Slike strani
PDF
ePub

THE ART OF ROBERT AITKEN, SCULPTOR.

225

it. Here we see embodied-in a fuller, riper form-many of the attributes. which give interest and value to the sketches for the Bret Harte Memorial to be erected in San Francisco, commissioned by the Bohemian Club. Two of these, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Death of Old Kentuck'," were destroyed in the fire, just as they had been cast in bronze and were ready to be put in place. One portion only of this magnificent memorial remains to-day, the marvelously vital presentation of Mr. Harte himself. Because he is a born portraitist, Mr. Aitken is able to show us the very personality of the author, rather than a mere photograph-like presentment. I do not wish to be understood as saying it is not a good likeness-for it is: but it is much more than thatthe nameless, intangible something that gives to each and every one of Mr. Aitken's portraits their singular and unforgettable charm.

ex

When the busts of George Bellows and Willard Metcalf were first hibited to an admiring public, "Aha!" said some (who fancied themselves possessed of supernatural wisdom) "they are good busts-very good; but probably that is because they are of brother-artists. Naturally, Mr. AitNaturally, Mr. Aitken, as an artist himself, would have a more enlightening knowledge of the characteristics going to make up the artistic temperament!"

A very interesting thought, this—if it had only been true-which, unfortunately, it wasn't. Because when the busts of Professor Nathaniel Shaler and Henry Arthur Jones, the playwright, and John W. Gates, the financier, were shown, they were at once found to possess the same evidences of perception of character, of subtle. discernment, that had so marked the busts of Bellows and Metcalf. Mr. Aitken is never content to make merely "a good likeness." Very likely he would say if that were all you desired, better far for you to seek a pho

tographer and have done with it! Rather is his aim to make the mind and soul of his subject shine forth from the marble or the bronze; and it is his ability to do this that lends to his busts their unique attraction, and real, lasting value.

Mr. Aitken has made his own place in the art life of New York City, and, among all the evidences of honor and esteem that have come to him in the city he calls "my adopted home," not one has given to him such pride and pleasure as his election as First VicePresident of the Architectural League, an organization which numbers among its ranks some of the most eminent of American architects and sculptors.

The slight artistic impulse of but little more than one hundred years ago has, already, has, already, waxed strong and stretched forth fearless hands to grasp the whole territory of our great republic. Moreover, the ever-growing impetus has acquired a very definite object-even the extremest limits of our Western land. What at first appeared but the formless reaching of blind instinct, almost without definite appeal or significance, has developed a subtle character, an inherent and vital sincerity, allied, gradually, to a complete self-expression. Where, formerly, were found only hesitancy and a lingering tendency to rest firmly on tradition's solid rock, to-day we note the nucleus of an artistic consciousness, not less vigorous than national. The American sculptor has become a veritable part of the world about him, realizing that to take his rightful place as one of the real moulders of his country's artistic thought, we must speak to the people in the vernacular, as it were not only of his kind, but of his own race. Nor must he soar too high above his fellow men, but ever be close to them-so close that they have but to raise their eyes toward his ideals as appreciation, step by step, draws them upward. And this is what Robert I. Aitken is doing.

Joaquin Miller's Cabin

(Joaquin Miller has built many cabins in his wanderings over the North American continent; the one below is attracting the most attention east of the Mississippi.)

T

By E. B. Sherburne

HE log cabin built by Joaquin Miller, near the City of Washington, D. C., in 1883, has just been removed to a site in Rock Creek Park, the largest and most beautiful of the parks of the National Capital. On June 2d, with appropriate exercises and addresses by several members of Congress from the Golden State, the cabin was formally turned over to the District Commissioners by the California State Society, through whose efforts it was removed to its present resting place.

