Running Elk Page #2

"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

								

music; the whisper of a lively multitude came to us, punctuated at
intervals by distant shouts or shots or laughter. On either hand the
campfires stretched away like twinkling stars, converging steadily
until the horns joined each other away out yonder in the darkness. It
was a suitable setting for an epic tale of the Sioux.

"I've grown gray in this service," the old man began, "and the longer
I live the less time I waste in trying to understand the difference
between the Indian race and ours. I've about reached the conclusion
that it's due to some subtle chemical ingredient in the blood. One
race is lively and progressive, the other is sluggish and atavistic.
The white man is ever developing, he's always advancing, always
expanding; the red man is marking time or walking backward. It is only
a matter of time until he will vanish utterly. He's different from the
negro. The negro enlarges, up to a certain limit, then he stops. Some
people claim, I believe, that his skull is sutured in such a manner as
to check his brain development when his bones finally harden and set.
The idea sounds reasonable; if true, there will never be a serious
conflict between the blacks and the whites. But the red man differs
from both. To begin with, his is not a subject race by birth.
Physically he is as perfect as either; Nature has endowed him with
an intellect quite as keen as the white man's, and with an open
articulation of the skull which permits the growth of his brain.
Somewhere, nevertheless, she has cunningly concealed a flaw, a flaw
which I have labored thirty years to find.

"I have a theory--you know all old men have theories--that it is
a physical thing, as tangible as that osseous constriction of the
cranium which holds the negro in subjection, and that if I could lay
my finger on it I could raise the Indian to his ancient mastery and
to a dignified place among the nations; I could change them from a
vanishing people into a race of rulers, of lawgivers, of creators. At
least that used to be my dream.

"Some years ago I felt that I was well on my way to success, for I
found a youth who offered every promise of great manhood. I studied
him until I knew his every trait and his every strength--he didn't
seem to have any weaknesses. I raised him according to my own ideas;
he became a tall, straight fellow, handsome as a bronze statue of a
god. Physically he was perfect, and he had a mind as fine as his body.
He had the best blood of his nation in him, being the son of a war
chief, and he was called Thomas Running Elk. I educated him at the
Agency school under my own personal supervision, and on every occasion
I studied him. I spent hours in shaping his mind and in bending him
away from the manners and the habits of his tribe. I taught him to
think like a white man. He responded like a growing vine; he became
the pride of the reservation--a reserved but an eager youth, with an
understanding and a wit beyond that of most white boys of his age.
Search him as rigorously as I might, I couldn't find a single flaw. I
believed I was about to prove my theory.

"Running Elk romped through our school, and he couldn't learn fast
enough; when he had finished I sent him East to college, and, in order
to wean him utterly away from the past, instead of sending him to
an Indian school I arranged for him to enter one of the big Eastern
universities, where no Indian had ever been, where constant
association with the flower of our race would by its own force raise
him to a higher level. Well, it worked. He led his classes as a
stag leads a herd. He was a silent, dignified, shadowy figure; his
fellow-students considered him unapproachable, nevertheless they
admired and they liked him. In all things he excelled; but he was
best, perhaps, in athletics, and for this I took the credit--a Jovian
satisfaction in my work.

"News of his victories on track and field and gridiron came to me
regularly, for his professors were interested in my experiment. As for
the boy himself, he never wrote; it was not his nature. Nor did he
communicate with his people. He had cut himself off from them, and I
think he looked down upon them. At intervals his father came to the
Agency to inquire about Running Elk, for I did not allow my protégé
to return even during vacations. That was a part of my plan. At my
stories of his son's victories the father made no comment; he merely
listened quietly, then folded his blanket about him and slipped away.
The old fellow was a good deal of a philosopher; he showed neither
resentment nor pleasure, but once or twice I caught him smiling oddly
at my enthusiasm. I know now what was in his mind.

"It was in Running Elk's senior year that a great thing came to him,
a thing I had counted upon from the start. He fell in love. A girl
entered his life. But this girl didn't enter as I had expected, and
when the news reached me I was completely taken aback. She was a girl
I had dandled on my knees as a child, the only daughter of an old
friend. Moreover, instead of Running Elk being drawn to her, as I had
planned, she fell desperately in love with him.

"I guess the gods were offended at my presumption and determined by
one hair's-breadth shift to destroy the balance of my whole structure.
They're a jealous lot, the gods. I didn't understand, at that time,
how great must have been the amusement which I offered them.

"You've heard of old Henry Harman? Yes, the railroad king. It was his
daughter Alicia. No wonder you look incredulous.

"In order to understand the story you'll have to know something about
old Henry. You'll have to believe in heredity. Henry is a self-made
man. He came into the Middle West as a poor boy, and by force of
indomitable pluck, ability, and doggedness he became a captain of
industry. We were born on neighboring farms, and while I, after a
lifetime of work, have won nothing except an underpaid Government
job, Henry has become rich and mighty. He had that indefinable,
unacquirable faculty for making money, and he became a commanding
figure in the financial world. He's dominant, he's self-centered, he's
one-purposed; he's a rough-hewn block of a man, and his unbounded
wealth, his power, and his contact with the world have never smoothed
nor rounded him. He's just about the same now as when he was a section
boss on his own railroad. His daughter Alicia is another Henry Harman,
feminized. Her mother was a pampered child, born to ease and enslaved
to her own whims. No desire of hers, however extravagant, ever went
ungratified, and right up to the hour of her death old Henry never
said no to her--partly out of a spirit of amusement, I dare say, and
partly because she was the only unbridled extravagance he had ever
yielded to in all his life. Well, having sowed the wind, he reaped the
whirlwind in Alicia. She combined the distinguishing traits of both
parents, and she grew up more effectively spoiled than her mother.
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes