TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have
been placed at the end of the book.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
THE BOOK OF THE
AMERICAN INDIAN
[Illustration: (icon)]
[Illustration: An Indian Scout
_Illustration from_
A BUNCH OF BUCKSKINS
_by_ Frederic Remington
_Originally published by_
R. H. RUSSELL, _1901_]
THE BOOK OF THE
AMERICAN INDIAN
Written by
HAMLIN GARLAND
_Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters_
Pictured by
FREDERIC REMINGTON
[Illustration: (Indian on a horse)]
Harper & Brothers _Publishers_
New York and London
THE BOOK OF THE
AMERICAN INDIAN
Copyright, 1923
By Hamlin Garland
Printed in the U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
WAHIAH—A SPARTAN MOTHER 1
NISTINA 15
THE IRON KHIVA 25
THE NEW MEDICINE HOUSE 39
RISING WOLF—GHOST DANCER 51
THE RIVER’S WARNING 67
LONE WOLF’S OLD GUARD 77
BIG MOGGASEN 87
THE STORM-CHILD 95
THE BLOOD LUST 105
THE REMORSE OF WAUMDISAPA 113
A DECREE OF COUNCIL 121
DRIFTING CRANE 127
THE STORY OF HOWLING WOLF 135
THE SILENT EATERS 159
I. THE BEGINNINGS OF POWER 159
II. POLICY AND COUNCIL 168
III. THE BATTLE OF THE BIG HORN 173
IV. DARK DAYS OF WINTER 189
V. THE CHIEF SURRENDERS HIMSELF 195
VI. IN CAPTIVITY 204
VII. HE OPPOSED ALL TREATIES 215
VIII. THE RETURN OF THE SPIRITS 219
IX. THE MESSAGE OF KICKING BEAR 226
X. THE DANCE BEGINS 232
XI. THE BREAKING OF THE PEACE PIPE 239
XII. THE CHIEF PROPOSES A TEST 252
XIII. THE CHIEF PLANS A JOURNEY 264
XIV. THE DEATH OF THE CHIEF 270
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
AN INDIAN SCOUT _Frontis._
A KIOWA MAIDEN _Facing p._ 8
THE RED MAN’S PARCEL POST ” 9
A COW-PUNCHER VISITING AN INDIAN VILLAGE ” 30
AN APACHE INDIAN ” 31
AT AN APACHE INDIAN AGENCY ” 42
THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURE OF OLD SUN’S WIFE ” 43
THE MEDICINE MAN’S SIGNAL ” 54
THE GHOST DANCE ” 55
ON AN INDIAN RESERVATION ” 72
IN A STIFF CURRENT ” 73
A MODERN COMANCHE INDIAN ” 80
A BAND OF PIEGAN INDIANS IN THE MOUNTAINS ” 81
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW ” 98
GERONIMO AND HIS BAND RETURNING FROM A RAID IN
MEXICO ” 99
AN INDIAN BRAVE ” 116
IN AN INDIAN CAMP ” 122
CROW INDIANS FIRING INTO THE AGENCY ” 123
AN INDIAN TRAPPER ” 138
A QUESTIONABLE COMPANIONSHIP ” 139
THE ARREST OF THE SCOUT ” 152
AN INDIAN DUEL ” 153
CHEYENNE SCOUTS PATROLLING THE BIG TIMBER OF THE
NORTH CANADIAN, OKLAHOMA ” 174
INDIANS RECONNOITERING FROM A MOUNTAIN-TOP ” 175
THE BRAVE CHEYENNES WERE RUNNING THROUGH THE
FROSTED HILLS ” 186
CAMPAIGNING IN WINTER ” 187
INDIANS AS SOLDIERS ” 200
AN INDIAN DREAM ” 201
BURNING THE RANGE ” 212
AN OLD-TIME NORTHERN PLAINS INDIAN ” 213
AN INDIAN CHIEF ” 226
A FANTASY FROM THE PONY WAR DANCE ” 236
CHIS-CHIS-CHASH SCOUT ON THE FLANKS ” 237
SCOUTS ” 260
ON THE LITTLE BIG HORN ” 261
WAHIAH—A SPARTAN MOTHER
THE BOOK OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN
WAHIAH—A SPARTAN MOTHER
I
From a casual point of view the Indian Agency at Darlington was dull
and commonplace if not actually dispiriting. The sun blazed hot in
the roadway which ran between the licensed shops, the office and the
issue house. Lean dogs were slinking about. A few bedraggled red
women with shawls over their heads stood talking softly together
on the trader’s porch. A group of warriors in the shade of the
blacksmith shop were discussing some ancient campaign, while now and
then a clerk in shirt sleeves, his hands full of papers, moved across
the plaza, his step quickened by the sting of the sun.
