling me? I don't believe
it," said I. "There's one that can't talk English, and I'll make a bet
on it." I indicated a passing brave with an eagle-feather head-dress
which reached far down his naked legs. He was a magnificent animal;
he was young and lithe, and as tall and straight as a sapling. "I've
tried him twice, and he simply doesn't understand."

My friend called to the warrior: "Hey, Tom! Come here a minute."
The Indian came, and the doctor continued, "When do you hold the
horse-races, Thomas?"

"To-morrow, at four o'clock, unless it rains," said the fellow.
He spoke in an odd, halting dialect, but his words were perfectly
understandable.

"Are you going to ride?"

"No; my race-horse is sick."

As the ocher-daubed figure vanished into the dusk the old man turned
to me, saying, "College man."

"What?"

"Yes. B.A. He's a graduate."

"Impossible!" I declared. "Why, he talks like a foreigner, or as if he
were just learning our language."

"Exactly. In another three years he'll be an Indian again, through and
through. Oh, the reservation is full of fellows like Tom." The
doctor heaved a sigh of genuine discouragement. "It's a melancholy
acknowledgment to make, but our work seems to count for almost
nothing. It's their blood."

"Perhaps they forget the higher education," said I; "but how about the
Agency school, where you teach them to farm and to sew and to cook, as
well as to read and to write? Surely they don't forget that?"

"I've heard a graduating class read theses, sing cantatas, and deliver
sounding orations; then I've seen those same young fellows, three
months later, squatting in tepees and eating with their fingers. It's
a common thing for our 'sweet girl graduates' to lay off their white
commencement-day dress, their high-heeled shoes and their pretty hats,
for the shawl and the moccasin. We teach them to make sponge-cake and
to eat with a fork, but they prefer dog-soup and a horn spoon. Of
course there are exceptions, but most of them forget much faster than
they learn."

"Our Eastern ideas of Mr. Lo are somewhat out of line with the facts,"
I acknowledged. "He's sort of a hero with us. I remember several
successful plays with romantic Indians in the lead."

"I know!" My friend laughed shortly. "I saw some of them. If you like,
however, I'll tell you how it really happens. I know a story."

When we had finished supper the doctor told me the story of Running
Elk. The night was heavy with unusual odors and burdened by weird

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