DEAR OLD YANKEE DOODLE!

The Song is Seven Centuries Old and Four Great Nations Have

Y

Owned It.

ANKEE DOODLE" is one of the oldest songs in the world, and at different periods of an unparalleled career has belonged to England, to the once vast empire of Holland, and to the Roman Catholic Church, where it probably originated, somewhere about the year 1200 A. D. If you happen to be a musician and do not believe that such an undignified ditty ever could have been intended for solemn purposes, play it over on a pipe organ, very simply and slowly, and as the majesty of a grand old papal chant fills your soul all your doubts will vanish away.

Several hundred years ago the good people of Holland thought so much of "Yankee Doodle" that they adopted the tune for a harvest song and made up new words for it. Mary Mapes Dodge gives one of the verses in 'Hans Brinker":

Yanker didee dudle down
Didee dudel launter.
Yankee viver voover vown,
Botermelt und taunter.

Nobody knows exactly what this verse meant, but the lines are interesting because they are primarily responsible for the word "Yankee" and for the familiar English version of "Yankee Doodle."

Soon after being first sung, this quaint verse became so popular among all classes in Holland that it may be called a truly national song. It was sung in livelier time than the old chant which it supplanted.

While the great naval war of the sixteenth century was in progress, the English, under Admiral Drake, caught the tune. Much to the surprise of everybody, England broke the mighty sea power of HolThe English Steal it From the Dutch. land, and when the fighting was over the English people sang mocking parodies of the old song against its hated

authors. Yankee was understood to mean a Dutchman. Since the Dutch were sharp traders, the popular meaning of the word came to be a shrewd, hard-headed, ungracious sort of a fellow. Holland then tried to forget the song, and it thus passed into the hands of another nation.

All England sang varying words to it in Oliver Cromwell's time. But one day-the day that the great reformer rode into Oxford at the head of the rebels to battle with the King's army-he wore an immense ostrich feather fastened to his hat by a band of heavy silk "maccaroni" cord. Yankee Doodle then being a term of contemptuous ridicule, one of the courtiers of the boastful King composed the famous refrain:

Yankee Doodle came to town

Riding on a pony;
Stuck a feather in his hat
And called it maccaroni.

The rhyme did not hold its first popularity very long, because the rebels were successful, and probably it would have been forgotten entirely had not the old King's son returned to power a few years later. Meanwhile, the reformers had sung the tune to many nonsense verses, which soon spread to America.

The best known of these was "Lydia Fisher's jig," which made its appearance in New England about the year 1713, and became famous as a dance song. The words ran :

Lucy Locket lost her pocket;
Lydia Fisher found it.
Not a bit of money in it,
Only binding round it.

"Lucy Locket" was very popular till 1775, when British regulars were encamped on Boston Common, and the natives of the city and surrounding towns were organizing into companies of John Hancock's

Minute Men.

"minute men" under John Hancock. While as yet there had been no open war, the feeling was very bitter among the colonists, who were held in such contempt by the soldiers that they were taunted with the familiar tune to the words:

Yankee Doodle came to town
For to buy a firelock.
We will tar and feather him,
And so we will John Hancock.

This made the colonists so angry that they declined any longer to sing an air put to such contemptuous words against themselves. A few weeks later something happened that changed their minds, for it was the destiny of "Yankee Doodle" to become, apparently forever, the undisputed property of America.

In April, 1775, Lord Percy marched out of Boston with a brigade of British regulars to disperse the rebels assembled at Lexington and Concord. Amid cheering and flying flags, the bands played "Yankee Doodle," and the red-coated soldiers sang boastfully the old words which had vainly ridiculed Oliver Cromwell over a hundred years before. Perhaps, when they began to sing, they had forgotten how, even before Cromwell's time, the tune had been turned against its very authors. He must have remembered before returning to Boston, for at Lexington the vaunted soldiers of King George were routed by a handful of patriots, who, when they saw how things were going, went wild with joy, and taking the words right out of the mouths of their adversaries, shouted in exultation the song that had been aimed at them in contempt.