A little back from the street the school building sat bleakly
exposed on the sod, flanked on each side by still more inhospitable
dormitories—all humming with unseen life. Across the river—the one
grateful, gracious touch of all—the yellowed conical tents of the
Cheyennes rose amidst green willows, and far beyond, on the beautiful
velvet green of the prairies, their untethered ponies fed.
To the careless observer this village was lonely, repulsive; to the
sympathetic mind it was a place of drama, for there the passions,
prejudices, ancestral loves and hates of two races met and clashed.
There the man of the polished stone age was trying, piteously,
tragically trying, to take on the manner of life of a race ten
thousand years in advance of him, and there a few devoted Quakers
were attempting to lead the nomads into the ways of the people of
the plow.
The Cheyennes, at the time practically military prisoners, had given
but a nominal consent to the education of their children, and many
individuals openly opposed it. For the most part the pupils in the
school wore buckskin shirts and were the wastrels and orphans of the
tribe, neglected and stupid. The fine, bold sons of the principal
chiefs would not surrender their freedom, and their contempt for
those who did was expressed in the cry, “Ahyah! Whiteman, Whiteman!”
It will appear that the problem before the teacher of the Cheyenne
and Arapahoe school in those days was not merely to govern the pupils
in the schoolroom, but to induce men like Tomacham and Tontonava to
send their own brave and handsome sons. With great native wit and
shrewdness, Seger, the newly appointed master, said to the agent:
“Our point of attack is the child. The red man’s love for his
offspring is very deep. We must also convince the mothers. They are
the conservative forces.”
The young teacher, Seger, had already won many friends among the
chief men by his unfailing helpfulness as well as sympathy with their
ways, and not content with the few pupils he had, he went out among
the tepees pleading the cause of education with the fathers in the
hearing of the mothers.
The old men listened gravely and for the most part courteously—never
interrupting, weighing each word as it fell. Some of them admitted
the reasonableness of his plea. “We think you are telling us the
truth,” they said, “but our hearts will not let us go with you on
the road. We love the old things. We do not like these new things.
We despise the white man’s clothing—we do not want our sons to go
crop-haired like a black man. We have left the warpath—never to go
back to it. What is before us we do not know—but we are not yet ready
to give our children into your hands.” And the women sitting near
applauded and said, “Aye, aye!”
Seger argued: “What will you do? The buffaloes are gone. The elk and
deer are going. Your sons cannot live by hunting—they must live as
the white man lives—by tilling the earth.”
“All that is strange,” darkly answered Tomacham. “We are as the Great
Spirit made us. We cannot change. If the Great One wished us to be
white why did He not make us so in the first place?”
Nevertheless, Seger’s words sank deep in the ears of Tomacham
and Wahiah, his wife, and one day the chief appeared at the door
of the school bringing his son Atokan, a splendid young lad of
fourteen—handsome as a picture of Hiawatha, with his fringed leggins,
beaded shirt, shining, braided hair and painted cheeks. Behind—a long
way back—came the mother.
“You see I have brought my son,” began the chief after Seger’s
delighted greeting.
“It is good. He will make a fine man.”
The chief’s face clouded. “I do not bring him to become like these,”
and he pointed at a couple of stupid, crop-haired boys who stood
gaping at him. “I bring my son to learn to read and write, but he
must not be clipped and put into white man’s clothing. He can follow
your ways without losing his hair. Our way of dress pleases us
better.”
Seger was obstinate. “I will not take him. If he comes he must do as
the rest—and he must obey me!”
The old chief stood in silence looking on his son, whose grace and
dignity appealed even to the teacher’s unæsthetic mind, and his eyes
grew dim with prophetic sadness. The mother drew near, and Tomacham
turned and spoke to her and told her what the white man said.
“No, no!” she wailed.
Then Tomacham was resolved: “No, my friend, I cannot do it. Let me
have him one more day. I cannot bear to leave him to become a white
man to-day. See, there is his mother, waiting, weeping; let him be a
small, red brave till to-morrow. I have given my word; I will bring
him.”
