A loud-clamoring bell awakened us at half-past six in the cold winter
mornings. From happy dreams of Western rolling lands and unlassoed
freedom we tumbled out upon chilly bare floors back again into a
paleface day. We had short time to jump into our shoes and clothes, and
wet our eyes with icy water, before a small hand bell was vigorously
rung for roll call.
There were too many drowsy children and too numerous orders for the day
to waste a moment in any apology to nature for giving her children such
a shock in the early morning. We rushed downstairs, bounding over two
high steps at a time, to land in the assembly room.
A paleface woman, with a yellow-covered roll book open on her arm and a
gnawed pencil in her hand, appeared at the door. Her small, tired face
was coldly lighted with a pair of large gray eyes.
She stood still in a halo of authority, while over the rim of her
spectacles her eyes pried nervously about the room. Having glanced at
her long list of names and called out the first one, she tossed up her
chin and peered through the crystals of her spectacles to make sure of
the answer "Here."
Relentlessly her pencil black-marked our daily records if we were not
present to respond to our names, and no chum of ours had done it
successfully for us. No matter if a dull headache or the painful cough
of slow consumption had delayed the absentee, there was only time enough
to mark the tardiness. It was next to impossible to leave the iron
routine after the civilizing machine had once begun its day's buzzing;
and as it was inbred in me to suffer in silence rather than to appeal to
the ears of one whose open eyes could not see my pain, I have many times
trudged in the day's harness heavy-footed, like a dumb sick brute.
Once I lost a dear classmate. I remember well how she used to mope along
at my side, until one morning she could not raise her head from her
pillow. At her deathbed I stood weeping, as the paleface woman sat near
her moistening the dry lips. Among the folds of the bedclothes I saw
the open pages of the white man's Bible. The dying Indian girl talked
disconnectedly of Jesus the Christ and the paleface who was cooling her
swollen hands and feet.
I grew bitter, and censured the woman for cruel neglect of our physical
ills. I despised the pencils that moved automatically, and the one
teaspoon which dealt out, from a large bottle, healing to a row of
variously ailing Indian children. I blamed the hard-working,
well-meaning, ignorant woman who was inculcating in our hearts her
superstitious ideas. Though I was sullen in all my little troubles, as
soon as I felt better I was ready again to smile upon the cruel woman.
Within a week I was again actively testing the chains which tightly
bound my individuality like a mummy for burial.
The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it
darkens the path of years that have since gone by. These sad memories
rise above those of smoothly grinding school days. Perhaps my Indian
nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now for their present
record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the
low voice of a curiously colored seashell, which is only for those ears
that are bent with compassion to hear it.