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ENFOLDING SILENCE
The Transformation of Japanese American Religion and Art under Oppression
Brett J. Esaki
Enfolding Silence
The Transformation of Japanese
American Religion and Art under Oppression
BRETT J. ESAKI
1
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Isamu Noguchi, Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima, a.k.a. Arch of Peace, unrealized model, 1952.
Isamu Noguchi, To the Issei, Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, Los Angeles, CA, 1983.
Reproduction, including downloading of Noguchi works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Esaki, Brett J.
Title: Enfolding silence: the transformation of Japanese American religion and art under oppression / Brett J. Esaki.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016. | Series: AAR academy series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015035659 | ISBN 978–0–19–025142–0 (hardback: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Japanese Americans—Social conditions. | Japanese Americans—Intellectual life. | Japanese Americans—Religion. | Arts, Japanese—United States—History. | Silence—Social aspects—United States—History. | Marginality, Social—United States—History. | Social change—United States—History. | Arts and society—United States—History. | Racism—United States—History. | United States—Race relations—History.
Classification: LCC E184.J3 E83 2016 | DDC 973/.04956—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015035659
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan, USA
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: “They’re Just like White Kids”: Genealogy and Theory of Japanese American Non-Binary Silence 1
Brief Genealogy of Japanese American Silence before Immigration 3
Brief Genealogy of Japanese American Silence after Immigration 9
Non-Binary Silences 18
Non-Binary Silences in Japanese American Art 25
1. Gardening, the Silence of Space, and the Humanity of Judgment 33
The History of Gardening Negotiating Multiple Forms of Oppression 37
Greg Kitajima, His Lineage of Garden Designers (Kinzuchi and Frank Fujii), and the Silence of Space 44
Masumoto and Asawa on the Silence of Space 63
Gaimenteki Doka and Religious Ideas in the Silence of Space 67
Afterword and Caution 72
2 Origami, the Silence of Self, and the Spirit of Vulnerability 75
Two Selves and the Marginal Man 76
A Brief History of Origami 81
Linda Mihara, Japanese American Origami Artist 95
Teaching Origami and the “Nice Girl” 105
Japanese American Kami 112
The Potential Space and the Silence of Self 113
The Spirit of Vulnerability 119
3. Jazz, the Silence of Time, and Modes of Justice 120
Introduction to This Song of Justice 122
First Time through the Form: Japanese American Multiracial History 128
Repeat to the Top of the Form: The History of Jazz 132
Turnaround: Ma and the History of Jazz 144
Ensemble Section: Minidoka Swing Band 146
Solo: Anthony Brown 155
Coda: Justice and the Silence of Time 165
4. Monuments, the Silence of Legacy, and Kodomo Tame Ni 168
Introduction to the Potential Problems of the Silence of Legacy 170
Japanese American Value of Monuments and Controversies over Monuments 172
Robert Murase’s Japanese American Historical Plaza 179
Isamu Noguchi’s To the Issei 191
Multiplicity in the Silence of Legacy 202
Epilogue: “Whiz Kids”? Racial Shamelessness, the Model Minority, and the Future of Silence 207
Cycles of Racism and Corresponding Non-Binary Silences 208
The Future of Silence 210
Appendix: Background Information Sheet and Interview
Illustrations
Figures
0.1 Illustration of binary silence between two sounds. 21
0.2 Illustration of silence with its own characteristics. 21
0.3 Spatial illustration of non-binary silence. 22
1.1 Sample Design Process. 48
1.2 Typical bonsai shape. 49
1.3 Tracing of one of Fujii’s trees. 53
1.4 Tracing of a tree pruned by Kitajima. 53
1.5 Tracing of a tree knuckle on one of Fujii’s trees. 54
1.6 Step 1 of Pruning. 59
1.7 Step 2 of Pruning. 61
1.8 Step 3 of Pruning. 61
1.9 Ruth Asawa, American, 1926–2013, Untitled, ca. 1962, detail, galvanized steel wire, 68.6 x 99.1 x 99.1 cm. 66
2.1 Integrity/Independence and Intimacy/ Interdependence. 79
2.2 Linda Mihara, Peace Sphere, 1994. 99
2.3 Nine connected cranes facing in a single direction. 100
2.4 Dual Instruction. 106
2.5 Transformation 1. 107
2.6 Transformation 2. 108
2.7 Group Instruction. 109
2.8 The Potential Space. 116
2.9 Non-Binary Silence. 117
3.1 “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” 125
3.2 Musicians and Students in Performance. 161
4.1 Japanese American Historical Plaza, Portland, Oregon. 183
4.2 Isamu Noguchi, Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima, a.k.a. Arch of Peace, unrealized model, 1952. 195
4.3 To the Issei, Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, Los Angeles, California, 1983. 197
3.1 Japanese American Interracial Marriage Rates, 2000 Census. 131
Acknowledgments
First, i would like to thank the following academic mentors: Rudy Busto, Rita Nakashima Brock, Joanne Doi, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, and Paul Spickard. Anthony Brown has been generous with his time and care commenting on the jazz chapter. Research was supported by three fellowships, listed chronologically: The North American Doctoral Fellowship from The Fund for Theological Education; The Fred Ho Fellowship from the Asian American Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut; and the Dean’s Advancement Fellowship from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Research was assisted at every archive, library, and site visit. Thanks to the Board of the Santa Barbara Buddhist Church; Bob Fisher of the Wing Luke Museum, with guidance from Sharon Suh; Cathy Schlund-Vials and the late Fred Ho for their assistance at the American Studies Institute at University of Connecticut; Robert Hori of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center; Heidi Coleman of The Noguchi Museum; Tony Cheng of the Library of Origami USA; and, Laura Baxter of the Minidoka Swing Band.
I would also like to thank all of the interviewees for their generosity with time, insights, and visions and for granting me access to see them perform and to observe their workspaces. The work has been rich and rewarding thanks to their graciousness. I hope that my work honors your contributions to the beauty, acuity, and innovation of Japanese American art, religion, and silence.
Last but certainly not least, I deeply appreciate the emotional support of family and friends. Love to my grandparents, some recently passed, whose presence is felt throughout the book and to my sansei parents who listened to chapter ideas for years. From first to final draft, I am deeply thankful for the spiritual and intellectual support of my life partner, Kristy Slominski. Thanks to all.
Enfolding Silence
Introduction
“They’re Just like White Kids”
Genealogy and Theory of Japanese American Non- Binary Silence
A F ter my gre A t- A unt’s funeral, I had the honor of sitting at my paternal grandmother’s dinner table, surrounded by my grandmother and her remaining siblings. This was the eldest of my grandmother’s siblings, so all were gathered to pay their respects. My parents were also there, not sitting, but walking around the house cleaning, preparing food, serving food, and eating. The table was full of dishes that my grandmother had spent the last few days making, and conversation went from Serena Williams’s recent tennis championship to jokes about sisters’ and brothers’ idiosyncrasies.
At one point, one of my great-uncles asked me what I do, and my latetwenties self explained that I was a graduate student studying religions and art and how Japanese Americans have used them to form communities and to create a sense of home. Then, my grandmother squared her shoulders, formed intense eyes, and turned to her brothers and sisters. She said, “See, both he and his brother—they’re just like White kids.” My grandmother was full of conviction, and I looked around and saw the table of elders nodding with confidence. I did not understand what was being agreed upon and began to feel self-conscious that I did not seem Japanese enough or maybe seemed too educated; in other words, I was ashamed for seeming too “White.” But, even though I felt my own palpitations, I sensed my extended family’s pride. So I asked my grandmother, “Well, what do you mean by that?” She simply replied, “You’re not afraid. You can say what you want.”
At this point came a torrent of information. My grandparents and my grandmother’s siblings talked of their experiences in the World War II internment camps, fighting in Italy in the 442nd Infantry Battalion, the interruption of a farming job when news broke about the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and finding work in canneries after internment. Later, during the drive home, my parents explained that they were still in shock because they had heard only a little of that information and had never learned about my great-uncle’s narrow escapes from death in the War.