With some understanding of the chief’s ache in the heart Seger
consented, and Tomacham let his young warrior stay home for one more
day of the old kind.
What sorrowful ceremonies took place in that well-smoked tepee
Seger did not know, but next day the chief came again; he was very
sorrowful and very tender, but the boy’s face was sullen, his head
drooping.
Slowly the father said: “Friend, I have thought all night of what you
have said to me. The mother is singing a sad song in our tepee, but
we have decided. We give our boy into your hands; teach him the road.”
And with a quiet word to his son the heroic red man turned and went
away to hide his quivering lips. It was as if he had given his son to
an alien tribe, never to see him again.
When the mother saw her boy next day she burst into a moan of
resentful pain. All his wild, free grace was gone. His scissored
hair was grotesque. His clumsy gray coat pinched his shoulders, his
trousers were absurdly short, and his boots hard and clumsy. He slunk
into the circle of the fire like a whipped dog and would not lift his
head even in reply to questions. Tomacham smoked hard to keep back
the tears, but his mind was made up, his word given. “We are on the
road—we cannot turn back,” he said, though it cut him to the heart to
see his eaglet become a barnyard fowl.
II
By this time Seger had reduced the school to something like order,
and the pupils were learning fast; but truancy continued to render
his afternoon sessions farcical, for as soon as they had eaten
their midday meal many of the children ran away to the camp across
the river and there remained the entire afternoon. Others paid no
heed to the bell, but played on till weary before returning to the
school. In all this rebellion Atokan was a leader, and Seger, after
meditating long, determined on a form of discipline which might have
appalled the commander of a regiment of cavalry. He determined to
apply the rod.
Now this may seem a small thing, but it was not; it was a very
momentous thing. It was indeed the most dangerous announcement he
could make to a warlike tribe chafing under restraint, for red people
are most affectionate parents and very seldom lay violent hands upon
their children or even speak harshly to them. Up to this time no
white man had ever punished a red child, and when Seger spoke to the
agent about it he got no help; on the contrary, the old Quaker said:
“Friend Seger, I think thee a very rash young man and I fear thee
will involve us all in a bloody outbreak.” Then he added, “Can’t thee
devise something else?”
“I must have discipline,” argued Seger. “I can’t have my pupils
making a monkey of me. There are only four or five that need welting,
and if you give me leave to go ahead I’ll make ’em toe the mark;
otherwise, I’ll resign.”
“Thee can go ahead,” testily exclaimed the agent. “But thee sees how
we are situated. We have no troops in call. Thee knows, also, that I
do not approve of force; and yet,” he added, in reflection, “we have
made a failure of the school—thee alone seems to have any control of
the pupils. It is not for me to criticize. Proceed on thy way, but I
will not be responsible for any trouble thee may bring upon thyself.”
“I will take all that comes,” responded Seger—who had been trained
in the school of the Civil War, “and I will not involve you in any
outbreak.”
That night Seger made his announcement: “Hereafter every scholar must
obey my bell—and return to the schoolroom promptly. Those who do not
will be whipped.”
The children looked at him as if he had gone crazy.
He went on: “Go home and tell your people. Ask them to think it
over—but remember to be here at sunset, and after this every bell
must be obeyed instantly.”
The children ran at once to the camp, and the news spread like
some invisible vapor, and soon every soul in the entire agency,
red and white alike, was athrill with excitement. The half-breeds
(notoriously timorous) hastened to warn the intrepid schoolmaster:
“Don’t do that. They will kill you.” The old scouts and squaw-men
followed: “Young feller, you couldn’t dig out of the box a nastier
job—you better drop it right now and skip.”
“I am going to have discipline,” said Seger, “or tan the jacket of
every boy I’ve got.”
Soon after this he met Tomacham and Tontonava, both men of great
influence. After greeting him courteously Tomacham said:
“I hear that you said you were going to whip our children. Is this
true?”
“It is!” answered Seger, curtly.
“That is very wrong and very foolish,” argued Tontonava. “We did
not give our children into your care to be smitten with rods as the
soldiers whip mules.”
“If the children act like mules I will whip them,” persisted Seger.
“I punish only bad children—I do not beat good ones.”
“It is not our custom to strike our children. Do you think we will
permit white men to do so?” asked Tontonava, breathing hard.
Assuming an air of great and solemn deliberation, Seger said, using
the sign language to enforce his words: “Go home and think of this.
