DIONYSIO AND MARGARITA.
The Pages had noticed a good-looking Indian boy, perhaps eighteen or
nineteen years of age, riding about on a fine horse. He wore a dark
blue uniform trimmed with red; his hat was of good Mexican straw;
he wore also a stiff white shirt-collar. This boy seemed to live on
horseback. He was always alone. Either he held aloof from the others,
or they did not care for his company.
"Who is that?" asked Walter of Francisco one morning as they were
arranging the water-barrel under the pepper tree.
Francisco looked around.
"Oh, that is Arturo, the son of Juan Pablo," he said.
"And who is Juan Pablo?"
"The rich man of Cupa," answered Francisco. "He owns many houses here.
He married the daughter of the old Captain."
"What Captain?"
"That is how we call the chief," said Francisco. "Juan Pablo is not a
Cupa Indian, but he has lived here since he was a child. Arturo is his
son."
"And that is why he is better dressed than the others, and goes riding
about by himself?"
"Oh, no. Formerly he was not deemed any better than others--nor was he
different. That is the uniform of Carlisle he wears. He goes to school
now at Carlisle."
"Do you mean Carlisle, Pennsylvania?" asked Mr. Page, who had been
listening to the conversation from where he sat reading under the
_ramada_.
"Yes; he was one of those who went to the schoolhouse on the hill. The
teacher thought he was a very smart boy, and she talked and talked
with his father to let him go to the Indian school at Carlisle. He
comes home during the vacation, and is too fine for the others. At
least, that is what they say. I have found him well enough. I think it
is the others who imagine he is different."
"What will he do when his schooldays are over?" inquired Mr. Page.
Francisco shrugged his shoulders.
"That I can not tell," he said. "There was Adriana. She, too, went to
Carlisle. She had only her mother. When she came back to Cupa she was
unhappy. She could not bear the life here after having bathtubs lined
with white porcelain at Carlisle."
Mr. Page laughed.
"Is that what she said?" he asked.
"Oh, yes; that and many other things. Two years she was at Carlisle
without coming back. Her mother was very poor--living in a brush-house
that summer, as always, renting her own adobe for the season that she
might have something for the winter. Adriana cried all the time. The
next year she did not come back, nor the next. When it was time for
school to be over, she wrote that she would stay in Philadelphia. Then
her mother died--of sorrow."
"And what became of Adriana?"
"Who can tell that? No one knows. She has not written."
"Are there any others?" asked Mr. Page.
"Well, there is Dionysio, who will fetch you the wood to-day. He can
tell you what he thinks of the Indian school at Carlisle."
Mr. Page had become interested, Walter and Nellie equally so. When the
wood arrived they found the driver of the wagon an intelligent-looking
youth about the age of Arturo, perhaps a little older.
"They tell me you have been a student at Carlisle," said Mr. Page after
he had paid him.
"Yes, sir. I spent four years there," replied the boy, very politely.
"Of what benefit has it been to you?" inquired Mr. Page.
"No benefit, that I can see," was the reply.
"Has it made you discontented?"
"At first--yes; but not now. I am satisfied."
"What do you do for your living?"
"What they all do."
"Laboring work, you mean?"
"Laboring work--harvesting, ploughing, grape picking--any thing that I
can do."
"What advantage, then, is your having been at Carlisle?"
"None. There they teach us many things, but seldom can an Indian get
work in the large cities. A white man is always given the first chance;
that is natural. I learned wood-carving. Perhaps if I went far away
and waited long I might have been able to work at my trade; but my old
grandfather and grandmother were alone here with my little sister. How
could I stay away from them? So here I am, and here I will stay. It is
my home; I like it best."
"It is well that you look at it in that way if it must be so. It
appears to me there are hundreds of thousands uselessly spent in the
Indian schools every year."
"That is very true," said the young man. "How much better to have them
on the reservations, where are all the people together, where all could
help each other and learn from each other. What a fertile soil is this,
for instance. How much could be done here! There are many places like
this. But now--it is a bad job, a very bad job."
"I agree with you," said Mr. Page. "It is a _very_ bad job."
"I tell you," said the boy, "there are three kinds of Indians who come
from those schools. One is ashamed of his people and will not live
with them any longer. There is not much for him to do anywhere, so he
rambles about from place to place. The whites despise him; for his own
people he has lost all his good heart. He dies after awhile, always a
sot and a thief. There is another kind of Indian. He is discontented
because he has been out in the world that does not want him. He comes
back and remains with his people; but what he has seen and done when
away makes him not content with his home. Always there is sorrow in
his heart while he lives. If they had not taken him away from his home
he would have remained content. Do I not say right--according to your
belief?"