This moment altered how I thought of my grandparents’ and other Japanese Americans’ silence around the internment years. Yes, I heard information from my grandparents’ generation that they had not told my parents, but more profoundly for me, I learned that my extended family had chosen silence and when to end silence. I understood that, instead of feebly hiding from their pain, they were willing to talk about their traumatic experiences, but only on the condition that the listener be somewhat equanimous while hearing it. I began to discern a contrast in this respect with my parents’ generation, who overall were outraged by the injustices that their parents had experienced. I understood that my grandparents’ generation had difficult memories to discuss, but did not want to pass on their pain to their children and did not have a remedy for the injustice that their children could take up. For reasons such as this, mentioning internment memories to their children might lead to negative consequences instead of a productive discussion like the one I witnessed. By contrast, my generation would not to be knocked off-center after listening to such memories. They understood that I had these qualities from only a few sentences about my life, and significantly because of my grandmother’s endorsement.
Moreover, I myself recognized that I was not afraid of hearing these emotional realities. As they told me their embodied, often painful memories and debated each other about internment and its aftermath, I soon came to know that I was psychologically secure enough to listen to these realities, to understand their complicated legacy, and not to jump to conclusions. Namely, I learned to see my relatives as survivors of racism who have led imperfect lives under incomprehensible circumstances with indeterminate futures. At that moment, I felt that I belonged at the table. Here, I must emphasize that I am not asserting that White Americans are without fear or that people of color are full of fear. Rather, for my elders, White Americans seem not to second-guess their appearance, demeanor, and word choice; they seem to act as if they know themselves
and know what they want, whereas minorities must choose their words carefully. In their view, I was “like White kids” because they felt that I had a strong enough sense of self and identity to hear about emotionally straining racism and not to mishear them, be hurt, or become uncontrollably angry. From this experience, I began to rethink Japanese American silence around the internment experience and racism in general.
For example, for historical and social reasons that will be outlined later, it is common for Japanese Americans in general and scholars of Japanese Americans in particular to interpret the silence around internment as racial shame and repressed pain that came from this time period. Yet, when my elders addressed their experiences, they did not seem ashamed, and it did not seem like they had never spoken about their experiences. They also did not try to repress one another as they spoke. I did not find them breaking down in tears or meekly discussing their victimhood. Instead, they carried on a conversation, albeit an impassioned conversation. They vociferously debated issues, acknowledged injustices, told funny stories, and marveled at some of the absurdity of their American experience. In short, I came to understand that there is much more to Japanese American silence than victimhood and repression, and choosing silence does not always mean denial, paralysis, or buried anger, sadness, guilt, and shame.
This book is the fruit of this re-examination of silence, and it was developed with careful attention to the practices and works of Japanese American artists who engage the depths of silence.
Brief Genealogy of Japanese American Silence before Immigration
Japanese Americans have developed dynamic and complex silences in response to a history of oppression within the United States and Japan; as a result, silence has become a strategy of resistance and a symbol of survival. A central silent strategy of resistance has been appearing to conform while inwardly maintaining one’s beliefs. This practice was developed in Japan in response to religious persecution and then was utilized in the United States in response to repeating cycles of racism. While this strategy of resistance has centuries-long roots in Japan, Japanese Americans have called it gaimenteki doka, or outward assimilation. Outward assimilation is a primary mechanism of creating multilayered silences, and both
strategy and silence have been resources for the spirituality and survival of Japanese and Japanese American people.
Before Japanese Americans immigrated, Japan underwent multiple centuries of national unification, many of which were designed to resist and to conform to pressures from Western nations. Internally, these processes of unification oppressed many groups of Japanese people, including particular religious groups.
One major example of oppression for unification was the response to Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When Christian missionaries arrived in Japan in the sixteenth century, some daimyo (regional military rulers) saw this as an opportunity to establish rulership. Daimyo competed over territory, resources, political influence, and the legitimacy to rule, and embracing the otherness of Christianity was one way to distinguish themselves from others who largely practiced Japanese religions. Christian missionaries in Japan in the sixteenth century were Jesuits from various nations. In 1549, Portuguese Francis Xavier first arrived in Japan, followed by Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano in 1579, and followed by other Portuguese and Spanish Franciscans and Dominicans from the Philippines at the end of the sixteenth century.1 As early as 1563, a few daimyo converted to Catholicism, had their associates convert, and held mass conversions of their subjects. Then, non-Christian daimyo rightly saw Christianity as a mark of belonging to an opposing faction. Using this logic, when a non-Christian daimyo would defeat a Christian daimyo, the victorious daimyo asserted his domination by eliminating Christianity from the newly conquered lands. Thus, for politicians and warlords, Christianity represented a foreign religion and a domestic, rival political identification.
Jesuit missionaries took actions that confirmed this political interpretation of Christianity to local Japanese government officials. By agreement, missionaries were allowed to build churches and to convert people, but only within designated zones. With their zeal to proselytize, missionaries felt too hampered by the zoning and would sneak out, sometimes with Japanese people’s assistance, to convert people and to preach to already converted Christians. This defiance did not sit well with Japanese officials, because it seemed to contest their authority. First, Jesuits had broken the official agreements. Additionally, since Christianity was part of the political identity of many daimyo, it seemed that converting Japanese to Christianity was increasing the power of certain daimyo. For these reasons and several others, the government banned Christianity in 1587.2
As non-Christian daimyo defeated Christian daimyo, they began sweeping reforms to remove potential subversives, including the public execution of Japanese Christians. In these exchanges, we can see the conflict of political and religious interpretations of Christianity. Politically speaking, Christians represented the presence of banned foreigners and defeated daimyo. Religiously speaking, many Christians did not see their religious identification as one that could be dropped when the government changed. Hence, their refusal to renounce Christianity under threat of death may not have solely represented a refusal to assent to a new political system, but was also an expression of religious identity. As instructed by the Jesuits, Japanese Christians valued martyrdom as a symbol of the power of Christianity. This value of martyrdom also matched Japanese ideals of overflowing beauty and spirit, where one’s inner strength is fully expended in the face of death. From these influences, martyrdom was valued for its demonstration of strength, beauty, and Christian faith. Some execution locations became Christian holy sites, and some of the executed became holy martyrs for Japanese Christians.
As the country became more clearly controlled by a non-Christian government, it switched its policy from executing Christians to forcing apostasy under the threat of execution. Though many refused the opportunities to apostatize and were executed, others understood that the new government primarily wanted a public statement that they were not Christian, which would be a public performance of political assent to the new government. Those Christian movements that survived the persecution similarly adopted a policy of outward conformity, or in other words, publicly seeming non-Christian while privately believing in and practicing Christianity.
To be more nuanced, the underground survival of Christianity depended on removing any sign of Christianity that could be noticed by government surveyors. This included transforming communal ritual sites and home altars to appear non-Christian, because officials would probe these sites for indications of Christianity. In the home, this involved not only hiding Christian objects in secret compartments but also making objects appear non-Christian. An example was the creation of the image of Maria-Kannon. Scrolls and other images of the Buddhist goddess Kannon were created to include the iconography of Mary, such as having Kannon hold a child. These outwardly assimilated rituals, symbols, and practices— that would keep Christianity a secret—became the foundations of the traditions of Kakure Kirishitan (Secret Christians), traditions that have been passed down to the present day. 3
As historian Stephen Turnbull argues, the Secret Christians eventually stopped considering the outwardly assimilated practices as accommodations to government surveillance; rather, these practices became their spiritual heritage. Turnbull makes this argument by comparing sixteenthcentury Catholicism to Kakure practices in the twentieth century. The primary sacrament of the modern Kakure was baptism, and this served several functions, such as welcoming people into the religious community, absolution, and cleansing. Their practices matched the guidelines in sixteenth-century Catholicism for performing baptism when there was no priest available. Additionally, Turnbull discovers that they expanded upon the practices and ideas of baptism that the early Jesuits taught. For example, they incorporated the Shinto meaning of water as purification, which cleanses a person before entering divine spaces.
In such ways, the survival strategy of outward conformity not only preserved Christian traditions but transformed them. First, the heritage of the Kakure has lost the fullness of an open Christian practice of worship and community. On the other hand, Shinto and Buddhist meanings supplemented Christian beliefs and practices. That is, outward assimilation was a process of surviving under discipline, preserving what was considered most important, and discarding other elements, resulting in rich, hybrid systems of symbols and ideas. This process of surviving was utilized later by those avoiding persecution and cultural erasure during Japan’s “Westernization.”