In 1883, Joaquin Miller, or Cincinnatus Heine, as his real name is, came to Washington to make a new start. He had been to Europe, had sojourned in New York City for a time, and his funds were at rather a low ebb. The city-bred man would probably have rented modest quarters within a couple of hours after his arrival, and then settled down to look for the main chance. Not so the Western pioneer. The first thing to be done was to build a home just as if he were preparing to work a gold prospect on one of the shaggy sides of a Sierra peak. A site for the cabin was selected on Sixteenth street, between Crescent and Meridian Hill, just beyond Henderson's Boundary Castle. The Washington monument had recently been erected, and a great pile of refuse rocks and building stones remained. Chester A. Arthur, then President, was friendly to the poet, and granted him permission to use as much of this material as was necessary for the foundation of his cabin. Louis

[blocks in formation]

Here in this secluded spot, two miles from the nearest street car line, and to be reached only by a winding road through the forest shades of Rock Creek Park, gathered, on June 2d, about two hundred persons, mostly Californians, and those who had known the poet in his many wanderings, to prove to the world that, even in this strenuous time, a man may have some chance to be recognized at his true value before it is too late. The poet himself, enjoying a green old age. in his hillside home near Oakland, overlooking the Golden Gate, sent the following poem to be read at the dedicatory exercises:

[graphic]

Joaquin Miller's cabin, built near the city of Washington, D. C., in 1883, and removed recently to the Rock Creek Park, D. C.

To My Log Cabin Lovers. Dear, loyal lovers, neighbors mine Of California, Washington, What word of mine, or deed or sign Can compensate what ye have done: This housing in your hearts my home, My lowly old log cabin home. Aye, dear the friends and memories

Of London, Dresden, storied Rome, The Arctic, the Antipodes,

But dearer far than all of these Your holding of my hearth and homeMy lordly, kingly, cabin home. Yea, many hands have been most fair;

Yea, many trumps of fame and faith Mine ears have heard both here and there

That said as only true love saith, But nothing ever seemed so dear

As this your brave log cabin cheer. Miller's poem, "Columbus," "Sail On, Sail On," was recited at the

or

exercises, and it is a coincidence that this poem, considered by many to be its author's masterpiece, is written in eulogy of the man to whom America is paying a somewhat tardy tribute, by a statue of the great navigator, which was unveiled in Washington on June 8th. This memorial stands at the portal of the Capital City, in front of the magnificent Union Station designed by D. H. Burnham, the famous. architect, whose death was recorded a short time ago.

The histories of many of America's foremost literary men are bound up with that of California, but the American people will remember Joaquin Miller and Bret Harte, as the poet and the prose writer who have probably done more than any others to preserve the real spirit of the free and buoyant West "beyond the boundaries of the old Mississippi."

The Phil Kearny Fort Massacre

December 1866

By Col. Anthony D. Marshall, Who Saw Part of the Affray

T

HE Indians were very angry with the white man for invading this, the last and best of their hunting grounds. The country composing the grand new Western States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming was at that time, 1866, the western hunters' paradise. There were tens of thousands of buffalo, elk, black and white tailed deer, antelope, and all three kinds of bear, cinnamon, grizzly and black, the cinnamon growing to such an enormous size that half a carcass was all a full grown American horse could carry. The land fairly teemed with other animals not fit to eat the grey mountain wolf, coyote, catamount, badger, mountain lion, mountain sheep and many other kinds. For years the Indians had been growing more angry and restless. During '65 and '66 the troops stationed in that country were constantly engaged in fights with the Indians. In the spring of 1866 the War Department sent the Second Battalion of the 18th U. S. Infantry, under the command of Colonel Henry B. Carrington, out to that country on what was called the Northern California trail, where the regiment established and built Fort Reno on the Powder River; Fort Phil Kearny on Big Piney Creek, 67 miles northwest of Fort Reno; and Fort Caspar H. Smith on the Big Horn River, 90 miles northwest of Fort Phil Kearny. The remainder of the regiment built Fort Fetterman on the main route, at the junction of the North Platte River and Laperville Creek, and

Fort Casper on the North Platte River, sixty miles northwest of Fort Fet

terman.

During all this time emissaries from the Ogallala and Brule Sioux Indians had been sent by Sitting Bull, the famous war chief of the Sioux Indians, to the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Pawnees, Kickapoos, Absarokas (Crows), Blackfeet, Shoshones, Flatheads, NesPerces and several other tribes, urging them all to forget their enmity of one another and enter into a war of extermination against the white men.