During the flight back to the camp the regulars were peppered with shot from behind stone walls and trees, so much to their own discomfort that Lord Percy, in a fit of disgust, next morning confessed that after marching out to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" they had danced to it all the way home.

"Yankee Doodle" has already belonged to the three great families of the Caucasian race the Latin, the Teutonic and the Anglo-Saxon. In seven centuries it has been carried into the heart of four of the greatest political powers of history.

But in America the song has found a permanent lodgment, and with our expanding territory it is destined to be an inspiring melody on distant shores, where waves the emblem of American liberty, and where courageous Yankees carry the higher civilization.

THE LAST GREAT BATTLE WITH THE INDIANS.

BY J. W. BUEL.

HERE is a pathetic interest that attaches to the Indians, especially for those who reflect upon the sufferings which they have endured at the hands of their subjugators. The unthoughtful are apt to regard what are known as the "Red Skins " as being more than savages, as the impersonation of cruelty, and the incarnation of blood thirstiness, hateful and unappeasable. The thoughtful, on the other hand, will reflect upon the conditions and circumstances that have conspired to make the Indian an implacable enemy of the white race. The whole of what are now the United States once belonged, by right of immemorial occupation, to the Red Man. To him the country was a vast preserve affording abundant means of livelihood without fatiguing drafts upon his energies. When confronted by the white man, his simple mind, untutored, inexperienced, superstitious, prompted him to a reverence such as awe inspires; but the white man came in gleaming armor, with falchion and spear, upon a mission of conquest. Before this interloper the Red Man was forced to retire. His valor availed him nothing; he fought with courage and died in despair. Driven ever westward, before trained armies and pioneers, the Red Man sought, but could find no refuge; his blood trails were everywhere, but place of final rest there was none. From a population of nearly ten million, at the time the Jamestown settlement was made (1607), the Indians of North America have dwindled to less than quarter of a million, and in another century the race will become extinct like their progenitors, the mound-builders. Their number is so small, their spirit so broken, their despair so great, that though they stubbornly refuse to assimilate with their conquerors, and tenaciously maintain the customs of their forbears, no existing tribe of Indians will ever again seriously dispute the mastery of their subjugators.

The illustration on the accompanying page is appropriately entitled, and graphically represents the last rally that the fast disappearing race will ever make.

On June 26, 1876, General Custer, with 200 as brave men as ever faced an enemy, while seeking a large band of Sioux Indians who had broken away from their Dakota reservation and had been committing many depredations, came suddenly upon the foe, 2,500 strong, in a valley of the Little Big Horn. The result of the battle constitutes one of the greatest tragedies of American history, but the particulars can never be accurately told because not a single person in Custer's force escaped the fury of the Indians. The remains of this heroic band were discovered a few days later, mutilated and massed about their brave commander, showing how fiercely they had fought and how bravely they had died.

Three months later another fight took place, between the regular cavalry, led by General Miles, and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians, the result of which was not only a victory, but a punishment so severe that it has served as an example and as a perpetual restraint to the Indian instinct to make reprisal upon their white foe. The Nez Perce tribe rebelled against the Government's decision to locate them in northeast Oregon and northwest Idaho, and went upon the war path, driving off stock and murdering settlers. General Howard set out with a strong force of cavalry to apprehend the marauders, but his search was a fruitless one, for the Indians contrived to elude his every effort to find them. General Miles, who at the time was a Colonel, then went in pursuit of the Indians, which he came upon, 500 strong, on the fourth of October, 1876, at Bear Paw Mountain, Montana, and their retreat being cut off, a desperate battle ensued which lasted for several hours. The Indians lost more than one-half their number in killed and the remainder were taken prisoners, except a dozen who escaped with Chief White Bird. This fight was so disastrous to the Indians, that the Nez Perce tribe was reduced to a pitiful number, incapable of further armed resistance, while all the other once powerful tribes have been similarly reduced, and are now practically prisoners to the strong arm of the government. The power of the Red Man has therefore been extinguished forever, and the time approaches when, like the game of the great west, he will disappear, or survive only as the relic of a lost race.