William Jones, Indian, cowboy, American scholar, and anthropologist in the fields

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WILLIAM JONES

WILLIAM JONES

Memorial Bust in Bronze by Edwin Willard Deming preseated to the
American Museum of Natural History by the Sculptor

WILLIAM JONES

INDIAN, COWBOY, AMERICAN SCHOLAR,

AND ANTHROPOLOGIST

IN THE FIELD

BY
HENRY MILNER RIDEOUT

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

MCMXII

COPTEIGHT, 1912, BT

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

All rights reserved

E

J' 79

^

□

June, 1912

CONTENTS

CHAFTEB PAOH

I A Memory 1

II Early Years 7

III Cowboy 17

IV Hampton and Andover 24

V Summer Work 36

VI Harvard 189&-'97 39

VII Harvard 1897-98 49

VIII Harvard 1898-1900 61

IX Life in New York 72

X On the Plains 85

XI Among Northern Indians 91

XII Doctor of Philosophy 103

XIII The Question of Money 118

XIV The Philippines 127

XV In the Wilds 145

XVI Dangers 191

XVII The Last Day 202

XVIII Conclusion 210

WILLIAM JONES

WILLIAM JONES
From a photograph taken In Chicago, 1907

WILLIAM JONES

A MEMORY

In the spring of 1900 — about the time when
the grass began to be green in the Yard at
Harvard College, and the leaves of horse-
chestnuts on Cambridge streets to appear
as knobs like the tips of young horns — two
friends lay and sunned themselves in a warm
corner between brick buildings. They were
both young, both poor, and by all rights
should have been thinking of their uncertain
futures. Instead, they lay talking of the
past, of boyhood, of things which they liked
to remember and tell at haphazard, there in
the spring sunshine on the new grass. Down
a street leading to the Charles, people were
beating carpets, so that, in the pauses of
reminiscence, echoes galloped up like the
sound of flying hoofs.

One of these two men had a career already
opening before him. He had won scholar-
ships, as a junior had distinguished himself

[1]

WILLIAM JONES

in the study of anthropology, and now could
hope that, after taking his A. B. in the ap-
proaching June, he should go out and capture
new honors in science. Close-knit, spare, and
muscular of frame, he had a face entirely
different, strikingly different, from the vague
undergraduate type, — a rather massive face,
already full of character. Experience had
written on it, and left it marked with kind-
liness, decision, and that clear, untroubled
thoughtfulness which comes not from, books,
but from life in the open. His eyes — brown
as his hair, with specks of golden light in
them — had a habit of looking oflF into dis-
tance; at which times they turned impene-
trably sad, became almost the eyes of an
Indian, and gave to his other features the
look of stillness, far-off preoccupation, and
sober dignity that is seen in the higher type
of Indian countenance. But when they came
back to close range, or suddenly met the eyes
of a friend, they lighted up again with pleasant
humor. The upper part of his face was re-
flective, melancholy; the lower, full of de-
termination, a fighter's. Any stranger would
have known him, at sight, to be gentle and
brave. Active in body, and with a spirited,
searching mind, full of quiet fun and play-

[2]

A MEMORY

fulness — for which children especially loved
him — he gave always an impression of force
concealed, animation below the surface, and
courage held in reserve. This appeared also
in his voice, which was quiet and low, and
which he seldom raised above ordinary pitch,
indoors or out.

On this spring morning at college, he did
something which to his friend had all the in-
terest of rarity. He spoke about himself.
To reproduce his words is impossible, as it
now is to convey the charm of what he said,
his diffident way of raising and lowering his
bright brown eyes, of plucking up a grass-
blade with sinewy fingers, or waving them in
a gesture very slight but very full of meaning.

He remembered — he said — lying rolled in a
blanket on the prairie, when he was a little
boy. Something woke him, something wet
and cold on his face. There was a gray mist
over everything: just enough to show him
that the cold object was a pony's nose, and
that three ponies, side by side, were standing
over him in hesitation. They did not wish to
step on him, and had halted. The riders were
three Indians, on their way home from some
place where they had been drinking all night.
The man in the center, who was the tallest

[3]

WILLIAM JONES

and oldest, was also the most drunk; and his
two companions, leaning from either side,
propped him in his seat. All three were wail-
ing together some long lament, the mournful-
lest thing ever heard. Their ponies sniffed at
the little figure in the blanket, decided to go
roundabout instead of over, and sheering off,
bore away the three tall riders through the
prairie dawn. It was like having seen the
ghosts of the last Indian people.

The boy in the blanket, now grown up, re-
called many other things about his native
plains, and many other aspects — ^noble and
touching aspects — of the people he was born
among. He went on to tell of these: of the
Indian's ancient customs; the Indian's life on
the prairie in the old days; the Indian's lan-
guage of signs; beautiful myths, colored with
camp-fire poetry, enacted by heroes, by cun-
ning supernatural beasts, or those witch-
driving gods whose forked stick is the light-
ning; beliefs concerning the soul and the Great
Mystery. He told other things, that would
make any honest white man more or less hot
with shame, that would cause one at least to
understand how, when young Indian gradu-
ates from the eastern schools returned home
again, their elders might laugh sadly at the

[4]

A MEMORY

report of honest white men, ahve and actual,
off there. But all these matters were not told
for the sake of being written down.

A bell rang. The spring morning had be-
come noon. The two young men brought
their holiday to an end, rose, and went else-
where.

This was not the common way of talking
among college men, who (in Cambridge at
least, ten years ago) considered the habit of
lounging on the grass as a kind of affectation;
but William Jones was no common product
of the colleges. His boyhood resembled the
boyhood of Hiawatha with Nokomis; his
career took him, as on an abrupt curve,
through some of the highest complexities of
our civilization; and when he had become the
chief authority in Algonkin lore — indispensa-
ble, humanly speaking, to the work he had
chosen — ^it was his fate to be sent off to the
far corners of the tropics, there to meet death
suddenly at the hands of savages.

"I was born out of doors," he wrote, from
the jungle. "Now it looks as if I shall keep on
under the open sky, and at the end lie down
out of doors, which, of course, is as it should
be."

He would not have desired any part of this

[5]

WILLIAM JONES

book to be written. His friends, now scat-
tered into many places, have thought that
the story of his short hfe should be recorded.
Let friendship, therefore, be the excuse for
this account, not of the scientist and his
achievement, but of a young man who, every-
where he went — among curators of museums,
artists in their studios, plainsnlen in their sad-
dles, or Indians in wigwams — endeared him-
self to many persons lastingly.

[6]

II

EARLY YEARS

William Jones was born March 28, 1871,
on the Sauk and Fox Reservation, in what
was then Indian Territory. The blood in his
veins was a mingling of Welsh and English
elements, with a strain from a clan of Indian
rulers.

This, briefly, is the story of his forebears.
His great-grandfather came from Wales to
this country, time enough to serve under
General Washington in the Revolution. His
grandfather, William Washington Jones, was
born in Kentucky, went to the west with
Daniel Boone, entered the army, fought in
the Black Hawk war, and while in Iowa mar-
ried the daughter of Wa shi ho wa, a Fox
chief.* A white-haired man, skilful as a
hunter, William Washington Jones became
well known as a scout, in the days when the
prairie was still the Far West. By Katiqua,

* The Sauk and Fox Indians, then and later, occupied lands in
Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. By the Treaty of February 18, 1867,
they were assigned a new reservation in Indian Territory, to which
the main body of them were removed in and after November, 1870.
Katiqua's people moved from Iowa to Kansas,' in 1845.

[7]

WILLIAM JONES

the Fox chief's daughter, he had three chil-
dren, of whom only one is living, — a son, born
in Iowa in 1844. This son— Bald Eagle, as
his mother's clan called him — took from his
father the name of Henry Clay Jones. He
remained in the Indian lodges until he was a
youth well grown; and then, wishing to see
something of the world, he journeyed out into
a white community, went to school, learned
the trade of blacksmith, and met a young
English girl, Sarah Penny. "He could not
gain the consent of her parents to a mar-
riage," writes one of Mr. Jones's friends, "un-
til he had proved himself capable of caring
for her, as a white woman, in a good home.
He went back to the reservation, opened a
blacksmith's shop, prepared a habitation that
seemed to meet the requirements, and then
returned in less than two years for his reward.
For years Mr. Henry Jones has been a leading
member of the Indian council, an interpreter,
a blacksmith, and a farmer," who has had
the respect of his neighbors, both white and
Indian. His young bride, when brought to
the new-built house, may well have found her
life strangely transplanted and transformed,
beyond even the lot of brides. "But her
years were few," our informant tells us.

[8]

EARLY YEARS

"When her first child was a year old, she died,
leaving her little son William, or Willie as she
called him, to the care of his Indian grand-
mother."

In a letter written at Harvard College on
his birthday, William Jones has recorded
the following memory. The passage would
seem to have an added meaning, an after-
significance, from the fact that death came
to him also in the spring, though in a country
where there is no return of our kindly seasons,
nor division of days except by sunlight and
darkness, nor any memory of things gone by.

"My dear old grandmother used to tell me
that I was born in the springtime, when the
bluebirds were coming from the south and
were looking about in the dead trees for holes
to build their nests in. Grass was just com-
ing up, and with it the flowers. She used to
tell me how she would carry me about, and a
whole lot more things which I sometimes live
over, though more often they seem but a tale.
Then the summer went by, and the winter
followed, and the next spring they laid my
mother to rest. This is the way she recorded
time, and that is the way it has always come
to me. Others have told me the exact dates,
but it has never been so pretty as the way

• [9]

WILLIAM JONES

my poor simple-minded, and possibly pagan,
grandmother used to tell me. How strange
that she too should have died at the same
time of the year."

Although on the government rolls his name
was "William," and although to some of his
friends he was "Wee lee," the child bore by
tribal custom the name Megasi&,wa, Black
Eagle. After his mother's death, his grand-
mother brought him to her lodge. Here, for
nine years, she took care of her little charge.
Katiqua could understand English, but would
have nothing to do with the speaking of it;
and so they two used always the Indian
tongue. Their wigwam was of bark, with
raised platforms along either side, on which
were spread gay blankets or bright-colored
mats of woven rushes. Outside, all round
about, lay the plains with the wind sound-
ing over them. Indoors, "this golden-haired
child of a white mother and two white grand-
fathers, passed the early years of his life,
swinging by day in his little hammock cradle,
or seeing life over his grandmother's shoulder
from his perch on her strong back."

Thus, through all that time of childhood
which remains most vitally colored, and
which would seem not only to form the basis

[10]

EARLY YEARS

of all memories, but to give the imagination
its lasting shape and texture, William Jones
lived, and saw, and spoke, and thought as an
Indian. It was in the ancient order, the
prairie faith, and the old vanishing tradition
that his grandmother nurtured him. She was
an Indian of the highest Fox clan — the
Eagle — was a chief's daughter born to lead,
and with all the force of a strong character
clung to the legends and customs of her tribe.
What strange talk passed between her and the
little boy, what rude poetic narrative by their
evening fire, we can only guess at dimly.
Glimpses of their life together appear in
retrospect through the following notes, writ-
ten down long afterward by one who became
the first and dearest of the boy's friends when
he entered our white man's world.

"Among other accomplishments this grand-
mother had the gift of healing, was what is
known as a 'medicine woman,' an oflSce that
does not necessarily encroach upon that of
the more priestly 'medicine man.' She knew
the medicinal values of many roots and herbs,
and could brew from them remedies for va-
rious disorders external and internal. These
things the child sought in the woods and on
the prairies by his grandmother's side, at-

[11]

WILLIAM JONES

tended her while they and queerer potions
were being compounded at home, heard and
remembered much of the lore connected with
them, and saw them appUed at the sick bed
or administered at the dance.

"Preparations for the feasts and various
tribal functions became a matter of familiarity
to him, and as he followed his grandmother
about the homes and in the sacred lodge, he
saw and heard many things never intended
for his child's eyes and ears, but which com-
ing as they did so naturally, made little im-
pression at the time, though in later years
they became of great value in his scientific
work.

"Recalling these days in later life, he felt
that he had been blessed in having had what
he regarded as an ideal childhood. When
with one who could understand his point of
view, he loved to recall the happy days spent
with his 'dear nokomis,'' — the evenings round
the fire, and the nights snuggled beneath her
blanket on the long hard platform. ' Though,'
he would add, 'it never seemed hard to me.'

"Unusually intelligent and quick to imi-
tate, the child learned without conscious
eflFort, during these early years, the songs and
dances of his tribe, and so thoroughly that
[12]

EARLY YEARS

scarcely a phrase of them was forgotten. He
could seldom be persuaded to exhibit either
accomplishment, but when he did overcome his
diffidence and forgot himself, he showed not
only a rare grace of movement in the dance,
but those little spontaneous variations that
one sees enacted only by the older Indian
people.

" He always insisted that he could not sing,
and would seldom join even in a large chorus.
In his first school some one had laughed at his
singing and so disheartened him that he never
regained confidence in himself. But some-
times out in the woods ' where no one but you
and the trees can hear,' he would lose his
restraint, and when once under the influence
of the Indian music, sing song after song with
absolute fidelity to the Indian phraseology,
marking time with anything at hand that
suggested the sound of the Indian drum.

"It was always a regret to him as well as
to his friends, that he had not been able to
conquer his shyness and learn enough of
music to write out the songs he knew so well.
A friend to whom he was willing to sing them
tried to take down some of the simpler songs,
but never succeeded in getting them quite as
he knew they ought to be. One only — a
[13]

WILLIAM JONES

simple little one — remains to bear the stamp
of his approval — the song he as a little boy
sang to the snake, begging him to find the
arrow he has lost in the grass.

"As a little child he learned to imitate the
call of the birds and squirrels, the wild prairie
animals and the horses, and often amused
himself, even in the East, by, as he said,
'talking to them.' Any horse was of interest,
and sometimes on the crowded streets he
would stop to 'say just a word to that tired
old horse.' Whatever it was, the horse would
prick up his ears and seem to understand.

"He also had a trick of patting on his knees
the different gaits of a horse — ^trotting, can-
tering, loping, galloping or running — so accu-
rately that one could almost see the action.
Imitating the reports of different firearms
was another form of amusement. 'Hark,'
he would exclaim, under his breath, 'do you
hear that Winchester way over yonder?'
And sure enough from 'way over yonder'
would come the sound that one could hardly
believe was made by a human throat.

"He could not remember when he had
learned to ride, probably like other little In-
dians, as soon as he was graduated from his
grandmother's back; but he did have very
[14]

EARLY YEARS

vivid recollections of the pony that shared
his childhood and next to his grandmother
was the dearest thing on earth, and never to
be forgotten.

"When the child was about nine years old
the happy days with his pony on the prairies,
and the wonderful tales told by his dear
nokomis round the wigwam fire, came to a
sudden end. The blow was a sharp one, the
first, and as he used to afiirm, the only real
grief of his life, — the first sorrow (so far as he
could remember) to bring a tear. Without
warning — to him at least — ^the beloved com-
panion of his days and nights lay dead in the
wigwam. All was confusion and woe. The
father whom he scarcely knew had come to
take him away. He could not be comforted.
New plans and new experiences had no in-
terest for him. For weeks and months he
sorrowed; and for years yearned for the love
and companionship that had so enriched his
early life. A staunch loyalty and tenderness
toward those he loved was a very marked
characteristic. Though he could have had
no memory of his mother, he treasured a
little picture his father had given him, always
remembered her birthday, and would often
say — 'I wonder if my mother knows this.''' "
[15]

WILLIAM JONES

His own birthday letter, already quoted,
shows with what affection he dwelt upon the
thought of his mother, and of the one who
had taken his mother's place.

His grief might have been mixed with
wonder could he then have foreseen in what
manner and after what strange transforma-
tion of self, he should revisit the country of
his childhood. That childhood was to be-
come, as he said, "but a tale." He was to
return as a white man, to find many things
obliterated from the aspect of the prairies and
their people; to learn that the old familiar
smoke inside the lodges could seem unfriendly,
smarting in the eyes of a foreigner; indoors or
out, to hunt with scholarly painstaking after
glimpses of all that life which the little Indian
boy had seen flowing past him so vivid and
copious.

Meanwhile, he knew only his present loss.
The chief's daughter was dead, the medicine
woman gone beyond reach of magic. She had
taught her young Black Eagle all that she
would ever teach him. And now his father
had come, to carry him from her wigwam.

[16]

Ill

COWBOY

In his new home, the boy found many
strange faces. His father had taken a second
wife, a woman from among the Cherokees,
There were new half-brothers and half-sisters
to be his playmates. The change, however,
was not enough to make him forget his loneli-
ness; so that presently, as this fact became
evident, his father very wisely sent him to a
school where he might live at a greater dis-
tance from old associations.

At about the age of ten, accordingly, Wil-
liam Jones began to learn the white man's
lessons, and to see the white man's world
which he could claim, by proportion of blood
and predominance of character, as his birth-
right. After a few months at Newton, Kan-
sas, where his mother's people lived, he took
the next step of his eastward journey, and
entered an Indian boarding-school at Wabash,
Indiana. This school, maintained by the
Society of Friends, was kept by an elderly
couple, known as "maw" and "paw" to their
large family of boys and girls from various

[17]

WILLIAM JONES

tribes. Here the little Fox boy met his he-
reditary foe, the Sioux, with whom he learned
to live amicably; although, as we shall see, he
never quite uprooted the stirp and stock of
tribal antipathy, even in later years. And
here at Wabash, under the gentle rule of his
teachers, he began conning our stubborn
primer of civilized life, and picking up his lost
connections. The education given him was
of a sensible, efficient kind, — part study, part
farming. There were animals and poultry to
care for, milk, vegetables, and eggs to look
after, beds to make, food to cook, dishes to
wash, and clothes to mend, as well as lessons
to learn from books. These things the family
of Indian boys and girls performed according
to their best ability. Good-will was a work-
ing principle in the school, and cheerfulness,
and mutual respect. "A certain cherry tree,"
wrote a visitor, "illustrates the spirit of the
place. In spring it would be loaded with large
perfect fruit, and so low that any child could
pick his fill; yet though thirty children passed
within reach of it scores of times every day,
not one cherry was ever touched." The pu-
pils were honest, the farmer-teachers kind.
In this environment the new boy, William
Jones, made rapid headway, learning the Eng-
[18]

COWBOY

lish that was literally his mother tongue, and
doing well in all his study and work.

After a three years' course, he returned to
the Indian Territory and his father's house.
Born out of doors, and bred in the saddle, he
now discovered that his schooling had become
the means of still greater freedom. It had
given him "the key of the fields." Like many
Indian boys of his age and horsemanship,
Jones found that the ability to speak English
admitted him to the free company of cowboys,
and all that a cowboy's life still meant, some
twenty years ago. It was a rough life, in
more senses than one; it was a good life, as he
used long afterward to say, with emphasis.
He saw, of course, the real thing, all in the
way of livelihood; and as Jones was never a
man to view real things in falsely-romantic
colors (but spoke with scorn of persons who
were "romance-mad" and "tearful" over the
Indians), he came to know much about cattle-
men and their ways, knew, intimately the
good and the bad, the strong and the weak,
the wholesome and the debasing. For three
years he was a cowboy, ancj a cowboy of the
old school. He loved to recall that period.
"I wish," he wrote, shortly before his death,
"I wish the Plains could have remained as

[19]

WILLIAM JONES

they were when I was a 'kid.' ... I went
down into Oklahoma before leaving the States
to take a last look. I cannot put into words
the feeling of remorse that rose within me at
the things I saw. The whole region was dis-
figured with a most repelling ugliness — wind-
mills, oil wells, wire fences, go to so and so
for drugs, go to another for groceries and so
on. The cowboy and the frontiersman were
gone. The Indians were in overalls and looked
like 'bums.' The picturesque costumes, the
wigwams, horsemen, were things of the past.
The virgin prairies were no more. And now
they say that the place is a State! Neverthe^
less you saw the stars that I used to see. Did
you ever behold clearer moonlight nights
anywhere else? Did you hear the lone cry of
the wolf and the yelp of the coyote.'' I wish
you could have seen the long horn and the
old-time punchers. The present would-be
punchers are of a dififerent build."

Spring round-up in 1889 was probably the
last at which William Jones appeared as
active member of a cattle "outfit." He was
then eighteen years old, had seen a great deal
of hard work and lively adventure. Had he
been less modest, in after years, his talk on
these matters might have filled a book, as the
[20]

COWBOY

saying goes; and even his reminiscences, rare
and diflSdent though they were, disclosed to
his friends a wealth of prairie knowledge, a
vigorous abundant experience, beside which
any book ever written about the West would
appear but the thinnest kind of secondhand
fiction. He distrusted what he called "stiff
incidents," and shied at the telling of them;
although once to a friend, he unfolded the
Homeric story of a "bad man" whom he had
known, — a fair-haired desperado, twenty years
old, with blue eyes and the face of an inno-
cent boy, who showed unearthly skill at mur-
dering deputies with his pistol, carried a price
on his head, and was killed only by a posse,
with buckshot, through a hole in a ranch-
house door at nightfall. Such narratives,
however, Jones regarded as rather loud bits
of by-play; the main scenes in his memory
were as quiet as they were full of space, vista,
and color. He told of daily happenings on the
range, by the river-bottoms; the ways of cows
and their calves; of ponies at work, of famous
pony races — in more than one of which he had
been chosen to ride; of curious debates among
old frontiersmen, and quarrels which they
sometimes averted by appealing to him as to
one who could read and write. He knew the
[21]

WILLIAM JONES

little prairie towns, and how his friends the
"cow-punchers" took their pleasure there;
the talk, devices and philosophy of gamblers
in "back rooms"; the death-in-life gaiety of
dance-halls. Through the whole miscellany
of the plains our young cowboy rode care-
free, seeing it all with his bright brown eyes,
learning both the worse and the better side of
mankind, getting much permanent good from
his experiences, and singularly little harm.
His own part in the doings of this period, he
seldom talked about; but not because there
was anything to conceal. His friends recall
one story of how, on a round-up, the men had
all risen and gone to work at dawn; how the
camp cook, in tidying up, shook out of Billy's
blankets a live rattle-snake, killed it, and
when the men returned for breakfast, called
out — "Look here, what this kid was sleeping
with!" The episode might almost serve as a
fable.

"The most beautiful adventures," accord-
ing to some writer, "are not those we go to
seek." And now to Billy the great adventure,
of his life came of its own accord. He would
have preferred, at that age, to go on riding the
plains. His father, however, was a wise man
who saw beyond the horizon of youth. In the
[22]

COWBOY

autumn of 1889, Miss Folsom came from
Virginia to visit the Sauk and Fox reserva-
tion, and find pupils for the Hampton Insti-
tute. The father recognized this opportunity
for his son, took a hurried journey of twenty
miles to find him, and next day brought him
into the Agency. It was the turning-point of
the boy's life; for by sunset of the next day,
along with ten other Indian youths, William
Jones was reluctantly speeding East to begin
his career.

[23]

IV

HAMPTON AND ANDOVER

Jones arrived at Hampton Institute on
October 1st, 1889. He was a slender but
manly youth, in cowboy clothes, high-heeled
boots, and broad felt hat, with a silk hand-
kerchief hung around his throat. From a
picture taken at this time, his features would
seem to have been touched with something
of unyouthful firmness, as though rough
weather and rough fare had matured them
before their time. The eyes appear wistful,
but (even by the photograph) uncommonly
fine, and deeply alive with thought. There
were sparks of hidden light in them, so that
they reminded one of the clear brown water
in a brook, with sunshine at the bottom. His
hair had precisely the same color: it was
brown and somewhat wavy, tinged with
dusky but living gleams like bits of outdoor
brightness blown into it and caught there.

Malaria, the chills and fever of the plains,

made him appear less rugged than he was.

Besides malaria in his blood, William Jones

found more subtle ingredients to contend

[24]

HAMPTON AND A^DOVER

with, — ^youthful unrest, the roving habits of
camp Ufe, and the inherited love of action
imder the open sky. Indian and cowboy
Uberty maintained their spell over him. It
was hard to be caged in a classroom, hard to
bear anything so artificial as routine. At the
Wabash school, he had been younger and more
docile; now he had reached that age where
the will is "the wind's will"; and at Hampton
every hour was ordered and appointed: from
the rising bell in the morning until taps at
night, task followed task, study and work
and drill, in a precise rotation that was sadly
different from the old by-and-large methods
of the Territory. His harness must have
chafed him sore.

Meanwhile, to fit the new life, young Jones
had a new code of morals to formulate. This
pagan boy, of mingled blood and mingled
experience, had to feel and think his way
toward spiritual manhood. A dawn of knowl-
edge among prairie myths, three years in the
devout Quaker family, three more with the
cattlemen, left his mind so constituted that,
on arriving at Hampton, he courteously but
firmly refused the gift of a Bible, saying that
he did not believe in it and would rather not
take it. Gradually, he found that the whole
[25]

WII^LIAM JONES

question of belief could not so easily be set
aside. The Reverend J. J. Gravatt, rector
of St. John's in Hampton, won the boy's
respect and confidence. At last, in his third
year at the school, William decided to unite
with the Episcopal church. What that deci-
sion meant, to a shy boy who shrank in agony
from any kind of public notice, and who had
always eagerly hoped to regain his old free-
dom on the plains, appears in one notable
declaration. "I understand myself," said he,
"and I know that I cannot live a Christian
life out there. I will not call myself a Chris-
tian and disgrace the name." The rite of
confirmation was to him, in prospect, an act
as irrevocable as that of any saint, — a re-
nunciation of the world, the only world he
knew and cared about. The bishop who
confirmed him was a stranger, and after the
service inquired about the 'youth with the
spiritual face,' saying that he had 'never
seen a more glorified expression on a human
face' than the one this boy raised to him as
he placed his hand on his head in benediction.
No one, according to the old and hard saying,
can save his brother's soul; no one, at all
events, may hope to portray it; and it is
enough to say that the boy had turned the
[26]

HAMPTON AND ANDOVER

main corner safely. Succeeding years, further
study, and intimate contact with many forms
of beUef and disbelief undoubtedly modified
the man's convictions. We shall not spy after
his creed, the path by which our friend went
apart, like the old Indian at prayer, to "re-
main silent before the Great Mystery."

For three years Jones worked hard at his
books, at the carpenter's bench, and on the
school farm, showing with both head and
hands that he possessed more than average
ability. Each year saw him steadily advanc-
ing. In the spring of 1892, he won the two
senior prizes for scholarship, and was entitled
to deliver the valedictory, — an honor which
he declined, because, he said, he was more
white than Indian, had at best only a fourth
title to any such distinction, and would not
claim that. Schoolboy honors seldom count
for much; but seldom does a prize pupil wave
them aside with so generous a motive. Jones
was not a mere clever boy, the "head of the
class" whose hand is always in the air sig-
nalling "I know" to his teacher. Three years
at Hampton, under good discipline, had given
him the makings of a man.