The period of “Westernization,” or Japan’s nineteenth-century modernization project, was riddled with religious oppression and forced transformation, and it was in this period that Japanese Americans immigrated.4 Modernization was part of the Meiji Restoration (the Meiji Era, 1860–1912), which was inspired by the threat of Western imperialism. In 1854, Commodore Perry’s American warships forced Japan to open trade relations, and consequently Japan was compelled to sign unequal trade treaties with Western nations. Instead of simply acquiescing to the demands, Japan capitalized on the opportunity and learned as much as possible from Western nations, with the end goal of becoming equal.
Ideologically speaking, the Japanese government felt that becoming equal to Western nations involved the creation of a unified, modern nation that would put Japanese people on par racially with Americans and Europeans. They believed that such a unified nation required a central government, a modern educational system, and a single, philosophically coherent religious system. To these ends, universal education became a goal, and the
Japanese government sought advanced scholarship in technology, medicine, economics, philosophy, religion, and politics. Women’s education was promoted, and in 1900 the government required at least one girls’ high school per prefecture.5 These sweeping changes were funded largely through the heavy taxation of the farmer class, and the economic turmoil inspired large-scale immigration to the United States. These changes also included overhauling the religious organization of the nation, including transforming local religious sites into satellite national religious sites.
The scope of the “restoration” was unprecedented in Japan, but many of the methods of transformation were not new to the Japanese people.
In Of Heretics and Martyrs, historian James Ketelaar describes the Meiji reconfiguration of Japan’s religions, and notes how it followed patterns and technologies from the seventeenth-century persecution of Christians. In brief, Ketelaar describes a four-step process: establishing local regulatory offices; using these offices to survey the size, membership, wealth, and activities of local temples and shrines; shutting down temples and otherwise removing elements deemed undesirable or extraneous; and restructuring local festivals and practices to fit the new, acceptable mold. This process was often violent, but sometimes did not initially appear so because it was extended over a long period. In one example, the initial survey seemed relatively harmless, albeit intrusive, but 30 years later officials used it as a guide to know where to apply violent restructuring. From these experiences, the Japanese people came to understand that government surveillance implied the possibility of future violence. In addition, as outlined in the discussion of Secret Christians, the Japanese learned that one could avoid violence by either changing exterior religious practices or ceasing them.6
Utilizing these methods, the Meiji government targeted Buddhism and indigenous traditions to remove them or to bring them in line with the centralized religious system. Ketelaar argues that the government targeted those practices that seemed the most carnivalesque. For example, diviners, mediums, exorcists, minstrels, and some local pilgrimages were banned. The government’s argument was that these occupations and activities directed money and productivity away from the central government. In practice, the government targeted religions that seemed to question the superiority of the new, central government. Accordingly, it sought to remove Buddhism, with its origins outside Japan, and indigenous Japanese religions that did not place religious authority in the new, central Japanese government. The government targeted religions and their
practices, and then, if it did not ban them altogether, ensured that the rituals were transformed to emphasize the central government’s authority, or it simply replaced the rituals.7 Instead of waiting to be targeted, some Buddhist sects and indigenous religions often initiated changes to match the perceived demands of the government—outward assimilations that would allow them to continue to exist. Once again, the Japanese people—if they did not fully participate in the new colonial desires of Japan—found ways to assimilate the appearance of religious practices to match the intruding demands of government surveyors.
While these outward assimilations were certainly subversive from one perspective, it should also be noted that they followed the modern Japanese conception of religion, which allows one to behave according to one religion while believing another. As Michihiro Ama argues, cultural imperialism and orientalism combined to create the modern term for religion in Japan. It is shukyo (宗教), which means doctrines, so it implies that a religion has a set of rigid doctrines. Ama traces the first use of shukyo in this capacity to the unequal treaties with Western nations, where it was used to translate the English word “religion.” In this way, it is linked to cultural imperialism. Ama also argues that shukyo represents the influence of cultural imperialism because it implies a Western understanding of religion that focuses on central creeds and doctrines. It further implies that folk traditions, which often did not have rigid creeds and consisted of myriad hybrid belief systems and practices, were not religions.8 Ama illustrates that this degradation of folk traditions was part of the orientalist depiction of the inferiority and incoherence of non-Christian Asian religions.
There were several consequences for this definition of religion. The Meiji national policy did not protect folk practices under the legal category of religion, allowing the government to intervene in folk practices and Shinto shrine affairs.9 However, the translation also meant that the government was officially concerned only with doctrines and rites, leaving the inner beliefs or interpretations of religious practices unregulated. For this reason, the modern Japanese conception of religion keeps outward rites and doctrines separated from inward beliefs, opening the possibility for outward assimilation without inward transformation.10
This policy and translation began with the Meiji Restoration, and thus Japanese immigrants to the United States were familiar with this understanding of religion and the government enforcement of the outward appearance of religion. This meant that Japanese Americans understood that governments valued doctrinal religions, while some folk traditions
could be passed on by considering them “cultural” traditions, as long as they did not interfere with “religion.” Transformed, hybridized, and hidden traditions can be found in Japanese American culture, including practices of art.
Brief Genealogy of Japanese American Silence after Immigration
Japanese Americans continued to transform their religious traditions and to develop silences as they faced racism and other forms of oppression in the United States. Immigrants to the United States primarily came from farmers and fishermen in the southern prefectures who were bankrupted and destabilized by the overhaul of the Japanese government. Also among the immigrants were people educated by American Christian missionaries and those removed from power during the government transition. The government supported emigration to the United States because of a substantial national income from remittances. The government also thought of it as an opportunity to convey a positive image of itself through the uprightness of its emigrants. In respect to the desired positive self-image, Japan instituted a policy that contract laborers had to prove that they were healthy and skilled.11
From the United States’ perspective, Japanese workers were an important resource. Specifically, they helped to meet the demand for Hawaiian plantation labor, and on the mainland they filled the loss of laborers after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. However, many Americans quickly became anxious about Japanese people, and built upon the anti-Chinese movement in their efforts to remove the Japanese laborers and immigrants. In 1907, the Gentlemen’s Agreement was enacted, which virtually ended the immigration of Japanese men. However, it also allowed for family reunification, which enabled wives to immigrate, and this was a loophole for women in Japan to marry as picture brides and then come to the United States. Later, the Immigration Act of 1924 officially ended the immigration of all Japanese. This meant that Japanese American men primarily arrived between 1888 and 1907, and women between 1888 and 1924. In addition, there was a predominance of contract laborers among men, though the occupations in America did not necessarily correlate with the former occupations in Japan. Many women came as wives of these men, but it should be noted that many of the women chose to marry immigrant
men in order to access opportunities to utilize their Western education, such as in medicine and English, as well as to advance in social class.
Early immigrants experienced other aspects of Japan’s modernization project, including mandatory education, government suppression of potential dissidents, and an introduction to ideologies of the modern Japanese race and nation. In these ways, Japanese Americans were familiar with political suppression, national unification, nationalistic militarism, religious persecution, and economic disparity, and when they faced similar oppressive realities in America, they applied the same strategy of outward assimilation in order to survive.
From first immigration and culminating in the Immigration Act of 1924, Japanese were subject to overt racism in the United States, including violent attacks by American nativists, political marginalization, and stereotypical images.12 Many who came ashore were greeted by jeers, were spit on, and had objects thrown at them. These physical attacks and concurrent political marginalization were often extensions of the racist oppression of Chinese immigrants. For example, many Japanese American students, called “schoolboys,” took up the domestic labor jobs formerly occupied by Chinese. In mainstream culture, fears of Asian male domestic laborers proliferated, with special anxiety that they occupied some of the same spaces as White women while husbands were at work. In these racist images, Asian men disturbed the purity of White men’s homes and they often plotted to rape the White women. Likewise, many White Americans conflated the Japanese American practice of picture brides with Chinese prostitution. As previously mentioned, the phenomenon of picture brides spread because of the Gentlemen’s Agreement, so the expansion of this presumed practice of prostitution was ironically due to nativist fears of Japanese families. To deepen the irony, actual Chinese prostitution, which supposedly also upset the purity of White families, was expanded by the White demand for prostitutes. For nativists, the purity of Western states was at stake, while their very fears were expanded by White support of prostitution and the successes of their own anti-Asian political movement.
