Chapter 2
Good IndianThere 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, he rather liked it when he was a
little fellow, and with custom had come to take it as a matter of
course.
Because his paternal ancestry went back, and back to no one
knows where among the race of blue eyes and fair skin, the Indians
repudiated relationship with him, and called him white man—though
they also spoke of him unthinkingly as "Good Injun."