And now he had to form a man's decision,
and choose a forward course. At gradua-
[27]

WILLIAM JONES

tion_when he received one of the last diplo-
mas ever signed by General Armstrong-
William saw clearly that he must make him-
self an exception to Hampton's rule of going
back to his own people. All his inclinations
pulled him to go back. His heart was with
the plains. His judgment lay uncertainly in
the opposite quarter. It was a choice be-
tween the easiest way and the hardest. Our
young graduate proved resolute in facing the
hardest, and following it. He went north for
the summer, to work on a farm where, at odd
moments, he could study a little Latin and
make himself ready to enter Phillips Andover.
He had put behind him all chance of the old
free life, and gathered his energy toward that
hard-scrabble road, full of doubtful turnings,
which we call the higher education.

Andover he entered in the autumn of 1892.
The school seemed at first to offer the wildest
kind of liberty, after the strictly ordered life
at Hampton. This liberty proved only ap-
parent, for William soon found that his work-
ing day was, in reality, more crowded even
than before. His studies, also, were new and
strange. The teachers conducted their classes
on a different plan. "With study and tutor-
ing," he wrote, "I do not get time for much
[28]

HAMPTON AND ANDOVER

outside reading. Polycon [Political Econ-
omy] is mighty interesting, but it requires a
lot of time. . . . Geometry is giving me all
kinds of tired feelings." Out of school hours,
he had a cottage to care for, as a means
toward the earning of his expenses. He found
time for a little football — enough to get one
leg slightly injured— 4)ut on the whole was
too busy to take much play or exercise.

"The journal letters begun at Andover,"
says the friend to whom he wrote them,
"were his first attempt at any expression of
himself. They began in homesickness and
discouragement, were badly constructed and
poorly expressed; but as the days went on,
new experiences and new ideas crowded in,
and in his intense desire to make another see
and understand, he gradually formed a style
of his own which developed into one of con-
siderable merit." His English had always
been full of curious idioms and the colloquial-
isms of the West, and he was often much
discouraged over it. "I shall always say — •
'I have went,' " he would moan; "nothing
else will ever sound right." His own little
turns of speech were often quaint, as when
once he wrote, being perplexed: "I don't
know what to do! I'm all wrapped up in a
[29]

WILLIAM JONES

fix." And when walking with a lady whose
sash had become unfastened, the young
scholar addressed her, with more knowledge
of grammar than of furbelows: "Excuse me,
but your — one of your personal endings is
dragging on the ground."

After his difficulties with the English lan-
guage, William rejoiced to find that Latin
could be "very interesting" and Greek still
more so. In his first year at Andover, he was
able to help other boys with their Latin; in
his second year, and throughout the rest of
his course, he earned part of his expenses by
tutoring in both the classical tongues. This
was not bad for "a little prep at Andover,"
as he afterward called himself. All four years
were full of hard work. Now and then a let-
ter gives a picture of schoolboy fun. "The
dancing teacher had some girls for us yester-
day. Oh, no, I didn't get rattled! But it was
so much joy, though! Tell Billy [the friend
who had given him admission to the dancing
class, as a Christmas present] that he is the
means of my having a mighty good time."
Yet these light-footed interludes appear none-
too often; the boy's progress through Andover,
though pleasant, was a steady march toward
a serious purpose. In a brief summer visit to
[30]

HAMPTON AND ANDOVER

his old home on the prairie, William had be-
gun to see his Indian people more clearly, to
understand their part in the general human
situation, and to feel strongly that he must
do something for them. Just what, he could
not tell; but the question filled his mind, as
when he wrote from Andover to his former
schoolmates at Hampton:

"We hear of Indian problems and schemes
for solving them. Many of those who origi-
nate these schemes are friends of the Indian,
but know little or nothing of what he really
needs. But we who come from the reserva-
tions know how the Indians are living, and
perhaps if we should try we might find some
way of showing them how to live better. We
do not have to do something that everyone
will hear and praise. The greatest good will
be done by our showing our relatives and
neighbors how to live by doing it ourselves in
a quiet, honest way. We should never de-
spise them, but because we have seen and
been taught, this should make us all the more
willing to help them on to the better way."

From indefinite desire to help, Jones gradu-
ally approached a plan which seemed to con-
tain equal promise and difficulty. He Icnew
the Indians, their language and their life; now
[31]

WILLIAM JONES

if he could become skilled in medicine, and
so return to them, not only with a wider
knowledge of modern affairs, but as a physi-
cian, he might truly serve his own people.
Obstacles, not a few, stood in the way of this
project. His income barely sufficed to clothe
him. By February of his final year at school,
he wrote: "I have in mind now only this. I
am going to pass my final examinations for
Harvard. But whether I go to the Medical
School or anywhere else is a question. If I
could earn a scholarship or earn anything
at Harvard I would not hesitate, but there
seems no chance. I will not pose as an
Indian. I will not take a cent on that score.
It isn't fair, besides it would be uncom-
fortable." The same spirit which prompted
him to forego the valedictory at Hampton, now
made him fight his own battle. It was a gal-
lant stand for any youth to take. Being a
white man, William Jones could accept no
favor, allowance, or suspension of the rules;
but he would discard no obligations, for he
took pride in his birth among the Fox people
and the Eagle clan.

His problem was complicated by the fact
that he had begun, and only begun, to dis-
cover his real gifts. The discovery is best
[32]

HAMPTON AND ANDOVER

told in the words of the person who chiefly-
brought it about: "While at Hampton, and
later during a vacation, he had been en-
couraged to write out and make a little study
of his Indian language, and one day while
visiting the Public Library in Boston was
shown the Eliot Bible there. One of the
librarians very kindly allowed him to look
through it, and to his great surprise and de-
light he found that he could read a great deal
of it. The dialect differed from his own, but
belonged to the great Algonkin family and
had much in common with his own branch of
it. The Hosford collection at Wellesley was
brought to his attention, too, early in his
Andover days; and many other things served
to stimulate his natural interest in the eth-
nology of his people."

April, 1896, found Jones therefore in a
quandary. Two possible careers lay before
him, neither as yet offering more than pos-
sibility. As to his own fitness, he felt no
conviction or preference. Medicine appears
to have come foremost among his thoughts,
but only because friends were advising him
in that direction. Dr. Bancroft, then at the
head of Phillips Andover, had given friendly
guidance throughout, and shown, above all,
[33]

WILLIAM JONES

that he understood and properly valued his
shy pupil. But even the weight of the
Doctor's opinion could not settle this diflS-
cult affair. With graduation only two months
ahead, Jones was both anxious to decide and
unable. "Dr. Bancroft," he wrote, "strongly
urges me to go to Harvard, spend three years
there for an A. B. degree, and then go to the
Medical School. ... I can see the general
wisdom of his plan, but my case is so peculiar,
so different from most others. Shall I go to
college three years and then perhaps to the
Medical? The one sure and strong argument
for going to college first is that I am not at all
sure that I am going to like medicine, and
that perhaps my ethnology work in Indian
may suit me better."

Time alone could show. Meanwhile the
boy worked steadily. Examinations ended,
the machinery of school routine ceased run-
ning, and Class Day approached. The close
of his life at Andover is told in his letters:

"... I came home about midnight, as
near dead as I ever was, tired physically and
mentally, for I had been up late the night be-
fore, and early that morning, plugging Geome-
try. My room-mate left this morning for his
home. Gradually the boys are leaving. I'm
[34]

HAMPTON AND ANDOVER

having pretty good luck disposing of the old
things I don't want and can't take away.
To-day was Class Day. Everything went oflf
nicely, and the day was pleasant. The old
Chapel was decorated with flowers, and the
boys in their caps and gowns, and the fem-
sems and other pretty girls seated in the seats
behind them and along the sides, made the
old Chapel look better than it ever did. I
saw so many sisters and mothers looking on
pleased at heart and doubtless proud of their
sons," the motherless boy reflects. "I shall
never forget this Commencement. . . . I don't
know that I'll get a diploma. I hope I do.

"It was late last night when I left off this
letter. Since then several things have taken
place. Commencement is over, and I have
my Phillips diploma. I am no more a student
here. Somehow I feel turned out, and hardly
know where to go. This afternoon a note
came from Cambridge telling me that I have
assigned to me $250 from the Price Greenleaf
Aid. That certainly gives me life enough for
one more year, doesn't it.''"

One year in college — ^future enough, for
hundreds of poor and cheerful young adven-
turers — ^was future enough for Jones, as he
put off his schoolboy cap and gown.
[35]

SUMMER WOBK

Between Andover and Harvard there in-
tervened a summer vacation, of which Wil-
liam took advantage to go West, to his father's
"prairie place." Mr. Henry Jones had re-
ceived a commission to collect students for
Carlisle, — in other words, to canvass not only
his Sauk and Fox neighbors but the Kick-
apoos, Shawnees, and other Indians near by,
wherever he might persuade a parent to send
a boy or a girl to this great Indian school
in the East. William Jones, as may be
imagined, was overjoyed at being allowed to
join his father in the enterprise. They went
about together, visiting the different tribes.
It is pleasant to recall, in this relation, what
heartily admiring terms the young man used
when speaking of his father. "We are great
chums." And adding a little portrait: "I
think he has a fine head. It always reminds
me of Julius Caesar's, but with the tenderness
and kindness of the youthful Augustus's
head." Then, as though afraid of having
[36]

SUMMER WORK

bared his own heart, he hastens to qualify:
"I am likely to idealize people I like."

The pair travelled to and fro busily on their
errand, which took them through the heat of
Indian Territory in August, at that season
when the sun, a sharp red orb, goes down
through dust like the smoke of general com-
bustion. No record remains of their diplo-
macy, except a few jottings in the boy's
diary:

"August 13. Eagle House. Sac and Fox
one night for two and team.

"August 15. Kansas Sac village again.
Met leading men. All refused. Sac village
again. Got Leona Grey-eyes.

"August 18. Father goes to Kickapoos.

"August 19. Father returns — no success.

"August 22. We go to Shawnee. ... Go
up the river to Jac. View's. Got Angela View,
a Pottawattomie girl.

"August 23. Kicking Kickapoos decide to
send no children.

"August 24. Osinakasi does not bring his
children.

"August 25. Sick again with malaria. . . .
Go out after Sac girl in the afternoon. . . .
Father returns. 2 Shawnee boys come to go
to Carlisle."

[37]

WILLIAM JONES

With this humble triumph, the diary breaks
off. BefoTe the end of August, having col-
lected seven or eight young hostages to edu-
cation, William came East with them, and
left them at CarUsle. Of all the "sub-
Freshmen" then travelling toward college,
none, surely, had passed a summer more
varied and picturesque, or had been so busy
plucking up and transplanting the lives of
other people. Jones himself had gained fresh
experience, received many new impressions,
and revised many old ones. He brought away
some additional knowledge of the Indians and
the plains, but above all, a profound sense of
the changes which had swept and were still
sweeping over the face of his native country.
"Out on the bald prairie where I used to see
only cattle and ponies graze," he said after-
ward, there were fewer and fewer traces of
the life which he had known, and which he re-
called in all the coloring of boyhood memories.

One remaining fixture, it appears, was
malaria. William had fought against illness
throughout his task as a fisher of men; and
now when after establishing the little Indians
at their school, he went on toward Cambridge,
it was to the old accompaniment of chills and
fever.

[38]

VI

HARVABD 1896-97

Jones entered Harvard College in the au-
tumn of 1896 with a "condition" in physics
and a temperature of one hundred and four
degrees. "The hottest man in Cambridge,"
he called himself, in language both literal and
figurative, for his fever had prevented him
from removing the "condition," and so, to his
great chagrin, had spoiled the clean slate with
which he hoped to start.

He had better fortune in securing his
quarters, a room in the Yard — 26 Stoughton
Hall — which proved so much to his liking
that he retained it throughout his four years'
course. Luxury, during the nineties, had not
yet seeped through the college walls; and
undergraduates living in the Yard still prac-
tised the simplicity of a former generation.
Stoughton 26, at that time, was a severe room
on the third floor, finished in painted panels
which gave it the air of a ship's cabin, and
which, as on board ship, concealed many odd
cubby-holes and lockers. As one remembers
it, the room contained none of that demented
[39]

WILLIAM JONES

multiplication of details which undergradu-
ates then considered as decorative. It was
always a plain study, a man's room, and like
its occupant, made no display of Indian be-
longings; although to a friend, at the right
season of talk, "Billy" would produce from
his lockers the most romantic objects, — bead-
work, weapons, a tobacco-pouch fashioned
from the head of a sorrel pony, all kinds of
outdoor and wigwam things made by tribes-
men with an eye for color. At other times
these keepsakes remained hidden.

Here in his room our Freshman settled
down, like other youth, to the mixture of work
and dreams. Work predominated, for he un-
dertook six courses, and planned to get his
degree in three years. Besides, there were
term-bills to meet; and Jones, to help himself
as far as possible, wrote from time to time
little stories of cowboy or Indian life; not
with much success, for we find him saying in
discouragement: "I wish now I hadn't taken
so many courses. It is too late to drop a
course. Just the moment I begin a story, I
fall behind in my work, and it is hard to catch
up. I have material for three stories, but I
haven't a moment to give one of them. I
don't suppose I could get much, if anything,
[40]

HARVARD 1896-'97

for any of them." Malaria played its part in
this despondency. He adds: "I am feeling
wretchedly to-day."

Shortly after "Mid-years," 1897, he found
a new impetus and made a new friend. On
March 6, Jones might well confide in his
journal letter, "It has been an interesting day
to me"; for on this day he had met the man
who opened the future to him, gave his am-
bition its final bent, and played the part of
destiny at a turning-point. Mr. F. W. Put-
nam, Peabody Professor of American Archae-
ology and Ethnology, saw at once the young
man's capacity and unrivalled fitness for
Indian research. "My meeting with Profes-
sor Putnam was the very nicest talk I be-
lieve I ever had with an elderly man, excepting
perhaps one or two with Dr. Bancroft. He
took me right in, and told me just exactly
what I wanted to know without the least
possible questioning on my part except one
or two times. I am afraid my dreams of ever
becoming a doctor are all thrown aside. The
field he opened out to me is certainly wide,
with room enough for hundreds of intelli-
gent workers. There is an opening without
any question, and so my little mind is sent
drifting in another direction. What struck

[41]

WILLIAM JONES

me most was the taking of courses that I
entered upon when college opened and the
ones I am taking now. For these were the
very ones he suggested I must need, and then
pointed out what others I must take next
year, and so on. Don't you think it strange.''
My courses next year will probably be Eng-
lish, French, German, Spanish, Anthropology,
and perhaps early colonial history. You per-
haps can't understand just now how these
courses I have now fit right into those above.
He told me to run in at any time I choose
and see him. *My boy, make yourself at
home,' he said, as he laid his hand on my
shoulder, 'and come over to the house and
see us there.' — Our little meeting couldn't
have been more pleasant or successful." It
is pleasant, also, to think that the relations
here begun continued unbroken, and that
this teacher won his pupil's lifelong affection.
Other letters record, at random, what
Jones did and thought as a Freshman. His
first year at Harvard passed quietly and, on
the whole, happily. Studies and plans came
foremost. "Botany is great!" he exclaimed.
"You and I will have some fun with it, if I
can go up to camp next summer with you."
To a friend who sent him a box of that most
[42]

HARVARD 1896-'97

Indian confection, maple sugar: "I hope,"
says he, "you won't think this is a very, very
quick answer to your letter, but I can't re-
sist the temptation to write just a word after
the maple sugar box was opened. I fancy I
see a little smile beginning. . . , 'Oh, he
isn't going to work me for another box of
maple sugar so easily as that!' But now
please may I have another some time? You
know my weakness. Nothing strengthens it
better than maple sugar." Sometimes there
is an echo of cowboy days. "Your quotation
from Lamb * would lead one to think he was
a loser at poker. One likes to hide his dirt^
especially a poker player; so that if that was
his trumps, he wouldn't want to 'be called'
for a 'show down,' so he would pass, hand in
his 'checks' and so lose the 'ante' and per-
haps his bet. These are old Oklahoma phrases
that come running back into my mind at the
thought which your quotation stirs up; so
don't think it's any Cambridge experience
I'm having." Now and then, as he struggles
with much work or his recurring fever, he
makes characteristic apology for writing such
idle things as letters. " Saturday evening . . .

* Charles Lamb to Martin Burney, at whist: "If dirt was trumps,
what a hand you'd hold!"

[43]

WILLIAM JONES

I have lots and lots to do, but I'm not am-
bitious enough for it this evening, and so this
is one of the ways I have to rest myself. Of
course you don't mind?"

As his Freshman year drew toward an end,
Jones confronted a new decision. He had
become a member of the Boston Folk Lore
Society, and written a few articles for the
Folk Lore Journal. The society was now
anxious to help in sending him West for a
summer among the Indians, and through
Mr. W. W. Newell, offered him $110 toward
such an expedition. As this sum would barely
provide for a short visit, and as Jones would
run considerable risk of increasing his ma-
laria, his friends who best knew the circum-
stances counselled him to decline the offer,
and to spend a quiet vacation camping among
the New Hampshire lakes. Jones felt strongly
tempted to rest; but his ambition being now
too thoroughly awake, he could not give up
active service. "I have you bothered very
much," he writes to one of his advisers, "be-
cause I am not so obedient as I might be.
The truth is just this. Either I must drive
everything possible in the way to the Medical
School, and thus make it no matter of dif-
ference whether I go West or not; or else
[44]

HARVARD 1896-'97

familiarize myself with everything that is
Indian — and the best way for this, you know,
is to go West and be among Indians. This
is why I have been holding off so long, and it
is not so easy to settle yet. ... I know
there is malaria in Oklahoma, and what not
in Iowa, but how else am I to get these things
without braving something unpleasant.'' I
am forgetting my Sac most woefully, and by
next year I won't be able to say hardly a
word. ... I don't see how I deserve such
good fortune as a real vacation, and I know I
shall be feeling all the time that I ought to be
working."

These considerations carried the day. In
the following summer (1897) William lived
among the Sauk and Fox Indians near Tama,
Iowa.* These people, a branch of the Ok-
lahoma tribe, maintained their community
apart in its ancient form, almost unaffected
by the influence of white men. They fought
stubbornly against all efforts of the govern-
ment to bring their children into school,
celebrated the tribal rites of their forefathers,
and clung to the old language, costume, and
tradition. Our Harvard undergraduate came
to them in the dress and with the bearing

* See note, page 7.

[45]

WILLIAM JONES

of a white man, but they welcomed him as
Megasiawa, the Black Eagle, to whom the
Eagle house was open. Here, says one who
knew both guest and hosts, he revived the
teaching and experience of his childhood —
here he heard and spoke again for the first
time in years the language of his Indian peo-
ple. He knew then that he belonged to them
and they to him. They in their turn recog-
nized in his sympathy and respect for them
that he was their brother. Nothing, perhaps,
shows this more plainly to one who under-
stands the race, than the fact that no effort
was made to induce him to give up his "white
man's ways" of life or thought. Instead they
took him into their most sacred ceremonies
just as he was, withholding nothing and de-
manding nothing, content that with his In-
dian heart he should keep his white man's
head.

For three months he lived with an old
couple who claimed a distant kinship — only
that kinship is never distant with an Indian.
He watched the daily life as it went on round
him, listened by the hour to the tales the old
men were glad to tell him, and in return im-
pressed upon them by life as well as by
speech, the advantages of education, showing
[46]

HARVARD 1896-'97

them how to improve their farms and homes,
and urging them, with some success, to send
their children to school.

Passages here and there in Jones's letters
hint at the variety, as well as some of the
diflBculty, in his life among the summer
lodges.

"Tama. August 15, 1897. I am waiting
for the Thanksgiving dance, which is to come
off soon. The Indians have been holding
their preparatory feastings, prayers, and sing-
ing. When all the gens have done this, then
the dance will come off.

"The circus came, and I took Patoka and
George to it. The old man was more than
delighted, and it would have done your heart
good to see his pleasant face beaming with
pleasure. I'm going to see him this after-
noon and talk it over with him.

"You will be glad to know that I have gone
so far without eating dog."

Of all that Jones saw and learned during
this visit, the real core and significance re-
main a secret. The Iowa Foxes initiated him
into many ancient mysteries of their religion,
which have never been disclosed to a white
man. Jones committed to paper an account
of these, with sketches, diagrams, and the

[47]

WILLIAM JONES

full interpretation which probably no other
man could have suppUed. The document he
then sealed. It will not be opened until the
older Indians have gone to their fathers,
taking their lore with them.

For the present, and for his own purposes,
William found that his summer's work bore
two unmistakable results. He had learned
first that his Indian people — whose claims on
him he had never forgotten — admitted gladly
his claims on them; and second, that his
whole life from childhood had formed a con-
tinuous training, the purpose of which ap-
peared too manifest to be ignored. How best
to fulfil this purpose, the young man could
not as yet see clearly. But when in the
autumn he turned East again, to begin the
second year at Harvard, he knew that hence-
forth his studies would not lead toward
medicine. He should return to the Indians
not as a healer, but as the historian of their
legends, the recorder of their language, and
the interpreter of their most reverent beliefs.

[48]

VII

HARVARD 1897-'98

"College days," at their wildest, are
never quite so gay as they are painted, or
at their other extreme so dull. The college
days of a man who foresees their outcome,
and turns them toward it with any constancy,
often appear to him the happiest chapter in
his life. The class-room, the laboratory
bench, the late hours beside the green lamp,
are all movements in a campaign; and even
where no open battle is offered, he remains
continually scouting and skirmishing, testing
his own forces in minor engagements, winning
humble heights, or at least discovering some
of the masked batteries against which he must
presently march. To him it is all pith and
moment; but generally, and often in the same
proportion as he becomes victor, the history
of his operations will contract into a small
page. Strangers, or even his friends, see only
the main route he has traversed; his alarms
and excursions leave no trace on the map;
and when he has won his destination, he
[49]

WILLIAM JONES

seems to have made a plain journey, leg over
leg, as the dog went to Dover.

It would be doing the memory of William
Jones a poor service, to present him as a
young man engrossed in the details of his
own career. For one who worked so hard
and well, he left an uncommon amount of
space clear for friendship, fun, and human
by-play. The letters already quoted will have
falsified the man, indeed, if while they state
in his own words the motives for a given
decision, or carry his own narrative past a
given point, they shall have pictured him as
knitting his brows in self-absorption. His
doubts and troubles he wrote down only when
a friend had the right to know them. Happy
at some good fortune, he turned quickly to
share it in a letter. But the living man whom
written words cannot recapture, — the man
with whom one talked, sitting on a window-
seat or walking in the open — ^was the most
restful and refreshing of companions. He
could throw oflf all shadow of work, to
bask in wholesome idleness. With slow, quiet
words, and bits of tranquil gesture, he would
discuss any subject but his own affairs. And
at that period of life, when youth is most
busily competing for the future or playing its
[50]

HARVARD 1897-'98

private Hamlet, "Billy" Jones could lead
an undergraduate dialogue farther iifidd,
and invigorate it with iuore manly humor,
than any of us knew the secret of doing.
"Lead" is a mistaken term: rather, he en-
ticed our talk along with a word or a smile
now and then; listened, agreed or disagreed
shyly; often did no more than look on, his
brown eyes lighted with a curious twinkle,
which we in our immaturity let pass, but
which now returns full of meaning.

In his letters, and in them not often, he told
of his own work and perplexity. "I am fear-
fully rushed now," he wrote, during his second
year at Harvard. "I am not so sure about
my six courses as ... at the beginning.
Anthropology now is decidedly slow and
stupid. I can't tell whether it is hard or easy,
because I am not sure what it is driving at.
I devote two or three hours a week to work-
ing up the notes of my summer's work, with
Dixon. He is more than interested, and
thinks the material in every way good." As
may be imagined, Jones had great store of
experience to draw upon for his work in
English composition. "I have a fortnightly
theme here . . . that was handed me to
revise. The critic seems to think I can write
[51]

WILLIAM JONES

a story if I try very hard. I wrote a de-
-_scnption r«ne day, 'A Round-Up on the
Plains,' and the instructor told me to keep
to such subjects, for that was almost half
the theme. . . . One or two on Exposition
and Argument, and then will come a theme
on any subject we may want, — ^Western
story, Indian story. Love story. Blood, or
any other subject. I wish I knew some love
plot to work up. Indian stories are too stale
for me now, particularly after I get done with
this week's folklore writing. ... I handed
in a thesis in my History X course yesterday
on the Indian population, so that I am dead
sick of Indian just at present." Respite was
denied, evidently, for elsewhere he complains
that he must "get to writing something for
the Folk Lore Club, which has been chasing
me for the last two months for something
about poor Lo." Attacks came from unex-
pected quarters, and took his few spare mo-
ments. "A is again in this part of the

country. He dropped into my room to ask
me to join his 'Aboriginal Society for the
Advancement of the Indian Race.' I told
him I was flat broke, so that ended that. I
didn't know it before, but it seems that there
is a time when it is a good thing to be broke,
[52]

HARVARD 1897-'98

and this was one of them." Worse than all,
the bugbear of public speaking began to rear
its head before him. An audience of listeners
was, of all things, the one for which Jones had
least liking. "When there are so many men
who want to talk," he once lamented, "why
can't they let a man who wants to keep still,
alone?" That they would not, many pas-
sages attest. "The Harvard Folk Lore Club
wishes me to read a paper before it. Holy
Smoke! I put them off. . . . Mr. Newell
sent me word that he wanted me to deliver a
lecture. ... I think I see myself speak-
ing!" As early as November, 1897, he was
forced to consent, and "give a talk. ... It
will be on ideas of death, the soul, etc., but
there will be a discussion of general things. . . .
I haven't had time to work up my notes.
That will be my Christmas vacation work."
Apart from these troubles, Jones led a quiet
life at college. Athletics of the usual sort he
was debarred from, not only by his work, but
also by the injury received in playing foot-
ball at Andover. "My leg is bothering me
again," he writes; certain ligaments had been
torn, "and now I believe the bone is injured.
It doesn't trouble me to walk, but just let me
try to run, and you see me go off on one leg."