The Great Father has built this schoolhouse for your children. He has
given them warm clothing and good food. He has given them beds to
sleep in and a doctor to help them when they are sick. Now listen.
Miokany is speaking. So long as they enjoy all these things they are
bound to obey me. They must obey me, their teacher,” and he turned
and left the two old men standing there, amazed and indignant.
That night all the camps were filled with a discussion of this
wondrous thing. Seger’s threat was taken up formally by the men in
council and informally by the women. It was pivotal, this question of
punishment—it marked their final subjection to the white man.
“If we lose our children, then surely we are doomed to extinction,”
Tomacham said.
“Let us fight!” cried fierce Unko. “What is the use of sitting here
like chained wolves till we starve and die? Let us go out against
this white man and perish gloriously.” And a few applauded him.
But the graver men counseled patience and peace.
“We do not fear death—but we do not wish to be bound and sent away
into the mysterious hot lands where our brethren languish.”
“Then let us go to the school and frighten ‘Johnny Smoker’ so that he
will not dare to whip any child,” cried Unko.
To this Tomacham answered: “‘Johnny Smoker’ is my friend. I do not
wish to harm him. Let us see him again and counsel with him.”
“No,” answered Unko. “Let us face him and command him to let our
children alone. If he strikes my child he must die.”
And to this many of the women cried out in piercing nasal tones: “Ah,
that is good—do that!”
But Wahiah, the mother of Atokan, looked at the ground and remained
silent.
III
When the pupils next assembled they were as demure as quails, and
Seger knew that they had been warned by their parents not to incur
their teacher’s displeasure; but Atokan looked aside, his proud head
lifted. Beside him sat a fine boy, two years younger, son of Unko,
and it was plain that they were both ready to rebel.
The master recognized the gravity of the moment. If he did not
punish, according to his word, his pupils would despise him,
his discipline was at an end; and to stripe the backs of these
high-spirited lads was to invite death—that he knew better than
any white man could tell him. To provoke an outbreak would be a
colossal crime, and yet he was a stubborn little man—persistent as a
bulldog—capable of sacrificing himself in working out a theory. When
a friendly half-breed came late that night and warned him that the
camp was in debate whether to kill him or not he merely said: “You
tell them I am doing the will of the Great Father at Washington and I
am not afraid. What they do to me will fly to Washington as the light
flies, and the soldiers will come back as swiftly.”
Immediately after school opened next morning several of the parents
of the children came quickly in and took seats, as they were
accustomed to do, along the back wall behind the pupils. They were
graver than usual—but otherwise gave no sign of anger and remained
decorously quiet. Among them was Wahiah.
The master went on with firm voice and ready smile with the morning’s
work, well aware that the test of his authority would come after
intermission, when he rang the bell to recall his little squad to
their studies.
As the children ran out to play all the old people followed and
took seats in the shade of the building, silent and watchful. The
assistant teacher, a brave little woman, was white with excitement
as Seger took the bell some ten minutes later and went to the door
personally to give the signal for return. He rang as cheerily as if
he were calling to a feast, but many of the employees shuddered as if
it were their death knell.
The larger number of the children came scurrying, eager to show their
obedience, but a squad of five or six of the boys remained where they
were, as if the sound of the bell had not reached them. Seger rang
again and called personally: “Come, boys, time to work.”
At this three others broke away from the rebellious group and came
slowly toward him, but Atokan and the son of Unko turned toward the
river.
[Illustration: A Kiowa Maiden
_That Indian parents are very proud of their children’s progress
is evidenced by the eagerness with which they send their sons and
daughters to the schools established by the Government on the
different Indian reservations. The Kiowa maiden here pictured
is one of the many Indian girls and boys who more and more are
availing themselves of the opportunity to obtain an education and
thus fit themselves to take their places in civilized society._
_Illustration from_
THE WEST FROM A CAR WINDOW
_by_ Richard Harding Davis
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S WEEKLY, _May 14, 1892_]
[Illustration: The Red Man’s Parcel Post
_Illustration from_
A PILGRIM ON THE GILA
_by_ Owen Wister
_Originally published in_
HARPER’S MAGAZINE, _November, 1895_]
Seger made a pleasant little speech to the obedient ones and ended:
“I know we are to be good friends in the future as we have been in
the past,” but a little shiver passed over the school as he went out,
stern faced and resolute, to recall the truants.
