Nine winters' snows had buried deep that night when my old grandmother,
together with my father and mother, designed my future with the glow of
a camp fire upon it.
Yet I did not grow up the warrior, huntsman, and husband I was to have
been. At the mission school I learned it was wrong to kill. Nine winters
I hunted for the soft heart of Christ, and prayed for the huntsmen who
chased the buffalo on the plains.
In the autumn of the tenth year I was sent back to my tribe to preach
Christianity to them. With the white man's Bible in my hand, and the
white man's tender heart in my breast, I returned to my own people.
Wearing a foreigner's dress, I walked, a stranger, into my father's
village.
Asking my way, for I had not forgotten my native tongue, an old man led
me toward the tepee where my father lay. From my old companion I learned
that my father had been sick many moons. As we drew near the tepee, I
heard the chanting of a medicine-man within it. At once I wished to
enter in and drive from my home the sorcerer of the plains, but the old
warrior checked me. "Ho, wait outside until the medicine-man leaves your
father," he said. While talking he scanned me from head to feet. Then he
retraced his steps toward the heart of the camping-ground.
My father's dwelling was on the outer limits of the round-faced village.
With every heartthrob I grew more impatient to enter the wigwam.
While I turned the leaves of my Bible with nervous fingers, the
medicine-man came forth from the dwelling and walked hurriedly away. His
head and face were closely covered with the loose robe which draped his
entire figure.
He was tall and large. His long strides I have never forgot. They seemed
to me then the uncanny gait of eternal death. Quickly pocketing my
Bible, I went into the tepee.
Upon a mat lay my father, with furrowed face and gray hair. His eyes and
cheeks were sunken far into his head. His sallow skin lay thin upon his
pinched nose and high cheekbones. Stooping over him, I took his fevered
hand. "How, Ate?" I greeted him. A light flashed from his listless eyes
and his dried lips parted. "My son!" he murmured, in a feeble voice.
Then again the wave of joy and recognition receded. He closed his eyes,
and his hand dropped from my open palm to the ground.
Looking about, I saw an old woman sitting with bowed head. Shaking hands
with her, I recognized my mother. I sat down between my father and
mother as I used to do, but I did not feel at home. The place where my
old grandmother used to sit was now unoccupied. With my mother I bowed
my head. Alike our throats were choked and tears were streaming from our
eyes; but far apart in spirit our ideas and faiths separated us. My
grief was for the soul unsaved; and I thought my mother wept to see a
brave man's body broken by sickness.
Useless was my attempt to change the faith in the medicine-man to that
abstract power named God. Then one day I became righteously mad with
anger that the medicine-man should thus ensnare my father's soul. And
when he came to chant his sacred songs I pointed toward the door and
bade him go! The man's eyes glared upon me for an instant. Slowly
gathering his robe about him, he turned his back upon the sick man and
stepped out of our wigwam. "Ha, ha, ha! my son, I can not live without
the medicine-man!" I heard my father cry when the sacred man was gone.