[53]

WILLIAM JONES

His lameness gradually wore away, for later
he was able to say— "An hour every day in
the gym and a half-mile run round the track,
is the limit of my exercise now. It will be
increased as time goes on." He took care
after this fashion to keep himself in good
physical trim; often went to church on foot,
eight miles to Boston and back; and some-
times played truant, stealing a winter holiday
on the eve of examinations: — "I have been
working so hard that I got where I could
not sleep. This morning I got Charles,
and we walked all the morning as fast
as we could out through AUston and round
by Belmont and over the hills behind Cam-
bridge. We got back at one, in time for
luncheon. I came over to my room and went
straight to bed, just as if it were eleven
o'clock at night, and slept till five." At an-
other time, with another friend, Jones made
a significant little pilgrimage, honoring the
memory of the Apostle to the Indians: —
"We took a beautiful walk out to John
Eliot's grave, the little town and the site of
his church and home."

The Hfe thus pieced together reveals a
pattern sober enough, even for the busiest of
undergraduates, — a tame pattern, surely, to
[54]

HARVARD 1897-'98

one who had lived as a plainsman. The
scholar's gown would show dismally beside a
cowboy's trappings or an Indian's blanket.
Jones was none the less happy, and indeed,
was never touched by the common under-
graduate discontents. "Here I am," he
wrote, as a Freshman, "here I am at Harvard,
where a man is measured for what he is, and
not for what society has made him." Through
his four years there, and through the nine
remaining years of his life, he felt for the
college a sentiment unknown to care-free or
sophisticated youths. Homesick he proba-
bly was, with a mind so fond of dwelling on a
past so different; but of homesickness there
are only hints. "To-day," he notes, during
a lonely Christmas recess in Cambridge, "I
stopped at a book store and saw a book of
drawings by Frederic Remington. I fell in
love with it on the spot, but it had a price
beyond my reach. There are so many things
in that book that bring back to me a thou-
sand reminiscences of the days before I was
brought east."

It is droll to consider that this young man,

who had known hardship and danger, and was

at bottom the soul of quiet courage, could be

as timid as a boy. Once, while at college,

[55]

WILLIAM JONES

Jones found to his dismay that he must pay
a call, and face no less dreadful creature than
a girl. This, apparently, was worse than pub-
lic speaking. He hated the necessity, and
put it off. At last he called; to his relief,
present fears proved less than horrible imagin-
ings; and there followed one of his first essays
on the method of womankind. "She has a
nice little way of breaking in, when you tell
her anything that interests her, and will go
on by herself. She makes these little side
tracks so interesting that you almost forget
what you meant to tell her, and behold you
find that both are talking about something
entirely different. Thus we found that an
hour and a half had gone by."

Bashful in all such matters, Jones could be
ready enough upon occasion. And now an
occasion drew near, with the spring of 1898.
Men who were at Harvard during that spring
term, remember well the great wave of excite-
ment which came flooding into college, and
swamped all personal or academic questions.
At first, as we hurried to late breakfast in
Memorial Hall, there came the news that the
"Maine" was sunk in Havana harbor. The
fact stared out from black headlines on the
newspaper stall, which stood in the transept,
[56]

HARVARD 1897-'98

directly under the torn battle flags of an
earlier generation. Before many days, the
black letters grew larger and larger. The
spring winds — to judge by the rumors they
brought — all blew from Cuba. And by the
time that the young apple trees behind Grays
were white with blossoms, the country had
rushed into war. We all forgot our books.
Lecturers forgot to lecture, and talked to us
like Dutch uncles. Professors of psychology,
of history, of literature, urged us to keep cool,
saying in chorus: "Don't enHst! This war
will be either short or long. If short, you
would be raw recruits, a needless trouble and
expense; if long, — wait, and drill!" It was
good advice, but youth will be served with
other doctrine. Awkward squads — some of
the awkwardest ever formed — already were
tramping all day long behind the gymnasium.
A '95 man opened a recruiting office, into
which went undergraduates, and out of which
came Rough Riders, whose story is told else-
where. Various men left college for the war,
some of them never to come back. Flags
appeared in the Yard, hanging from the
window of this or that study, wherever a
room-mate had gone.

The outbreak stirred and shook us all.

[57]

WILLIAM JONES

Jones, like many others, had seen it coming
far ahead. "Perhaps," he had written in
February, "the war cloud will roll over, but
if anything does come like war I may want
to go into the army. There is nothing serious
in this last; it is only a dream, which might
be realized in case war does come. I haven't
told anyone else." The cloud grew, however,
and spread nearer. "If I am needed, and can
be of any use, as I told you before, I want
to go into the army. It will be hard of course
to leave the pleasant life of a great university,
much harder still to leave friends; but the
words of General Armstrong come into your
soul, 'Put God and Country first and your-
self afterward.' " By April, the question
absorbs all his thought. "I feel the country
has done a disgraceful thing to plunge into
this war, but I haven't the heart to remain
comfortably here without doing something to
help get her out of the trouble she is in. . . .
This is the hardest thing I ever tried to do."
Within three days, the decision became still
harder. To the same lifelong friend, who had
undertaken his education, a,nd helped him
at every turning, Jones wrote as follows:
"Mr. Roosevelt has sent word that he wants
ten Harvard men to be with him in his troops

[58]

HARVARD 1897-'98

of cowboy cavalry. Men have come to see if I
would go." He tells how he seized the chance,
and continues: "I do feel it my duty to
go. . . . If any cavalry troops are to see
fighting, these cowboy regiments will see
it. . • . You have prepared opportunities
for me to see noble and beautiful ideals. I
have thus far enjoyed innumerable blessings
and have gained a host of friends ... all
these things only through you. So I ask you
as the same good and brave mother that you
have always been to me, to let me go into
this war. If I come out alive you will be
prouder and all the happier because I fol-
lowed what I thought was my duty to my
country. . . . You,perhaps, may realize what
thoughts come through my mind as I think
of being in these troops of cowboys. I would
thousands of times rather be with those fellows
than in any regiments of college men."

With all these motives, and more which we
may only guess, Jones did not go to the war.
He stayed at home and went about his
work, — an infinitely harder course to follow,
but a course which he felt he could not desert
with honor. He stayed, recognizing a fact
which more than one young man of courage
has overlooked, that his life and even his
[59]

WILLIAM JONES

bravest desires are not always at his own
disposal. The early summer of 1898 Jones
spent at Hampton, where he saw the trans-
ports come back to Old Point Comfort, bring-
ing sick and wounded men. "Among them,"
says a friend who was with Jones at this
time, " was a classmate, a splendid, handsome
fellow who, racked with pain and hardly ex-
pecting to live until his family could reach
him, said, 'I tell you, Billy, it has paid.'
This made a deep impression upon Will, and
he felt he would gladly have changed places,
just for the glory of it. . . ." One day,
reading a list of the dead and wounded, he
looked up at the friend who knew what an
ordeal he had passed, and said, "There, but
for you, might be W^illiam Jones." He paused,
and added, "I almost wish it were." And
afterward in Cambridge, as he and the same
friend were passing the soldiers' tablets in
Memorial Hall, he asked, with a laugh: "Do
you realize, — that for you I gave up my only
chance iorfame? "

Had he foreseen, he might not have spoken
so. The close of his life showed — ^what we all
knew — that he could stay in his duty without
considering danger or renown.

[60]

VIII

HAKVARD 1898-1900

During his four years at Harvard College,
Jones became a member of the Signet, Folk
Lore, Andover, and Hasty Pudding clubs,
wrote articles and stories — "Frederic Rem-
ington's Pictures of Frontier Life," "Anoska
Nimiwina, a legend of the Ghost Dance," "A
Lone Star Ranger," and other pieces — for
The Harvard Monthly; became an editor of
that magazine in 1899-1900; won the Harvard
Advocate Scholarship "for excellence in Eng-
lish Composition"; was twice appointed Win-
throp Scholar; and at the last, won honorable
mention in American Archaeology.

Other youths have done as much or more.
The list of achievements — good in any case,
and strange enough as sequel to that boyhood
in Katiqua's wigwam — may briefly certify
that Jones worked his way through college
with more than average distinction. It is not
what his friends remember best. As there
pass, in the review of memory, the crowds of
men whom one has seen at college, many of
the most conspicuous among these will take a

[61]

WILLIAM JONES

transitory shape, and reappear but as men
pressing on to succeed, — cloaked already with
success, and muffling their other aspects and
lineaments; only here and there a man re-
turns as he was, familiar, complete, clear, his
face still the face of youth. This remains the
man we knew; as though our last talk to-
gether had been yesterday, or all the missing
letters had gone back and forth for years.
We have not met since, but there is no change;
here stays our friend.

It was always so with "Billy." Hard-
working and competent though he was, he
reappears not like one of those half-hidden
figures in transit, but with his old presence,
the kindliest and most likable of boys. As
he crossed the Yard, when the bell rang and
crowds filled every path, there was little in-
deed to single him out from the rest of us.
One friend who came to know him only in
Senior year, had often seen his active, muscu-
lar figure, and without having heard his name,
had remarked the face as uncommonly full of
character. It seemed a Celtic face to this
passer-by, who may have gathered his im-
pression from some Welsh trait. Of "Billy's"
Indian blood one never thought, and seldom
was reminded, even on close acquaintance.
[62]

HARVARD 1898-1900

Those wonderful brown eyes of his were not
the eyes of a modern white man; they con-
tained more depth, distance, meditation, and
(especially when you came toward him un-
perceived) were like Indian eyes in their ex-
pression of steady sadness. To meet them,
was to know that this young man observed
closely, felt strongly, thought much, and kept
results to himself.

Jones was, above all, an observer. His
prairie training had given him the habit of
seeing, and his sight was very keen. I re-
member that once, as we came back together
from a long winter walk, he suddenly peered
ahead through the dusk, saying — "There's a
cat in that tree." The tree stood across a
wide road, against the blackness of a field, so
that — to me at least — the very branches made
little more than a conjectural mass. Any
cat there would be like the "black cat in a
dark cellar" of metaphysics. Billy's remark
seemed to be either pretence, or the prologue
to some mysterious trick. We went under-
neath the tree, and stood on a fence, before I
could see what he had seen from the dis-
tance, — a cat lying flattened along one of the
dark boughs.

On another evening, between late spring

[63]

WILLIAM JONES

and early summer, we happened to cross the
Yard from Stoughton toward Sever Hall,
when a slight rustle in the foliage called our
attention overhead to the top branches of an
elm. Something black flitted through pieces
of starlight, and vanished among leaves. I
guessed at a bird, and should have thought no
more about it. "Wait," said Billy. "That's
an owl. He's flown into the ivy on Uni-
versity." Sure enough, the ampelopsis cover-
ing the front of that building began violently
to shake in patches, as though Minerva's bird
were trying to find a perch in the Faculty
Room. "He's after young sparrows," Billy
explained, even before the noise reached us,
or the squeaking of tiny victims among the
vines. He had foreseen the whole transaction
in the dark.

His past life made him all the better com-
pany, because the moments when he spoke
of it were moments of perfected friendship.
Also, at this period, it gave sometimes an un-
expected turn to events. A small band of us,
now widely scattered, amused ourselves by
walking to town, dining in some smoky den,
and walking roundabout again to Cambridge.
Once, during a night's entertainment of this
sort, we happened to pass a miserable little
[64]

HARVARD 1898-1900

"museum," by the door of which stood one
dressed as an Indian, in fringed buckskin,
with long hair flowing on his shoulders.

" Go in," said somebody, "and talk to him,
Billy."

Our friend demurred, but presently ap-
proached the grimy fraud, and spoke in an
unknown tongue. He gave the good old-time
western greeting, — a request for a chew of
tobacco.

"Aw," replied he of the buckskin, "I don't
remember none o' that stuff — been too long
East here."

"Perhaps," Billy suggested, "we don't
speak the same language."

"That's it, I guess." The other visibly
snatched at this relief.

"What was your Agency?"

"Pine Ridge."

"Oh," said our spokesman. "Then" — and
readily addressed himself as to a Sioux.

The man fidgetted under his fringes, and
again pleaded his long residence in the East.
We had turned away, when one of our party,
who had missed the dialogue, asked if the fel-
low was really an Indian.

"I don't know: he may be," answered
Billy, in his charitable fashion; and then, by

[65]

WILLIAM JONES

an afterthought, stepped back into the gaudy-
entrance of the museum. Speaking in Eng-
hsh, and with a manner of great courtesy, he
let fall a few innocent-seeming words.

"That so.?" replied the buckskin man, well
pleased.

Jones came out and rejoined us, laughing.

"If that fellow had been an Indian," he
explained, "there'd have been a fight."

Besides enlivening the dullest of streets with
such episodes, Jones could find means of
breaking for us, as nobody else could, the
deplorable regularity of things at college.
On a fine afternoon, for example, when noth-
ing clouded the June sky except a shadow of
approaching examinations, he might appear
with a proposal to go behind the scenes at
Buffalo Bill's. We were not long in accept-
ing. Three of us — it may suggest something
of the variety in Billy's friendships, to say
that one of the three is now a captain of
artillery, another a surgeon at the head of a
children's hospital — three of us went with
him into the green-room of the Wild West
show, a green-room open to the sky, car-
peted with trampled grass, and crowded with
dressing-tents, horses and harness, Cossacks,
gatlings, buffaloes, Indians,:and Rough Riders
[66]

HARVARD 1898-1900

whom Jones had known in "the Territory."
Here we sat atop the Deadwood Coach, be-
hind the canvas screen of the arena, and felt
the bird-shot hopping on our hats as Miss
Oakley and the great Baker shivered glass
balls in air with their rifles. Here we met
cowboys who welcomed us, in part as Billy's
friends, in part because they had fought
alongside Harvard men at San Juan. Mc-
Ginty, rider of the bucking horses, treated us
most handsomely on Billy's account. Horses
were put at our disposal, both in joke and in
earnest. A great many feathered Indians
were standing around, aloof and silent. Some-
body proposed going up to them and opening
talk. "No," answered Billy, with unusual
curtness; then made the same objection that
he once offered to the late Mr. Remington's
Hiawatha pictures: "They're all Sioux."
Through friendship with the driver, we be-
came passengers in the Deadwood Coach, and
when our turn came, trundled into the arena
past a long line of mounted Sioux, painted in
wild colors, grinning viciously, and each man
patting the revolver on his hip to give us a
foretaste. The band struck into The Arkan-
saw Traveler, the eight mules into a full
gallop. After one unmolested circuit, we
[67]

WILLIAM JONES

heard a "Yi-yi-yip!" from behind the canvas,
and saw the varicolored ponies, bodies, and
tossing feathers of the Sioux burst forth from
cover. A cowboy, sitting inside with us,
pumped his Winchester out at them, but they
swooped alongside yelling, and fired blank
cartridges through the window close enough
to burn our cheeks. One yellow-painted sav-
age, on a white pony, had a sharp wooden
spear, used in a former "act" to prod buffalo
with. This he jabbed into the coach, hitting
our future surgeon accurately in the deltoid
muscle. "Hi yi!" cried the Sioux, at every
jab. "Hi yi!" cried the surgeon, doubling
into a ball in the farthest corner. When the
flurry was over, somebody asked — "What
were you saying 'Hi yi' for, Nat?" — "I
couldn't think," was the answer, "of any other
remark!" This quaint confession seemed to
give Billy more delight than anything else in
our afternoon performance.

Intermissions like this were not frequent.
Our college working-days followed each other
in an even round. Jones was busier and
steadier with his books than the rest of us,
and accomplished a great deal more. His
free moments he passed in various quiet
ways, — walking, reading, discussing books or
[68]

HARVARD 1898-1900

life at large with the other editors of his col-
lege magazine, or perhaps guiding a few mem-
bers of the Carlisle football team (when they
visited Cambridge for a game) to the house
where the author of Hiawatha lived. Though
fonder of listening than of talking, Billy told
stories admirably; indeed, his love of story-
telling came by inheritance; and sometimes —
not to any but close friends — he would unfold
narratives of former days out West, using in
the Indian mode a slow and eloquent gesture
in place of adjective or verb. To one man
of his college acquaintance, he explained the
language of signs, so that, meeting in the
Yard, they two might amuse themselves by a
secret conversation without words.

In the summer vacation of 1899, Jones re-
visited his birthplace. He made but a short
stay, for Oklahoma was at its hottest, and his
old fever threatened to return. He suffered
not only from lassitude but from disillusion.
"I'm going to get out as soon as I can," he
writes in August. "It's too hot, and there is
too much malaria. Indians don't look like
Indians any more. When I went away they
used to look so well in their Indian costumes;
but now they are like tramps in trousers and
overalls which they don't know how to wear.

[69]

WILLIAM JONES

Indian women are better looking because they
have not changed their dress so much."

Senior year at college, beginning soon after,
passed quickly and happily. In June, 1900,
Jones was graduated from Harvard, and by the
middle of July was taking a well-earned holi-
day in the White Mountains. His immediate
future lay straight before him. He had sub-
mitted to the Secretary of Columbia Univer-
sity an application for a scholarship, by aid
of which he could hope to proceed as a grad-
uate student. Indian ethnology was to be his
subject, and Professor Franz Boas his chief
instructor. His good friend Professor Putnam
transmitted the application to the Secretary
with the following letter:

"Harvard University,

"Cambridge, Mass., July 12, 1900.
"Dear Sir:

"Mr. William Jones has been a student of
good standing, and he received his A. B. this
year. He has taken courses in American
Archaeology and Ethnology during the past
three years, including one year's work in my
Research Course, when he made a study of
and wrote a thesis on the Massachusetts In-
dians. Mr. Jones came to Harvard from the
[70]

HARVARD 1898-1900

Indian School at Hampton, where he won the
esteem of his teachers, who have continued
to take an interest in his work. He has had
to work his way through college with such
assistance as he has received. For two years
he held the Winthrop Scholarship in this
Department, and he received a prize from
Harvard for English Composition.

"He is certainly worthy of holding a
Scholarship at Columbia, and I sincerely
hope it will be bestowed upon him that he
may continue his chosen research under
Dr. Boas.

"Yours very truly,
"(Signed) F. W. Putnam."

Recommended thus, as well as by his own
record, Jones entered Columbia University in
the succeeding autumn, and was appointed
President's University Scholar during his
first year of graduate study.

[71]

IX

LIFE IN NEW YOKE

In June, 1901, Jones received from Co-
lumbia the degree of A. M. ; in July, an ap-
pointment as University Fellow in Anthro-
pology for the ensuing year. Meantime,
Dr. Boas (then head of the Department of
Anthropology at the American Museum of
Natural History) had obtained for Jones a
commission to carry on field work in the
West. This work, which was to occupy the
summer months of 1901, consisted of "lin-
guistic and ethnological investigations among
the Sac and Fox Indians, and if circumstances
should demand, among closely allied tribes."
The Museum provided part of the necessary
funds, the National Bureau of Ethnology
furnished the remainder. "In your work,"
Jones's appointment read, "you will en-
deavor to collect as much information as
possible on the language and customs of the
Sac and Fox, and obtain as many specimens
as you can illustrating the ethnology of the
people. Your collections are to be sent
[72]

LIFE IN NEW YORK

to . . . the American Museum of Natural
History."

Jones lost no time in starting for his field.
The ink which enrolled him as Master of
Arts was hardly dry, before he had settled
among his former friends, the Iowa Foxes.
From Tama, Iowa, he wrote in June:

"I am writing this on my knee just outside
an Indian summer lodge. The time is about
half past six of a Sunday morning. I have not
had my breakfast yet. The breakfast, how-
ever, is cooking. One reason Avhy I am up so
early is because I have not yet become used
to the smoke in my eyes. The women are the
early risers. They make the fire, and while
the men sleep are preparing breakfast. Isn't
that fine.'' But the women enjoy it, and why
shouldn't they be let to do what pleases
them?

"How many people can you count on your
fingers who have written you before break-
fast.? You deserve a nice long letter, but I
am not promising one here for several rea-
sons. In the first place, I hear the clank of
dishes and the rattle of pans and spoons and
knives and forks, and I know not what minute
I may be called to come and eat. Again, the
men and boys are rising, and it won't be long

[73]

WILLIAM JONES

before some one or many will be looking over
my shoulders to see what manner of marks I
may be making on this paper. You know
yourself such is not conducive to an easy
letter."

For letters, indeed, the young scientist now
found little time. He was "not always where
there is a post-oflBce at hand"; he lived amid
the interruptions, the coming and going, the
visits and discussions of an Indian neighbor-
hood; and waiting on the moods of this chief
or that medicine man, he could never choose
his own time to begin work or to break oflf.
We may picture him as sitting beside some
red kinsman, asking and answering questions,
exchanging confidence, and seizing every pro-
pitious moment to hear the ancient stories
told. These were the tales of his grandmother
Katiqua's people, from remote generations.
No man could understand or record them so
fully and truly as Katiqua's grandson. But
the interpreter, though perfect and unfailing,
could not command the living sources of
legend to flow at his own pleasure. A tale,
well begun, might stop again and again at the
caprice of daily events. Letters describing
these interruptions, or a journal with the
barest jottings of them, would in part repay
[74]

LIFE IN NEW YORK

us for the loss they caused. Even to his best
friends, however, Jones could send only a
chance message. "I began this letter on a
Friday, and now it is Monday. I am on a
long Indian story, and am writing you this
when my informant is not at hand." "The
character of my work," he explains elsewhere,
"is such that I have to keep at it, though
many times it is barren of results."

The summer expedition was, in the main,
highly successful. From the Iowa Foxes,
Jones went to his native prairie in Oklahoma,
where he not only levied further scientific
tribute among his relatives, but enjoyed far
better health and spirits than during his visit
of two years before. He lived, for part of the
time, in the lodge of an old Indian who
claimed a double kinship by marriage and
tribal adoption, and who could impart much
hereditary lore. To the young man's delight
he was given the use of a fine pony, — a pony
famous through no mean exploit, for it had
led the great Oklahoma rush over thirty miles
of wild riding. Jones often sang the praises of
this mount. Meanwhile, he enjoyed his work
and did it well. In August he wrote: "I am
expecting to be in the field until the 20th of
September, perhaps later. I have gathered a
[75]

WILLIAM JONES

heap of stories in the Indian language, and
that means a pile of work for me this winter
when it comes, to get them ready for the
Government to publish. . . . Malaria has
not got hold of me, . . . but then I am not
going to play with fate, for the game is not
over yet."

Jones returned well and sunburnt to New
York in the autumn, and changed himself
back from plainsman and Indian to Uni-
versity Fellow at Columbia. His quarters he
took up in Lenox Avenue "not very near
Columbia," as he said, "and a long way from
the Museum; but I have a good room to sleep
in, and a good table to eat from, and so am
quite contented with my lot."

In November he joined the Harvard Club,
where, a few weeks later, he helped to give " a
reception to our victorious football eleven . . .
and a merry time we had of it. I met in with
a lot of fellows I know." His friends in New
York, it would appear, saw more of Jones
throughout the winter than before, although
he was busier than ever. "I have been work-
ing away like a Trojan," he writes in Decem-
ber, "preparing a paper to be read next week
at Chicago, where a host of scientific men
meet. Its subject is — Customs and Rites
[76]

LIFE IN NEW YORK

Concerning the Dead among the Sauk and
Foxes. One of my Columbia professors is to
read it; 'owing to unavoidable circumstances
the author cannot be present,' etc. The man
is tickled over the part I have shown him, and
he thinks it will do. — Christmas Day was a
quiet one for me. I loafed in my room during
the morning, and in the afternoon I went to
the Museum of Art to feast my eyes and de-
light my aesthetic sense. In the evening I
went to dine with a college class-mate of
mine. . . . His family are in New York
now; they are from an old Virginia line, and
they are very nice. They interest me very
much. . . . About the dinner, — it was de-
liciously good to eat, and I ate till I had a
goodly fill and was as contented as a well-fed
broncho. — I must tell you I've just finished
writing my 'speech.' They won't hear my
little bleat, but they will catch the idea of it.
I am doing a pile of work this recess."

While Jones was thus employed, a great
happiness had befallen him. His friends noted
the effect, without guessing the cause, until
six months later he told them of his engage-
ment to Miss Caroline Andrus, of Hampton,
Virginia. From now on, his labors had a new
enthusiasm and a new purpose; and though
[77]

WILLIAM JONES

fate cut them short, we know what happy
devotion sent him on, Hke the Greek hero, to
things "higher and harder."

"Busy!" he exclaimed, with gusto, in a
letter written shortly after New Years: "I
am up to my ears in work! But I can go at
it with a vim. ... I am up here at the
Library [of Columbia], busy over the trans-
lation of the Sauk and Fox tales that must be
done before many months roll round. I am
planning to do one story every day. Besides
the tales there is the ethnological material
that must be written up too." Thus the win-
ter passed, day after day of hard study and
application, though not without some variety,
or some chance, now and then, of seeing an
old friend or making a new.

"February 6, 1902. A week from Monday
night I am going down to a Mission on the
East Side and talk to a men's club. Morrow
and I have a friend who does church work in
that section. The man's name is Paine. He
is a Harvard man of the class of '97. He
wants me to tell about the West, cowboys
and Indians. The more graphic and exciting
the better, he says. There will be about
twenty-five men. ... I have done several
talks this year, and am getting lots of the
[78]

LIFE IN NEW YORK

'scare' and 'fear' driven out of me. But my
knees are pretty limber yet, and my voice
insists on clinging deep down in my bosom.

"February 18. You should have heard me
last night making my 'speech!' I told the
man in charge I would try to last half an hour,
and what do you think! It was an hour be-
fore I got warmed up, and the room was as
still as death, with the eyes of the men and
boys riveted on me. When I let up, the men
fired questions at me in a way as if they had
been really entertained. I was told after-
ward that it is seldom anyone has been able
to keep the boys as still as that. I told them
about cowboys and Indians, and livened up
the thing with a stiff incident here and there,
and I suppose that that was what took.

"March 12. This morning I have devoted
to an Indian story, translating it into read-
able English. ... I went to the Princeton
Club for dinner, and later to the Sportsman's
Show. I had a good meal at the former, and
was very much amused and entertained at
the latter. The Indians at the show simply
go through stunts like children who are in the
game for the fun there is in it. I go down
town again this evening. This time it is to

the Academy of Sciences, to hear W talk

[79]

WILLIAM JONES

on the Condition of the Indians. I hope to
see some one there whom I know and who
will know the speaker, because I should
like to have words with him for about one
minute.

"March 13. I heard W last night,

and after the talk was introduced to him.

Dr. B introduced me, and you will smile

at the exchange of words and moods. It was
something like this:

"Dr. B . 'Mr. W , let me intro-
duce Mr. Jones.'

"Mr. W , with a dead man's look of

indifference — 'Glad to meet you.' Then he
looks away and half turns round with ribs
toward introduced.

"Dr. B . 'Mr. Jones, you know, is the

Sauk and Fox who '

"Mr. W spins round with face full of

surprise. He grabs hand of introduced, and
with a tight prolonged squeeze exclaims —
'Oh! Oh! Yes! Yes! I've heard. I— and—
and — and . . . !'