The wife of Unko rose and scuttled away to give the alarm, but Wahiah
stood with her robe drawn over her lips as if in struggle to repress
a cry. Tomacham smoked on quietly, waiting the issue.
Meanwhile, Atokan strolled along the path, shooting his arrow at
small objects on the ground, apparently oblivious of his teacher’s
hastening footsteps.
When within hearing Seger called: “You know the rules, Atokan. Why do
you not answer the bell?”
Atokan made no reply, and Seger was tempted to lay hands upon him;
but to do this would involve a smart chase, and, besides, he was too
wise to seem to be angry. He followed the boys, pleading with them,
till Atokan turned and said: “You go away. Bimeby I come.”
“You must come now!”
“You going whip me?”
“Yes!”
“Then I don’t come.”
After half an hour of this humiliating parley Seger had the
dubious satisfaction of seeing the truant set his face toward the
schoolroom—for Atokan knew his father and mother were waiting, and
into his heart came the desire to test “Johnny Smoker’s” courage.
With insolent slowness he led the way past the group of his elders,
on into the schoolroom, followed by twenty-five or thirty Cheyennes
and Arapahoes. Some of the men were armed and all were stern. The
women’s faces were both sour and sad. It was plain that something
beside brute force must be employed in dealing with the situation.
Seger knew these people. Turning suddenly to Tomacham he asked:
“My friend, what do you send your children to school for?”
Taken by surprise, the chief hesitated. “To learn to read and write
and speak like the white man.”
“What do you think I am here for?”
“To show our children the way,” he reluctantly answered. “But not to
punish them.”
Seger was addressing the women through the chief. “Do you think I can
teach your children if they are out shooting birds?”
“No, I do not think so.”
“Do you think it would be honest if I took pay for teaching your
children and let them run to camp all the time?”
“No, I think it is necessary that the children be kept in school—but
you must not whip them.”
Seger faced Unko. “What kind of a person do you want to have teach
your children—a liar?”
“No, a liar is bad for them.”
Unko saw the drift of Seger’s remarks, and he moved about uneasily,
the butt of his pistol showing from beneath his blanket.
Seger then said in a loud voice, “I am not a liar!” and repeated this
in signs. “I told your children I would whip them if they did not
obey me, and now I am going to do it! You know me; I do not say ‘I am
your friend,’ and then work evil to your children. Jack, come here!”
A little boy rose slowly and came and stood beside his teacher, who
went on: “This is an orphan. He was dying in his grandmother’s tepee
when I went to him. I took him—I nursed him—I sat by his bed many
nights when you were asleep. Jennie,” he called again, “you come
to me!” A shy little girl with scarred face tiptoed to her beloved
teacher. “This one came to me so covered with sores that she was
terrible to see. I washed her—she was almost blind. I made her see. I
have done these things many times. There is not a child here that has
not been helped by me. I am not boasting—this is my duty, it is the
work the Great Father has told me to do. It is my work also to make
your children obey me. I am the friend of all red men. I have eaten
in your lodges. I have been in council with you. I am not a liar. It
is my duty to whip disobedient children, and I will do it. Atokan,
come up here!”
The boy rose and came forward, a smoldering fire in his black eyes.
As Seger laid a hand on his shoulder and took up his whip Wahiah
uttered a shuddering moan. A sinister stir went through the room.
The white man’s dominion was about to be put to the final test. In
Wahiah’s heart a mighty struggle was in progress. Love and pride in
her son demanded that she put an end to the whipping, but her sense
of justice, her love for Seger and her conviction that the boy was
wrong kept her fixed and silent, though her lips quivered and the
tears ran down her face. Tomacham’s broad breast heaved with passion,
but he, too, remained silent.
“Will you obey me?” asked the master.
Receiving no answer, he took firm hold of Atokan’s collar and
addressed the spectators. “Little Unko is younger than Atokan. He was
led away by him. I will therefore give both whippings to Atokan,” and
he brought the hissing withe down over the boy’s shoulders. Again a
moan of involuntary protest went through the room. Never before had
a white man struck a Cheyenne child and remained unpunished for his
temerity—and no other man, not even the agent himself, could have
struck that blow and survived the wrath of Tomacham.
Atokan seized the lapel of his coat in his teeth, and bit hard in
order to stifle any moan of pain the sting of the whip might wring
from him. His was the heart of a warrior, for, though the whip fell
hissing with speed he uttered no cry, and when the rod was worn to a
fragment he remained silent as a statue, refusing to answer a single
word.