"Yes," said Mr. Page, "you do."
"And there is still another kind--the lazy one who comes home and
sneers at everything, and yet is too lazy to go away and look for
something better. Pretty soon he gets lower than those at whom he
laughs and sneers. He lives on the labor of his women--his mother, a
sister, or wife, when he gets one--until he dies. You cannot change the
Indian; if you attempt it you spoil him."
Mr. Page was surprised at the extraordinary good sense of the young man.
"You have a wise head on your shoulders," he said. "I do not wonder
that with very good intentions, perhaps, they selected you for
Carlisle. At any rate, they have taught you to reason."
"To reason!" echoed Dionysio, with a flash of the eye and contemptuous
curl of the lip that betrayed the latent deep Indian nature. "The
Indian could reason long before he ever saw the face of the white
man--and can do it to-day better than his teachers. I am not very old,
but that much I have seen and I know."
"I believe you are right again," said Mr. Page. "I should like to talk
with you some other time."
"Thank you," said Dionysio. "It will also give me pleasure."
That evening the children took a walk with their father and mother in
search of eggs. They were directed to a dilapidated brush-house at
some distance from their camping place. It was said the eggs there
were particularly large and fresh. They could not find it at first
and went considerably out of their way. At length they came to the
place, the most forlorn-looking dwelling they had yet seen. It was
quite extensive, however, open on three sides, and with a hole in the
roof for ascending smoke from a bare fireplace. Two heaps of ragged
and dirty bed-clothing lay close to the smouldering coals. A little
farther away, almost out of sight, was a cot. An old man lay on one
heap of rags, an old woman crouched near the fire. A little girl, very
pretty but very dirty, with beautiful large brown eyes and long black
hair, sat near the old woman, still as a statue. They all seemed to be
asleep.
"Have you any eggs to sell?" asked Mr. Page.
The old woman rose from the ground. She was crippled, and appeared bent
nearly double. She called her husband, who with great labor also got up
from his heap of rags. The child, seeing the bucket in Walter's hand,
cried out in Spanish:
"_Huevos, huevos!_"[B] The old people screamed at each other in a
_patois_ of Spanish and Indian, principally the latter. Then the child,
in obedience to some words from the grandmother, asked, "How many?" "A
couple of dozen," was the reply. The little one disappeared into the
darkness in the rear of the dwelling, faintly illumined by the dying
fire.
She presently issued forth, carrying the eggs in her apron. She counted
them into the pail, and Mr. Page placed a quarter in her hand. The old
woman snatched it eagerly from the child and thrust it into a bag
which she took from her bosom. Nothing could have been more squalid or
uncomfortable than the hut, nothing more unlovely than the inhabitants
with the exception of the child, whose beauty and innocence neither
dirt nor squalor could destroy.
The old man began to busy himself with the fire, throwing some brush
upon it, while his wife produced a blackened coffee-pot from one corner
and put it on the coals. They gave no more attention to their visitors
than as if they did not exist.
"One would think they did not know we were here," said Walter.
"Probably they mean that we should go," suggested his father. "Now that
we have the eggs there is no excuse for our staying."
"I wish we could have that cute little thing to live with us," said
Nellie. "She is not so very dark. I would like her for a little
playmate, mamma."
"She is very attractive," said her mother. "What a pity she must live
in a hovel like this." They turned to go, when a young man entered from
the outside. It was Dionysio.
"Good-evening," he replied to Mr. Page's salutation. "Were you looking
for me?"
"No," replied Mr. Page, "we were not looking for you, but we are glad
to see you. We have been purchasing eggs from these old people. I am
told they have an excellent lot of fowls. Perhaps you are on the same
errand."
"I!" exclaimed the boy; "I live here--these are my grandfather and
grandmother--and my little sister," he added, as the child glided to
his side.
Mrs. Page regarded him sadly.
"You are thinking, madam," said the Indian boy, "that it is a poor
place--and so it is. But in the winter we are a little better off. Ours
is yonder adobe house. My grandparents are too old and my sister too
little to do much work. I must be away working whenever I can."
"What is your sister's name?" inquired Mrs. Page. "She is a lovely
child."
"She is called Margarita," said the boy. "She is fond of her brother."
"Mamma," whispered Nellie, "ask him to let her come and play with me."
Mrs. Page did not reply. The child was in her present condition not a
possible companion for her own.
Dionysio had heard the whisper, and instantly divining what was in the
mind of Mrs. Page, he said:
"You see that she is neglected; but what can I do? My grandmother is
very queer. She will not allow the little one to go to the school on
the hill because the teacher is not Catholic, and she will not send her
to the Mission for then Margarita will be away so far. She does not let
her from her side. What can I do?"