"Then followed a shower of words. . . .
We talked for a few minutes on some things I
wanted to know about. After the meeting I
was lugged away by my friend Deming, who
took me down to his studio for an hour or
[80]

LIFE IN NEW YORK

more. . . . He and I may do some work
together some day.

"The wind is waiUng outside as it does on
the plains, and it strikes a chord of lonesome-
ness in my soul. The wind is always wailing,
singing, screaming, and murmuring out there,
and when once you get used to its sound you
never forget it. It reminds me of my past,
with all its curious episodes from Indian
camps and cow camps and then on into white
folk's schools. Perhaps it is fortunate you are
not here now, for I am in very much of a
reminiscent mood, and might torture you
with tales of all kinds.

"March 21. The enclosed card [an invita-
tion to a meeting of the Sequoya League] will
tell you where I was last night. I had the
pleasure of meeting a man I had been want-
ing to meet. The man is the illustrator and
artist Schreivogel. He does things western,
especially where Indians and soldiers are
fighting. You have seen his pictures, I know.
They are like Remington's, only far better.
This statement has reference only to the
pictures in action. In atmosphere and cow-
boys and ponies Remington is king, it seems
to me. Well, the man and I exchanged 'jaw-
breakers,' to use the Western vernacular, for
[81]

WILLIAM JONES

a long time. Deming and I went over to-
gether. I dined with him and his family at
his studio. Afterwards he and Schreivogel and
I went over to a German place and swapped
stories and good German beer through clouds
of smoke.

"The Sequoya League is a pretty name, and
that so far as I have been able to discover is
its best thing. An interesting young Apache
was there, and he and I scraped acquaintance.
He is one of the Geronimo prisoners. I hope
to learn something of him, and have asked
him to come to the Museum to see me.

"April 19. I have just come from Co-
lumbia, where there was a big blow-out mak-
ing a President out of Professor Butler. There
was a host of learned men in garments of
various colors and of various degrees. I
ought to have strutted about in a Master's
gown, but chose to be unostentatious and
went in my ordinary clothes. I joined the
crowd, and there were fine looking men in
abundance and handsome women were a
plenty. President Roosevelt was there, and
it was fun now and then to see him 'smile
toothfuUy' at a joke. Presidents of the col-
leges were there, too, and chief among them
was the very dignified Charles William Eliot,

[82]

LIFE IN NEW YORK

who made the best short address of the day.
Music sweet and soothing broke the monotony
of the speeches.

"I have not done much this day. I went
down town to do a Uttle purchasing, and
dropped in on Deming. I smoked a cigar
with him, while he talked about pictures and
other interesting things. He is a bully fellow."

Mr. Edwin Willard Deming (well known
for his portrayal, on canvas and in bronze, of
the real beauty and true spirit of Indian life)
became one of William's best friends in New
York. His studio in MacDougal Alley heard
many a long talk on Indian manners and be-
liefs, saw many an ancient tale put into ac-
tion, and many a prairie game, when Jones,
donning wolf skin or buffalo horns, romped
in play with the artist's children. It is one of
the best traits which his friends recall, that
wherever Jones went, he made the young
people love him. His letters are full of mes-
sages to them.

Though his chosen work demanded more
and more from him, Jones never lost his habit
of reading. He ranged through all conditions
of good books, prose and verse, fiction and
philosophy. In stories he took a special de-
light, rendered all the keener by his profes-

[83]

WILLIAM JONES

sional knowledge of story-telling. "Yes," lie
answers a correspondent, "I have read and
have had read to me Stevenson's letters. I
like them very much, though I always had a
strong suspicion that there were others which
could have revealed more of the man himself.
Stevenson is one of the men I can read at any
time and all times. No one could beat him
at a story, and no one had the same ease and
grace." Later in this busy year he writes:
"The day has been a most restful one. In
the morning I started a story, and read a lit-
tle from the Psalms of my Modern Reader's
Bible, a little verse from the second series of
my Golden Treasury, and much more from
your 'Kim.' In fact I do a little reading
almost every day, but not all, in all the above
works; and very little it is, but enough to
keep me in touch with the human side of
literature. It is a tremendous temptation to
fall away from good reading when one has
every hour full from 8.30 in the morning until
10.30 and 11 in the night."

The second year of graduate study closed
like the jBrst : Jones was not only re-appointed
Fellow in Anthropology, but sent West, on
much the same terms as before, to spend
another summer among the Sauk and Foxes.
[84]

ON THE PLAINS

Jones reached his field in June, 1902, and
living among the Indians, began once more to
collect "specimens" and preserve legends.
His letters, written at odd moments and odder
places, tell of bad weather, delays, and dis-
appointment, mingled now and then with
success.

"Tama, Iowa, June 22-29, 1902. I leave
town this afternoon and make my home in the
lodges. ... I am going to an Indian dance
to-night. . . . Night before last an Indian
told stories till after midnight, while the room
was thoroughly fumigated with tobacco smoke.
In the room was made a bunk for me and an-
other for the yarn teller. The air was thick
enough to be hacked into blocks. I thought
I should die, but the thing to do is not to show
discomfort, for I am a guest and must now do
as the Foxes do. Most lodges are well venti-
lated, but that was a house, one of the few
good ones on the reservation. You would
have laughed to see me rise this morning and
do my dressing under a blanket. ... I have

[85]

WILLIAM JONES

worn out all the soft places on my body. . . .
But the whole thing is a bully outing, and I do
not mind so long as I do not come in bodily
contact with creeping insects. I use ether in
my hair and clothes. ... I had a narrow
escape this morning from a delectable bite of
cooked dog. . . . Last night I entered the
Ghost Dance Lodge, where a parasitic crowd
of Pottawattomies, Chippewas, Winnebagoes,
and others were dancing. Of course I took no
part in the dance, but I wondered several
times what I would do if an Indian came
dancing up to me in the place where I was.
That, you know, is a sign for the one seated
to rise up and dance. At one time the boom
of the drum was so lively and the singing so
excited that the Indians were dancing like mad
and whooping war-whoops like warriors in a
fight.

"Last night I slept in a room where a man
had the floor and I had a sofa. Part of the
time he slept, part of the time he lay awake
puffing a pipe, and very much of the time he
sang bully Indian songs through a husky
nasal voice. He succeeded in keeping me
awake. He got up very early and roamed
about indoors and out.

"Toledo, Iowa, July 17. When we started
[86]

ON THE PLAINS

from Tama for Toledo we went into the face
of a fearful windstorm, so thick that we could
scarcely see ahead of us. It began to rain as
we entered town, and just as we drew into a
feed stable and under a roof, a tremendous
downpour came. The place we drew into is a
great big place, covering, I should say, an acre.
It is a place for putting up teams. Up at the
entrance, where it is light, I am writing this.
The thunder is cracking outside, and the
lightning is flashing about the sky; a regular
cannonade is on. My Indian friend sits
about two feet from my left elbow, his legs
crossed, his back humped, and his chin in his
hands; he looks as if in deep thought. A let-
ter from my father yesterday says he may
start for Iowa the last of this week. We are
great chums. I think he has a fine head. I
am going to take some pictures of it, front and
side views. It always reminds me of Julius
Caesar's, but with the tenderness and kind-
ness of the youthful Augustus' head. You
know the ones I mean. I suppose this is all
imagination on my part. People who claim
to know me say I have strong likes and dis-
likes, and that I am likely to idealize people I
like. I do not know, but you will know when
you see him.

[87]

WILLIAM JONES

"August 4. Father and I are having an
interesting time in the Camps visiting the
people. The Indians are extremely hospi-
table, and they entertain with ease and grace.
Maple sugar is one of the great foods, and
you may imagine my state of feeling when I
catch sight of it.

"August 13. I went to the camp last
evening and spent the night there. The
lodge is one of the flag-reed kind, shaped like
an Eskimo snow hut, and I tell you the wind
did blow against the lodge and the rain beat
against it as if to soak it through.

"August 15. Last night fell a tremendous
rain, and the water splashed through the
lodge. ... I fled in town to-day, for the
chief is holding a dog feast, and I am not keen
for a bite. ... I should probably have to
pass round the dainties, for when the Bears
are feasting the invited clans, the Eagles are
attendants. The chief is from the Bear clan,
and the chief's herald or runner or spokes-
man is an Eagle.

"September 19. Kansas somewhere. The
weather has been extremely cool in Iowa, and
now as we pass through Kansas I am begin-
ning to come in contact with the familiar
air of the plains. The air now is becoming
[88]

ON THE PLAINS

warmer. To-night as we go into Oklahoma it
will be even yet warmer. Familiar types be-
gin to board the train, but the most familiar
will not show up for about six hours yet. Now
and then I hear the smooth, long-drawn-out
drawl. When we get into the Territory I
shall hear heaps of it, and will begin to look
for faces I know. The civilized part of this
plains country is extremely homely to me.
The houses are painfully ugly, and the trees
and grass about them seem to be pitied.

"Shawnee, September 22. It is interesting
here. Sometimes when I have nothing to do,
I drop into these gambling resorts and see the
various gambling devices and notice how they
are played. The men who drop in to gamble
interest me too. I have seen all kinds of
men . . . well dressed men of the city, slov-
enly dressed men of the farms. There are the
broad-brimmed hatted cowboys in high-heeled
boots. Indians in varying costumes are at the
tables, too. The ages of the gamblers vary
from old gray-hairs to youths with the down
yet on their faces. The faces of some are
gentle and show gentle, pleasant breeding,
and the faces of others are severe, brutal, and
untrustworthy. I don't know that I told you
that everybody drinks.

[89]

WILLIAM JONES

"Sauk and Fox Agency, Oklahoma, Octo-
ber 1. I am doing nothing more than loaf
about this lazy place. I have not struck the
sort of Indians I want. Though I happen in
with a lot that are of no use to me, yet I am
having a pleasant time in one way and an-
other. I meet up with old faces, faces that
were full of life when I was a child, and are
now on the other side of the hill of life — on the
downward slope of that hill. I visit old
friends, and they are cordial. I go from
house to house. The dogs do not bother me,
which is a wonder, for there are heaps of them.

"November 14. I am travelling north,
and . . . glad that I am on my way. It is
growing dark on the prairies, a sort of thing
I like to see, because, somehow, it sets my
mind to recalling past scenes of childhood
when this country was worth while living
in. — Somewhere along this road we will eat
supper. There is a beautiful moon, and the
view is beautifid out on the prairie."

The scene quickly changed. Not long
afterward, Jones returned to New York and
began his third year in the graduate school at
Columbia.

[90]

XI

AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS

Jones had intended to "go up" without
delay for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
The winter of 1902-1903 found him working
harder than ever, holidays and all. After
long hours at Columbia or the American Mu-
seum, he spent the evenings over his doctor's
thesis, "plugging away" with great anxiety.
"I begin to see the monster," he wrote, when
at last his subject grew into form. The com-
bat was deferred, however, by a change of
plans. His Indian material promised well,
and his instructors urgently advised him to
make his treatment of it thorough and de-
liberate. He therefore put off his degree till
another year.

Meanwhile, to lose no time and to explore
all possible sources, Jones made a short visit
among the Indians at the Carlisle school.
Here, in February, 1903, he reports himself
as "having a pleasant time, in a way, with
the Sauks and Kickapoos. They are ex-
tremely cordial. I have a room where the
Indians drop in, and they gladly give almost

[91]

WILLIAM JONES

any help I ask. "We had a regular story-
telling bee last night, and I learned volumes
of things I had not known before among the
Kickapoos, but which I had suspected. —
March 2. I had Indians all about me yester-
day. To-day the Kickapoos have been in my
room, giving me a good deal of information.
Both the boys and girls are as nice to me as
they can be. The teachers are cordial, too."
For the rest, Jones passed his third year of
graduate study much as the first and second,
though his work increased. It was a red
letter day — usually a Sunday — ^when he man-
aged to see a friend or two. Theatres he could
visit seldom, and then only "for a change, to
rest my head," perhaps in some theatre where
"bad acting predominated." — "But I don't
mind that," he writes. "I get nearly as much
entertainment watching the people, to note
how the acting strikes them. Queer people
get into the boxes, and I like to see the joy
they get out of their self-suflaciencies, and the
way they exchange salutatiesis. ... It is the
kind of audience that hisses the villain."
Next might come an evening at the house of a
professor, "with other students, being taught
Chinook"; a long talk about Indian life and
Indian pictures with Mr. Deming; an after-
[92]

AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS

noon conference of the learned at the Museum;
a quiet hour at the Harvard Club; or a
smoker, at which "anthropologists round
these parts assemble, to burn up the Doctor's
cigarettes and cigars, and drink his beer, and
eat his foods."

In the spring, the authorities at Carlisle
made a very generous reply to a request from
Jones, and sent a Kickapoo boy, with whom
he could do "language work," and study as
in a living book lent from some inaccessible
library. Jones, worn with other studies, had
threatened to "rush him as fast as he will let
me"; but in point of fact, he treated most
carefully and kindly this young volume of old
knowledge. "The Kickapoo lad arrived," he
writes on May 11, "and yesterday I took him
out to Bronx Park to see the animals. In the
evening I thought it was my duty to take my
man to Grace Church. It was pretty warm
for my friend, and he did not have to urge me
to go out into the cooler air. We went to the
Demings' studio.— May 13. My Kidkapoo
and I are at it pretty much all the time. He
is full of information.— May 15. This even-
ing I took my Injun for a long walk up to
125th Street to see the sights. ... We
bought tickets to see Joseph Jefferson in The
[93]

WILLIAM JONES

Rivab to-morrow night. My Injun and I are
getting piles of stories. He is a jim-dandy,
just full of yarns, and a very nice boy, too."

When the year closed at Columbia, and the
young Kickapoo had gone home, Jones con-
trived to see his friends at Hampton. Here
he took a holiday of some weeks. A letter
written aboard ship on his return to New
York, contains a highly characteristic pas-
sage:

"June 23. After breakfast I went into the
smoking-room. . . . Three men were telling
tales of experience, and between whiles dis-
cussed subjects of many kinds. One man in-
terested me particularly. He was. from North
Carolina. He had been in the Rockies in the
early days, and some of his yarns were of ex-
periences out there. Since then he had seen
service on the sea. He was a storehouse of
information. He talked with good sense and
much detail in politics, law, government, ag-
riculture, and betrayed a fine sense of humor.
The old fellow did not speak the King's Eng-
lish, but his words were racy, to the point, and
pat. After a while two well dressed young
men came in and sat down at my right. Pres-
ently they began talking about psychology
and biology, and I felt like booting them out
[94]

AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS

of the room; but it soon seemed that their
discussion was to be in an undertone and so
did not interfere with the more interesting
tales."

In New York, Jones had a few hurried days,
buying "a six-shooter, a cowboy hat, a rubber
coat," and other articles of outfit. The Amer-
ican Museum was sending him west again, on
a more difficult mission: he was to travel
through the region of the Great Lakes, and
the farther country on both sides of the
Canadian border, wherever he might find
Indians living the old life or recalling it. His
commission was a roving one, his journey, in
some measure, a journey of discovery. The
Indians would be scattered, especially during
the summer season; and even in their settle-
ments, they would show varying degrees and
effects of contact with white men. Jones
could not choose beforehand the places most
fit for his purpose. He could only go and see,
experiment, scout and learn.

From Sault Sainte Marie, he began his
search by going to Kensington Point, the
scene of the annual Hiawatha play, where he
did an errand for the Museum, and made
friends with certain visiting Indians. The
play itself he dismissed impatiently, saying

[95]

WILLIAM JONES

that he had never seen "so much pretension
of knowledge about Indians with so much
ignorance." Jones took far greater pleasure
in the company of an "old Hudson's Bay
employe, George Linklater, He is Scotch and
Indian. He knows pretty much all the coun-
try between here and Hudson's Bay, and can
speak the various dialects of the region. He
has given me an interesting tale or two of his
experiences. I may propose his name for a
probable companion in the trip to Labrador.*
He is the type of the old frontiersman of our
country, the sort I imagine my grand-daddy
and his kin were."

Grand River, Manitoulin Island, Spanish
River, were the first places where Jones tried
to find a few Indians knowing the old life.
The rest of what he called his "summer gad-
ding" took him north-about round Lake
Superior, through Manitoba, North Dakota,
Wisconsin, and Minnesota, down to his old
friends and kinsmen the Iowa Foxes.

"Thessalon, Ontario, July 8. Lake Huron
looked still and quiet. I wanted to go out on
some rock and sit. The nights are beautiful
now. Last night I turned in at two in the
morning. Kabaoosa, the Indian, and I sat

' A. proposed expedition, which Jones never made.

[96]

AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS

out in front of his house and talked on and
on. He told me tales, and I exchanged, and
thus the hours of the night flew by. We be-
came good friends. . . . This man Kabaoosa
is of the family that gave Schoolcraft the
material from which Longfellow made his
Song of Hiawatha. Kabaoosa gave me In-
dian versions of things used in the poem.

"Nepigon, Ontario, July 17. I met some
Indians from Albany River. They came down
in canoes. We had a great time talking to
each other. They don't always understand
me, and I don't always understand them, but
we manage to get along pretty well. The
Indians speak a mixture of Cree and Ojibway.
Often I can understand a whole streak, and
then at times I don't get a bit.

"I am constantly overcome with the things
I see in this grand Lake country. I want to
see even what is more wild, back up in the
forests, lakes and rivers.

"Fort William, Ontario, July 22. I went
straight for the Indian reservation, which is
about two miles from here. I found the peo-
ple exceedingly mild and kind, which was only
in keeping with what I have found among
these Ojibways all along. I never saw In-
dians so willing, so kind in their hospitality.

[97]

WILLIAM JONES

I met an old French half-blood, Penassie by-
name, who took me round among the people.
He will make some things for me, traps to
catch bear, skunk, mink, and so on, and other
things in the way of games and the like.

"Mine Centre, Ontario, August 3. Most
of the boarders, at least they who make their
presence felt the most, are English. I came
near to being rude several times. They talk
about things in general in such a superficial
manner, and about all the earth in such a
condescending way, that it is not always easy
to remain within hearing. But their intona-
tion, and their style of pronunciation, and the
way they do it, are enough to limber the
stifiFest. Actually I laughed twice at table,
even though I was a stranger to those present.
I could not contain myself. One Englishman
tickles me even to look at him: he is a glorious
freak.

"Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, August 7.
I drove out into the country to-day and saw
the Indians of Long Plain. They are Ojib-
ways, and a primitive lot. ... [A certain
oflScial] went along. He was no use to me, and
I am sorry not to have taken an Indian.
Some Sioux have a village two and a half
miles south of here. They are Santee Sioux*
[98]

AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS

They came here after the Minnesota massa-
cre, and have been here ever since, afraid to
go back. They are different from Ojibways.
The Ojibway is the more aggressive, more
conservative, and more pagan. The Indians
were very cordial to me to-day. The [certain
oflScial] was dumbfounded to see me talking
away to the Indians in a tongue unknown to
him. I doubt if he understands me yet. He
has learned that I was brought up on a cow
ranch, among Indians, at Harvard and Co-
lumbia, and I am sure he does not under-
stand.

"August 8. I visited the Sioux this morn-
ing. The poor things feel they are exiles, I
am sure. I talked with one old man, and he
learned I had seen some of his people. His
feelings were pretty strong, and his emotion
was deep. I gathered a good deal from his
broken speech and vague gestures. It sur-
prised me to find he knew nothing of the sign
language, which the western part of his people
knew so well.

"Dunseith, North Dakota, August 16.
This town lies flat in a prairie valley. . . .
The nights are quiet, only the wail of the
wind as it sweeps past the corners. I was re-
minded of the old Indian Territory last night

[99]

WILLIAM JONES

as I lay half awake thinking of many things,
and hearing the cry of the wind. Many a
night have I gone to sleep with the wind
lulling me. I wish I could explain why it is
and in what way the wind affects me so. I
used to miss it at Hampton and at Andover,
but I think I was weaned of it at Harvard.
It cries a little in the day time, but not so
much as at night. . . .

"I got to Dunseith yesterday at noon, and
called on the Indians I came to see in the
afternoon. They live in a very pagan manner
among the hills north of the town, called the
Turtle Mountains. . . . I passed the Agency
on coming out here. The agent met me on
the way. He eyed me in the characteristic
manner agents use when I first approach
them. Their first attitude makes me feel like
a rattlesnake or something to be shunned.
But they collapse into their own forms again
when they know that my mission has nothing
to do with their affairs. [This agent] turned
out to be a very pleasant old man.

"Churche's Ferry, N. D., August 21. I
got some very nice things from the Turtle
Mountain Ojibways. I made friends with
several, and it was a bit touching the way
some of them bade me good-by.
[100]

AMONG NORTHERN INDIANS

"I got fond of Dunseith. The wide sweep
of the prairies I got from the hills must be the
reason. It is a magnificent sight, and I do
not know when I have seen quite the like,
unless it was in old Oklahoma before the
opening. At evening at the time of dusk a
huge feeling of vastness would take posses-
sion of me. I had begim to understand why
the Indians were so fond of the particular
place where they are now. It seems that the
tribes used to gather in the hills about Dun-
seith and hold great ceremonies. Coyotes
yelp at night yet, and it was a satisfactory
sensation to listen to the old familiar sound
I used to go to sleep to.

"September 29. The frost has nipped the
birch and poplar and red oak, and I wish I
could describe to you the beautiful soft yellow
of the birch and poplar leaves, and how rich
the crimson is on the leaves of the oak. We
paddled by miles and miles of color on both
sides of us. It has been a long time since I
have eaten so much wild meat.

"Tama, Iowa, October 15. [Among the
Foxes.] I arrived here this morning, and it
seems like coming back to a place where I
have always lived. People greeted me in a
very generous manner, and the Indians were
[101]

WILLIAM JONES

even more demonstrative. I had the chief
and his head men at dinner with me, and we
talked in a pleasant way almost all the after-
noon. . . . You should see how people look
and stare when Indians come and greet me
and go round with me."

A few weeks later Jones was in New York
again, helping at the Museum and the college.
He spent the Christmas holidays of 1903 at
Hampton, Virginia.

[102]

XII

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Private examination and public ceremony
did their best, on June 8, 1904, to change
WiUiam Jones into a Doctor of Philosophy.
It is enough to say that he received his de-
gree, in the company of many other studious
young men and women, a cloud of professors,
chairmen, and grand marshals lending dignity
and security, while fiddlers played the Salut
d' Amour. Jones took the process with a good
grain of humor. From his thesis, or disserta-
tion — "Some Principles of Algonkin Word
Formation " — ^he said that he gained pleasure.
"It is different from temperamental writing.
I am always put on my guard, must not make
statements that cannot stand alone. Good
discipline, no doubt. But the thing is really
amusing. Think of it, a grammar on an In-
dian tongue that will never be used on this
green ball except, perhaps, by a few special
students who may only finger over the pages
and chuck it aside with the most indifferent
feeling in the world." At the same time he
had worked his hardest, "anxious to do it
[103]

WILLIAM JONES

fully in as brief a manner as possible," and
wishing, for the sake of his readers, he "had
a style that would rivet their eyes till the last
page was read!" His preparation was "the
severest affair I have ever gone through. . . .
I am deep in mire trying to fill my head full
of all kinds of knowledge." His oral examina-
tion before a long table of wise men so dazed
and excited him that he could "hardly recall
even the questions asked, to say nothing of
the answers I made. The moment I would
pull myself together, my mouth would be-
come as dry as a powder-horn, and I could
hardly speak. I was skinned alive ... a
very formal proceeding." He had faced the
ordeal seriously, he was glad of his success.
"And now I am to be classed in that group of
men known as Doctors of Philosophy. The
title is only a term, but it means a heap." It
meant to him, above everything, a prompt
and lively sense of gratitude toward those
friends who had given him his start. "Now
that the game is over and I have won, it is
only natural that I should think of them first
of all." But he did not set too high a value
on his winnings. Never, when he could pre-
vent, would Jones allow himself to be called
Doctor.

[104]

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

His own attainment, the sincerity of his
purpose, his respect for all true scholarship,
admitted no trace, even temporary, of the
scholar's pride. Jones loved plain Anthropos
the man better than Dr. Anthropologist.
Born and reared in the open, he did not en-
joy what is called the "educational" atmos-
phere. "I whiled away about two hours," he
writes, " 'beating the air' with my pedagogical
friends at the Sunday dinner table. I wonder
if I have ever described them to you? You
know people very often betray their profes-
sion by the style of the garment and the man-
ner of wearing the same, by the speech and by
the attitude toward things in general. The
class-room, like the motion to adjourn, takes
precedence before all matters for talk. These
dominies talk class-room at breakfast, the
same at noon, and heat it up for supper.
There is no harm done, the excitement is
innocent enough; but like a boiled potato
three times a day for seven days in the week,
it actually tends toward monotony." And
again: "I am touching on a side of life which
I feel a great hunger for. I long for the com-
panionship of fellows I used to know in my
last year at college, like Henry, and Colonel,
and Bill. It is like green pastures when I get
[105]

WILLIAM JONES

with Bill and the Colonel at odd hurried
moments, these days. My scientific friends
(classmates and fellow-students) are all right,
it is only myself sort of out of gear." Jones
had made, and continued to make, warm and
lasting friendships among the men of his
profession: always with men who, like him-
self, did the most thorough work, but who
like himself, at the close of day could brush
off the class-room chalk or the Museum dust,
and cheerfully rejoin the outer world. "When-
ever Jones and I finished our afternoon,"
said one of these colleagues, "and went out
for a smoke and a glass together, there was
no longer any such thing as Anthropology on
the face of the globe."

After getting his doctor's degree, Jones
worked as hard as ever, in the city heat, on a
grammar of the Fox language, on the proofs
of his thesis — afterward published in the
"American Anthropologist" — and on many
preparations for the field* He kept long
hours, yet managed to see his friends, dine
with them, beat them at revolver practice in
a shooting gallery, paddle canoes with them
up the Hudson, and snatch a brief holiday on
the Maine coast, though even there he began
writing a treatise to be read (by somebody

[106]

DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY

else, we may be sure!) before a congress of
scientists in St. Louis. His own summer read-
ing was in a book which interested him
greatly, — "Varieties of Religious Experience,''
by the late William James.

