BOSTON TILICUM.
Marlowe Mann--"Boston tilicum," as the Siwashes called all the
missionaries, teachers, and traders from the East--sat down upon a bench
of split log and leaned upon his desk, which consisted of two split logs
in a rough frame. A curious school confronted him. His pupils numbered
fifteen, representing Germany, England, Sweden, New England, and the
Indian race.
"The world will some day come to the Yankee schoolmaster," he used to say
to the bowery halls of old Cambridge; and this prophecy, which had come to
him on the banks of the Charles, seemed indeed to be beginning to be
fulfilled on the Columbia.
He opened the school in the same serene and scholarly manner as he would
have done in a school in Cambridge.
"He is not a true gentleman who is not one under all conditions and
circumstances," was one of his views of a well-clothed character; and this
morning he addressed the school with the courtesy of an old college
professor.
"I have come here," he said, "with but one purpose, and that is to try to
teach you things which will do you the most good in life. That is always
the best which will do the most good; all else is inferior. I shall first
teach you to obey your sense of right in all things. This is the first
principle of a true education. You will always know the way of life if you
have this principle for your guide.
"Conscience is the first education. A man's spiritual nature is his
highest nature, and his spiritual concerns transcend all others. If a man
is spiritually right, he is the master of all things. I would impress
these truths on your minds, and teach them at the beginning. I have become
willing to be poor, and to walk life's ways alone. The pilot of the Argo
never returned from Colchis, but the Argo itself returned with the Golden
Fleece. It may be so with my work; if so, I will be content. I have
selected for our Scripture lesson the 'incorruptible seed.'"
He rose and spoke like one before an august assembly; and so it was to
him, with his views of the future of the great empire of the Northwest. A
part of the pupils could not comprehend all that he said any more than
they had understood the allusion to the pilot of the Argo; but his manner
was so gracious, so earnest, so inspired, that they all felt the spirit of
it, and some had come to regard themselves as the students of some great
destiny.
"Older domes than the pyramids are looking down upon you," he said, "and
you are born to a higher destiny than were ever the children of the
Pharaohs."
"With the exception of Gretchen, not one of the pupils fully understood
the picturesque allusion. Like the reference to the pilot of the Argo, it
was poetic mystery to them; and yet it filled them with a noble curiosity
to know much and a desire to study hard, and to live hopefully and
worthily. Like the outline of some unknown mountain range, it allured them
to higher outlooks and wider distances.
"He talked to us so grandly," said Gretchen to Mrs. Woods one evening,
"that I did not know half that he was saying; but it made me feel that I
might be somebody, and I do intend to be. It is a good thing to have a
teacher with great expectations."
"Yes," said Mrs. Woods, "when there is so little to expect. People don't
take a lot of nothing and make a heap of something in this world. It is
all like a lot of feathers thrown against the wind. _Nevertheless_ it
makes one happier to have prospects, if they are far away. I used to; but
they never came to nothing, unless it was to bring me way out here."
The log school-house was a curious place. The children's benches consisted
of split logs on pegs, without backs. The sides of the building were logs
and sods, and the roof was constructed of logs and pine boughs. All of the
children were barefooted, and several had but poor and scanty clothing.
Yet the very simplicity of the place had a charm.
Benjamin sat alone, apart from the rest. It was plain to be seen that he
was brooding over the painful event of the morning. Gretchen had grown
cheerful again, but the bitter expression on the young Indian's face
seemed to deepen in intensity. Mr. Mann saw it. To quiet his agitation, he
began his teaching by going to him and sitting down beside him on the rude
bench and opening to him the primer.
"You understand English?" said Mr. Mann.
"A little. I can talk Chinook."
In the Chinook vocabulary, which was originally the trade language of all
the tribes employed by the Hudson Bay Company in collecting furs, most of
the words resemble in sound the objects they represent. For example, a
wagon in Chinook is chick-chick, a clock is ding-ding, a crow is kaw-kaw,
a duck, quack-quack, a laugh, tee-hee; the heart is tum-tum, and a talk or
speech or sermon, wah-wah. The language was of English invention; it took
its name from the Chinook tribes, and became common in the Northwest.
Nearly all of the old English and American traders in the Northwest
learned to talk Chinook, and to teach Chinook was one of the purposes of
the school.
"Can you tell me what that is?" asked Mr. Mann, pointing to the letter A
in the primer.
"Fox-trap."
"No; that is the letter A."
"How do you know?"