"That is true; you can do nothing," said Mrs. Page. "But perhaps some
day----"
"Yes, when they die--the old people, you mean," continued Dionysio in
the most matter-of-fact tone. "Then I shall send her to the Mission.
But while they live it must be as they say. I hope you will like the
eggs; we have them always very good."
He made way for them to pass, a courteous smile upon his lips, his
little sister clinging to his hand.
A few days after this, when Alfonsa, the old woman who had said prayers
in the church, and who had since undertaken to do the family washing,
came for the clothes she said:
"There has been a death in the night. The grandmother of Dionysio is
gone. She was eighty-five. But many have lived longer. The grandfather
is ninety."
"How good of that boy to be so kind and work so hard for them,"
remarked Mrs. Page.
"They are not so poor, maybe," rejoined Alfonsa. "With a vineyard and
a little ranch, and the old woman always with chickens and eggs--they
are not so poor, maybe."
"What will become of the little one?" inquired Mrs. Page.
"Who can tell? Some one will take her. Dionysio can stay with the old
man."
"Couldn't _we_ have her, mother?" asked Nellie. "She is so sweet."
"What would you do with her, child?" inquired Aunt Mary.
"Love her and have her for a little playmate," said Nellie.
"Well, well! Who ever heard the like!" exclaimed Aunt Mary.
"But she is _so_ sweet," repeated Nellie. "Let us have her, mother."
Alfonsa smiled at Nellie and went off with the clothes.
Nellie still persisted in her pleading. Mr. Page was reading within
hearing distance. He now looked up from his paper and said to his wife:
"Martha, since we came to California you have not had an orphan to care
for. Before that there were always one or two."
"Yes, that is so," agreed his wife. "Some one would die, or some waif
would come along and we would keep them till a home was provided."
"Suppose you take the little Indian," said her husband. "I am greatly
interested in the boy. He and I have a chat nearly every day. We might
be able to give _him_ some kind of a chance also. If I buy that ranch
up at Poway he could be of use there."
"What do you wish me to do--not to take the child into the family as
one of us, surely?"
"Oh, no, not exactly; but we could take her in now, and later send her
to the Mission, or perhaps to school in town. If she is anything like
her brother she will become a help to you some day."
Nellie listened with sparkling eyes.
"Yes, do, mamma; do, do!" she begged.
"Well, I am willing to try it," said the mother. "That is, if her
brother consents, and we can get her thoroughly washed and combed and
clothed before we bring her here. How is that to be done?"
"Alfonsa will do it," cried Nellie. "She has the _cleanest_ house,
mother--the _cleanest_--and you see how neat she looks."
"Well, we can ask her after we have seen Dionysio," said her mother.
It was trying for Nellie to wait until they laid the old woman away on
the hillside, where the Indians bury their dead.
Alfonsa was first approached with regard to the child. "Yes," she said,
she would take the little one gladly; "and scrub and comb her every
day for a week till she is clean enough to bring under the roof of the
good, kind lady."
"But will the brother give her to us?" asked Mrs. Page.
"If he is wise, he will," said Alfonsa. "And he has always been wise."
Dionysio was pleased. His eyes brightened when the subject was broached
to him.
"But she is not clean," he said. "I could not bring her to you as she
is."
The talk with Alfonsa was then repeated. Dionysio had no objection
to make, and Margarita herself was willing. A week of "quarantine,"
as Mr. Page humorously referred to it, and one morning Dionysio made
his appearance, leading his sister by the hand. She wore a clean blue
calico dress, and a red ribbon in her neatly braided hair. Her face was
radiant, and when Mrs. Page approached, she at once went forward and
placed one little brown hand in hers.
"I have never seen her do like that," said the boy. "She is so shy."
"I have come to live with you," said the child, gazing frankly around
the tent till her glance included every member of the family.
"And you are welcome, my dear," said Aunt Mary, disarmed of her reserve
and prejudice, much to the surprise of everybody. She said afterward
that no one could have resisted such a charming face and manner. From
that moment her subjugation was complete, and Margarita attached
herself with equal affection to the kindly, if peculiar, old aunt. In
a few days the child had adapted herself to all the ways of her new
friends. Her amiable disposition and willingness to wait upon everybody
soon endeared her to all the family. Nellie petted and caressed her--it
did not seem to spoil her. She slept on a rug in the larger tent,
wrapped in a blanket, and curled up like a kitten. It was as though the
little orphan had always lived among them.
[Footnote B: Eggs.]