The close of July found him travelling
westward by train, in high spirits at the sight
of green country, and of people who looked
"as if they lived close to the earth and its
doings." His letters, penciled in haste, hold
many a thumbnail sketch of his fellow pas-
sengers and of fleeting scenery. Among these
passages, two reveal their writer in opposite
moods, both strongly in character. The first
episode came when Jones met some Jack-in-
ofiice at a railway station. "Do you suppose
I could get anything from the stupid Eng-
lishman behind the glass window? I asked
politely, and was as considerate as one could
be. I wanted to know, first, the fare from
Sudbury to Garden River. He said he did
not know if it cost one dollar or a thousand-
I began to boil under my white hat, but kept
steady, and asked him to tell me the distance
between the two places. He threw a time
table out at me. I was pretty well heated,
but contained myself, went to a seat, and
began to work the table out; got to a point

[107]

WILLIAM JONES

that stuck me, and so went to the bear to get
a httle light. He began his performance
again. I let fly a piece of English and asked
him out on my side of the window. He did
not come, but he got jolted into enough
decency to give information." — ^The second
episode took place in a railway car. "Across
the aisle was a mournful looking girl of about
eighteen, with a doleful aunt with two or
three children. They spent the time crying,
the aunt and niece, and talking about one
departed. . . . The seat in front of me was
vacant. After many risings and sittings the
niece, a pretty brunette, came over, and in
many ways sought attention from the man in
the white hat behind. Finally she asked how
far to a certain station; I looked in my
schedule sheet and told her. She sighed a
deep sigh, and told a pitiful story of a journey
she was making, and how long it was seeming.
She got a telegram last night, she and her
aunt, that her little brother was drowned,
and for them to come. She was starving for
sympathy. I talked with her, and used all
kinds of devices to turn her mind away to
other things, but of no avail. She was a pretty
little thing, with jet black hair and deep,
mellow eyes that talked volumes. She was
[108]

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

simple-minded, with a delightful, naive man-
ner, a poor girl, and had some store position
in Sault Ste. Marie. It tore my heart to see
her in so much grief. I wish I could have
lightened her burden."

Our traveller now began the summer's
work, visiting his Indian friends, old and new,
on either side of the Canadian border. "It is
a pleasure to come back here," he wrote,
"and have the people welcome me in the de-
lightful way they do." Garden River he had
a hard time leaving, the Indians were "so
cordial, so entertaining, so friendly." Jones
met with many "genuine story-book char-
acters," both white and red, who told him
freely the strange narrative of their lives.
He saw with delight the various panorama
of outdoors, where "lofty islands stand in
bold relief against a mist and cloud of back-
ground on the lakeward side, and on the
other, hillsides of tall evergreen"; or "country
where one can get as lonely and disconsolate
as one pleases . . . distance after distance,
dreary wastes of stunted growth, and what
remains of dense forests, where fires have
passed through and left tall, bare trees stand-
ing dead." The Ojibways beyond Thunder
Bay made him welcome once more; and once
[109]

WILLIAM JONES

more he "dwelt at court" in the old chief
Penassie's log house. Jones pitched hay for
his host, or watched his hostess while she
traded pickerel and suckers for eggs. He
gave medicine to the sick, wrote state papers
for the tribe, attended their long night coun-
cils. Penassie was "chock full of all kinds of
lore," so that inside his house there was much
talk, much writing down of tales told slowly
and broken by the arrival of Indian gossips.
The telling was marked, however, "with very
fine artistic skill. I have one tale in particu-
lar," Jones wrote, "which keeps me guessing
all the time. All of the stories are naive and
unconscious. I don't know if my narrator
(old Penassie) is an artist, or if it is the genius
of the Ojibwas that makes these stories so
good. Suggestion is resorted to with fine
effect, and it is never studied. For artistic
effect I have no Sauk, Fox, or Kickapoo story
to come up to the standard of some I'm now
getting. ... Of course I'm taking the
stories down in Indian . . . already more
than two hundred pages of text, and I am
sure of as much again." Thus the days were
busy; not so the nights. "The old chief one
evening took me out to walk with him and
showed me some of his realm. In a moment
[110]

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

of extreme friendliness he let fall some re-
marks to the effect that he wished I would
come and live here, take to myself a wife and
be one of the people; that he would give me
some land and allow me all the rights of his
people. The poor old man, of course, is
ignorant of the big world outside. . . . The
village is as silent as a graveyard at night;
lights are out early. The chapel bell is about
the only thing in the village to interrupt the
silence." By nine o'clock in the evening,
Jones had usually undressed under his blan-
kets, in a corner opposite "the royal bunk,"
where he could hear, in the darkness, the
chief's family telling their beads.

Up Rainy River to Pelican Lake a "rather
hard and barren" journey brought Jones into
the wilderness, where he camped among some
pagan Bois Fort Ojibways. These gave him
so much valuable information that he was
"kept busy day and night," besides, as he
said, "having the time of my life." The
Indians vied with each other to have their
spoken words recorded, so that the young
doctor's note-books were filled up at wonder-
ful speed, until November brought the north-
ern winter. "The Indians seemed," wrote
Jones, "to dislike my leaving. They gave me

1111]

WILLIAM JONES

a dance for a send off. They had tried to get
me to dance on various occasions before, but
this time I gave in to please them. Inci-
dentally I 'got onto' a new step. I have
another which . . . looks like a ghost-dance
step with back bent forward, arms free and
swinging back and forth, and the dancer mov-
ing sidewise one way and then back again,
now receding, now coming forward. It is an
eye opener, and I hope to spring it on you
some time when no one's around. The women
have a cunning step which I should like to
know. Their skirts are so low that I cannot
see."

From Bois Fort and these parting festivi-
ties, Jones "came out through ice and snow"
to the Agency at Leech Lake. There he
found a "warm hazy Indian summer" still
lingering; good company and "very delight-
ful" surroundings; a helper in Joe Morrison,
"an old Carlisle boy and the best interpreter"
he had met among the Ojibways; cordial
visitors, Indians from Bear Island, who took
him to see a medicine dance of the Midiwiwin;
altogether, a chance to round out "a vast
amount of excellent myth material," — so full,
indeed, and recorded with so much fidelity,
that Jones might well permit himself, as he
[112]

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

almost never did, to feel "very satisfied" with
his own part of the work. Already, he had
done for O jib way lore what no other man
could do. His only comment was: "The
language of the texts is very pure, I am sure."

Late in November, Jones travelled to Okla-
homa, for the purpose of revisiting the Sauks
and Foxes. From Shawnee, he wrote: "The
air is soft and the sunshine warm, a great
contrast to the northern woods. The wind
wails just the same as it used to when I was a
child. The wind cries on these plains in a way
different from anywhere else. Last night the
train stopped several times on the broad
prairies, and at once my ear caught the old
familiar moan. It started up a thousand
recollections." He stayed in this home coun-
try for a few weeks, to complete his account
of the Sauks and Foxes, their language and
their material culture, by collecting whatever
he could find concerning their religion. This
done, Jones went "over into the Seminole
country after two slabs of stone bearing on
them the figures of human foot-prints"; and
then, bringing to its end a highly successful
expedition, he turned back toward the white
man's world.

Most of the diflBculties under which our

[113]

WILLIAM JONES

friend worked, are of necessity omitted in this
account. Some of them may be gathered
from the following letter, written in the sum-
mer of 1904:

"My dear Deming: I am glad to get the
letter that came this morning and another
that came about six or eight days ago. . . .

"I've had the finest kind of luck since my
last letter to you. The old chief has given
me some dandy tales, and now I'm getting
some good things on the old time religious
worship. I could do more and faster work
but for a mob that lives in the loft overhead.
His grandson married a young woman of
very uncertain morals but with a goodly host
of relatives by blood and otherwise. She and
the crowd occupy the upstairs of the cabin,
and it's like a. thunder storm by day as well as
by night. Damn their lazy hides, if I had
but an inch of authority I'd fire them p. d. q.
They sponge off the chief, and do it in the
most cold blooded manner. Sometimes they
get up energy enough to move to the bush to
pick berries, and you should behold the
caravan — four women, two men, two children
is the least number. I don't mention the dogs.
They get good money for the berries — 50 cents
for a small pail holding three or four quarts.

[114]

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Instead of buying food and clothing they blow
it in for booze. They sober up before they
arrive on the premises, that is sober up enough
to make what they consider a proper entry.
But the look of booze is all over them. The
old chief is perfectly straight and never drinks,
and it's only his good easy nature that pre-
vents him from having the whole gang pulled.
But they stood too long on that good nature
last night. They had been on a debauch of
several days, and last evening when the old
man had told off his beads and gone to bed,
here the damned outfit came, and they seemed
to try to stamp the stairs through. They were
having a regular rough house time of it up
there, while the young wife of the grandson
was doing a stunt of her own. The old man's
ear caught the sound of her whistle through
the din above, and he rose to find her signal-
ling to a lover out in the moonlight. Without
any ceremony whatever he grabbed the young
woman, turned her face the other way, and
booted her up the stairs. Of course she was
surprised. She once made an attempt to hit
the old man with a lacrosse stick. I don't
know but that she did land him one over the
ear. But about the same time the old fellow
dashed a cup of water in her face, and you

[115]

WILLIAM JONES

should have heard the yell that went forth
from some one. 'Blood! blood! Go get
Simon ! ' Simon is a policeman. The girl and
the old man then started for Simon's. The
old man is about 70, but he gave the girl a
run for her fun. She tried to pass him, but
her wind gave out. 'Come on! Run! Run!'
yelled the old man. But the run did no good,
for Simon's ears were deaf to both. To-day
is calm, but the storm will break out when the
young husband returns home. He went off
for a two-weeks trip to fish. The old man
came back mad as a hornet. You could
have heard a gnat breathe upstairs after the
rumpus; it was as silent as the tomb. I shall
lie about here for another week, and then I'll
pull for some place on the Rainy River. . . .
"... I think I've enough trout, whitefish,
pickerel, and pike to last me for a while,
though I might go the trout and whitefish a
little longer. I refuse sturgeon, but I don't
know why. . . . The Smith and Wesson is
all you say it is. Crows inside of a 100 yards
get it where they'll never get it again, or else
they get out in a hurry never to return. The
chief's wife would have cooked a crow for me
the other day ! I made myself clear, you bet,
that she needn't cook any crow for me. The

fll6]

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

chief said they were good, for he'd always
eaten them ! But we had no crow.

"I am glad that all is going well with you
in the way of work. It's good to hear that
Mrs. Deming and the girls are well. Re-
member me to them, won't you? . . . Give
greetings to Mr. Hall, — and much luck and
good health to yourself.

" Yours sincerely,

"Uncle Billy."

The year 1904 closed very happily for
Jones. He reached Hampton and his Vir-
ginia friends, his nearest and dearest, in time
for the Christmas merry-making.

[117]

XIII

THE QUESTION OF MONET

"An honorable poverty," according to
Gibbon, long suflSced to keep the Roman
soldier hard and valiant. More than one
young man of science, in America, has been
loaded with the same austere benefit. The
young men follow their profession through,
make the usual sacrifices, and put the best
face on the matter. But sometimes it is a
pity. Sometimes, were the poverty a little
less, the honor might be greater, — not to the
men, but to the national cause in which they
are engaged. There is grievous loss, at any
rate, when a man like Dr. Jones — ^young, full
of power, full of promise, given by nature
incomparable qualities for a certain work,
anxious to justify his long, costly training —
when such a man must wait, and forego, and
cast about. Jones was ardently willing to put
forth "that one talent which 'tis death to
hide." Our American republic is both a
stingy and a careless master. One instance,
well stated by Mr. Dillon Wallace, may indi-
[118]

THE QUESTION OF MONEY

cate the nature of our loss. "Doctor Jones
desired very strongly," writes Mr. Wallace,*
"to accompany the last Outing expedition
into Labrador, that he might live there for
two or three years with the northern Nas-
caupees; but funds necessary to meet the
expenses were not forthcoming, and he was
forced to relinquish his plan. Had he lived to
return from the Philippines he would un-
doubtedly have done this neglected work in
ethnic research among the most primitive
North American Indians of to-day. There is
no one else half so well fitted as was Doctor
Jones to do it, and it is now improbable that
it will ever be done, or at least thoroughly
done, and the world is so much the poorer."

This research in Labrador was not the only
work which Jones was ready for, and failed of.
The year 1905 brought him much disappoint-
ment and uncertainty. He had accomplished
great results, but only on temporary commis-
sions, renewed from year to year. Jones
naturally wished to see his way toward per-
manent appointment, to stay in his Algonkin
field where he was most needed, and staying
there, to earn such a living as would make
possible his marriage. He was always brave

* Outing Magazine, June, 1909.

[119]

WILLIAM JONES

and hopeful; many active friends were watch-
ing his career, wishing to further it; but as
one of them said, "the whole ethnological
situation of the country" was clouded, the
outlook far from bright. A place in the Bu-
reau of Ethnology at Washington might have
enabled him to devote his life to a study of
the Algonkin stock. No such position was
ready. The late George Rice Carpenter, of
Columbia — whose name is gratefully remem-
bered by many young men — ^would have per-
suaded Jones to write an Indian novel, or a
collection of essays, presenting Indian life as
viewed through Indian eyes. In time, Jones
might have written such a book, — ^who knows
how wonderfully? But time was lacking:
once again, our loss. Meanwhile, he could
earn a living, and little more, by doing con-
stantly the hardest kind of work.

There were moods of discouragement., A
year before, Jones had been offered, and had
seriously considered, a position as Indian
agent; and once it was only half in joke that
he proposed "if things cannot and will not
turn up, to go West and grow up with the
country." These moods were not the man.
Out of dragging disappointment he writes —
"I am really enjoying my work . . . writing

[120]

THE QUESTION OF MONEY

up my Sauk and Fox stuff." He was "quite
content" with his Ojibway collection of texts.
As for the future, the lack of professional
openings— this door to which he had been so
carefully led, only to find it locked — he felt
that "the whole situation [was] exceedingly
absurd." He could always see humor, even
in a personal situation.

Thus, when obliged to "declaim," before
brother scientists, "on the religious concep-
tion of the Manitou among the Central Algon-
kins," he reported the meeting as follows:
"There were four speakers . . . and the au-
dience was about eight, making two apiece for
each blower. The thing seemed at first as
though it was in for all night. The first
speaker up was a German, and he droned
away a full hour. I squeaked for ten minutes
and then slept through the other two speeches.
I simply did what the other eight did. We
all woke up at the end, and found it niearly
eleven o'clock."

Such dormouse entertainment was not for
him. We have a better picture of the man off
duty, as he appeared to a friend who knew him
well, and who saw much of him at Mr. Dem-
ing's studio in McDougal Alley. The place
was like home to him. "Uncle Billy," our
[121]

WILLIAM JONES

informant writes, "had his own ring of the
door bell; and when he gave it, there was a
wild scramble among the little Demings to see
who would get to the door first. Often he had
to wait until they were untangled. Mean-
while, Uncle Billy was thinking up a way to
add to the confusion; and as soon as the door
was open, there would come the loud roar of a
lion, or a buffalo would charge through the
little people, rush to the fire place, where he
would find some convenient cast off buffalo
horns, which he would appropriate, and com-
mence chasing little Demings (as he called
them, 'Little Wolves') all over the studio,
butting them. They played until 'The Sky
Woman ' (as he called the mother) announced
dinner, which offered a relief to the shattered
nerves and the fractured quiet of the big,
weird barn silence in the Deming studio.
Uncle Billy was tired first, so he had to pay
the forfeit, a good-night story after dinner;
and then the little ones were packed off up-
stairs, and Uncle Billy with the others rested
and wondered at the peaceful quiet. But
Uncle Billy loved the romp most!

"The children loved Uncle Billy's 'Fraid
Heart' story best of all; and when there was
turkey or chicken for dinner, the 'Fraid

[122]

THE QUESTION OF MONEY

Heart' had to be carefully divided so each
child would have his share.

"The summers were long when Uncle Billy-
had to be in the Field. The letters were
eagerly looked for and read aloud so the little
people would hear too; and when Fall finally
came, and the expressman threw trunks and
bags marked *W. J.' at the studio door with-
out any word or information, not one child
left the house longer than was necessary for
fear Uncle Billy would come while he was
away."

In the year 1905, neither the children nor
his older friends were to see him return to
New York. Severe illness kept Jones in hos-
pital through part of June, and this, with
other misfortunes, delayed the start of his
final Ojibway expedition until August. The re-
mainder of that year he spent among the
Indians. First came Canadian Ojibways, who
were "extremely nice" to him, and of whose
hospitality, "the Indian form, softened by
French influence," he said that he had never
seen the equal. They were Catholics, so that
for their Friday meals there was much fishing
to do, often before breakfast, when "the water
was quiet and a haze dimmed the high prom-
ontories of the cape and islands." A clever
[123]

WILLIAM JONES

woman, Melisse by name, gave Jones "great
help" in the interpretation of tales and
legends, — the North Shore material which he
had gathered in the foregoing season. The
region was rich in legend, poor in ceremony.
Civilization had relaxed the old habits, a
fact upon which Jones commented quaintly:
"these people do not observe some of the
rules in use among the wilder tribes. Women,
particularly, gabble at will." Nevertheless,
he writes, "I could get a fine collection of
stories if I remained here; but I must be off
to wilder people who dance and do magic."

These he found at Bois Fort, along with
many "fine cosmic myths" — the story of the
Great Otter which nightly sparkles in the
northern sky, the tales of Nanabucu, of Hell
Diver, and the sacred origin of things — told
in an old chief's lodge, in Jones's tent under a
hill by Lake Vermilion, or in the canoe of his
friend. Ten Claws, the hunter. Snow and ice
drove him, once more, out from the wilder-
ness; but not until he had "a very big collec-
tion of tales," about which he could say — .
"It is pretty good stuff, and I am proud of
it." November and December he spent at the
Leech Lake Indian Agency, revising this and
former collections, measuring his own ac-
[124]

THE QUESTION OF MONEY

curacy by the variants of Indian interpreters,
reading proof sheets of a dictionary of tribes
for the Bureau of Ethnology, and, in his few
leisure moments, trying to see and plan his
future. This last was the hardest work, but
Jones determined to be patient. "If what I
know and what I can do is of any value," he
wrote, "I ought by spring to get some sort of
a position."

The hope was not fulfilled. By mid-winter
of 1906, Jones had returned to New York,
but found no prospect of permanent employ-
ment in Algonkin research. The Carnegie
Institution offered him, indeed, another grant
(which he accepted) to continue the prepara-
tion of his Ojibway papers. Still, everything
was temporary, everything uncertain. And
then suddenly Jones came to the cross-roads
of his life. Dr. G. A. Dorsey, of the Field
Museum of Natural History in Chicago, came
to New York and gave him the choice of three
expeditions, to Africa, to the South Sea Is-
lands, or to the Philippines. Here were three
regions open, all at once, and all, to an an-
thropologist, full of good hunting. Jones at
first refused, rightly. For a long time he tried
in every direction to get Algonkin work. His
friends then felt — and now see clearly — that
[125]

WILLIAM JONES

here if ever was a man who knew our North
American Indians, and who, by blood, and
training, and predilection, ought to stay where
he had begun so brilliantly. There was no
help for it. As a last resort, Jones consented
to undertake the Philippine expedition. Since
he had the Ojibway material yet to complete
for the Carnegie Institution, it was judged
best that he should go to Chicago, finish there
his contracted work, and while broadening his
acquaintance with scientific men and methods,
prepare himself for a new and alien field.

In June, 1906, therefore. Doctor Jones went
to Chicago, and began his connection with the
Field Museum.

[126]

XIV

THE PHILIPPINES

Doctor Jones lived in Chicago for about
a year. Except that he found pleasant com-
panions at the Field Museum, and soon, as
was his habit everywhere, made friends of
them, there is little to be recorded about this
period of his life. He kept long, busy hours in
the Museum, near which he had his lodgings,
"You know," he writes, "the part of the city I
am in is like an inland country town with lots
of open air and space; and so I never go down
town into the dust, cinders, rush and noise,
only when I have to. The Museum, you know,
is on the Lake. There are green plots, with
trees often. For example, a maple comes up
to my window. To smoke I must go out of
doors, which in one way is a hardship, but in
another quite a recreation; for the lawns, and
groves, and lagoons, and big Lake are all
there."

The Philippine expedition * took shape
slowly, with much postponement. "My work
out there (in the Philippines) will probably be

* Organized by Mr. R. F. Cununings.

[127]

WILLIAM JONES

with the pygmy black man called the Negrito.
He is the wild man of the islands, wild in the
sense that he lives in out of the way places,
and not that he is ferocious. The main thing
holding me back at present is a piece of work
I am doing for the Carnegie Institution. It
will be devoted almost entirely to the transla-
tion of Ojibway myths and traditions which I
collected at various times in Canada and
Northern Minnesota. I will present the tales
as they came from the lips of the narrator,
and my manuscript will be so arranged that
both text and translation can be published at
the same time, with the Ojibway on one page
and the translation on the other. Of course
you know this is rather for science than for
popular reading, and it is better so; for much
of it is naive and unrestrained, and it wades
with childish simplicity through what so-
called civilized people term indelicacy. The
work should have one feature that may be of
popular interest. The background of the
Song of Hiaioatha is the mythology of the
Ojibways. Now by means of these tales one
can pick out just what is Indian and what is
the poet's fancy."

It was with regret that Jones left this work
unfinished, and made ready, at last, for his
[ 128 ]

THE PHILIPPINES

voyage across the Pacific. Though being sent
on most generous terms, he felt the break in
the main design of his training. "I wish I
had something here," said he. But even such
a wish, even the natural sadness at leaving
his friends, could not tarnish a bright zeal for
his profession, an old strong love of active
service.

Chance words may not be taken for pre-
sentiment. Yet more than once, during these
last days in America, Jones spoke or wrote of
things to be done "by the time I get back, if
I ever do"; and in July, 1907, he revisited his
birthplace — the old prairie of the moaning
wind — to take, as he said afterward, "a last
look." He sailed from Seattle in August, on
the ship Aid Maru.

From this point onward, we have only let-
ters and a diary.* Jones landed in Manila on
Friday, the 13th of September, and began at
once to collect his outfit for the field.

"Manila, October 6. It is very difiicult to
get hold of any information to go by, for the
knowledge of the ethnology of the islands is
yet pretty hazy even in the minds of those
who are working at it. And others who have

* Unless otherwise designated, the extracts given are from
Dr. Jones's letters.

[129]

WILLIAM JONES

been about, and should have something to tell,
are more content with some cock and bull
tale which in time goes as gospel truth, where-
upon it then forms a basis of opinion. Some
army officers can locate places where they
have seen naked natives, who can fight, and
who can run to fight again. That is good as
far as it goes. It is the same old thing we
have become familiar with in our country:
army officers have been stationed for years
among some of our most interesting Indians,
and yet know nothing about them."

At last, in that city of conflicting talk,
Manila, Jones learned his route would lie
round the north end of Luzon, by sea, to
Aparri at the mouth of the Cagayan River,
in Isabela Province; thence up the river,
southward, among the hills and the wild hill-
people.

"Aparri, Nov. 4, 1907. My dear Doctor
Dorsey: I am leaving for the Abulug River
west of here, not for work but in company
with an expedition of inspection. I will re-
turn in a week and go to the Ilongots south-
east of Echague at the headwaters of the
Cagayan. The why and wherefore of this I
will relate after my return from Abulug. I
met Cole and found him doing grandly.
[130]

THE PHILIPPINES

"Ilagan, Isabela, Nov. 20. When I sent
off that hurried note from Aparri I had
no idea that it would be this long before I
could get a letter off to you again. When I
left Vigan after the visit with Cole I met on
board the boat, bound for Aparri, Mr. Brink,
the Assistant Director of Education. He was
on his way to visit the schools of Northern
Luzon and of the Valley of the Cagayan. He
asked me to accompany him and his party on
this tour, and so I accepted the invitation. I
am glad I did it, because it has enabled me to
see where I am better than any information I
have yet been able to derive from written or
oral source. From Aparri we went to the
Abulug country. We . . . got as far as the
Apayaos. Before coming to the Apayaos we
saw and met mixed blood Negritos. Their
hair was curly, frizzly, and russet brown.
Sometimes there was one with the short,
woolly kink. They squatted together in clus-
ters, or one behind another. As a rule they
were as lean as dry bamboo, and the hags
were as wrinkled as shrivelled potatoes. They
were as homely as toads. They bivouacked
at night under a straw lean-to. . . . The
sleepers mind the stones and pebbles about
as much as I do the comfortable bed of a
[131]

WILLIAM JONES

hair mattress. In the morning, about when
Sirius is rising high enough for the Pawnee to
lug in eating sweet corn and barbecue in the
Morning Star rite, a small fire is kindled; then
the old man hogs it. He can't circle it, but he
lies as much around it as he can, and the rest
hug up wherever they can find room. At
daylight, or rather when the dawn lightens
up the Eastern sky, they are astir. They
were hunting, and so had venison and meat
to eat. . . . They sing a pretty hum, about
as loud as the buzz of a humming bird, and
they dance a pleasing pantomime. In fact the
girls do a wave of the arm and hand and a
movement of the body which are very vol-
uptuous. It was art in the way it was done,
and in the way it wrought an effect. The
boys dance a step not unlike a * hoe-down'
or 'cutting the pigeon wing.' Beyond the
Negritos towards Cole's country were the
Apayaos, a fine looking type of men and
women. At first sight they remind one of
our American Indians. I got about two days
[distant] from Cole. Then we withdrew by
the path we came, or rather down the river
up which we came in barangays. A barangay
is a dug-out with a bamboo floor, and over
the floor an oval shed of the same material.

[132]

THE PHILIPPINES

"My objective point is Echague, where I
expect to strike out and return to. Worcester
advised me to select the region over here to
work in. He suggested that I take up first
the Ilongots who are south of Echague. These
people, as you know, are supposed to be
Malay-Negritos."*

Two fragments, found long afterward among
the Doctor's papers, may well be inserted here.
They indicate the sort of welcome which he,
as a notable visitor, received in "educational
circles" at Bangued, Abra, during the travels
mentioned in the foregoing letter. Seriorita
Lutgarda Astudillo addressed to him the fol-
lowing speech:

"Mr. Jones, Ladies and Gentlemen:

"We the people in Bangued come to bid
you a hearty welcome our most distinguished
visitor to our place. We are very glad to see
you. Perhaps you are anxious too, to see our
place and the different tribes of people.

"It is strange for you to see perhaps an
unknown girl who comes to crown you now
with a wreath of flowers as a sign of joy we

* The rest of this letter was filled with cordial praise of a colleague
then in Northern Luzon, Mr. F. C. Cole of the Field Museum, who,
Jones said, had "gone after a collection with pretty much the eye
of a Harrington, the taste of a Simms, and the care of an H. I. Smith."

[133]

WILLIAM JONES

show you. This girl that I mentioned is the
ninth descendant of the Tinguians. These
Tinguians were the pioneers of this town.

"Permit me, then, Mr. Jones, to place this
wreath of flowers on your thoughtful head.
It is the custom here to crown our friends
when they celebrate their birthday and to
crown distinguished visitors, therefore I place
this crown upon your head.