Our digger of Greek roots from Cambridge was puzzled. He could not repeat
the story of Cadmus to this druid of the forest or make a learned talk on
arbitrary signs. He answered happily, however, "Wise men said so."
"Me understand."
"That is the letter B."
"Yes, aha! Boston tilicum, you let her be. Old woman no good; me punish
her. Knock-sheet--stick her" (club her).
Mr. Mann saw at once the strange turn that the young Indian's mind had
taken. He was puzzled again.
"No, Benjamin; I will teach you what to do."
"Teach me how to club her? You are good! Boston tilicum, we will be
brothers--you and I. She wah-wah, but she is no good."
"That is C."
"Aha! _She_ heap wah-wah, but _she_ no good."
"Now, that is A, B, and that is C. Try to remember them, and I will come
soon and talk with you again."
"You wah-wah?"
"Yes," said Mr. Mann, doubtful of the Indian's thought.
"She wah-wah?"
"Yes."
"You heap wah-wah. You good. She heap wah-wah. She no good. Potlatch come;
dance. She wah-wah no more. I wah-wah."
Mr. Mann was pained to see the revengeful trend of the Indian's thought.
The hints of the evil intention of the Potlatch troubled him, but his
faith in the old chief and the influence of his own integrity did not
falter.
Gretchen was the most advanced scholar in the school. Her real mother had
been an accomplished woman, and had taken great pains with her education.
She was well instructed in the English branches, and had read five books
of Virgil in Latin. Her reading had not been extensive, but it had
embraced some of the best books in the English language. Her musical
education had been received from a German uncle, who had been instructed
by Herr Wieck, the father of Clara Schumann. He had been a great lover of
Schumann's dreamy and spiritual music, and had taught her the young
composer's pieces for children, and among them Romance and the Traumerei.
He had taught her to play the two tone poems together in changing keys,
beginning with the Traumerei and returning again to its beautiful and
haunting strains. Gretchen interpreted these poems with all the color of
true feeling, and under her bow they became enchantment to a musical ear
and a delight to even as unmusical a soul as Mrs. Woods.
Gretchen's chief literary pleasure had been the study of the German
poets. She had a poetic mind, and had learned to produce good rhymes. The
songs of Uhland, Heine, and Schiller delighted her. She had loved to read
the strange stories of Hoffman, and the imaginative works of Baron Fouqué.
She used to aspire to be an author or poet, but these aspirations had
received no countenance from Mrs. Woods, and yet the latter seemed rather
proud to regard her ward as possessing a superior order of mind.
"If there is anything that I do despise," Mrs. Woods used to say, "it is
books spun out of the air, all about nothin'! Dreams were made for sleep,
and the day was made for work. I haven't much to be proud of in this
world. I've always been a terror to lazy people and to Injuns, and if any
one were to write my life they'd have some pretty stirring stories to
tell. I have no doubt that I was made for something."
Although Mrs. Woods boasted that she was a terror to Indians, she had been
very apprehensive of danger since the Whitman colony massacre. She talked
bravely and acted bravely according to her view of moral courage, but with
a fearful heart. She dreaded the approaching Potlatch, and the frenzy that
calls for dark deeds if the dance of the evil spirits should conclude the
approaching feast.
There was a sullen look in Benjamin's face as he silently took his seat in
the log school-house the next morning. Mr. Mann saw it, and instinctively
felt the dark and mysterious atmosphere of it. He went to him immediately
after the opening exercises, and said:
"You haven't spoken to me this morning; what troubles you?"
The boy's face met the sympathetic eye of the master, and he said:
"I was happy on the morning when I came--sun; _she_ hate Indian, talk
against him to you; make me unhappy--shade; think I will have my
revenge--_pil-pil_; then music make me happy; you make me happy; night
come, and I think of her--she hate Indian--shade. Me will have my
revenge--_pil-pil_. She say I have no right here; she have no right here;
the land all belong to Umatilla; then to me; I no have her here. Look out
for the October moon--Potlatch--dance--_pil-pil_."
"I will be a friend to you, Benjamin."
"Yes, Boston tilicum, we will be friends."
"And I will teach you how to be noble--like a king. You felt good when I
was kind to you?"
"Yes, Boston tilicum."
"And when the music played?"
"Yes, Boston tilicum."
"Then you must be good to her; that will make her feel good toward you. Do
you see?"
There came a painful look into the young Indian's face.