In response to the racist conflation of Asian peoples, Japanese Americans and the Japanese government often worked to distinguish Japanese from Chinese immigrants. This anti-Chinese rhetoric by Japanese Americans was part of the larger ideology called Japanese occidentalism, which argued that Japan could advance by borrowing from the best of the West and by removing other Asian cultures, which would supposedly purify Japanese cultural roots.13 Japanese occidentalism also
manifested itself in some labor competitions with other Asian immigrants in the United States, when Japanese laborers would band together at the expense of other Asian immigrant groups.14
Hence, Japanese Americans responded to early racism by distancing themselves from Chinese culture and adapting to American culture. Their process of adaptation echoed the strategy of outward conformity developed earlier in Japan. While the Japanese strategy was for the purpose of surviving religious persecution and the imperial restructure of the nation, Japanese Americans likened their struggle to those of a recent adoptee who does not fit into a new family. The term for this process of adaptation was gaimenteki doka. Japanese American historian Yuji Ichioka illustrates that the first generation (issei) of Japanese Americans debated how to transform their culture in the United States and focused on the contrast between gaimenteki and naimenteki. 15 Gaimenteki (外面的) literally translates to “associated with the exterior surface,” and in this respect an adoptee would learn to act like the new family but inwardly retain the spirit of the original family.16 It generally refers to transformations in culture that are externally visible, such as etiquette and dress. Naimenteki (内面的) is “associated with the interior” and includes the adoption of both the actions and inward values of the new family. Proponents of gaimenteki doka argued that the adaptation to American culture was expedient, superficial, and was part of a duty to appear acceptable for the sake of the larger community. Additionally, they argued against naimenteki doka because the internal could not be changed or did not need to be changed.
The concern was partly about religion because one difference was the degree to which people wanted to accept the American value of democracy and American interpretations of Christianity.17 Underlying splits in the community were perspectives on the content, stability, and vibrancy of the spiritual core of Japanese Americans; namely, they were determining whether there was a core worth preserving. They were debating how much of American culture they should adopt, and which culture— Japanese or American—is dominant or better. This transformation was pressed by the overwhelming realization that they needed to make changes to survive. In these ways, “assimilation” in the term “outward assimilation” does not refer to an inferior group transforming to become like a superior group, like many sociological theories of assimilation assert, rather a group being faced with potentially dangerous forces and responding by choosing to preserve elements deemed important from its culture and finding ways to bolster them. That is,
gaimenteki doka is both a process of making disciplining gazes not notice or otherwise feel unthreatened, and of determining what is most important to a people and protecting it in their core. It is not a concession, but a process of external silence with internal spiritual vitality and an attitude of facing oppression for survival.
The forces that pushed Japanese Americans to use gaimenteki doka were never clearer than during World War II internment.18 The government and military forced more than 110,000 Japanese Americans in western zones out of their homes, into assembly centers or prisons, then into concentration camps, and finally out of these camps. This was without exemptions of citizenship status, military service, gender, age, or religious affiliation. The experiences initiated profound changes in the Japanese American community, such as the upheaval of family organization, physical scattering, psychological turmoil, and the loss of property and income. Administrators created camp policies and the organization of facilities in order to undermine patriarchal authority and Japanese family structure. For example, everyone ate communally at mess halls, which kept parents from purchasing and providing food, and stopped parents and other elders from preparing family meals. Instead of immigrant parents bringing in more income than their children, jobs were more often given to American-born children. The official argument was that English-speakers could be more easily trusted and instructed, but in practice this policy took authority away from parents and fomented antagonism between generations. Due to such policies and organization, people of similar ages formed strong social groups that separated themselves from others, and English-speaking youth found themselves with more authority and ability to determine their own choices and organizations.
Despite the abrupt disruption of life and uncertainty for the future, Japanese Americans had remarkably few violent protests during their incarceration. This does not mean, however, that Japanese Americans were not upset and did not find ways to express their anger. As historian Gary Okihiro describes in “Religion and Resistance in America’s Concentration Camps,” internees found ways to express their frustrations using coded language. For example, their term for the “barracks” in which they lived was buraku, which refers to outcaste ethnic groups in Japan.19 Using coded language, religious gatherings, and the transmission of folk beliefs, Japanese Americans were able to find a sense of solidarity and to express their discontent to each other while avoiding the gaze of police and administrators.
Japanese Americans also engaged in art and decorated their barracks with gardens.20 Forms of art without a focus on Japanese language did not seem threatening to camp administrators, so these were allowed and were encouraged in some cases. In addition, as theater scholar Emily ColbornRoxworthy describes, even with the official association of Japanese culture with disloyalty, many Japanese cultural arts were allowed.21 This was because administrators focused on the appearance of internees’ Americanness for public relations, so performances would generally be allowed if they could be cast as pro-American. For example, Japanese classical dancing (ondo) and theater (kabuki) could be performed on American holidays such as the Fourth of July under the argument that nisei (secondgeneration Japanese Americans) were thanking issei for their American citizenship.22 That is, by taking art and rituals and assimilating the appearance or timing in the annual calendar, the inward emotions and religious messages could be preserved.
There were a variety of reasons to participate in art in the camps. For many internees, art projects were simply ways to fend off boredom. For others, the arts served multiple purposes, from sustaining their composure to higher spiritual pursuits. Moreover, the arts, since they were allowed in the camps, became vehicles to pass on religious ideas that would be discouraged or banned if taught through language and doctrines. Thus, the arts became a vehicle for outwardly assimilating religious ideas, transforming them into seemingly harmless artistic or cultural ideas that could be transmitted in the camps.
For Japanese Americans, there were obvious benefits of seeming harmless, such as not being assaulted and killed by armed guards, but camp administrators also benefited. Camp administrators worked under the mandate to democratize Japanese Americans, and thus taught democracy classes.23 They actively competed against administrators of other camps to prove that their policies and physical layouts minimized disruptions in camp life. They were therefore pleased with themselves when Japanese Americans did not riot. Moreover, several outside groups benefited from Japanese American peaceful adjustment. There were sociologists and anthropologists who took advantage of the unusual historical circumstance, as well as the isolation and consistency of the population, to do scientific studies on Japanese Americans. Additionally, White American artists, such as Dorothy Lange and Ansel Adams, took it upon themselves to make a photographic argument that Japanese Americans were fully American.24 Lange and Adams photographically documented the
internment experience and took care to capture the even temper, positive attitude, and American customs of Japanese Americans in the camps. This included photographs of internees doing American things like playing baseball and marching in a band, smiling while in school, wearing American clothes, and working at American jobs. Photographs, newspaper articles, and government propaganda films all worked to illustrate the safety of the camps and the positive attitude of internees.
Thus, the results of gaimenteki doka, while silently preserving Japanese culture, religious ideas, and a history of survival, also helped to legitimate the self-image of America as a beneficent, democratic, meritocracy that valued education and family—all ideals contested by the realities of the internment. Such ironies of gaimenteki doka are sustained in nearly every practice developed from it, including those continued outside the contexts of severe discipline.
In the time period after World War II, the transition of Japan from an enemy to a democratic and capitalist ally occurred in a matter of two decades. Accordingly, Japanese Americans went from being imprisoned en masse as enemy aliens to being eligible for citizenship. While before and during the war Japan’s success contested America’s ideological dominance, after World War II Japan’s success resuscitated it. Postwar, the United States felt that it had defeated Hitler’s military and persecution programs, and it zealously displayed its defeat of Japan with the atomic bombs. These military successes, depicted with images of atomic bomb clouds and flattened Japanese cities, proved to many Americans that the United States was exceptional on intellectual, physical, and spiritual levels. In relationship to Japan, its superiority was reinforced by images of the economically desperate postwar Japanese and of the American Occupation that supposedly rebuilt Japan as a demilitarized, productive, democratic, and religiously free country.