"May you live long and may you be so
happy in the Philippines that you will never
want to leave them."

The learned stranger was then greeted by a
chorus who knew their "Herald Angels," and
were not afraid of parody :

"Hark! the High School class proclaim,
Jones has come to the Philippines.
Welcome glad to him we bring,
Greetings true to him we sing.
Joyful all ye people rise,
Join the triumphs of the skies.
With the High School class proclaim
Jones has come to the Philippines.
Hark the High School class proclaim
Jones has come to the Philippines!"

We cannot tell what was passing, at the
moment, inside that "thoughtful head" un-
der its floral crown; but we may be sure that
[134]

THE PHILIPPINES

our friend missed no detail in the little
comedy.

At Echague, a small "Cristiano" town on
the Cagayan River, Jones reached his last
outpost of civilization. The fringe of our
white man's world is always ragged; and it was
without flattery that Jones described what he
saw there. "This," he wrote from Echague
in November, 1907, "is the end of things, in
a way. There are lines of bamboo shacks
standing each side of the passageway to sug-
gest streets; there are several Chinese shops,
dingy and squalid, and a native store here and
there, more dingy and more squalid than the
Chinese places. At present I am in the
quarters of a Lieutenant of the Constabulary,
and . . . am alone. The Lieutenant is at
Ilagan, attending court, and may be gone ten
days. . . . There is one other white man
in town, but he, too, is gone; or rather, I
should say, one other American, for there are
several Spaniards. It is a great place for
marriages and funerals. One morning there
were five at one time, all in the Roman Catho-
lic church, which is a tumble-down af-
fair. , . . Off one corner at the front is a
scaffold, and perched aloft is a stand where
two boys rend the air pounding bells. I al-
[135]

WILLIAM JONES

ways associated the chiming and tolling of
bells with churches, but since coming out to
the Islands I find church bells can make pan-
demonium as well.

"The padre is a well fed lump of putty,
with a total lack of spirituality in his look.
These dispensers of spiritual guidance are a
queer lot. One night we rode into a barrio, a
little town part of another, where a church
fiesta had been going on during the day.
Arrangements had previously been made to
have dinner (evening meal) at the house of the
padre. When we rode up we heard loud talk-
ing and the opening of bottles. Ascending
the stairway from the ground, we worked our
way through a crowd and entered the smok-
ing room and the sitting room beyond. The
long table was loaded down with food, and
Spaniards filling themselves like swine. A
padre came forward to greet us; he had a
heavy load, and it was with effort that he
could steer his course toward us; it was as
much effort for him to stand. He had on a
loud talking drunk, and looked like an untidy
butcher in an untidy butcher shop. The
white ecclesiastical garb he had on was
smeared with about everything he had rubbed
against. . . . The leader of our party was
[ 136 ]

THE PHILIPPINES

Mr. B , a fine type of American, not only

for stature, looks, bearing and dignity, but
also for character and quality. He is a man
of theological training ... a Presbyterian, I
believe. The contrast between these two men
of God was wide as the east is from the west.
Another fat padre had a seat at a round
table, gambling at cards with five or six low-
born rascals. He made some insulting re-
mark to a Spaniard, who replied by slapping
him on the cheek. The revulsion in my mind
was not so much at the debauchery of the
two padres as at the thought that it was to
such as these that so many well disposed peo-
ple went to confession and sat for spiritual
guidance, even innocent maidens."

Christmas in Echague was "like a circus
day. The pueblo was in gay attire in the
morning, which was as warm as a July morn-
ing in Hampton. The church was packed so
tight that the door was blocked, and a crowd
waited outside. ... In the afternoon where
were many cocks slain in the pit, aiid much
money lost and won in the fight. The local
band went to the door of each tienda (shop)
and played its weird music, in this way beg-
ging money for the church and getting a
drink of bino at the same time. In the even-
[137]

WILLIAM JONES

ing the lieutenant and I attended a small dance
in a room about twelve by twelve. The Span-
ish dances were pretty. . . . When the Fourth
of July comes round, imagine it Christmas.
Then you will have an idea of what Christmas
is like out here. ... A soldier leaves to-
morrow, and will take this, God speed him!"
Soon after New Year's, 1908, Dr. Jones was
off into the wilds, ready for "the so-called
unknown" at the head-waters of Rio Grande
de Cagayan. This stream, which rushes down
in boulder-broken rapids through jungle from
the hills, was to be his only guide — ^indeed,
for all but the first stage, his only means of
approach — into a country without maps, with-
out trails, without a name. Two govern-
ment officials under escort, and a few Filipino
traders in fear of their lives, had formerly gone
as far up as Dumubatu, where, five days of
hard travel from Echague, rude houses strag-
gled along the river bank. The traders car-
ried up red or blue cloth, salt, pots, knives,
brass wire; they fetched in return wild honey
and beeswax, coarse mats and tampipis, rice,
venison, or wild pork; and with these, a little
information, scant and vague, about the men
with whom they had bartered, — the Ilongots
from the high wilderness beyond. These
[138]

THE PHILIPPINES

Ilongots were little naked brownies, with
crinkly russet hair, and often a crinkly russet
down of beard; with broad cheeks but narrow
chins, so that their faces had a cat-like, ef-
feminate contour: — nervous, vivacious men,
ready to laugh at nothing, ready to cry; head-
hunters, armed with wooden shields, light
spears cruelly barbed, bows and arrows, and
bolos with deep-bellied blades. They lived
in transient clearings on the mountain slopes,
or fishing-camps beside the river, far down
in gorges of huge white rock overhung with
jungle, — gorges into which the sun struck
briefly at noonday, to heat the boulders among
the rapids, or light a pool where crocodiles
lay waiting. It was up this river, to find these
Ilongots, that Dr. Jones started in a season of
low water, April, 1908. With him went a
native servant, and Doiia his German hound.
For arms he carried only a Luger pistol, using
eleven cartridges to the clip.

"Up the Cagayan, April 10. I am writing
this at various places and times, in order to
have it ready when I can catch someone going
down the river. I left Echague last Sunday
morning with my man Lorenzo,* Dona, and

* A FiKpino servant, incapable, whose place was afterward better
filled by Romano Dumaliang. See page 153.

[139]

WILLIAM JONES

two bull carts laden with various kinds of
plunder, such as chow, note paper and books,
articles for barter, and clothing. That after-
noon ... we came to a small barrio called
Pangal. It lay in among banana trees, and
was a tempting place to rest. A sick youth
was down with fever, and I did a little minis-
tering. The next morning we took three
basket sleds, each of which was drawn by a
carabao.* These three took us to another
town farther up the river called Majatungut.
We were entertained in the house of the
teniente (Lieutenant), who corresponds to the
Mayor of a town in the United States. It was
full of people, not when we entered, but after
we entered. I ate eggs, chicken and rice, with
a host of eyes glued on me and my mouth. I
have acquired the siesta habit, and so take
my mid-day sleep. I took it there, and at
three o'clock we pulled on to the next town,
called Inamatan, where we put up with an-
other teniente. This man had a big house,
and he needed it to hold the multitude of men,
women, boys, girls, cats, dogs, chickens, hogs
and carabaos that lived under and round it.
I know now what a tiger feels like at a show,
where he is fetched out upon an arena, with

* Water buffalo.

[140]

THE PHILIPPINES

crowds of faces looking down upon him from
everywhere. Eyes were riveted on me from
the moment I entered until I don't know
when. They were still looking when I fell
asleep on my cot. The next morning we
pulled out early, and crossed the river for
the second time. At a town called Masaya-
saya . . . the teniente gave me breakfast. In
another hour we were off, and crossed the
river again. This time we pulled into a town
called Quinalabasa, where I was again enter-
tained by the teniente. A man has suddenly
shown up who is going to Echague, and so
this will have to go unfinished —

"[From the diary.] Saturday, April 11.
The soldiers * passed on their way to Echague
this morning. ... I asked [one] about the
expedition, and this was the brilliant exploit
performed — that they came to some houses,
and seeing no people there set fire to the
houses; then they came back. He said that
all the people had fled up the river. I asked
how he knew where they went when he saw
no one. His reply was a sickly grin and a
bowed head.

"The Ilocanos are now certain that it is
futile for me to try to see the Ilongots. I told

* Native Constabulary.

[141]

WILLIAM JONES

them to take me near where the first Ilongot
town is, unload me and my stuff, and then to
come home as fast as they desire. Lorenzo
wanted to know what we were going to eat
and how we were going to live when all alone.
The question seemed an interesting one to the
Ilocanos. I answered by saying: let me see
but a single man; that I would wave a piece
of red cloth, jingle some bells, and show some
beads; that this would fetch not only him but
others. Whereupon laughed the Ilocanos,
who understand me less now than when I
first came.

"[From the diary.] April 15 and 16. We
found the six Ilocanos and two banquillas in
waiting. ... It was 8.30 when the polers
pushed off. . . . The river was pretty low,
but the men kept to one side or the other be-
cause in such places it was generally easier
poling. Rapids became more frequent the
farther we ascended. . . . All of us got out
where the rapids were swift, and the Ilocanos
pulled and pushed the boats over into smooth
water again. . . .

"Farther we ascended, more pleasing and

varied became the scenery. First on one side

and then on the other the banks rose in walls

of white rock. ... To the right of a turn

[142]

THE PHILIPPINES

in the river beyond were two very deep cav-
erns in the high walls. A confused rumbling
went on inside, and now and then a large bat
would appear at the entry way, and as sud-
denly vanish into the darkness of the place
again.

"The sun went down with the round moon
high in the eastern sky. Big bats flew over us
on their way up the river, now dipping, now
rising. . . . We kept on in the clear moonlight
till we came to this island in the river. It is
long and narrow with nothing but rock and
gravel. We are camped near its upper end,
just below some swift rapids. The night is
calm. Some sort of a bird with a whooping
cry is calling in the jungle. The Filipinos are
lying on the barren rocks by their fires, the
Ilocanos near theirs, the Yogads and Lorenzo
near ours. Bernaldino * said it will be a
good thing to push on after a little sleep
so as to arrive among the Ilongots before
sunrise. ...

"We slept till two in the morning, and in
half an hour were on our journey. I went in
the banquilla with Bernaldino. The moon
gave us a clear night to travel by. Surging

♦Bernaldino Panganiban, a trader who had met Dr. Jones by
chance on the river, and was now guiding him to Dumubatu.

[143]

WILLIAM JONES

low in the southern sky loomed the great
dragon. Beyond either bank the deer called
to each other with their bleating bark, and
now and then rose the plaintive squeak of a
carabao trying to low. ..."

[144]

XV

IN THE WILDS

"The sun was now up," continues the diary
on April 16, 1908, "and in a half hour Ber-
naldino began to halloo and tell who he was
and with whom he came. He got out near
where the first house was, but on going up to
the place found no one there. We made no
attempt to see anyone at the next place we
passed, for it was there that the soldiers had
done their burning; the place is called Alipai-
yan, and in a grove of palms. In an hour we
drew up to a place where we could see booth-
like structures high up on poles about a half
mile from our left. Presently we beheld peo-
ple scurrying away, but after much halloo-
ing Bernaldino succeeded in halting two. He
went to where they were, and after a short
talk came back to the river with them follow-
ing behind. I took them for women at first,
due partly to their feminine features, light
build, their walk, and to the way they did
their hair in a knot at the back of the head.
But on a nearer view I found them to be
young men; each had a bow and some arrows
[145]

WILLIAM JONES

in one hand, and in the other some fresh hog
meat strung in small pieces on bejuco. They
had just come in from an early morning's
hunt. Bernaldino had them to wade out to
the boat where I was and give me their hands.
As the first extended a finger from the right
hand which clutched his bow and arrows, he
used the other to help him beg for the cigarette
in my lips. His companion came up for the
same thing, and I let each have a cigarette.
They hurried back to the shore, where they
quickly pushed a bamboo raft out into the
water and poled up-stream behind us; as
they came, they hallooed to people in the
jungle on the left, who answered back. In a
half hour I could make out some houses high
up on the left bank; and as we drew near
I could see people appearing by the bank.
Presently down the trail to the water came a
man, who took a step or two and then halted;
then came another hesitatingly; now two, and
then others. On their making out Bernaldino
and hearing the sound of his voice, they got
courage and came on down to the water. By
the time we came up about 50 men, women,
and children were assembled at the landing
place.

"Dumubatu, April 16. Please don't ad-
[146]

IN THE WILDS

dress a letter to me at this place, for it will
never get here! It is far up the Cagayan, at
least five days from Echague. There is no
way in but by the river; by that way one goes
out; when one gets to it one has to wander in
the jungle to find it. It is the most out-of-
the-way place I have yet run into out here,
and probably the people are the wildest. I
have a nice, cool little house to dwell in. It
is thatched with palm leaves of the betel nut,
and stands off the ground about seven feet.
I have a far view in various directions. There
is abundant game everywhere around. I wish
I had a shot gun. The river is full of fish.

"May 7th. My dear Doctor Dorsey: —
I've a chance to send this to Echague by a
Yogad on his way there. May it reach you in
good season, and find you in the beneficent
keeping of this pretty good old world. I've
no idea where you are, save only a vague
notion that perhaps you may be under the
cool canvas out upon the deck of some lone
steamer 'somewheres east of Suez,' or mixing
in the naked, spindle-legged throng of some
heat-smitten city in that direction. With the
notion is a guess that perhaps in the next
forty days and nights your boat will come
steaming into Manila Bay. I wish I might
[147]

WILLIAM JONES

be there; but as that cannot be, this goes to
greet you.

"I am at present with a group of Ilongots
living far up the Cagayan, at a place called
Dumubatu. On the map there is a spot giv-
ing one the impression that it is a definite
locality, at least as definite as an Indian vil-
lage. But don't be deceived thereby. There
is no such thing as a village. At the particular
spot where I am stands a house, high up on
poles and the tall stump of a tree. It is
thatched with palm leaf. In front is a door-
way which is connected with a stepladder.
An opening on one side looks downstream,
another upstream, the door faces the river.
The house stands on a high bank which is
pretty steep. The jungle hides the house
from the river, but objects on the river are
easily and quickly seen. This house is con-
nected with another about a 100 yards
upstream by a narrow difficult path, with
another about 200 yards downstream by a
still worse path. About 100 yards beyond this
third house is another. It will take a half
hour to get to the next house downstream.
By crossing and recrossing the river for two
hours more, yes three hours or more, but
keep moving, you can see what constitutes
[148]

IN THE WILDS

Dumubatu. Generally where there is a house
or two, or possibly three, there is a family of
people more or less closely related by blood.
These various units living here and there
along the river for four or five miles consti-
tute one political gi-oup of Ilongots. An-
other group lives in the same scattered fashion
up the river, about a day by balsa from here;
it is called Panipagan. A short way from
there is a third, called Kagadyangan. South-
west of here, but in the hills is a fourth; it is
called Tamsi. A difficult trail leads to that
group; a crawl when it leads upwards, a slide
when it takes a downward course, and a tight
rope walk over precipices; along some slides,
one has to claw the rocks and hang on by the
eyelids, so to speak. These four groups make
up one division of Ilongots, and are my
present subjects for study. They are friends,
and of one culture. Beyond them toward the
south and west are other Ilongots who are
their enemies.

"May 8. It has been many weeks, several
months, in fact, since I have had any word. . . .
Can it be that my mail lies in Manila a long
while before it is forwarded? ... Of course,
I am out of all communication now save when
hunters or fishermen come up this way and
[149]

WILLIAM JONES

stop at my place. At present there is a man
and his son, two Yogads, who belong down
the river, who are visiting me. The father
returns to-morrow, and will take this. . . .
I have been very fortunate so far in being able
to send out word. It will be a little more
difficult as I proceed up the river and get
deeper in the mountains. I am having an
easy time as things usually go. I have plenty
to eat, and live in a pleasant shack, and have
the Ilongots friendly towards me. My food
is eggs, chicken, wild hog, venison, bananas,
sweet potatoes and — what else dp you think.''
Can you guess.'* Can you shut your eyes be-
fore going further down the page.? Well, it is
wild honey, which my friends bring me in
bamboo tubes. It is clear honey, and most
pleasant to my tongue and palate. ... I
fetched along two boxes of hard-tack, each box
weighing twenty-five pounds; and nothing is
better than eating several hard-tacks crushed,
with the crumbs swimming in honey! Of
course, I always have rice, but it gets a little
monotonous. ... I forgot to mention fish,
which is so abundant in the river. Sometimes
I have a wild dove or pigeon. I never saw
such big ones; about the size of a crow, some
are. . . .

[150]

IN THE WILDS

"My house is unlike any you have ever
seen. It stands high up off the ground on
poles. It has one room, and a hearth in two
corners, one diagonally opposite the other.
The walls reach up to your waist, and the
roof then begins from all four sides and meets
at a point above. The roof is thatched with
palm. My floor is a screen of bejuco splints.
The walls are bamboo screens. I have three
openings; one is a door, the others are win-
dows. Leading up to my door is a stepladder,
which my friends pull in or throw down at
night ... for I always have one or more
Ilongots. They like to come, and so I let
them. They sleep on the floor, according to
custom, and always have a fire burning on the
hearth, to keep them warm. The weather
has been insufferably hot, ... so from ten
o'clock in the morning until about three or
four in the afternoon, I remain in the shade
of my cool shack, with always visitors in. I
am beginning to talk a little Ilongot, not
enough to hurt; but my speech is growing
day by day. The rains have begun to set
in. . . . If this paper is a bit smelly, it is
because of the smoke from a roasting frame,
where I am having a pile of venison cured. . . .

"May 25. An American by the name of
[151]

WILLIAM JONES

Biltz is visiting me, and returns down the
river in a day, taking this with him to mail.
He is the school teacher at Mayoyao. I be-
came well acquainted with him among the
Igorotes. He came up simply to see me, eat
some fish and venison, and while away a part
of his vacation. At the same time he came to
fetch me a few necessities, things to eat, and
junk for barter. ... I am still at what is
called Dumubatu, but I am expecting any
time to go upstream to a place called Pani-
pagan, an Ilongot place. It is not on the map,
and there is no other road to the place but
the river. I shall go up on a balsa, a raft of
bamboo poles laid lengthwise. ... It has a
little platform to sit on, and the raft is poled
by two men. I have about 250 pounds or
more of impedimenta, which will be distributed
among other balsas.

"I dislike the idea of leaving my house,
which I have become very much attached to,
and these wild people have told me that I
must not go; but if I do, to be sure to return
as soon as possible. . . . My house is high
up, but then it is low compared with others.
When it is crowded with my little brown
friends it becomes a little shaky. The people
at Panipagan are preparing a house for
[152]

IN THE WILDS

me, and will come for me as soon as it is
done. . . .

"[Diary.] Thursday, June 30 — I gave red
cloth, salt, needles and thread to my friends,
and I have provisions to last indefinitely.
Joaquin [a trader] came this noon with a
box of stuff. . . . He seemed in a tremendous
hurry, and said he was going back to Dumu-
batu. ... In the party was one named
Romano * who evidently came with the idea
of staying with me; for he had clothes for that
purpose. He speaks a little English, and was
recommended to me by his companions. I
will give him a trial.

"About July 12, 1908. My dear Smith:—
Your letter came to me some time ago; but
at the time, as I still am, I was out of all
communication with the big world. When
you know this, you will be a little indulgent
with me for not having sent you a letter
sooner. You have my sympathy in the be-
reavement of the death of your father. It is
late getting to you, but it is as sincere as if it
had gone to you months ago.

"Look on the map of Luzon and find the

* Romano Dumaliang, of Echague; a, youth of seventeen years,
who remained a loyal servant to Dr. Jones. As will be seen later, he
played the man at a crisis.

[153]

WILLIAM JONES

crooked line representing the Cagayan River.
Find the dot marking the place of the town of
Echague. Then follow the course of the River
upstream to somewhere in the neighborhood
of Southern Isabela Province, and you will
get a general location of about where I am.
The region is unknown, and the present map-
ping of it is based largely on pipe dreams.
I am sojourning with a Negrito-Malay people
called Ilongots, who dwell in lofty booths on
poles and in the forks of trees. The native
name of the place where I am at present is
called Kagadyangan. It is on a mountain;
and commands a sweeping view of large
spaces up and down the River and far and
wide on each side. The River winds between
high walls of white rock in places along here;
and in the shelters of these walls the Ilongots
often dwell for long periods at a time when
they want to live on fish and pass an easy life.
Back on the hillsides behind some of the
shelters are clearings where the people raise
camote, cane and rice. This shows that some
of the shelters are more or less permanent
dwelling places. The houses are thatched
with long grass or with palm leaves. They
are floored with bejuco splint.

"I live in these houses with them, am with
[154]

IN THE WILDS

them on hikes, hunts, and fishing. I behold
them in all sorts of moods — when happy and
sad, contented and dissatisfied, hungry and
sated with food, sober and drunk, generous
and stingy, and so on. Think of the lousiest
Indians you've ever seen, and you will have
a partial notion of how lousy my friends
are. . . . Society is pretty simple, and gov
ernment is largely according to custom. They
raise rice, corn, squash, beans, tomato, greens,
tobacco, bananas, gabi, and some other things
in timbered clearings. They hunt deer and
wild hog with the bow and arrow, and use nets
and traps for catching fish. They hunt in
parties and with dogs. After a killing the
meat is divided equally all round. They raise
chickens, and here and there a wild hog is
penned and fattened, either under the house
or close by. I've met one woman who makes
a rude kind of pottery. She told me she
learned it from her mother. She is a gray-
haired, wrinkled old woman of about sixty.
As far as I can learn she is the only woman
among this particular group of Ilongots who
makes pottery. The people boil food in pots
as they do in iron kettles, and over as big a
fire.

" My friends wear no footgear. The women

[155]

WILLIAM JONES

wear a short skirt of one piece of cloth, and
the men a narrow clout to hide their naked-
ness. They file the front teeth, and do a little
tattooing. They take heads, breast-bone,
heart, and a finger from a slain enemy, but
do not keep any of these things as trophies.
They have few formal ceremonies, though
they do many things ceremonially.

"This is a rough, random sketch of some of
the things these people do. I expect to con-
tinue with them four or five months longer, and
then I will go to another region of probably
the same people. Then after that I hope to
pay some attention to Negritos not in con-
tact with Malays, or with those rather who
are not so very much in contact with Malays.
Those that I've seen live in their peculiar
kind of way but speak Malay.

"I've been very well thus far. Of course
I've been in the highlands pretty much all the
time. And before coming to this neck of the
woods I was among the Igorotes. Give us a
little time and you can come to Chicago to
study Philippine ethnology! And when Lau-
fer comes home from Thibet, there will be
some more. We are going some, don't you
think?

"My trip oversea was uneventful, but my
[156]

IN THE WILDS

two weeks in Japan is still a pleasing dream.
That land has had good press agents, and they
have accomplished what they set out to do,
but in their accounts of art, temples, and war,
they forget to tell much about the people.
True, there is much beauty in Japan, but
there is a good deal of the other thing. Cos-
tume is odd, architecture quaint, language
unintelligible, manners highly conventional;
all these things have deeply impressed the
European, and he has accordingly written
about them, and generally from a distorted
point of view. Forget the idea that all Japs
are brave. I saw a boat load of panic stricken
people one day near Tokyo, and their wild
behavior changed my former impressions con-
siderably. And it seems a mistaken notion
to speak of Japan as a young nation. She is
an ancient land, and the marks of it are
everywhere.

"Well, this is enough for now. It's your
turn to talk. Tell me about yourself, what
you are doing, about the New York Museum
of Natural History, and other things in gen-
eral. How is Wissler.? Remember me kindly
to him. Say to him that I will write him one
of these days. Say howdy to Mead and
Orchard. Is Happy Bob still around with his
[157]

WILLIAM JONES

dust broom in hand? Good old Bob! Don't
forget to say a kind word to the Demings,
Mr. Hall, and to Mr. Frazer.

"Remember me to Mrs. Smith and the
girls.

"July 14, 1908. Kagadyangan. The peo-
ple came down to Dumubatu with their
balsas (bamboo rafts), and brought me and
my impedimenta. In two days we reached
Panipagan. We should have reached the
place sooner, but the men wanted to catch
fish. They caught the fish with nets which
were thrown from the balsas. One man
stands in front and the other drives the balsa
into position. With many balsas it is pretty
certain that fish can be got. It was great fun,
and they enjoyed it pretty much all the way.
They kept at it even at night. The moon was
big and bright, and we had many fish to eat.
Some women were along. They did not throw
the nets, but they helped push the balsas.
They are strong, like Indian women, from
continual work. I was at Panipagan but
about two weeks. I lived in the house of the
head man. He was extremely hospitable, and
I never lacked for food . . . but the house
was alive with roaches, and they got into
everything. The people hated to see me

[158]

IN THE WILDS

leave, but I had to get out of that house. . . .
The town was full of sick, lame, halt and
whatnot. I gained something of a reputation
as a healer, and the people have an idea I can
perform miracles. I have had wonderful luck
in one or two instances, and am on the wave
of popular approval. When it came time for
me to come here I had willing hands to carry
my impedimenta. The carriers were mostly
women, or rather the women carried the
heaviest packages and the men the light, easy
ones. It was no easy work for the women
either, for after crossing the river it was a
long climb up a steep mountain. I made
payments in cloth; the amount was a fathom,
that is, the distance between the hands when
the arms are held out. It was regarded as big
pay ! and both sides were pleased, they and I.
I gave a handful of salt to all around, and that
added joy to pleasure. Salt is a great thing
to have, and with it I've got much food. I
have read of salt being used as money, but
never before appreciated how valuable it
could be.

"The country is wonderful here, the most

picturesque of any that I've yet come upon.

The river winds through places where the

banks are of solid rock; the walls rise several

[159]

WILLIAM JONES

times higher than the church tower at Hamp-
ton. The mountains are wooded, and in ap-
pearance are not unlike the mountains of
New England. The river has almost an east
and west course through this particular region,
and in consequence one ridge after another
can be seen afar. Down the ridges from the
east pours the light in the morning, and from
the others at the west it lingers at evening
time. At night the Cross hangs in the south-
ern sky, rather low and not long visible.