Seger, convinced that the punishment was a failure unless it
conquered the culprit, caught up another willow withe and wore it out
upon him, to no effect—for, casting a glance at the pieces lying on
the floor, the boy’s lips curled in a smile of disdain as if to say:
“I am a warrior; I do not cry!”
Realizing his failure, Seger caught him with a wrestler’s twist,
threw him across his knee, and beat him with the flat of his hand.
The suddenness of this attack, the shame of the attitude, added to
the pain he was already suffering, broke the boy’s proud spirit. He
burst into loud lamentation, dropped to the floor, and lay in a heap,
sobbing like a child.
Straightening up, the teacher looked about him, expecting to meet a
roused and ready group of warriors. Every woman and all the children
were wildly moaning and sobbing. The men with stern and sorrowful
faces were struggling in silence to keep back the tears. The resolute
little white man had conquered by his logic, his justice, his bravery.
“Atokan, will you obey me?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered—his spirit broken.
Turning to the mother, Seger very gently said: “I do not like to
do this, Wahiah; it hurts my heart as it does yours, but it was
necessary. Tomacham, once I was a soldier—like you. I was taught to
obey. You may kill me for this, but the Great Father at Washington
will say, ‘Miokany died doing his duty.’ I know how hard it is for
you to plow and reap and do as the white man does, but it must be
done or you will die. Your children can do nothing till they learn
to speak the tongue. I am here to do that work. The children must
stay in school. They must obey me. I do not whip good children who
obey—only those who are bad. Now you old people go home and think
over what I have said, and we will return to our lessons.”
Then a wonderful, an incredible, thing happened! Tomacham rose and
took Seger’s hand and shook it silently in token of conviction. But
Wahiah, the mother of Atokan, with tears still streaming down her
cheeks, pressed the teacher’s hand in both of hers and looked into
his face as if to speak, but could not; then snatching her son’s
symbols of freedom, his bow and arrows, she broke them over her knee
and stamped on the fragments in the face of all the school. “Obey
Miokany,” she commanded, with Spartan vigor, and, turning swiftly,
went out, followed by the sad and silent chieftain.
NISTINA
NISTINA
There was lamentation in the lodges of Sunmaker’s people, for the
white soldiers had taken away the guns of Hawk’s young warriors, and
now they were to be sent away into lands of captivity. Huddled in big
wagons, the young men sat, downcast and sullen, ashamed to weep, yet
choking with grief and despair.
“Had I known this,” said Hawk to the captain of the escort, “I would
have died fighting,” and this defiant word he uttered in the harsh,
booming tone of a village crier. It was heard by everyone in the
camp, and the old women broke forth into wailing war songs, which
made the fingers of sedate old sages clinch.
But the blue-coated soldiers, ranked and ready, stood with loaded
guns in their hands, calmly observant, and the colonel sat his horse,
not far away, ready to give the signal for departure.
Hawk, young, handsome, and reckless, for some ruffianism put upon
him by a band of cattlemen, had organized a raid of retaliation, and
for this outbreak the government was sending him and his band to
Florida—a hot, strange land, far in the South. He, as its unconquered
leader, sat bound and helpless in one of the head wagons, his feet
chained to a rod, his hands ironed, and working like the talons of an
eagle.
It was hard to sit thus in the face of his father and mother, but it
was harder yet to know that Nistina, the daughter of Sunmaker, with
her blanket over her face, sat weeping at the door of her father’s
lodge. All the girls were moaning, and no one knew that Nistina loved
Hawk—no one but her inseparable friend, Macosa, the daughter of Crane.
Hawk knew it, for they had often met at the river’s edge of a
morning, when she came for water.
Now they were to part without one word of love, with no touch of
hands, never to see each other again, for it was well known that
those who went into that far country never returned—the breath of the
great salt water poisoned them.
At last the colonel uttered a word of command. A bugle rang out.
The piercing cries of the bereaved women broke forth again, wild
and heart-breaking: the whips cracked like pistol shots, the mules
set their shoulders to the collars, and the blue chariots and their
hopeless captives moved slowly out across the prairie.
Hawk turned his head and caught one last glance from Nistina as she
lifted her face to him, flung her robe over her head, and fell face
downward on the earth, crushed, broken, and despairing.
