Other editions of book The Good Indian Illustrated

There is a saying--and if it is not purely Western, it is at least purely American--that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. In the very teeth of that, and in spite of tho fact that he was neither very good, nor an Indian--nor in any sense "dead"-- men called Grant Imsen "Good Indian" to his face; and if he resented the title, his resentment was never made manifest--perhaps because he had grown up with the name.

There is a saying--and if it is not purely Western, it is at least purely American--that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. In the very teeth of that, and in spite of tho fact that he was neither very good, nor an Indian--nor in any sense "dead"-- men called Grant Imsen "Good Indian" to his face; and if he resented the title, his resentment was never made manifest--perhaps because he had grown up with the name.

There is a saying--and if it is not purely Western, it is at least purely American--that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. In the very teeth of that, and in spite of tho fact that he was neither very good, nor an Indian--nor in any sense "dead"-- men called Grant Imsen "Good Indian" to his face; and if he resented the title, his resentment was never made manifest--perhaps because he had grown up with the name.

There is a saying--and if it is not purely Western, it is at least purely American--that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. In the very teeth of that, and in spite of tho fact that he was neither very good, nor an Indian--nor in any sense "dead"-- men called Grant Imsen "Good Indian" to his face; and if he resented the title, his resentment was never made manifest--perhaps because he had grown up with the name.

Bertha Muzzy Sinclair or Sinclair-Cowan, née Muzzy (November 15, 1871 – July 23, 1940), best known by her pseudonym B. M. Bower, was an American author who wrote novels, fictional short stories, and screenplays about the American Old West. Her works, featuring cowboys and cows of the Flying U Ranch in Montana, reflected "an interest in ranch life, the use of working cowboys as main characters (even in romantic plots), the occasional appearance of eastern types for the sake of contrast, a sense of western geography as simultaneously harsh and grand, and a good deal of factual attention to such matters as cattle branding and bronc busting." She was married three times: to Clayton Bower in 1890, to Bertrand William Sinclair (also a Western author) in 1905, and to Robert Elsworth Cowan in 1921. However, she chose to publish under the name Bower.Early lifeBorn Bertha Muzzy in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, to Washington Muzzy and Eunice Miner Muzzy, Bower moved with her family to a dryland homestead near Great Falls, Montana, in 1889. That fall, just before her eighteenth birthday, she began teaching school in nearby Milligan Valley. The school was a small, hastily converted log outbuilding, and she taught twelve pupils. Her experiences as a teacher informed the characters of schoolma'ams who appear frequently in her in the writings, notably in The North Wind Do Blow (1937), in which a young, eastern-born schoolma'am teaches her first term in central Montana. After one term as a schoolteacher, Bower returned to her family's homestead.Writing careerBower began writing to "save my sanity" after moving to Big Sandy with her first husband. Seeking financial independence from Clayton, she began sending stories to publishers in 1900. She regularly wrote new material while continuing to send out her old stories once a month. Bower published her first short story, "Strike of the Dishpan Brigade," locally in 1901. Her first short story to be published nationally, "Ghost in the Red Shirt," appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine in 1904.Later that year, Bower published her first Western novel, Chip of the Flying U, as a serial in Popular Magazine by Street & Smith. The book introduced readers to the fictional Flying U Ranch and the "Happy Family" of cowboys who lived there. The story line centers on a cowboy named Chip and his relationship with Dr. Della Whitmore, a self-reliant doctor from the East who "can shoot a coyote, laugh off a hazing, doctor a horse, and turn cowboys into pediatric orderlies." Their relationship begins coldly when Della takes credit for a painting done by Chip. But they fall in love after Della restores credit to Chip and after Chip rescues Della from a runaway horse.[8] The book was so popular that it was re-released in hardcover in 1906 with three watercolor illustrations by famed painter Charlie Russell. Chip of the Flying U rocketed Bower to fame, and she wrote an entire series of novels set at the Flying U Ranch.Bower went on to write 57 Western novels. She died in July 1940 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 68.

It was somewhere in the seventies when old Peaceful Hart woke to a realization that gold-hunting and lumbago do not take kindly to one another, and the fact that his pipe and dim-eyed meditation appealed to him more keenly than did his prospector's pick and shovel and pan seemed to imply that he was growing old. He was a silent man, by occupation and by nature, so he said nothing about it; but, like the wild things of prairie and wood, instinctively began preparing for the winter of his life. Where he had lately been washing tentatively the sand along Snake River, he built a ranch. His prospector's tools he used in digging ditches to irrigate his new-made meadows, and his mining days he lived over again only in halting recital to his sons when they clamored for details of the old days when Indians were not mere untidy neighbors to be gossiped with and fed, but enemies to be fought, upon occasion. They felt that fate had cheated them--did those five sons; for they had been born a few years too late for the fun. Not one of them would ever have earned the title of "Peaceful," as had his father. Nature had played a joke upon old Peaceful Hart; for he, the mildest-mannered man who ever helped to tame the West when it really needed taming, had somehow fathered five riotous young males to whom fight meant fun--and the fiercer, the funnier.

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There is a saying--and if it is not purely Western, it is at least purely American--that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. In the very teeth of that, and in spite of tho fact that he was neither very good, nor an Indian--nor in any sense "dead"-- men called Grant Imsen "Good Indian" to his face; and if he resented the title, his resentment was never made manifest--perhaps because he had grown up with the name.

It was somewhere in the seventies when old Peaceful Hart woke to a realization that gold-hunting and lumbago do not take kindly to one another, and the fact that his pipe and dim-eyed meditation appealed to him more keenly than did his prospector's pick and shovel and pan seemed to imply that he was growing old. He was a silent man, by occupation and by nature, so he said nothing about it; but, like the wild things of prairie and wood, instinctively began preparing for the winter of his life. Where he had lately been washing tentatively the sand along Snake River, he built a ranch. His prospector's tools he used in digging ditches to irrigate his new-made meadows, and his mining days he lived over again only in halting recital to his sons when they clamored for details of the old days when Indians were not mere untidy neighbors to be gossiped with and fed, but enemies to be fought, upon occasion. They felt that fate had cheated them—did those five sons; for they had been born a few years too late for the fun. Not one of them would ever have earned the title of “Peaceful,” as had his father. Nature had played a joke upon old Peaceful Hart; for he, the mildest-mannered man who ever helped to tame the West when it really needed taming, had somehow fathered five riotous young males to whom fight meant fun—and the fiercer, the funnier. He used to suck at his old, straight-stemmed pipe and regard them with a bewildered curiosity sometimes; but he never tried to put his puzzlement into speech. The nearest he ever came to elucidation, perhaps, was when he turned from them and let his pale-blue eyes dwell speculatively upon the face of his wife, Phoebe. Clearly he considered that she was responsible for their dispositions. The house stood cuddled against a rocky bluff so high it dwarfed the whole ranch to pygmy size when one gazed down from the rim, and so steep that one wondered how the huge, gray bowlders managed to perch upon its side instead of rolling down and crushing the buildings to dust and fragments. Strangers used to keep a wary eye upon that bluff, as if they never felt quite safe from its menace. Coyotes skulked there, and tarantulas and “bobcats” and snakes. Once an outlaw hid there for days, within sight and hearing of the house, and stole bread from Phoebe's pantry at night—but that is a story in itself.