il one day, at the end of our stay in Cuba, as he
was sitting in the Adjutant's tent working over the returns, there
turned up a trooper of the First who had been acting as barber. Eyeing
him with immovable face Pollock asked, in a guttural voice: "Do you
cut hair?" The man answered "Yes"; and Pollock continued, "Then you'd
better cut mine," muttering, in an explanatory soliloquy: "Don't want
to wear my hair long like a wild Indian when I'm in civilized
warfare."

Another Indian came from Texas. He was a brakeman on the Southern
Pacific, and wrote telling me he was an American Indian, and that he
wanted to enlist. His name was Colbert, which at once attracted my
attention; for I was familiar with the history of the Cherokees and
Chickasaws during the eighteenth century, when they lived east of the
Mississippi. Early in that century various traders, chiefly Scotchmen,
settled among them, and the half-breed descendants of one named
Colbert became the most noted chiefs of the Chickasaws. I summoned the
applicant before me, and found that he was an excellent man, and, as I
had supposed, a descendant of the old Chickasaw chiefs.

He brought into the regiment, by the way, his "partner," a white man.
The two had been inseparable companions for some years, and continued
so in the regiment. Every man who has lived in the West knows that,
vindictive though the hatred between the white man and the Indian is
when they stand against one another in what may be called their tribal
relations, yet that men of Indian blood, when adopted into white
communities, are usually treated precisely like anyone else.

Colbert was not the only Indian whose name I recognized. There was a
Cherokee named Adair, who, upon inquiry, I found to be descended from
the man who, a century and a half ago, wrote a ponderous folio, to
this day of great interest, about the Cherokees, with whom he had
spent the best years of his life as a trader and agent.

I don't know that I ever came across a man with a really sweeter
nature than another Cherokee named Holderman. He was an excellent
soldier, and for a long time acted as cook for the head-quarters mess.
He was a half-breed, and came of a soldier stock on both sides and
through both races. He explained to me once why he had come to the
war; that it was because his people always had fought when there was a
war, and he could not feel happy to stay at home when the flag was
going into battle.

Two of the young