"About August 8, 1908. Dear Bill: Your
letter written on the 9th of January found
me on the 26th of July. I can give you but
a general idea about where I was at the time
and where I am now. If you look on the map
for the Cagayan River of Luzon and follow
the crooked line of the River into what is
supposed to represent the mountains of South-
ern Isabela Province, you can say that some
place in there is where I am. The country is
unknown, and so the mapping of it is based
largely on the pipe dreams of first the Spanish
and then our haughty officers. I am sojourn-
ing among a wild naked folk generally called
Ilongots. They are a mixed race of Negritos
and Malays. The Negritos are pigmy blacks,
and the Malay you probably have heard more
[160]

IN THE WILDS

about. Taft calls the latter "our little brown
brothers," but few Americans are yet ready
to accept the relationship, especially when
it refers to the Cristiano Filipino. The Ilon-
gots inhabit isolated spots along the sources
and head waters of the Cagayan and the
mountains on both sides. A district where
a given group lives has a name. When your
letter came to me I was at what is called
Kagadyangan; it was on the Cagayan. I am
now at a place called Tamsi. It is west of the
River and in the mountains. You won't find
these names on the maps because the makers
of maps know nothing about them yet. Your
letter was fetched with a bunch of other mail
by some Filipinos who came to trade with
these Ilongots. These Filipinos follow in my
wake; they have been doing it since I came
among these people. They were afraid to do
it before. They fetch salt, cheap cloth, knives,
and pots. They get in return chickens, bees-
wax, wild honey, mats, baskets, and various
sorts of foods. Some are here now, and when
they start for Echague, Isabela, I will give
them this to take there to mail. Your letter
was delayed at the Bureau of Science by a
self-conscious clerk. It takes about three
weeks of steady travelling to go from here to
[161]

WILLIAM JONES

Manila. Though it is not far as the crow
flies.

"I am living a pleasant existence. My
happiness would be increased by the posses-
sion of a good rifle and a shot gun. I've a
Luger revolver which is the prettiest arm I've
ever had; it shoots with tremendous velocity
but it has no stopping power except when it
catches the recipient where he lives. I was
very foolish when I left the States by faith-
fully following the advice of Philippine ofl5-
cials whom I met out there, men who claimed
to know the islands and the conditions pre-
vailing here. So I left my equipments that I
had in the northern woods. The out of door
life here is unlike anything we have at home,
and the wild man here is not the camper that
the Indian is. But we get along pretty well.
On the hunt and hike I take more pains with
my sleeping place. I do it in the Indian way,
and let them sit up the greater portion of the
night hugging their tiny little fire, so small
that my hat could almost cover it. These
people take no particular pleasure in a night.
It is a period of time the sooner over with the
better. They do as much if not more sleeping
by day.

"But when I'm in a given district for some
[162]

IN THE WILDS

time, I live more comfortably than among
Indians. Their houses are bamboo structures
thatched with long grass or palm leaf. They
stand high on lofty poles or in the forks and
branches of trees. The Ilongot is not at peace
with all the world, and so his dwelling serves
the purpose also of a watch tower or fort. It
always commands all possible approach, and
often commands a view of large distances.
With the kind of warfare these people wage
against their enemies, it is a difficult house to
get to. The long ladder leading up to the
entry way is either pushed down or pulled in
at night. At dusk the people often set sharp
pointed bamboo sticks in the ground round
about the house, planting them thick and
setting them to point in every direction. The
points are so sharp that they are deep in the
foot or leg of a trespasser before he knows
what he has run into. They are the best
'keep off the premises' signs that I've ever
seen. When Taft says that peace reigns
throughout the islands, wink the other eye.
I'm in an ideal spot, far from officials of any
sort. And it is given me the pleasure of seeing
a whole lot of things at close hand. You know
the saying about the mice when the old cat
is somewhere else.

[163]

WILLIAM JONES

"I've never been in a place where deer
were so many; but venison is not the refresh-
ing bite as at home. Do you know the wild
carabao, sometimes called the wild buflfalo?
That animal offers the best sport of anything
out here. It is a fighter all the time, will often
give chase like the grizzly on general princi-
ples. It's all day with a man if he wounds one
and the animal is between him and a tree or a
place of refuge. I had the great pleasure of
killing a whopper one day. It would take
pages to tell of the thrilling joy an Ilongot
and I had in doing it. I caught the animal
below but a little back of the horn on the right
side, and it dropped like lead. I used a dum-
dum and the ball lodged in the brain. It was
great sport, and about 200 of us ate nothing
but carabao for three days. I can't describe
the meat. It is reddish like beef salted down;
rather strong tasting and is far less delectable
than beef, buffalo, moose, and caribou. Wild
hog is the best of game meats, wild chicken is
the best of birds, and the big dove the next.
The Ilongots supply me with camote — a kind
of coarse sweet-potato, wild tomatoes about
the size of large marbles, bananas of various
flavors, — ^from sweet to those that taste like
squash, — rice, wild honey, and a few other
[164]

IN THE WILDS

foods. Thus you see I am not quite starving.
Yet despite this variety, I'd like now and then
something I've been brought up on. It
doesn't quite reach the creases between the
ribs, it doesn't give bottom, as we say in the
west. They have a soupy drink called basi.
It is made from sugar cane and looks and
tastes like bad vinegar. It is a stand-off be-
tween basi and beer in the matter of putting
one in the proper mental and physical state.
If one can drink much beer, one can drink
much basi, and vice versa perhaps. After a
big killing, or a big catch of fish, or when
entertaining visitors, much basi flows. It be-
gins to run about an hour before meal time,
continues throughout the eating, and after if
any is left. That is the time my friends tell
me how much they love me, what a good man
I am, how sorry they will be when we part,
and some more idle talk. Of course like peo-
ple elsewhere they find it convenient to forget
all about what they have said when they have
slept off the effects.

" . . .1 am due [in Manila] about January.
It will be for a brief stay, to ship away some
stuff to the Chicago Museum, reequip, clean
up, and see how much English I still know. I
may go over to Hong Kong to do some of this.
[165]

WILLIAM JONES

"I haven't the least idea what is going on
in the big world beyond the mountains. I am
wondering who the men are that have been
nominated by the big parties, who won the
track and field sports, baseball, and the boat
race. Are the Japs still Cocky?

"This would have been still longer, but I
find the man who is going to Echague is soon
leaving. So here go all sorts of big wishes for
you and Henry and the Colonel. I'm glad
you showed them the other letter, and you
may do the same with this, and others, if they
find it worth while reading.

"Tamsi, August 21. [Diary.] Inamon *
has the following account of the way he
slaughtered a house full of people in Sinadipan.
There were a number in the party, and they
divided themselves into five to take in the
five houses they were to attack. The house
he went to happened to be full — three men
and several women. The men lay asleep about
one hearth. He disposed of two with ease,
the first as he lay asleep. The sound of
his grunt woke a man who lay next to the
corner of the house. As he rose Inamon

* Inamon, the £apunwan or capitan of Tamsi, a local hero in
whose house Dr. Jones was then staying. Note this creature's be-
havior during the typhoon, pages 174 and 175.

[166]

IN THE WILDS

dealt him a blow on the head, splitting it
open above the forehead. A man who lay-
on one side of the hearth gave him much
trouble; by him he was wounded on the lower
arm and wrist. It was not till he had chopped
his lower arm and knocked his bolo aside that
he finally disposed of him. He ripped up a
woman. ... He grabbed a child that called
to its father and dissevered its hand. He
slew the women about the hearth as they
screamed in terror. He said that when he
finished the blade of his bolo was as dull as
the back. When he had finished, he called to
his companions to come over and cut off the
heads.

"About August 25, 1908. My dear Dr.
Boas: I am writing from the country of the
Ilongots at a place in the mountains of South-
ern Isabela ... an Ilongot district called
Tamsi. It lies in the mountains, a day's
journey afoot west of the Cagayan River. . . .
There is nominal peace among the four dis-
tricts, but it is not of a kind to establish much
confidence. Individuals of one district will
kill any individual of another if the oppor-
tunity is given; and in turn these same in-
dividuals are marked for slaughter by all of
the others. Dumubatu is on pretty good
[167]

WILLIAM JONES

terms with all the other three districts.
Panipagan and Kagadyanan are intimate.
It seems desirable to have some enemies, and
so there is no attempt to have peace with
places like Kabinanan, Ifugu, and others up
the River, and with others oflf toward the
west in the direction of Nueva Vizcaya. . . .

"Village life as I know it in America is
wholly absent. . . . The dwellings here at
Tamsi are nearer together than at the other
places. As a rule here on the high slope of a
mountain stands a dwelling in the midst of a
clearing of deadened trees left standing. On
one side may be a dense growth of sugar cane
with the camote patch near at hand; on the
other is the ground where the corn had stood
but is now green with growing rice. . . .
Another dwelling stands yonder, farther down
the mountain, in the midst of another group
of white and gray barren trees. Down at the
foot of the mountain is a third. ... A thin
trail leads from one dwelling to another. On
coming to a brook, it may come up immedi-
ately on the other side or not be found again
for some distance up or down the stream.
The bed of a stream is often the best way to
travel.

"The dwellings stand off the ground. . . .
[168]

IN THE WILDS

The older dwellings are pretty filthy dens and
are full of ants and roaches. A heavy line of
deer and hog skulls and jawbones hang from
the top girders of the older houses. They are
not trophies. They are kept because it is
said that if thrown away the hunter will not
have good luck in hunting. Low structures
are set on the ground for the people to flee
into in times of heavy wind. . . .

"... Night to these people is not a period
of time to be especially enjoyed. Not long
after they lie down to sleep, some one be-
comes chilled and so rises to feed the fire that
has burned low. Another rises, and then an-
other, till at last round about the fire they sit,
chewing betel nut and talking and laughing.
Then one by one they fall back to sleep, only
to rise again later, repeating this over and over
till the break of day. Then up they rise one
at a time, and sit as if fixed to their seats.
When not gazing blankly into space, they are
scratching their lousy heads; for of all the
lousy people that I've ever seen these are the
lousiest. As if by accident, some one finally
rises to the feet. Another catches the sug-
gestion, and in the course of an hour they are
all off to their various occupations. Any
time between eight and ten the women return
[169]

WILLIAM JONES

with rice and camote; and if the men have
gone to hunt or fish and have been lucky
they come with what they've got. As soon
as these things are cooked, the first meal of
the day is eaten. . . .

"They hunt deer and hog with the bow
and arrow. . . . The game must pass within
twenty yards for a man to be certain of hit-
ting it; even then his arrow often flies wide.
Most of the marksmanship I've seen thus far
would be poor shooting among Indians. An
Ilongot is content to have the arrow hit any-
where; the point of the arrow is that of a
harpoon with a thong attached to the shaft;
this shaft becomes caught in a tangle of grass
or in the thicket, and then the victim is held
until the dogs come up and bring it to bay. . . .

"They fight with the bow and arrow, spear,
bolo, and shield. . . . They cut off the head
of the slain, chop out the bosom, bone and
all, down to the lowest ribs; cut out the heart,
and dissever a finger. . . . The companions
of the slayer hack the body with bolos to gain
second honors. The slayer wears the beak
of the red-bill standing out from the forehead
with prongs of wood reaching overhead. His
companions wear the tail feathers of a rooster
in a tuft on the head. But in either case the

[ 170 ]

IN THE WILDS

man must be unmarried, otherwise he does
not wear the symbols.

"... There is a great deal of singing.
One class of songs is sung when chopping in
the clearings, another when planting, and so
on with other activities like hunting, fighting,
putting babes to sleep, and praying. In fact
about all the songs I've heard are prayers.
I've heard none sung merely for fun; it sur-
prises me in view of the fact that this folk is
so light-minded. . . .

"... The Ilongot easily gives expression
to his emotions. He is a loud talker and
is fond of animated conversation. He will
break in on a man who is talking, drown him
under with a louder voice. In an assembly
all try to talk at the same time; it is a din of
confused voices. They use much gesture and
exclamation, and follow it up with facial and
eye expression. When these seem inadequate
in telling of an incident considered interesting
they will act it out in pantomime. It is not
the fashion to practice restraint. I've never
seen a people more given to nonsense; they
swing into it without any effort whatever.
They laugh as loud as they talk. Their wit
runs on things obscene, the favorite kind on
sex and the sexual desires. They cry easily.
[171]

WILLIAM JONES

They readily lie down before an obstacle that
seems formidable. I have seen little that
would make me think that they ever steal.
But they lie as easily as they breathe. It was
at first annoying to have them smile good
naturedly when I caught them in a barefaced
lie. They say it is nothing, that it is the way
with all men everywhere. On the other hand
they condemn those who lie to them. . . .

"About August 25. . . . I am glad my
Fox texts are finally out. I am getting some
complimentary notices from my co-workers.*
My O jib way will be much better if I ever
finish that work. A man is here to take my
letters to Echague. That is great luck. . . .

"Tamsi, October 4-10. [Diary.] The night
was very warm, despite the rain that fell
at intervals from dusk till this morning. At
about seven it began to rain rather heavily.
At the same time a northwest wind began to
blow t • • • with increasing velocity. ... As

* One of these wrote: "Your Fox texts have come to hand, and
everyone who sees them is delighted. They are the first collection
of Indian stories I have ever been able to read through at a sitting
merely for the fun of the thing. You have certainly set a new stand-
ard of rendering, which those not thoroughly acquainted with an
Indian language will find it impossible to follow, and those who have
such knowledge will find it difficult to equal."

t Three typhoons swept over Tamsi between October 4 and Octo-
ber 15, 1908.

[172]

IN THE WILDS

the wind increased, limbs began to crack and
fall; here and there down crashed a deadened
tree. At the sound of the roar of the wind
and at the sight of the falling timber, people
began to leave their houses and to betake
themselves to the low storm shelters. They
carried out their pots, baskets, weapons, and
other petty possessions. The pots they laid
on the ground out of range of any possible
falling tree; the rest they took into the shel-
ters. Inamon and Lima waited for Romano
and me, but as we seemed slow in starting
they began to be excited. . . . Inamon began
to grow peevish. His behavior showed him
to be very much frightened. Presently he
began to scold his wife . . . and hurled ugly
epithets at his little daughter. ... I then
told him and his wife to go. I had Romano
put the bags and effects into shape and then
to follow. ... I stayed partly to see the
wonderful scene that was taking place. The
mountains dip into a hollow north of Tamsi,
and through this gap the wind was rushing.
The course of the wind was from the north-
west, and it came with a roar like that of a
railway train over a bridge. Throughout the
clearings the limbs were siiapping and trees
were falling. At every heavy crash the women
[173]

WILLIAM JONES

set up a wail for the rice that was being de-
stroyed. Finally I had to give up dodging
the wood that came flying about where I
stood, and join the people in the shelters. . . .
By noon the wind was playing havoc. . . .
When I went from one shelter to another the
rain cut my face like hail. ... It was with
an eflfort that I could keep my feet. . . . The
wives and mothers of the absent hunters kept
wailing, saying that they were slain by the
storm. All the women wailed for the rice,
cane, and fruit in the fields. The wailing was
not loud but in low tones, sometimes with
tears and as often without. The men wailed
in the same tone, but what they said was gen-
erally a complaint against the storm. The
shelters were dark enough inside even when
an end was open, but when both ends were
closed tight, it was as black as night there. . . .
The people could not stand the sight of what
was going on outside. And when a crash was
heard they would cover their faces and
wail. ... I went down to a shelter where
Inamon was, when the storm was pushing
over the granaries and sending down big trees.
He sat hugging a few coals that were almost
dead; he shivered as if he were suffering from
cold; but as a matter of fact he was much

[174]

IN THE WILDS

frightened. His manner somehow struck me
as funny, and I broke out into laughter.
'Don't laugh, don't laugh!' he exclaimed.
'This is no time to laugh. We shall surely
die.' Presently I pulled out a cigarette and
also gave him one. He would not light his.
Presently he said with much emotion — 'Do
fling that away. It troubles me to see you
smoking. It angers the storm. Don't you
hear it rage louder when you smoke.?' I did
as he asked, and he was much relieved. The
lamentations and cries going on at different
places close about me, showed me that I was
in a cluster of shelters. . . . Mothers, wives,
and sisters were weeping for the absent who
had gone into the mountains to hunt. 'Alas,
Dinampul is dead, he is dead!' wailed Alan.
And in this wise wept others. And the men
groaned in a low quavering tone. . . .

"I had a rather sleepless time where I was.
The place was crowded, the smoke was thick,
and the naked folk smelt. Mice persistently
nibbled on my shoes or on the belt and
holster of my revolver, which I used for a
pillow. And so I spent much of the time
watching the fire and the tangle of naked legs
that stuck out on all three sides of the hearth.
The dogs had the other side. . . .
[175]

WILLIAM JONES

"The unkind weather seems to have taken
the life out of the people. . . . They keep
whining. . . . They seem ready to lie down
and quit. . . . Since the foul weather set in
this house has been a general gathering place
for the greater part of Tamsi. The people
come out of their shelters and lounge about
in here till after the morning meal. When
their bellies are filled they depart. Their
aspect is most repelling. Hands, faces, and
bodies are smeared with blotches of various
kinds of dirt; and their stiff hair is dishevelled.
As they sit and scratch their lousy selves they
seem more like beasts than human beings.
These women suckle puppies. I saw one
woman giving suck to two, one at a time,
while she wove a bag and gossiped with an-
other woman.

"Tamsi, November 11. Blue skies have
appeared once more and the mountain brooks
are running with clear water. This gives me
a hope that the Cagayan is becoming shallow
enough to permit Filipino traders to come up
and trade again. Therefore I am writing this
to have it ready for the first party that drops
in. It has been many weeks since I sent my
last letter. . . .

"Alikod, January 4, 1909. See the time
[176]

IN THE WILDS

that has ehipsed since I wrote the last sen-
tence at Tamsi. I waited to finish the letter
when some one would take it to Echague, but
days, then weeks, finally months passed; and
I was alone with my naked brown friends.
Rains came, not in silent, gentle, soothing
showers, but in torrents and loads; it con-
tinued night and day, day and night. The
brooks filled, and the great River became
swollen. No one could come to or go from
where I was. I had no knowledge of what
was going on where people read papers and
wrote letters. Last evening a messenger came
from the Constabulary ofllcer at Ilagan in
command of the district, to find out where
and how I was. He came with a bundle of
mail. In it was a bunch of lovely letters. . . .
"Alikod, Nueva Vizcaya, probably Janu-
ary 4, 1909. — My dear Dorsey : If I had known
or had some sort of word that you were to be
at Echague and would probably not come up
because of the high water, I would have taken
to the mountains, then into the plain, with
my Uongots and gone to see you. I ought to
have foreseen some such event, because I
could have done it and at the same time
helped you to meet your dates farther on
en route. My men would have had to run
[177]

WILLIAM JONES

the chance of a scrap with their enemies, but
that's part of the game and that is why I'm
sitting in. I wanted you to come to the
Ilongot country and see the people and their
stamping ground, because I take them to be
the wildest Malays in Luzon. If you had got
here I would have seen you safely back to
Echague by the overland route. It would
have been stiff hiking, a little slow, but noth-
ing more. . . . Your Lalloc letter of Octo-
ber 8 . . . came to me last night by a mes-
senger whom Captain Bowers sent to find
out where and how I was. When it began to
set in and rain in lively earnest I gave you up,
because the river went up to its widest banks,
packed up my impedimenta and came on to
Alikod. I may be able to get to Ifugu, 2 days
farther up, because Alikod is keen to take me
there. If I can go the visit will be but for a
few days, because I want to gather up my
stuff and take it to Manila at the first op-
portunity. ... It takes a long time to move
along the line I'm going, because the districts
are so afraid of each other. . . .

"I am sorry Cole had to go home. I'll stay
and see what I can do. . . . I believe the
culture of these so-called wild tribes of the
Islands will go fast, and what is especially

[178]

IN THE WILDS

needed are men who know how to collect.
Take these people, for example. When I jfirst
came among them, you had to hunt for the
one who had commercial cloth; bark cloth
was abundant. Filipino traders followed in
my wake, and now they all have cloth. They
had no matches when I came; they used noth-
ing but flint and steel. I had a time to find a
man using flint and steel when I came away
from Tamsi. This is a far off place where I
am now, and I am making my flre collection
before the river goes down and the Filipinos
arrive. If it were possible for these people
to have guns, the story would be the same;
their bows and various kinds of arrows would
go enseguida. I believe as soon as head hunt-
ing is put down it will be diflScult to get good
spears, shields, and the various accompani-
ments. . . .

"Alikod, January 8. . , . You see fair
weather is coming on oncQ more, and at such
a time the young Ilongot's fancy turns to
longings for a head. The young bucks are
especially anxious to go. Let me tell you of
an experience I had when Bowers's messenger
fetched me my stuff. His carriers were mostly
from Panipagan, a place which owes Alikod
five heads. The next night the Alikod youths
[179]

WILLIAM JONES

implored me to let them carry out their heart-
felt wish and take the six or eight heads
which were in their midst. They wanted to
do it while the Panipagan folk were asleep.
But it would have been a cold blooded mur-
der; and the visitors were guests in my house;
they were people whose hospitality I had en-
joyed, and therefore I could not stand for
what Alikod asked. But I obtained a deal of
first hand knowledge on what these people
call warfare.

"Alikod, January 18. I've just returned
from Ifugu. It was an entertaining trip,
profitable in some particulars and disappoint-
ing in others. Without my knowledge, Alikod
had sent for Inamon, the head man of Tamsi
and reputed one of the best fighters among
all the Ilongots. I got a force of 25 eager
young bucks and they got 3 women to carry
the chow. It delighted their hearts when I
put them under the command of Inamon,
which was exactly what they wanted. You
should have beheld that bunch of men, armed
with all their fighting material and keen for a
scrap. We did not see a soul in Kabinanan
territory. We spent one night on the road
when fires signalled round about us. The
thrill was exhilarating, but we were not mo-
[180]

IN THE WILDS

lested. That day and night, the cautious,
picturesque manner with which we moved
next morning into Ifugu, gave me many a
detail of the way these people fight. You'll
hear it all one of these days. Well, we got
into Ifugu without a fight. Festivities fol-
lowed, the most interesting being the making
of peace between Ifugu and Alikod. Some
Kabinanan people were there; they sought
shelter in Ifugu, and it was well they did. I
saw my first head ceremony, but the head
was not there. My Filipino * was scared out
of his wits, and was afraid that I was coming
to Ifugu with my stuflF.f I would, but must
turn back downstream because it is too slow
moving along this way; furthermore my col-
lection is gathering and I am compelled to
keep it with me. . . .

"If I could move according to my desire I
would have my collection at the Museum by
this time. Travelling from district to district
is exceedingly slow, and I am dependent en-
tirely on the disposition of my hosts. Did
Bowers tell you how he got as far as Tamsi,
and could get no farther.'* He would not have
got as far as that if it had not been for me.

* Romano Dumaliang, see page 153.
t I.e., to set up headquarters at Ifugu.

[181]

WILLIAM JONES

Climatic conditions hinder me less. Bear in
mind that I am moving as fast as conditions
will permit. It is not like among the Igorot
where there are trails. There are no trails
here.

"Kagadyangan, January 31. Bernaldino
came yesterday and leaves in the morning. I
was off on a hunt and did not return till a few
minutes ago, and will end this letter written
at different times. ... I am gathering my
stuff and having a couple of house models
made. In 20 days I am due in Dumubatu. . . .
I am well. Remember me to all the workers
in the Museum. ... P. S. So Harvard
won the football game too! Baseball, boat
race, football!

"Please send five dollars to the fund for
President Eliot according to the enclosed
pamphlet. The Filipino trader promises to
be back in two weeks, and I'll try to have a
good letter for him to take back.

"February 1. My dear Simms: You can
form some notion of where I was and still
am when I tell you that the Constabulary
once tried following my track, but got no
farther than a second town. I helped them
to get there; but at that point the Ilongots
quit them cold, whereupon they beat back for
[182]

IN THE WILDS

home and comfort. The rains began to set
in, and one of the oflBcers wrote me with what
speed they went. Don't get the impression
that I am in an inaccessible territory. Far
from that. Only it is hell for people who are
in a hurry, can't wait, and wish to see action
and things hum. The officer in command
has been in the Islands for 8 or 10 years, but
evidently it will take longer to teach him the
ways of the East and the costumbre of the
naked little brown people. ... I ought to
arrive in Manila during April. I don't mean
to tarry there any longer than it takes to
ship my plunder and re-equip; for I wish to
keep moving as long as I am in condition. . . .
I've never been lonesome. The fascination of
the wild life in these wild hills, and ceaseless
occupation in one thing and another have
made the days slip by only too rapidly. It
seems that I came only yesterday. Indeed,
I am going with reluctance down into the
Cristiano towns where men go in bare feet,
shirt-tails, and trousers rolled up to the knee;
where women stride along with a hip and
shoulder swing, bosoms raised, and a mouth-
ful of a 12-inch cigar. You know the familiar
sight. ... I don't know when I shall come
home. ... I had an entertaining letter from
[183]

WILLIAM JONES

Lewis. He is the third to tell me that there
had been no play since I came away. I hardly
know how to take this kind of thing now. Is
it that I was a little frivolous? that I interfered
in the steady industry of the shop.f* I was,
never regarded as a very gay creature. On
the contrary, I have been told that I was too
sedate and serious. Some have said that I
should have been a parson, that in fact I re-
minded them of a preacher in this town or
one in that. Well, I hope all work will be
done by the time I come riding in on the
cars. . . . Perhaps the journey home by
way of Europe is less exhausting. I hope to
have Japan on my way when I go, whether
it be via Europe or the Pacific. Whatever
your notion of me, I am still a colt and green
pastures and still waters are good to my sight
and ever alluring. You know what some one
has said about — 'You go this way but once.'
My gait is never fast, but I like it rich with
vision. . . .

"February 25, 1909. My dear Dorsey: — I
am on the Cagayan, going downstream and
heading for Mayoyao and Manila. The
cholera is on at Echague and the other towns
below, and is said to be moving this way.
Accordingly it may be best for me to hang up
[184]

IN THE WILDS

at Dumubatu till I hear that the plague is
checked. Word was sent to me that it was
raging among the paisanos up to a town or
two below Echague. This is to be regretted,
but I am glad to know about it here. I can
keep at work here all the time, but in a
Cristiano barrio I might be compelled to
champ the bit with all this stuff with me.
Before the cholera, a pest came and took off
all the ponies and carabaos. Previous to that
came the typhoons which you got a touch of.
The Uongots would say that surely the moun-
tain gods must have it in for the valley. I
believe the wet season has at last come to an
end, and the change will be welcome for no
other reason than that it is a change. The
river is still pretty full, but it can be travelled
by lashing two rafts together side by side. It
was risky farther up where the rapids are
swifter and rocky curves more frequent. But
I passed it all without a loss of a single
thing.