Soon the rise in communist countries’ military and scientific power during the Cold War once again questioned America’s dominance. The development of science and technology by the Soviet Union, such as the Sputnik satellite and nuclear weapons, made it seem possible that the United States would not be at the forefront of science and that it could be annihilated by communist weapons. Many communist governments also violently oppressed organized religions, so that the existence and potential dominance of communist nations threatened America’s foundational ideal of religious freedom. However, from Americans’ view, Japan stood in contrast to communist nations, because Japan—at least according to its newly
imposed Constitution, which was written to match the US Constitution— supported religious freedom, capitalistic business, and democracy. In these ways, changes in international politics made Japan quickly move from enemy to ally. Further, Japan stood as a symbol of American military domination, and this enhancement of American masculinity made Japanese men seem impotent by contrast and Japanese women and the nation seem passive and happy recipients of American masculinity.
The decreased threat of Japan accordingly helped Japanese Americans find a limited welcome in the United States. While prewar Japanese Americans could not find jobs that matched their college degrees, postwar the degrees counted more often. With more and higher paying jobs, it seemed as if within one generation Japanese Americans were able to build from nothing and to move into middle-class status. This in part explains the founding of the model minority myth, which is a racist image that argues that Asian Americans are harder working, better at mathematics, and excel at technical, emotionless endeavors more than other groups, including Whites.25 While it may appear to be a positive image, this was a continuation of former racist depictions of Japanese people. Prewar, Japanese people were thought to be fungible, mindless, and slavish workers for the Japanese empire, and their economic success was considered the result of inhuman intense and non-compassionate labor. In the postwar period, the earlier images of Japan were layered onto the new image of economic growth, leading to a renewed fear of hyper-productivity for the sake of imperial aspirations at the expense of human emotion. For example, the model minority myth was used in the 1980s to explain Japan’s rise in technological and industrial power.
Japanese Americans thus were uncomfortably welcomed into the American citizenry. Many war-weary Japanese Americans welcomed this change from enemy to ally and silently acquiesced to life under provisional acceptance. To this end, many focused on economic stability and further assimilation in hopes that this would help the next generation of Japanese Americans avoid a recurrence of similar racism. To many Americans and Japanese Americans themselves, this was a tacit acceptance of the new racist characterization as the model minority.
Meanwhile, the Japanese American community was changing by connecting to a variety of racial and political groups. These connections were not made simply because of the community’s rising economic status; rather, the experience of internment, along with an increased social status, gave Japanese Americans a diverse set of connections to racial,
religious, and artistic groups. For example, the internment experience caused many to empathize with other marginalized peoples and to forge political coalitions. The newly developed diversity led to internal tensions, some of which could be seen in the Third World Movement and the Asian American Movement of the 1960s. At this time, radical and left-leaning Japanese Americans conducted protests at San Francisco State University. Among other demands for consciousness-raising, they wanted the development of ethnic studies courses. These students were also inspired to protest by other college students who were protesting the Vietnam War. However, some Japanese Americans were on the other side of this debate, including San Francisco State University’s S. I. Hayakawa, who decried the protests and argued that the demanded changes were unnecessary. In such ways, Japanese Americans formed coalitions with other marginalized peoples and formed coalitions against them.
Japanese Americans also joined others in cultural and artistic endeavors. Many were involved in African American culture, including music. Others associated with White Americans in resistance music and countercultural artistic and religious movements. Japanese Americans connected to these groups through politics, religion, art, and business, as well as through interethnic and interracial sex. Sexual relationships were influenced by contexts of war, the American Occupation of Japan, and mixed neighborhoods, and this has contributed to an increasing number of mixed-race Japanese Americans.
These various connections informed Japanese Americans’ political views on internment and helped them to gain experience in many levels of politics. This helped empower them to take political action to redress internment injustices, but by no means was this effort unified. The most politically supported position was for monetary reparations for property and income loss. However, some did not want any political action to be taken, some wanted a statement acknowledging wrongdoing, some wanted a larger amount that included other losses, and some wanted a more comprehensive redress. Generational divisions could be seen, because younger Japanese Americans were the primary organizers of the political action. The younger generations, younger nisei and sansei (third generation), often struggled to get the older former internees to testify. To explain this reticence, some in the redress movement and the official report from the US Commission of Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians labeled the pervasive silence after internment a sign of trauma, and compared it to the silence of rape victims.26
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“You ought to have explained clearly.”
“It’s too late now; be ready for the next show.”
But it did not come. The assailants were so discouraged by the vigilance of the emigrants that they abandoned the plan of rushing the camp. The desultory shots ceased and when a half hour passed without a sound, it looked as if the Indians had withdrawn altogether.
Shagbark, however, was not misled. The stillness might be meant to deceive the defenders and cause them to cease their watchfulness. The guide allowed the men who had stood guard the first half of the night to retire to rest in the wagons, while the relief took their places. As he intended from the first, he did not sleep, but moved from point to point, and made sure that none was neglected.
Alden Payne and Jethro Mix, acting on the advice of the veteran, lay down and despite the exciting incidents of the night were soon asleep.
The long hours dragged past without bringing any alarm. Shagbark kept moving around the camp, pausing at different points to talk with the sentinels, and twice he crept out from the wagon circle and pressed an ear to the ground. He was almost certain the Indians had withdrawn and nothing more would be heard from them.
When at last the increasing gray in the east told of the approaching day, the camp was astir. The light was an unspeakable relief, for brief as had been the hours of slumber, no one felt any disposition to stay inside the wagons after it was safe to venture out.
Before the sun rose, Shagbark had scanned every part of the horizon. No sight of the redmen was seen. The warriors must have gone back to their ponies, and leaping upon them, skurried off in quest of more inviting prey.
Beyond a doubt two or three of the assailants had fallen, but, as is the custom among Indians, their former comrades carried them away. Hardly a trace of the attack remained.
The women busied themselves in preparing the morning meal, a fire having been rekindled, and all ate with appetites such as come
only to those who live in the open. A feeling of profound gratitude filled the hearts of all, for their deliverance was markedly providential.
“We’ve been a good deal luckier than I expected,” said Shagbark during the meal.
“We had more than one close call,” remarked Fleming; “I had something of the kind myself.”
It was found that three others had escaped by chances fully as narrow.
“That warn’t what I war most afeard of,” continued the guide; “we all had such good kiver that there never was much danger of being hit, but there’s one thing I don’t yet understand.”
In answer to the inquiring looks, Shagbark explained:
“With all them bullets whistling round us some of ’em oughter reached the hosses and oxen, but there hain’t one of ’em been so much as scratched.”
“Was not that because all were lying down?” asked Fleming.
“That had a good deal to do with it, but some of the hosses kept gitting on their feet and I had to watch ’em close and make ’em lay down agin; there warn’t any such trouble with the oxen, fur they was glad ’nough to lay down and chaw their cuds.”
“If we had lost a pony or two,” suggested Alden, “it would not have been so bad, for we could get on without them.”
“That ain’t what I’m driving at, but if a hoss had been wounded or killed, he would have kicked up such a rumpus he’d stampeded all the others; they’d have scattered over the perarie and upset things so promiscuous that we’d never got ’em agin. More’n that, thar would’ve been such times in camp that the varmints would have sailed in, and if we’d managed to stand ’em off, a good many of ye wouldn’t be left to talk about it this morning.”
The listeners shuddered at the picture brought up by the words of the grizzled guide. None of them had once thought of the terrifying
peril named, but they saw that it had been real and beyond the power of exaggeration.
The most complacent member of the company was Jethro Mix. Shagbark and Alden had taken pains to tell of his exploit, and if the fellow had been capable of blushing, he would have turned crimson, but that being beyond his power, he affected to make light of it all.
“Pshaw! dat ain’t nuffin,” he said when the wife of Abner Fleming complimented him; “I ’spects to do de same thing a good many more times afore we gits across de plains; de fac’ is, I’m on to dem Injins and dey’ll find it out; when dey wokes up Jethro Mix dey wokes up de wrong passenger and dere’s gwine to be trouble in de land.”
“I never heard of firing at a spot where an enemy is not supposed to be,” ventured Richard Marvin, another member of the company, and somewhat of a wag.
“Who ’sposed he warn’t dere?” demanded Jethro. “I knowed he was dere ’cause he wasn’t dere—so I aimed at de spot where he wasn’t ’cause I knowed he was dere. Doan’ you see?”
“I’m glad to have so clear an explanation,” gravely replied the gentleman; “but it seems to me there must have been a good deal of guesswork, for there was no way by which you could know of a certainty which way—the right or the left—he had moved.”
“No guesswork ’bout it,” loftily remarked Jethro.