On September 19, 1866, a large number of Indians attacked and destroyed a large government supply train at a place called Big Goose Creek, sixteen miles north of Fort Phil Kearny, on the road to Fort Caspar F. Smith, on the Big Horn River. The Indians captured 5,600 pounds of canned goods, consigned to the post sutler at Fort Smith, 500 pairs of red blankets, and twenty-five or thirty cases of Henry (now the Winchester) repeating rifles. They killed and wounded several soldiers. They also burned the wagons, and ran off the horses and mules.

Matters ran along until December, 1866. During these weeks, the troops had several fights with the Indians. As a very cold, hard winter was anticipated, Colonel Carrington had been sending out a number of teams with an armed escort, nearly every day during December to haul in several hundred cords of wood for winter fuel. During this time the Indians had been viciously harassing the troops daily. About ten o'clock a. m., December 21,

THE PHIL KEARNY FORT MASSACRE.

the Indians became so bold that the commander of the escort to the wood train, Captain Baldy (F. H.) Brown, sent a courier in to Fort Phil Kearny asking Col. Carrington for reinforcements. Col. Carrington immediately made a detail of forty extra men. Placing them under the command of Captain Henry L. Fetterman, of Company A, senior Captain of the regiment and Brevet-Colonel, with orders to proceed to the assistance of Captain Brown, accompanied by Lieut. G. W. Greenmond.

Colonel Fetterman was known as a very brave and gallant officer, hating the Indians bitterly, and always ready for a fight with them. Nearly every day during the summer of '66, he had ordered Company A out at three o'clock a. m., and posted them on the hills a mile or so from the fort, hoping for a fight with the redskins. He always said that gallant old Company A boys could each defeat five Indians. When the news flew about camp that Colonel Fetterman had been given command of the reinforcements, consisting of twenty-seven cavalrymen, two famous scouts, Bill Carter and Jim Wheaton, and thirteen men from the 18th U. S. Infantry, a large number of infantrymen, myself among the rest, began climbing the walls of this fort, swelling the number of the advancing troops to about one hundred and fifty.

It was a regular stockaded fort, built of young cottonwood saplings, cut twenty feet long, and set eight feet into the ground, the sides being trimmed so as to make a solid wall twelve feet high.

Meanwhile the Indians had become very bold, coming down to within half a mile of the fort, but when Colonel Fetterman and his reinforcements started out to the assistance of the wood train, the Indians kept gradually withdrawing. Colonel Fetterman and his troops followed them. While doing so, quite a number of the boys, who had climbed over the walls of the fort to follow the detail on its march, felt that the Indians would not fight,

229

and there was really no cause for them to go, as they were not on the detail, and they began to drop out and return to the fort.

By the time the troops were half a mile from the fort, the force had dwindled down to ninety-four men, including the two officers. The Indians decoyed the troops some five miles from the fort into a deep ravine, three sides of which were from 500 to 700 feet high, and so precipitous that the cavalry could not climb the sides on horse back. It was known later that the redskins had gathered there from their different tribes, and formed a force of about 12,000 warriors, or four times as many Indians as at the Custer massacre, nearly ten years later. The firing was heard at the fort, lasting from one to one and a half hours. Every one of the party, ninety-four men all told, were killed. No prisoners were taken. The bugler of the squad of cavalry, a half-breed French and Sioux, named Charley Gamford, was the last man killed, according to the story of the Indians, nearly one year later. He was fighting them alone nearly twenty minutes, after every other man was killed. At first he fought them with his cavalry carbine, and when the ammunition was gone, he clubbed the carbine for a time. He used his two navy forty-five revolvers, and then his cavalry sabre. After breaking the sabre over the head of a redskin, he used his old-fashioned copper bugle, about two feet long, the end being about 8 inches in diameter and as hard as steel, a very dangerous weapon in the hands of a man on horseback and fighting for his life. The Indians began to think the bugler's life was charmed. His clothing was literally shot off him. When his body. was finally recovered, there was but one mark on him, and that was on the back of his head, where an Indian had struck him with the butt end of a gun and crushed his skull.

When the soldiers from the fort reached the battleground, they gathered up seven wagon loads, and an ambulance of dead bodies. The bodies

« PrejšnjaNaprej »