"I good to her, make her good? She good to me make me good? She no good to
me. She say I no right here. The land belong to Umatilla. She must go. You
stay. Look out for the October moon. She wah-wah no more."
"It is noble to be good; it makes others good."
"Then why isn't _she_ good? She make me ugly; you make me good. I think I
will punish her--_pil-pil_; then you speak kind, and the music play, then
I think I will punish her not. Then dark thoughts come back again; clouds
come again; hawks fly. What me do? Me am two selves; one self when I think
of you, one when I think of her. She say I have no right. She have no
right. All right after Potlatch. I wah-wah; she wah-wah no more."
"Be good yourself, Benjamin. Be kind to her; make her kind. You do right."
The young Indian hesitated, then answered:
"I do as you say. You are friend. I'll do as I feel when the music play. I
try. So you say."
The cloud passed. The teacher paid the Indian boy special attention that
morning. At noon Gretchen played Von Weber's Wild Hunt of Lutzow, which
drove Napoleon over the Rhine. The rhythm of the music picturing the
heroic cavalry enchanted Benjamin, and he said: "Play it over again."
After the music came a foot-race among the boys, which Benjamin easily
won. The afternoon passed quietly, until in the cool, lengthening shadows
of the trail the resolute form of Mrs. Woods appeared.
Benjamin saw her, and his calm mood fled. He looked up at the master.
"I is come back again--my old self again. She say I no business here; she
no business here. She wah-wah."
The master laid his hand on the boy's shoulder kindly and bent his face on
his.
"I do as you say," the boy continued. "I will not speak till my good self
come again. I be still. No wah-wah."
He dropped his eyes upon a page in the book, and sat immovable. He was a
noble picture of a struggle for self-control in a savage and untutored
heart.
Mrs. Woods asked for Gretchen at the door, and the master excused the
girl, thanking her for the music that had delighted the school at the
noon-hour. As she was turning to go, Mrs. Woods cast a glance toward
Benjamin, and said to the master in an undertone: "He's tame now--quiet as
a purring cat. The cat don't lick cream when the folks are around. But
he'll make trouble yet. An Injun is a Injun. I hate Injuns, though Parson
Lee says I am all wrong. When you have seen as many of 'em as I have,
you'll know more than you do now."
Benjamin did not comprehend the words, but he felt that the woman had said
something injurious to him. The suspicion cut him to the quick. His black
eye sparkled and his cheek burned. The scholars all seemed to be sorry at
the impression that Mrs. Woods's muttered words had left in his mind. He
had struggled for two days to do his best--to follow his best self.
School closed. Benjamin rose like a statue. He stood silent for a time and
looked at the slanting sun and the dreamy afternoon glories of the
glaciers, then moved silently out of the door. The old chief met him in
the opening, and saw the hurt and troubled look in his face.
"What have you been doing to my boy?" he said to the master. "Has he not
been good?"
"Very good; I like him," said Mr. Mann. "He is trying to be good here,"
pointing to his heart. "The good in him will grow. I will help him."
The old chief and the boy walked away slowly out of the shadows of the
great trees and up the cool trail. The tall master followed them with his
eye. In the departing forms he saw a picture of the disappearing race. He
knew history well, and how it would repeat itself on the great plateau and
amid the giant forests of the Oregon. He felt that the old man was
probably one of the last great chiefs of the Umatillas.
On one of the peninsulas of the Oregon, the so-called Islands of the Dead,
the old warriors of the tribes were being gathered by the plagues that had
come to the territories and tribal regions ever since the Hudson Bay
Company established its posts on the west of the mountains, and Astoria
had been planted on the great river, and settlers had gathered in the
mountain-domed valley of the Willamette. Wherever the white sail went in
the glorious rivers, pestilence came to the native tribes. The Indian
race was perceptibly vanishing. Only one son of seven was left to
Umatilla. What would be the fate of this boy?
The master went home troubled over the event of the afternoon. He was
asking the Indian to be better than his opponent, and she was a
well-meaning woman and nominally a Christian.
His first thought was to go to Mrs. Woods and ask her to wholly change her
spirit and manners, and, in fact, preach to her the same simple doctrine
of following only one's better self that he had taught to the young
prince. But he well knew that she had not a teachable mind. He resolved to
try to reach the same result through Gretchen, whom she upbraided with her
tongue but loved in her heart.