“Could you see him as he lay in the grass?”
“Ob course not.”
“You certainly couldn’t hear him.”
“Ob course I couldn’t; who said I could?”
“Then how could you know where he really was?”
“I’m ’sprised at your discomfuseness, Mr. Marvin; de way I knowed whar he was, was dat I knowed it; I felt he had flopped ober to de left, so I knowed jes’ de p’int to aim at; dat’s de skience ob de hull bus’ness.”
“I haven’t anything more to say, Jethro; you’re a wonder; I see Shagbark is getting ready to move on again and needs us.”
CHAPTER IX
OLD ACQUAINTANCES
The next look we take of the train under the guidance of Shagbark, the veteran of the plains, is several weeks after the incidents just described. The route which they in common with thousands of emigrants, including the Pony Express riders, followed, led due west up the Kearny valley to Julesburg, a distance of two hundred miles. Here it crossed the South Platte, trended northwest to old Fort Laramie, passed thence over the foothills at the foot of the Rockies to South Pass, and by way of Fort Bridger to Salt Lake.
You must bear several facts in mind. Colorado at the time of which I am writing had not yet been formed into a Territory, nor had Wyoming. The oldest white settlement in the latter section was Fort Laramie—since abandoned—which was made a trading post in 1834, rebuilt by the American Fur Company two years later, and sold to the United States and garrisoned as a fort in 1849.
In speaking of the great overland trail, which was used for a score of years after the discovery of gold in California, one is apt to think of it as of comparatively slight width. Yet, although it narrowed to a few miles in some places, there were others where the ground traversed was fifty or a hundred miles across. Thus it happened that trains which were following parallel routes were often out of sight of one another for days, and perhaps weeks. The breadth of the famous South Pass, the gateway of the Rocky Mountains, is so great that parties of emigrants frequently did not know for a long time that they were really traveling through it.
Although there were many incidents worth telling, we must skip them and come to the time when our friends were plodding some distance beyond the straggling town of Cheyenne, which was to attain importance during the building of the transcontinental railway eight or nine years later. They were heading for Fort Laramie, on the
western slope of the spur known as the Laramie Mountains. Far ahead the crests could be seen, tinted with a soft blue, as they raised their summits into the clear spring sky. The ground was more rolling and undulating, and streams of varying depth and volume had to be crossed. The greater elevation gave a sensible coolness to the air. Although summer was near at hand, the nights were chilly and the warmth of blankets and the roaring camp fire was grateful to all alike.
Indians had been descried many times, and Shagbark expected an attack, but since the affair many miles to the eastward, not a hostile shot had been heard. He was inclined to think this was due to the vigilance of the emigrants. No matter how tranquil everything looked, all the adults took turn in mounting guard each night. The redmen more than once rode up within two or three hundred yards and seemed to meditate a closer approach, as if for barter. But with good reason they distrusted the white men, who knew their treacherous nature. Occasionally these warriors waved their blankets and made tantalizing gestures as if to draw a shot, but Shagbark would not permit any to be fired.
“Thar’s no use of throwing away powder and ball,” he said; “we’re likely to need all we’ve got afore we see Salt Lake, and them insults don’t hurt.”
Several times our friends had seen the Pony Express riders as they skimmed across the country with the speed of the wind. A wave of the hand from the flying horseman, without the slightest pull of rein, was the only acknowledgment made to the salutations of the emigrants. The majority of these headlong riders were not seen, for, always hunting the speediest route, they were generally well north or south of the trail of the ox teams.
A goodly part of the journey was over, and yet the train had suffered no serious accident. In crossing a rapid stream, where the animals had to swim, Jethro Mix performed another exploit which won the praise of his friends. One of the oxen, stupid as the species always is, became entangled in his yoke and would have been drowned had not the African urged his pony alongside, where with a
swift, powerful wrench, some shouting and a savage blow or two with the butt of his gun, he straightened out matters and saved the valuable animal.
More than likely any man in the company would have done the same thing had circumstances equally favored, but Jethro was the nearest to the endangered animal, and seconds were beyond estimate. His promptness was what won.
Despite this service and the remarkable exploit on the night attack by the Indians, Shagbark never showed any special liking for the African. It may have been because of his race, but, although he could not have been induced to harm the dusky youth, he preferred to have as little to do with him as possible.
Alden Payne had become the favorite of the guide. At his invitation the young man frequently rode with him. When the nature of the ground permitted, the two kept side by side. If this was not practical, Alden dropped to the rear, pressing forward again when the chance offered. Shagbark had his silent moods, but not so often when the two were together. A peculiar result of nature and training shown by the veteran amused Alden. The guide never lost his habit of eternal alertness. No matter how deeply interested the two were in what was being said, Shagbark kept glancing ahead, on each side, and frequently behind him. Even when sitting on the ground or eating with the others this bird-like flitting of his eyes was kept up. It seemed impossible for such a man to be caught off his guard.
There had been stormy skies and the train lay by for most of the day, but on the whole the weather continued favorable. The guide said more than once that the best of luck had been with them from the very day they left St. Joe.
“It can’t continner,” he added, “so we must make the best of it while we’ve got it; we’re getting into the mountains, and though it’s about summer, we’ll catch some squalls that’ll freeze the nose onto yer faces.”
“It strikes me, Shagbark,” said Alden, “that that train two or three miles ahead of us have kept almost the same distance for the last
few days.”
“Ye’re right, younker.”
“What do you make of it?”
“That we both happen to be tramping at the same rate. If they went a little faster they’d draw away from us, or if we went a little faster we’d overhaul ’em.”
“How large do you make out the party to be?”
“’Bout the same as ours; they’ve got an extra wagon and a few mules, but I don’t think thar’s more men and women.”
“Wouldn’t it be well for us to unite and travel together? It would be much safer in case of attack by Indians.”
Shagbark shook his head.
“’Twon’t work; they’ve got thar guide and we’ve got ourn; which one would be the boss in them sarcumstances?”
“You, of course.”
“The other chap, whoever he might be, would have something to say ’bout that, and like ’nough him and me would have a fout to settle the question. Our folks are all good friends and git along powerful pleasant; ’tain’t likely we could do that if we took in a lot of strangers that we’d never heerd of afore. No, sir.”
And Shagbark puffed hard at his pipe, which had nearly died out during the conversation.
That night the train went into camp on the western bank of a stream fifty yards wide, but comparatively shallow. There was no difficulty in fording it, the women and children riding in the wagons without getting wet. The current was clear and so icy that it was evident it had its source in the mountains.
The wagons were ranged as usual in a circle with the animals surrounded, where there was enough grass for their supper. Some trouble was met in getting all the wood needed, but enough was obtained to serve for the preparation of supper. By that time the air
had become so chilly that the blaze was carefully nursed in order to reinforce the blankets. The effort, however, was not very successful.
The fact that no Indians had been seen for the last two or three days did not affect the watchfulness of the company. The usual guards were stationed, and it again fell to the lot of Alden Payne to act as one of them. Jethro Mix was placed at the wagon which stood next to his, the duty of both being to serve until midnight. Shagbark, who seemed to sleep only now and then, for brief intervals, decided by and by, to take a long rest. He never occupied any of the wagons, but wrapping his heavy blanket around his shoulders, lay down near the smouldering camp fire, with the animals grouped on all sides. It was always understood that if anything occurred he was to be roused at once. The men had learned much during the long journey thither of the ways of the plains, but he never fully trusted them.
The steady tramping, riding and the dragging of the heavy Conestogas made the rest welcome to men, women, children and to the animals. By nine o’clock everything was in the form it would be two hours later, provided no disturbance took place.
Night had hardly shut in, when a mile or so to the westward the lights of another camp twinkled through the darkness. All knew it came from the party that had been traveling near them for several days past. Shagbark had spoken of riding forward with Alden and making a call upon the emigrants, but decided to wait a while.
The night was similar to that of the Indian attack. Perhaps there were more clouds drifting across the sky, but the moon near the full, plowed through the snowy masses and made the illumination fitful and uncertain. Sometimes one could see objects for a hundred yards and more, and then the view was shortened to half that distance.