"... On coming back to the river I found
that the districts had been pretty well knocked
out by the typhoons. They are gradually
recovering, but not sufficiently to enable me
to get the stuff I wanted. What I have is
representative, but it would have been of
[185]

WILLIAM JONES

better quality had I been able to take it out
six months ago, or if the typhoons had not
been so destructive. They say that these
storms were the worst in their memory or that
of their fathers. Be that as it may, I nev^
saw anything Hke 'em. Though the sight of
trees going down, timbers flying, and houses
crashing to ruin was somewhat disquieting,
and though the prolonged din and roar of the
tempest became at length a weariness to the
spirit and the flesh, it was yet a wonderful
thing to behold all nature awake and in anger,
an experience thoroughly worth while withal.
The rains that followed became as feeble
trickles, sort of a gentle dew from heaven.
Still I am not metamorphosed into a duck or
frog.

"I tell you what, but I dislike leaving this
field. I am departing with a reluctant heart,
but I feel the silent call of the coast east of
here, and realize that I must go. Things are
happening all the while, not that they never
happened before but because I had not yet
tapped the broken sources of things, and could
not see or hear what I was blindly groping for
in the dark. Ground that refused to give way
is now loosening all around. You've had the
experience many more times than I, and so it
[186]

IN THE WILDS

is nothing new to you. I simply make men-
tion of it to have you know at what stage
psychologically I've arrived in the life of
these people.

"Well, at last I've come upon the tales.
They are curious creations, and some will at
once remind you of North American variants
not only as to incident and literary elements
but as to the cosmic ideas they display. I
will put the little collection together and send
them on to you to publish wherever you
think best. Still yet am I unable to discern if
the Ilongot has the manito in the Algonkin,
Sioux, or Pawnee sense. His anitu is a real,
tangible thing which he names by the mean-
est words he can think of. In fact the Ilongot
is very uncomplimentary toward his gods.
He will go through the list with you, telling
what good points and what bad points this
and that god has, and at the end he will curse
the whole lot and say they are no good. A
rather interesting attitude this, psychologi-
cally. ... I am sending my boy Romano
down to Echague with this and other mail
to-day, and to have him bring back word
about the plague. . . .

"Dumubatu, March 19, 1909. My dear
Doctor Dorsey: — ^I thought I had sent you

[187]

WILLIAM JONES

my last letter from this bunch of Ilongots, but
here goes another because I have a chance to
send it. I am still here because the men have
not made balsas enough to raft me and my all
down to Echague. When Bowers, left here
last fall he cleaned up all the balsas; and
though the river has fallen two months earlier
than last year the men have not been able to
build other balsas. The bamboo material is
just far enough away to make it risky to go
for it. As I write a bunch of men have gone
out to search for two youths who went for
bamboo yesterday and have not returned.
You see the weather is growing more torrid
every day, and the sun can now shine for a
whole day at a time. As a result every Ilongot
house is on the watch for prowlers looking for
heads, and ambitious youths are off looking
for the same in other districts. As Captain
Bowers said at Tamsi when the Ilongots re-
fused to do his bidding because what he
wanted involved a taboo: 'This may be good
ethnology, Jones, but it makes me tired!'
He said he had seen many foolish people in
these Islands, but the Ilongot was the worst
of them all. Well, I don't know that I would
agree with the sentiments he expressed, but he
is probably correct when he thinks the Ilongot
[188]

IN THE WILDS

exasperating from a practical point of view.
I shall need about 15 balsas. I've sent for
Panipagan and Kagadyangan to come down
with 8, but I don't know what is keeping
them. I would not bet on it, but I believe I
shall be out of here in 10 days.

"I've just returned from a visit of nearly
a week in the mountains at the west. . . .
What wearied me was to hear of my Alikod
friends off on a head hunt, their objective
being Gumiyod. This place is southwest of
Ifugu, in the mountains, and is said to be a
large district. I tried getting there once, but
my friends balked on account of the rains, the
prospect of lack of food, and the report that
a war party of Gumiyod was in the neighbor-
hood of Alikod. They wanted to get on the
trail of the party and cut off its return. Please
don't entertain any notion that I am seeking
for adventure. Naturally there's a little risk,
but so there is riding in the cart behind the
old grey mare. The point is this — warfare
among the wild men of Luzon is rapidly being
checked, and this is practically the only terri-
tory where the mice have free play. And so
all I've desired and still desire is to observe
and note what happens. . . .

"Smith sent me word that the cholera was

[189]

WILLIAM JONES

being checked in the 4own stream towns.
Hence all that is keeping me is the lack of
rafts, but these I can get in time.

"If I remember it, this is the time the
winds sweep down 57th Street, the chief
janitor is economical with his coal, and the
pipes gurgle lazily. I hope none of you are
frozen, that all are as well as I am."

[190]

XVI

DANGERS

Jones was not the man to harp on diflS-
culty in his own life. Whatever hardships
appear, in the foregoing narrative, it is plain
that he encountered them all alike with
patient courage. Yet even by the few
glimpses given us, we may see clearly one
fact: that Jones well knew how bloody,
childish, and bestial were the folk among
whom he ate and slept, and that he made
not even the simplest movement rashly. In-
deed, we may see more: that while in his let-
ters he told only what was comfortable and
pleasant, he let his diary confess, by sugges-
tion here and there, to darker things. The
letters present his Ilongot companions as
"little naked brownies, very kind" to him.
The diary shows them otherwise. It is in the
diary that they act from day to day their real
parts, furtive, ungrateful, unclean. It is in
the diary, not the letters, that we see them
housed with vermin in their huts, huddling
beside mangy dogs in the ashes, tearing with
their filed, blue-black teeth the flesh of a

[191]

WILLIAM JONES

dead sow that stank, talking and performing
the wildest obscenity. It is the diary which
records their greed, their lies, their experi-
mental threats and arrogance, followed by
"the same old cringing, the same old apologies
and evasions." The letters do not mention
that houseful after houseful of drunken blus-
terers, met by a kind but unshaken fortitude,
gave in, left off their loud menaces, and
kneeling, repulsively stroked their conqueror
on the arms and legs. Nor do the letters tell
how Jones, one day at Alikod, facing alone
two hundred highland warriors greedy for
plunder, informed them that their young
men were weaker than women, that he was
ashamed of them and disappointed, that they
could go now and relieve him of their society.
All this, more than this, our dear friend met
and suffered and dared, but never told: it is
jotted down in memoranda which he thought
nobody else ■ would see. Not fear, but re-
flection and the sense of humor, caused him
to add — "If these people would only stop to
think, they could bring almost any kind of
pressure against me."

Besides these intimations of his moral
sovereignty, the private journal contains our
only hint that Dr. Jones had received fore-

[192]

DANGERS

warning; that at night, in the tangle of naked
legs and half-sheathed bolos round the hearth,
lighted by fire or the smoking rosin stone, he
slept with his head pillowed on his revolver,
or on the flanks of Dona his hound. The
diary, but no letter, speaks out as follows: —
"Saturday, June 20 [at Panipagan], — While
at tiffin a man came in with a chicken. It was
given to me because it had flown near my
head when I was out among the people yes-
terday. I don't remember the time, place, or
hen; but they said it really happened, and
that the bird was destined for me. I took it,
and gave the man some salt." — "Friday,
August 28 [at Tamsi], — ^The Alikod people
had an interesting story to tell me last night.
They told me that when I was in Panipagan
a plan was set to kill me; that I was to be
made to pass a place where a tree would be
felled upon me; that the tree was felled but
missed me; that the man who was commis-
sioned to carry this out was Kandag, . . .
and that when the attempt failed, the man
had fetched me a chicken. I said that I had
been given a chicken by a man who claimed
it had flown by my head and was therefore
destined for me. They gave this the laugh."
Jones knew the risk he ran by day and
[193]

WILLIAM JONES

night. He was not foolhardy. His Indian
caution more than matched the wiles of these
head-hunters, his sleep was infinitely lighter
than theirs, his footfall more wary. "I
came," he says in the diary, "upon a family^
resting in the shade of a booth, and was on
them before they knew anything about it.
I've done this so many times that I am now
curious to know if it can be connected with
poor hearing." In another passage he laughs
to scorn the night guards of the jungle tribes,
the sentinels of their war parties, and their
scouts. We may be sure, on the other hand,
that although Jones felt his watchfulness to
be superior to theirs, he did not relax it. All
up and down the Cagayan, from village to
trackless village, he had won great authority,
which he used without fear, single-handed,
whether leading a band of spearmen through
the dense kogon, or presiding at conferences,
or checking massacre. But that authority
never made Jones careless or secure: he main-
tained it by vigilance, and pursued his policy
of quiet friendship. He was there to work, to
be with and of the people at all times, in dan-
ger and out : to work and watch and learn and
record. This he did, wisely and faithfully.
Even when lying sick in a hut, he observed
[194]

DANGERS

with the minutest care how arrows were made
and bowstrings twisted.

What Dr. Jones himself thought of his life
and labors, we read in the following letter.
One of the last he ever wrote, it would seem
strangely enough to review all his experience
under the approaching shadow of the close.

"February 25, 1909. Dear Marlborough, —
Your letter of November 10th came to me
about a month ago. I will answer it now and
have it ready to send when the chance comes.
It was good to hear from you, Marlborough,
a happy reminder of past associations of the
Academy and the college and the lads we
used to know. I wonder how the men are
doing, how they are faring in the game, how
many rest content with only the ante, what
ones keep opening and who stay, and who
keep raising the limit. As for me, I am just
so so, moving along in an even gait, sort of a
dog-trot. You know I was no intellectual
light, no winner of scholastic honors and the
other worthy prizes. Therefore, I'm doing no
miracles, nor clouding the air with dust and
sand. After we had done our playful stunts,
drunk the punch and beer, and took our
leave-takings, I went down to New York and
became connected with the Museum of Natu-
[195]

WILLIAM JONES

ral History there. I was with the institution
for 4 years, and then with it and the Carnegie
Institution for 2 more years. All the while I
put the springs, summers, and falls mostly in
the wood and lake country of the North, an^
wintered in the big city which I came to love
for reasons hard to define. Then a couple of
years ago I went to the Field Museum of
Natural History in Chicago, to come on the
chase out here. I had a pleasing journey
through Japan and down the China coast,
lingering here and there, and became infected
with the something that makes those who
have been there to desire to return, despite
its filth, plagues, and all the other horrors.
My work makes me lead the life of a gypsy,
but it suits my heart nevertheless. I was
born out of doors, and the only sheltered life
I have had was when you and I came to know
each other. Now it looks as if I shall keep
on under the open sky, and at the end lie
down out of doors, which, of course, is as it
should be. I don't know how long I shall re-
main on this side of the spinning ball. My
stay is indefinite. The plan was for me to
journey also to other islands away from this
Archipelago, go to India, and the good old
Lord only knows where else. My prayer is
[196]

DANGERS

that I may have the health and life to do it.
I've been in the Islands about 19 months.
Thus far my head seems clear, heart and
lungs in good working order, so far as I know.
Therefore, when you come out to the Islands,
I shall very likely be somewhere around. My
address is always with the Bureau of Science,
Manila. And if you send word there telling
where you are, I shall get it some time. Don't
become impatient if you don't receive an im-
mediate reply, for I am generally, as at
present, out of the reach of mail and tele-
graphic communication. For that matter, it
does not necessarily mean that because one
lives near or along a mail and telegraphic
route, one will get the letters and telegrams
sent to one. This is the Philippines and not
the U. S. A., so smother your wrath and act
as if you don't give a darn, whether you feel
like it or not, when a letter or telegram goes
astray.

"I am still up the Cagayan River in East-
ern Luzon sojourning among the wild folk
called Ilongots. I was further up the River,
but am now heading down stream. It is no
use for me to give names of places, for none of
them are on the map. The people who made
the map of this country were a cheerful lot.
[197]

WILLIAM JONES

They did it on their imagination because it
was a little inconvenient to come up and do a
pretty picture of the real thing. I am heading
for Manila, but I have word that the cholera
is doing mischief in the Cristiano pueblos
down stream. I've a lot of plunder on my
hands, things which these people make, and
rather than run the risk of being held up
where church bells are tolling for the dead,
I've decided to remain where I am for a while.
Hence it will be April or May before I can
reach Manila. I don't mind being here. In
fact I enjoy it. I've been among these people
now for about ten months, having their
presence day and night. On the whole, I've
had a pretty good time. It is not so much the
society of the Ilongot that has enchanted me,
but rather the free life in these wild, rugged
hills and silent gloomy jungles. The Ilongot
interests me only in an objective sense, for
what he has and does, the way he lives and
dies, his relations toward his fellow men and
how he adjusts himself to the narrow world
about him. There are no trails in the country
of these people, and it is all foot work. In
going from one district to another, the way
is up and down mountains, along and over
bogs and boulders, through dense thickets
[198]

DANGERS

and tall razor-bladed grass, up and down
streams up the ankle or to the waist. Deer
and wild hogs are abundant. Where the
country is open I can get a little hunting like
at home. But the greater part of the hunting
is with dogs. The dogs jump the game and
the men lie in wait for it to pass at an exit
and send an arrow into it. I've had some
carabao hunting, but steel nosed bullets are
only ticklers. Unless you catch the beast
where it lives your shooting is only target
practice. A 30-30 soft nose would do the
trick, for it has the smashing power to stop
the animal. Be on your guard if you hunt
the animal when you come out here. It's a
fighter all the time, and an ugly one at that.
When it throws up its head on seeing you, it
is coming, and coming like hell. So what
you do, do it P. D. Q. But it's fine sport, and
very satisfying when successfully over. The
military haven't subdued this neck of the
woods yet. That is one reason why I made a
bee-line for it. My friends still hunt heads
as they've done since days far back in time.
When you come and we are in the shade of a
cool verandah with a little 'pizen' and rolled
dusky leaves, I'll tell you a whole lot of this
life and country. I am looking forward to
[199]

WILLIAM JONES

seeing you now. I shall have a lot to ask.
My memory is poor, but a few things still
hang on

"And so you are married and have a
growing daughter. Well, that is pretty fijie,
Marlborough. You and Don and some of
the others are pretty lucky. Occasionally I
get an announcement of this man and of that
getting married, but it is always a long while
after the event. For I have grown used to
getting letters in a bunch after I come in from
a long trip. It has been bad in one sense. A
great deal of work is then piled on my hands,
and many of these letters have gone astray
and have never been acknowledged. Lastima !

"I am glad to learn that you were along
when the soldiers made that march from
Riley in 1905. I remember the newspaper
account of it. I wish the Plains could have
remained as they were when I was a 'kid.' I
hope you passed through the least civilized
section of it. I went down to Oklahoma be-
fore leaving the States to take a last look. I
cannot put into words the feeling of remorse
that rose within me at the things I saw. The
whole region was disfigured with a most re-
pelling ugliness — windmills, oil wells, wire
fences. Go to so and so for drugs, go to an-
[200]

DANGERS

other for groceries, and so on. The cowboy
and the frontiersman were gone. The Indians
were in overalls and looked like 'bums.' The
picturesque costumes, the wigwams, horse-
men, were things of the past. The virgin
prairies were no more. And now they say
that the place is a state! Nevertheless you
saw the stars that I used to see. Did you ever
behold clearer moonlight nights anywhere
else? Did you hear the lone cry of the wolf
and the yelp of the coyote.'* I wish you could
have seen the long horn and the old time
punchers. The present would-be punchers
are of a different build.

"I would write a little longer, but I must
stop to do other letters. I've a messenger
going to the Cristiano towns and I want him
to take the mail. I thank you for your letter,
Marlborough. Don't let it be the last. Pass
a kind word along to any of our old friends
we have and tell them howdy. And may the
Lord be merciful to your sinful soul, and bring
you safe to Manila, where we can open a cool
bottle and another in memory of other days
and of friends 5,000 miles or more away.
"Yours very sincerely,
"William Jones."

[201]

XVII

THE LAST DAY

Balsas — ^bamboo rafts — were needed to
bring Dr. Jones and his ethnologic freight
down river to the friendly huts at Dumubatu
and the Cristiano town of Echague. Two
hamlets, Panipagan and Kagadyangan, had
promised and failed to bring these balsas, had
promised again and failed again, until even
the doctor's patience had been taxed. At
last, on the evening of March 28, 1909, he
received a fresh promise that the rafts would
be ready, and an appointment to meet their
polers at Pung-gu landing, above the rapids
of that name.

Morning broke darkly on March 29th, with
a drizzle of rain. By ten o'clock, however,
out came the sun to set the river and the
green jungle shining. Dr. Jones wrote the
final entry in his journal, and put off from
Panipagan, where he had spent a troubled
night, to paddle up the two miles of broken
water to the rendezvous. With him went his
faithful boy Romano, and a Dumubatu man
as boatman, a trusty fellow named Gonuat,
[202]

THE LAST DAY

or Ganwat. Romano was frightened. He
afterward said that his master had for some
time slept badly. The very boat they sat in
was of ill omen, — a banquilla borrowed from
one Pascual Batag, a trader whom people
dreaded because, it was said, he could poison
by a touch. The time of year was an uneasy
time: the spring, when cutters of bamboo
distrust the jungle, when the head-hunting
fever sends each ambitious lover abroad for
a trophy. The fear was not yet dead that
cholera might come upstream; and the last
words the doctor wrote in his journal describe
an enigmatic barrier — bamboo poles and
shaved bejuco vines festooned across the
river — to ward oflf, it would seem, the ap-
proach of deadly sickness from below.

About noon, the travellers reached the ap-
pointed place by Pung-gu rapids. Here the
Cagayan runs through a narrow gorge of
grayish rock, which in the tropic sun glares
white. The river itself, at this season a fast,
deep, smooth, foreboding body of water,
beautifully blue, passes between clustered
boulders on the one hand, and on the other a
small crescent beach of gray sand, towered
above and cut off by a pointed crag two hun-
dred and fifty feet high. This crag stands
[203]

WILLIAM JONES

like a huge flat-iron set up o^ /t^^^f ;^ Moul-
ders, piled ashore by many a freshet, flank its
base' up-stream; boulders and sharp kogon
thicket, down-stream; so that the gray sand
beach has little or no exit but by the hurijying
river. One who visited the place afterwards,*
observed that its isolation made it an almost
perfect trap.

In company with Dr. Jones, his boy Ro-
mano, and the honest Gonuat, came three
unwilling natives, — Maging, Dinampul, and
old Takadan, the Kapunwan or captain from
one of the dilatory villages. What then
troubled the minds of these three, we can
never know; or what words had passed be-
tween them and a certain Tolan, a messenger
who had run off through rain and gathering
darkness, the night before. The party landed
below the flat-iron rock, and awaited the com-
ing of the rafts. Only foiir came. The num-
ber was in itself a flagrant broken promise, like
many foregoing promises. On the rafts or
with them came more than twenty savages,
each bearing shield and spear, bow and ar-
rows, the itan or head-taking bolo.

A little tree grew, if it does not stand till

* Dr. S. C. Simms, who ascended the Cagayan and brought back
Dr. Jones's collection to this country.

[204]

THE LAST DAY

this day, on the beach at Pung-gu. Near this
tree the assembled Ilongots built a fire and
cooked rice and fish. Dr. Jones ate heartily,
with the same good appetite as of old. Gonuat
the boatman did likewise. But young Ro-
mano Dumaliang could not eat, though
pressed with invitations. "I felt something
was wrong," he said afterward. "I did not
know why I was suspicious, but my heart was
fluttering." Instinct, a sense of evil round-
about, whatever it was that oppressed him
in the -hot noon air between crag and river,
Romano could not eat.

"I said to the doctor: 'Let us go now, and
let the Ilongots come afterwards with the
balsas.'

"The doctor replied: 'No. Why do you
want to go now? If we go now they will not
come with the balsas. So we will wait until
they prepare the balsas.' "

The mid-day meal was finished. Most of
the company squatted on the beach, near
their weapons. Romano and Gonuat retired
to the poisoner's banquilla, which waited at
the water's edge. Dr. Jones remained to con-
sult, laughing while he talked, with the aged
captain Takadan. He laid his hand on the
old man's shoulder, bidding him come down

[205]

WILLIAM JONES

in the banquilla as far as Dumubatu, where
he should receive gifts whenever the promised
boats arrived.

There was in this crowd of brown men a
fellow named Palidat, whom Jones had cured
of a sickness, "a man," says Romano, "whom
the doctor considered his good friend and to
whom he had given many presents," a man
who had won renown by killing the mother
of an enemy. This Palidat drew near while
Dr. Jones and old Takadan were speaking.
He patted the doctor on the shoulder, and
smiled.

"We shall bring more balsas to-morrow,"
said he; and at the same instant, reaching
swiftly, drew his bolo and struck for the white
man's neck.

The blow must have come like lightning
out of that clear noon. Even so, Jones
dodged quickly enough to catch it across his
forehead. Dazed, blind with rushing blood,
he sprang back toward the river, and fumbled
behind him for the Luger pistol. Lives have
hung on trifles before now, but no braver life
or kinder heart ever hung upon a button.
The button of the holster flap was fastened.
While Jones tugged it loose, the squatting
cowards jumped up and rushed at him,
[206]

THE LAST DAY

twenty and more to one. In the press, a
certain Yapogo sliced him across the right
arm. Another sturdy brute, Gacad by name,
speared him below the heart, dealing a mortal
blow just as the doctor drew his weapon.
Maging also, his fellow traveller of that morn-
ing, had thrust the point of a spear butt
through the wounded arm. Jones, barely
able to stand, began firing, but could neither
see nor swing revolver. The Ilongots sprang
apart, so that the eleven bullets flew harmless
among them.

Meanwhile — to their everlasting honor —
out from the banquilla tumbled boatman and
servant, vainly attempting a rescue. Gonuat
drew his bolo, fought, was overpowered, and
flung back, striking his neck so violently on
the gunwale that he remained half stunned
throughout the rest of that day. Romano
Dumaliang, the terrified youth of seventeen
years, clutched a bolo blade in his naked
hand, grappled with the tall Maging, and
while wrestling in the water, got a spear
through his hip. Between them, these two
faithful servants dragged their master into
the boat, which they pushed off from shore.
The Ilongots ran, flinging spears after them.
Dr. Jones contrived to put another clip of

[207]

WILLIAM JONES

cartridges into his revolver, and gave it to
Romano, who fired with his hand bleeding,
shot Yapogo dead through the head, and sent
all the others diving into the kogon grass or
the river. Some ran along the heights and
sent down poisoned arrows. As soon as
Pung-gu rapids caught the boat, the fight
was over.

The ill-fated banquilla shot down-stream,
bearing three almost senseless men. The
time of day was somewhere after two o'clock.
Dr. Jones, with death upon him, cared first
for his bleeding servant, Romano, and bound
up the boy's wounds. As for himself, he said
that he should not die, but conjured Romano
to steer well through the many rapids, lest
the dug-out strike a water-level rock and
leave them a prey to crocodiles. Later, as they
sped down the deep canons, and as the doctor
felt his strength to fail with the failing light,
he gave Romano his watch as a parting gift,
explained how all his papers and collections
should be cared for and sent down to Echague.
By what account we possess, the doctor ap-
pears to have suffered little pain. At any
rate, he made no mention of suffering. In
deep twilight the boat reached Dumubatu.
Romano, following orders, went up among the
[208]

THE LAST DAY

hovels and called the people, who came down
to the shore and set a guard roundabout; for
the doctor's only fear had been that those
Ilongots up-river might descend and take his
head.

About an hour later, Romano put some
question to his master, who lay still in the
boat. He received no answer. Jones had
quietly closed his eyes forever, while the
great stream ran silent underneath him, and
tropic stars burned overhead.

The guard of savages wept bitterly upon
the shore

[209]

XVIII

CONCLUSION

The body of William Jones was rafted down
upon a balsa to Echague. There, on Thurs-
day evening, April 1st, 1909, it was buried
in the Municipal Cemetery, two lonely Ameri-
cans reading over the grave those words con-
cerning man that is born of woman.

All up and down the wilds of the Cagayan
River — ^now less wild for his presence there —
remain the signs and traces of our friend.
Stilted booths which before held nothing but
deer skulls and hog bones, now contain what
is left of his free-handed giving, — ornaments,
cloth, metal, tools, and whatever else im-
providence could not consume. Tamsi has
dogs named Dona, after his famous hound.
Panipagan and Alikod now call their babies
Lomano, honoring the young Romano who
caught a bare blade in his bare hand. A
Governor-General of the Islands wrote: — "Dr.
Jones took the chance that you and I know it
is necessary to take in performing such work
[210]

CONCLUSION

as he was doing, and lost! It seems like the
irony of fate that he should have been made
away with by Ilongots after he had done so
much to help and protect them. Such re-
cent legislative and administrative measures as
have been adopted, calculated to better their
condition, were based directly on the informa-
tion which I received from him. In fact,
when I first heard of his death and learned
that it was ascribed to Ilongots . . . with
whom I knew that he had lived on friendly
terms, the idea immediately occurred to me
that the real murderers might not improbably
be the Christian natives whose abuse of the
wild people he had reported." It was their
benefactor whom these people slew, without
reason or motive, as boys might kill a squirrel.

Enough has been said. It is not the busi-
ness of this narrative to tell how Dr. Jones's
murderers were captured, tried and sentenced
to death by the Court of First Instance, given
a foolish clemency by the Supreme Court of
the Islands, and allowed by their native con-
stabulary guard to escape. Dr. Jones asked
the government for nothing, but went forward
by himself, and gave his service like a good
American.

Nor does this book care to praise a man who

[211]

WILLIAM JONES

never looked for praise. His record speaks.
Jones would have it so, and rest content to be
remembered by a few. He lived fearless and
upright, in obedience to the Great Mystery.

"The valiant never taste of death but once."

[212]

WRITINGS OF WILLIAM JONES

Episodes in the Culture-Hero Myth of the
Sauks and Foxes, The Journal of American
Folk-Lore, Vol. XIV, Oct.-Dec. 1901.

Some Principles op Algonquian- Word-Formation,
American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 6,
No. 3, Supplement 1904. (This was the thesis
written for doctor's degree.)

The Algonkin Manitou, The Journal of American
Folk-Lore, Vol. XVIII, July-Sept., 1905.

Central Algonquin, Archaeological Report, Toronto,
Canada, 1905.

An Algonquin Syllabary, Boas Anniversary Volume
(New York, G. E. Stechert), 1906, pp. 88-93.

Mortuary Observances and the Adoption Rites
OF THE Algonquin Foxes of Iowa, Congrfe In-
ternational des Americanists, Quebec, 1907.

Fox Texts, Publications of the American Ethnologi-
cal Society, Vol. I, 1907.

Notes on the Fox Indians, The Journal of American
Folk-Lore, April-June, 1911.

Algonquian (Fox), An Illustrative Sketch, Hand-
book of American Indian Languages [Bulletin 40,
Part I, of Bureau of American Ethnology (Boas),
pp. 735-874], 1911.