Mrs. Woods had come to regard it as her appointed mission to abuse people
for their good. She thought it tended toward their spiritual progress and
development. She often said that she felt "called to set things right, and
not let two or three people have their own way in everything"--a view of
life not uncommon among people of larger opportunities and better
education.
Benjamin came to school the next morning silent and sullen, and the
master went to him again in the same spirit as before.
"She say I no right here," he said. "She suffer for it. She wah-wah. Look
out for the October moon."
"No, you are a better Indian now."
"Yes; sometimes."
"The better Indian harms no one--one's good self never does evil. You are
to be your good self, and please me."
The young Indian was silent for a time. He at last said, slowly:
"But me know who will."
"Do what, Benjamin?"
"Make her suffer--punish."
"Who?"
"I know a bad Indian who will. He say so."
"You must not let him. You are son of a chief."
"I will try. I no wah-wah now."
At noon Benjamin was light-hearted, and led the sports and games. He was
very strong, and one of his lively feats was to let three or four children
climb upon his back and run away with them until they tumbled off. He
seemed perfectly happy when he was making the others happy, and nothing
so delighted him as to be commended. He longed to be popular, not from
any selfish reason, but because to be liked by others was his atmosphere
of contentment. He was kindly above most Indians, a trait for which his
father was famous. He was even kindly above many of the white people.
The next morning he came to school in good humor, and a curious incident
occurred soon after the school began. A little black bear ventured down
the trail toward the open door, stopping at times and lifting up its head
curiously and cautiously. It at last ventured up to the door, put its fore
feet on the door-sill, and looked into the room.
"Kill it!" cried one of the boys, a recent emigrant, in the alarm. "Kill
it!"
"What harm it do?" said the Indian boy. "Me drive it away."
The young Indian started toward the door as at play, and shook his head at
the young bear, which was of the harmless kind so well known in the
Northwest, and the bear turned and ran, while the Indian followed it
toward the wood. The odd event was quite excusable on any ground of rule
and propriety in the primitive school.
"It no harm; let it go," said the boy on his return; and the spirit of the
incident was good and educational in the hearts of the school.
The charm of his life was Gretchen's violin. It transfigured him; it
changed the world to him. His father was a forest philosopher; the boy
caught a like spirit, and often said things that were a revelation to Mr.
Mann.
"Why do you like the violin so much?" said the latter to him one day.
"It brings to me the thing longed for--the thing I long to know."
"Why, what is that?"
"I can't tell it--I feel it here--I sense it--I shall know--something
better--yonder--the thing we long for, but do not know. Don't you long for
it? Don't you feel it?"
The tall schoolmaster said "Yes," and was thoughtful. The poor Indian had
tried to express that something beyond his self of which he could only now
have a dim conception, and about which even science is dumb. Mr. Mann
understood it, but he could hardly have expressed it better.
The boy learned the alphabet quickly, and began to demand constant
attention in his eagerness to learn. Mr. Mann found that he was giving
more than the allotted time to him. To meet the case, he appointed from
time to time members of the school "monitors," as he called them, to sit
beside him and help him.
One day he asked Gretchen to do this work. The boy was delighted to be
instructed by the mistress of the violin, and she was as pleased with the
honor of such monitorial duties to the son of a chief. But an unexpected
episode grew out of all this mutual good-will and helpful kindness.
Benjamin was so grateful to Gretchen for the pains that she took with his
studies that he wished to repay her. He had a pretty little Cayuse pony
which he used to ride; one day after school he caused it to be brought to
the school-house, and, setting Gretchen upon it, he led it by the mane up
the trail toward her home, a number of the pupils following them. On the
way the merry-making party met Mrs. Woods. She was as astonished as though
she had encountered an elephant, and there came into her face a look of
displeasure and anger.
"What kind of doings are these, I would like to know?" she exclaimed, in a
sharp tone, standing in the middle of the way and scanning every face.
"Riding out with an Injun, Gretchen, are you? That's what you are doing.
Girl, get off that horse and come with me! That is the kind of propriety
that they teach out in these parts, is it? and the master came from
Harvard College, too! One would think that this world was just made to
enjoy one's self in, just like a sheep pasture, where the lambs go hopping
and skipping, not knowing that they were born to be fleeced."
She hurried Gretchen away excitedly, and the school turned back. Benjamin
was disappointed, and looked more hurt than ever before. On the way he met
his old father, who had come out to look for him, and the rest of the
scholars dispersed to their homes.