Alden was leaning against a wheel of the vehicle, in his favorite attitude. Now and then when he felt a faint drowsiness stealing over him, he moved about for a brief space until he felt fully awake. Then he listened to the heavy breathing which came from some of the wagons, to the stamping of the horses, some of which were still on their feet, with an occasional murmur of voices from those who had not yet drifted into forgetfulness.
Suddenly through the stillness, Jethro Mix called in a husky undertone:
“Helloa, Al, am you dere?”
“Of course I am; what do you want?”
“Dere’s somebody out dere, and not fur off, too!” was the startling explanation of the hail. “Haben’t you seed him?”
“No. Is it an Indian?”
“Dunno; he’s on de back ob a hoss; come ober here and take a look fur yourself.”
Alden knew the objection to leaving his post, but he thought the circumstances justified him in joining his friend for a few minutes. He hastily crossed the intervening space.
“Where did he show himself, Jeth?”
“Right in front ob us; wait till dat cloud passes and you’ll see him suah.”
The surprise came the next moment, when the clearing sky disclosed not one, but two horsemen, a few rods away. They had halted their ponies and were sitting side by side, evidently studying the camp as if in doubt whether to venture nearer. The first sight showed they were not Indians, but white men. Two equestrian statues could not have been more motionless than they.
Placing one hand as a funnel, Alden called in a low voice:
“Helloa, neighbors! Why don’t you come forward?”
By way of reply the couple twitched their reins and rode to the edge of the camp. Neither dismounted. Alden noted that one was a large, bearded man, while his companion was a youth of about his own age. The two wore broad brimmed hats, which partly hid their features, but when the elder spoke, Alden fancied there was something familiar in his voice.
“Good evening, friends,” he said. “We meant to call earlier, and it has grown so late that we shall defer it to-night. I presume all except
the guards have turned in?”
“They did so some time ago; it will not do for us to leave our stations, but we shall be glad to welcome you at any other time. You belong to the company that has gone into camp a little way from here?”
“Yes; we have been in sight of each other for several days; had the situation become threatening because of Indians, I should have proposed that we unite, but everything seems to be peaceful.”
“Have you had no trouble with them?”
“None whatever, though we have seen many parties at a distance.”
“We were attacked one night some weeks ago along the Platte, but drove them off without harm to us.”
“How was it with them?” asked the man significantly.
“We got several who were too venturesome.”
Jethro could not restrain himself any longer.
“Yas, and de fust warmint dat got soaked, he done it—suah as you’s born!”
“I congratulate you on your success; doubtless it had much to do with repulsing your enemies.”
“Jethro told you the incident so as to force me to say that he picked off another of the redskins. Incredible as it may sound, it is true.”
The man in the saddle looked down with renewed interest upon the burly African, who had set the stock of his rifle on the ground, folded his arms over the muzzle, and assumed a lolling attitude, as if the matter was of no concern to any of them.
“Dat ain’t nuffin,” he said airily; “de sarpint furgot dat I was on de lookout fur him and as soon as he fired and missed, why, I plugged him; ’tain’t wuth speaking ’bout.”
“Fortunate is that company which has two such sentinels as you,” commented the man, with something like a chuckle; “if we run into danger from Indians, shall we be able to borrow you two, or if your friends cannot spare both, can we have one?”
“Who would be your choice?” asked Alden, entering into the spirit of the moment.
“Jethro, as you call him; of course he’s the most valuable.”
“Dunno ’bout dat,” said the African with dignity; “de wimmin folks and de children will blubber so hard when dey find I think ob leabin’ dem dat Shagbark won’t be likely to allow it; howsumeber, I’ll think it ober.”
“Thank you; you are very kind.”
During the conversation, which continued for several minutes longer, with nothing of moment said, the youth who accompanied the elder caller did not speak a word. He seemed to be peering from under his hat at Alden, as if studying him.
“Well,” said the man, “we shall ride back to camp now and doubtless shall soon see you again. I need not assure you that you and your friends will be welcome at all times. My name is Garret Chadwick, and I have charge of the other company. My friend here is my nephew, Ross Brandley.”
“Very glad to have met you. I am Alden Payne, and I am on my way from St. Joe to join my father, who left for California some months ago.”
As Alden spoke he made a military salute to the two. The elder returned it, but his companion slightly nodded without speaking or saluting. The two then wheeled their animals and rode off at a walk.
The incident showed there was nothing to be feared from hostiles for some time to come. Alden, therefore, did not scruple to linger for a few minutes with his sable friend.
“Jeth, there was something familiar in that man’s voice.”
“Ob course dere was; doan’ you remember him?”
“No; do you?”
“You hain’t forgot dat splendid fout you begun wid dat chap in St. Joe when he butted into you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Wal, dat’s de gemman dat pulled you apart.”
“And that fellow with him is the one who struck me?”
“Suah’s you’s born; he knowed you, if you didn’t know him; I seed him watching you mighty sharp, as if he was achin’ to get another chance at you; he’d done it, too, if his uncle hadn’t been wid him.”
“If the chance ever does come, he’ll find me ready,” said Alden, compressing his lips, for the memory of the insult rankled. “I remember he called him ‘Ross’ in St. Joe, but forgot it a minute ago.”
“Why doan’ you ask him to come alone and wisit us?”
“If he called here it would be as my guest, and that would never do: it would be a breach of hospitality.”
“Den go ober and wisit him.”
“That would place him in my position as it is now. No; we shall have to meet on common ground. He must have thought I recognized him,” added Alden with a thrill of disgust, “and wanted to make friends with him. I hope we shall come together pretty soon, where nothing can prevent a settlement of our quarrel.”
“And dat ’minds me, Al, dat I haben’t tole you my big secret yit.”
“I don’t care anything about your secret,” replied his master impatiently, for he was in anything but an amiable frame of mind. “Attend to your duty and I will attend to mine.”
With which the youth walked back to his own wagon and resumed his task of sentinel while most of the company slept.
CHAPTER X
A HUNT
Since there was no call for haste, the progress of the emigrant train sometimes ceased altogether. This was the case on the morning following the incident just related. The cause of the stoppage was to permit Shagbark to go a-hunting. They had entered a region some time before where game abounded, and his policy was to use as little of the reserve supplies as possible. The day was likely to come when they would have no other recourse. It was not practical to carry much fodder for the animals, but even that scant supply was hoarded against the inevitable “rainy day.”
Although the American bison or buffalo has been virtually extinct for years, the animals were numbered by the hundred thousand on the western plains at the time we have in mind. The droves seen in the distance seemed often to cover a fourth of the horizon, and their dark, shaggy backs as they cropped the herbage and hitched continually forward, were like the fretted waves of the sea. Shagbark had shot a number, and twice he took Alden and Jethro with him on the excursions. A nearly fatal result to Alden followed the attempted slaying of an enormous bull by shooting him in the head instead of just behind the fore leg, but the mistake was not repeated. Jethro showed his natural timidity, and kept as close as he could to the veteran, while Alden indulged in spurts of his own which more than once brought results.
Shagbark, however, was not partial to buffalo meat, which many of his friends found coarse and tough. They preferred venison, which was not always tender, and they were able to obtain considerable quantities of it. He regarded the antelope with more favor than either. So it came about on the morning referred to, that he and the two youths set out to shoot some of the timid creatures. Occasionally Mr. Fleming and some of his friends took part in the hunts, but they
preferred to stay in camp on this day and let the trio prove their prowess.
The effect of this halt was to increase the distance between the party and the one in advance, to which Garret Chadwick and his nephew belonged; for the latter company moved at an early hour and were many miles distant before nightfall.
Antelope hunting has been too often described for me to dwell upon this particular venture. When the three rode over the plains to the northwest in the direction of the towering Laramie Mountains, not one of the animals was in sight, nor had the guide seen any on the previous day. He had been over the region before, however, and knew he would not have to hunt long.
He first headed toward a ridge which rose two hundred feet or more above the prairie, showing few boulders and rocks, and no trees. Beyond it stretched a beautiful valley to the foothills of the mountain range. This space was several miles in width, and a small, clear stream meandered through the valley, on its way to the Sweetwater, and thence to the North Platte. Shagbark gave it as his belief that some of the animals would be found in the valley, and, as usual, he was not mistaken.