That evening, after a long, vivid twilight, such as throws its splendor
over the mountain ranges in these northern latitudes, Mrs. Woods and
Gretchen were sitting in their log-house just within the open door. Mr.
Woods was at the block-house at Walla Walla, and the cabin was
unprotected. The light was fading in the tall pines of the valleys, and
there was a deep silence everywhere, undisturbed by so much as a whisper
of the Chinook winds. Mrs. Woods's thoughts seemed far away--doubtless
among the old meadows, orchards, and farm-fields of New England. Gretchen
was playing the musical glasses.
Suddenly Mrs. Woods's thoughts came back from their far-away journeys. She
had seen something that disturbed her. She sat peering into a tract of
trees which were some three hundred feet high--one of the great tree
cathedrals of the Northwestern forests. Suddenly she said:
"Gretchen, there are Injuns in the pines. Watch!"
Gretchen looked out, but saw nothing.
The shadows deepened.
"I have twice seen Injuns passing from tree to tree and hiding. Why are
they there? There--look!"
A sinewy form in the shadows of the pines appeared and disappeared.
Gretchen saw it.
"They mean evil, or they would not hide. Gretchen, what shall we do?"
Mrs. Woods closed the door and barred it, took down the rifle from the
side of the room, and looked out through a crevice in the split shutter.
There was a silence for a time; then Mrs. Woods moved and said: "They are
coming toward the house, passing from one tree to another. They mean
revenge--I feel it--revenge on me, and Benjamin--he is the leader of it."
The flitting of shadowy forms among the pines grew alarming. Nearer and
nearer they came, and more and more excited became Mrs. Woods's
apprehensions. Gretchen began to cry, through nervous excitement, and with
the first rush of tears came to her, as usual, the thought of her violin.
She took up the instrument, tuned it with nervous fingers, and drew the
bow across the strings, making them shriek as with pain, and then drifted
into the air the music of the Traumerei.
"Fiddling, Gretchen--fiddling in the shadow of death? I don't know but
what you are right--that tune, too!"
The music trembled; the haunting strain quivered, rose and descended, and
was repeated over and over again.
"There is no movement in the pines," said Mrs. Woods. "It is growing
darker. Play on. It does seem as though that strain was stolen from heaven
to overcome evil with."
Gretchen played. An hour passed, and the moon rose. Then she laid down the
violin and listened.
"Oh, Gretchen, he is coming! I know that form. It is Benjamin. He is
coming alone. What shall we do? He is--right before the door!"
Gretchen's eye fell upon the musical glasses, which were among the few
things that she had brought from the East and which had belonged to her
old German home. She had tuned them early in the evening by pouring water
into them, as she had been taught to do in her old German village, and she
wet her fingers and touched them to the tender forest hymn:
"Now the woods are all sleeping."
"He has stopped," said Mrs. Woods. "He is listening--play."
The music filled the cabin. No tones can equal in sweetness the musical
glasses, and the trembling nerves of Gretchen's fingers gave a spirit of
pathetic pleading to the old German forest hymn. Over and over again she
played the air, waiting for the word of Mrs. Woods to cease.
"He is going," said Mrs. Woods, slowly. "He is moving back toward the
pines. He has changed his mind, or has gone for his band. You may stop
now."
Mrs. Woods watched by the split shutter until past midnight. Then she
laid down on the bed, and Gretchen watched, and one listened while the
other slept, by turns, during the night. But no footstep was heard. The
midsummer sun blazed over the pines in the early morning; birds sang gayly
in the dewy air, and Gretchen prepared the morning meal as usual, then
made her way to the log school-house.
She found Benjamin there. He met her with a happy face.
"Bad Indian come to your cabin last night," said he. "He mean evil; he
hate old woman. She wah-wah too much, and he hate. Bad Indian hear
music--violin; he be pleased--evil hawks fly out of him. Good Indian come
back. One is tied to the other. One no let the other go. What was that low
music I hear? Baby music! Chinook wind in the bushes! Quail--mother-bird
singing to her nest! I love that music.
"Say, you play at Potlatch, frighten away the hawks; mother-birds sing. No
devil dance. Say, I have been good; no harm old wah-wah. Will you--will
you play--play that tin-tin at Potlatch under the big moon?"
A great thought had taken possession of the young Indian's mind, and a
great plan--one worthy of a leader of a peace congress. Gretchen saw the
plan in part, but did not fully comprehend it. She could only see that his
life had become a struggle between good and evil, and that he was now
following some good impulse of his better nature.