The American antelope or pronghorn is a native of the plains near the Rocky Mountains. Nearly always the upper parts of its body are yellowish brown in color, while the under parts, the sides and the head and throat and the buttocks are white. It sheds the bony sheath of its horns every year. It may be worth noting that this creature is known also by the names of prongbuck, pronghorned antelope, cabrèe and cabut.
The most peculiar trait of the antelope is its curiosity. But for this weakness, it would be almost impossible for a hunter to get within range of the game. Lying in the grass, where his body is invisible, the man lifts his hat or a handkerchief on the muzzle or ramrod of his rifle. The moment the animal sees it he bounds off in a panic, but does not go far before he halts and looks back. The odd sight has roused his curiosity, and he gingerly draws near, ready to dash away again in the instant danger shows himself.
All the hunter needs to have is patience. The creature is sure to come within reach of his gun and fall a victim to the infirmity that had proved the undoing of many a human being. It is hard to understand this singular failing of the antelope.
At the base of the ridge Shagbark drew rein and his companions did the same.
“Don’t stir from hyar,” he said, “till I give ye the word.”
Dismounting, he walked briskly up the slope until near the top. There he slackened his pace, stooped low, and reaching a favorable point, removed his hat and peeped cautiously over. Alden and Jethro, who were watching him, saw him remain stationary for a minute or two. Then he crouched still lower, donned his hat and hurried back to them.
“Thar’s three of ’em,” he said, “and we oughter bag ’em all.”
“I shall be glad to do my part,” replied Alden.
“Which de same am likewise de fac’ as regards myself,” added Jethro.
The guide explained his plan, which, it may be said, caused Alden mild surprise, inasmuch as it gave the African the post of honor. Shagbark had described so often the method employed in hunting the antelope that the youths understood it theoretically. It remained for them to prove that they had a practical knowledge also.
Shagbark remarked that everything was in their favor. The slight breeze came directly from the animals, so it could not carry the scent of the hunters to them. In the circumstances, with the protection of the grass, it ought to be easy to steal within gunshot of the game, provided their inquiring nature was turned to good account.
Jethro was to move along the slope parallel with it, until he had gone an eighth of a mile, when he was to creep over the crest with the utmost caution and sneak into the grass on the other side. Once there he must advance slowly and with the utmost care toward the antelope. If they took the alarm, which they were almost certain to
do, he should cease moving, lie flat and raise his hat on the ramrod of his gun, one end of which was to be thrust into the soft earth.
Then the old performance would follow One or more of the animals would begin a timid, hesitating approach, frequently bounding or circling away for some distance, halting and advancing again, hypnotized by the singular sight whose nature they could not fathom without a closer view.
“All ye’ve got to do is to lay still with yer gun p’inted and yer finger on the trigger till he comes within reach. Then let him have it.”
“What will become of de oders?” asked Jethro.
“We’ll ’tend to them.”
“Am de antelope a wery savage critter, Mr. Shagbark?” asked Jethro, with so much misgiving as to rouse the waggery of the trapper.
“He stands next to the grizzly b’ar: he kin use them horns and sharp hoofs and chaw up a wolf while ye’re winking an eye.”
“Yas, sir,” said Jethro, swallowing a lump in his throat, as he set out to obey the directions of the guide.
Shagbark and Alden had little to do for an indefinite period except to watch the course of the African, who had every reason to look for success, since all the conditions, as the hunter had said, were favorable. In addition, it has been shown that the dusky youth was a fair marksman.
He kept below the crest of the ridge and walked fast, until he had gone even farther than told to go. Finally he crept up the slope, and like his director, removed his hat and cautiously looked over the summit of the ridge.
He as well as the antelope was in sight all the time, and Shagbark and Alden did not allow any of his movements to escape them. They saw him pass slowly over the top of the elevation and down the other side, where it was not so easy to trace him, because of the abundance of grass which screened the amateur hunter.
“Sometimes I think he isn’t such a big fool as he looks,” said the guide, after Jethro had begun worming his way through the vegetation. “I couldn’t do any better than he’s done so fur, but it’s best to wait to see how he makes out.”
“That is my opinion—helloa! what’s up now?”
The largest of the animals, evidently a buck, was cropping the grass a few yards nearer the negro than were the other two animals. The three remained thus employed for some time after Jethro had left the base of the ridge. That which caused the exclamation of Alden was the action of the buck. He suddenly stopped grazing, threw his head high in air and stared in the direction of the invisible hunter.
“He seems to be alarmed over something; it can’t be he has scented Jethro.”
“I might think so, for it’s easy to do that with him, if it warn’t that the wind blows the wrong way. But they’re mighty cute critters, and the buck is scared over something. Now’s the time when the darky oughter stop.”
“He seems to have done that. He is half hidden by the grass, but I don’t think he is stirring.”
From their elevation the couple by using care could peer over the crest without drawing the attention of the game to themselves. Looking down on the colored youth, as he was partly revealed, it was evident he had noticed the action of the prongbuck. Jethro had ceased moving, and sank so flat on the ground that the game became invisible to him.
Waiting thus a few minutes, he slowly raised his head, parting the spears in front until once more he saw the game.
The two had not stopped grazing for a moment, and the buck now lowered his head and resumed feeding. If he had been alarmed his fears quickly left him.
Jethro resumed his painstaking progress and kept it up until within two hundred yards of the group, no one of which raised a head. The
distance was too great for a shot, though he might have succeeded in his aim. Seeming to think he had gone far enough, the youth now resorted to the usual trick, which has been described. Drawing his ramrod from its place under the barrel of his rifle, he placed his hat over one end and pushed the other down in the ground so hard that it stood upright without aid from him. That which followed was beyond the comprehension of either Shagbark or Alden.
The signal had hardly been set in place, when the buck flung up his head again. What induced him to do so cannot be told, unless it was that mysterious “sixth sense,” which some believe belongs to men and animals alike. There had not been the slightest noise, and it has been said that what little breeze was blowing could not carry the scent across the space.
But the first glance of the buck was at the hat on the upright stick. Almost immediately he wheeled and ran a dozen paces, his companions following. Then he paused, stared and walked toward the scarecrow, as it may be called. He did not go much nearer than before, and when he turned, ran round in a large circle, halted once more and repeated the movement described.
This peculiar performance continued until the buck was no more than a hundred yards from the dusky hunter lying low in the grass. Then his halt and stare were longer than before. His companions now caught to some extent his excitement. They discerned the cause, trotted here and there and back again, and looked and acted as if they wished to leave the spot, but could not shake off the attraction which drew them to the danger point.
It was noticeable, however, that the females did not approach the signal so near as their leader. They were as content for him to take the main risk as he was to take it upon himself.
“Why doesn’t Jethro fire?” asked Alden impatiently; “the antelope is within easy range, and he can bring him down dead sure.”
“I’ve been wondering over the same thing,” said Shagbark; “he can shoot from the grass or stand up and pick off the critter afore he
turns. That’ll send the others this way and we’ll pick ’em off. What’s the matter with the chump?”
Jethro had partly risen from the ground and was seen more clearly by his friends. From his position the shot would have been an easy one. Shagbark had expected from the first that the African would make such an attempt. The plan, as has been shown, would have bagged all three of the antelope.
Jethro was seen to rise higher, though still stooping, and grasp his gun, which, however, he did not bring to his shoulder. Then he suddenly wheeled without firing a shot and ran at headlong speed directly away from the buck!
The most forcible exclamation that Alden Payne had ever heard from the lips of Shagbark was uttered at the astounding sight. The terrified buck had turned and dashed off with the speed of the wind in the opposite direction, running so swiftly that he drew away from his two charges.
“Don’t stir,” whispered the guide; “I’ll take the buck and you the one next to him; don’t fire till I give the word.”
The two were lying on their faces with their guns pointed over the crest of the ridge. The three animals in their panic came not straight toward the couple, but took a diagonal course which promised to bring them within easy range. Their extreme sensitiveness to scent and sound was familiar to Shagbark, and he knew they would turn aside before coming very near.
The buck detected his danger a minute later. In running from one of the ogres that strode through the country on two legs, he was leading his charges directly upon another.
In the same instant that the new peril flashed upon him, he veered abruptly to the right, still skimming the prairie with amazing speed.
“Now!” whispered Shagbark, pressing the trigger of his weapon.
There was only a second or two between the reports, and it is enough to say that each shot was perfect in its way. Like all their