With teeth set like those of a grizzly bear, the young chief strained
at his cords, eager to fight and die in the face of his tribe, but
the white man’s cruel chains were too strong. He fell back exhausted,
too numb with despair to heed the taunt of the white soldier riding
beside the wheel, cynical, profane, and derisive.
And while the young prisoner sat thus, with bowed head and
low-hanging, lax hands, the little village of his people was lost to
view—hidden by the willows on the river’s bank.
In the months which followed, the camp of Sunmaker resumed its
accustomed round of duties and pleasure. The babes rollicked on the
grass, the old men smoked placidly in their council lodges, and
planned their next buffalo hunt; the children went reluctantly to the
agency school of a morning, and came home with flying feet at night.
All seemed as placid as a pool into which a suicide has sunk; but
no word came to Nistina, from whose face the shadow never lifted.
She had never been a merry girl like Macosa. She had been shy and
silent and wistful even as a child, and as the months passed without
a message from Hawk, she moved to her duties as silent as a shadow.
Macosa, when the spring came again, took another lover, and laughed
and said, “They have forgotten us, that Elk and Hawk.”
Nistina had many suitors, for was she not Sunmaker’s daughter,
and tall and handsome besides? Mischievous Macosa, even after her
marriage, kept her friend’s secret, but she could not forbear to
tease her when they were alone together. “Hawk is a bad young man,”
she said. “He has found another girl by this time. Why don’t you
listen to Kias?” To such questions Nistina made no answer.
At the end of a year even Sunmaker, introspective as he was, could
not fail to remark upon her loneliness. “My daughter, why do you seem
so sad? There are many young men singing sweet songs for you to hear,
yet you will not listen. It is time you took thought of these things.”
“I do not wish to marry,” she replied.
Then the old father became sorrowful, for he feared his loved one had
placed her heart on some white soldier, and one day he called her
to him and said: “My daughter, the Great Spirit decreed that there
should be people of many colors on the earth. He called each good in
his place, but it is not good that they mate one with the other. If
a white man comes to speak soft words into your ears, turn away. He
will work evil, and not good. Why do you not take a husband among
your own people, as others do, and be content? You are of the age
when girls marry.”
To this she replied: “My heart is not set on any white man, and I do
not wish to marry. Let me stay with you and help to keep your lodge.”
The old man’s voice trembled as he said: “My daughter, since my son
is gone, you are my staff. It is good to see you in our lodge, but I
do not like to see you sad.”
Then she pretended to laugh, and said, “I am not sad,” and ran away.
When she was gone Sunmaker called Vetcora and told her what had
happened. She smoked the pipe he handed to her and listened
patiently. When he had finished speaking, she said:
“She will come round all right. All girls are not alike. By and by
the true one will come, and then you’ll see her change her song. She
will be keeping her own lodge soon.”
But Sunmaker was troubled by his daughter’s frequent visits to the
agency across the river, and by her intimacy with Neeta, the daughter
of Hahko, who had been away to school, and who had returned much
changed, being neither white woman nor red.
She was living alone in a small hut on the river bank, and was not a
good woman for Nistina to visit.
He could not know that his daughter went there because Neeta could
read the white man’s papers, and would know if anything had happened
to Hawk. No one knew, either, that Nistina slyly asked about learning
to read. She laughed when she asked these questions, as though the
matter were of no consequence. “How long did it take you to learn to
read? Is it very hard to learn to write?”
“Oh no; it is very easy,” Neeta replied, boastingly, and when Nistina
went away her eyes were very thoughtful.
Again and again she called before she could bring herself to the
point of asking Neeta to go with her to the head of the school.
Neeta laughed. “Ho! Are you going to school? You will need to hump
low over your toes, for you will go among the smallest girls.”
Nistina did not waver. “Come, go with me.”
With a smile on her face Neeta led the way to the office of the
superintendent. “Professor Morten, I bring you a new scholar.”
Morten, a tall, grave-faced man, looked up from his desk, and said:
“Why, it’s Nistina! Good morning, Nistina.”
“Mornin’,” said she, as well as she could.
“She wants to go to school, eh? Well, better late than never,” he
added, with a smile.
“Tell him I want to work and earn money,” said Nistina.
When Neeta interpreted this, the teacher exclaimed: “Well, well! This
is most astonishing! Why, I thought she hated the white man’s ways!”
“I think she want to marry white man,” remarked Neeta.
Mr. Morten looked at her coldly. “I hope not. You’re a mighty smart
girl, Neeta, but I don’t like the way you carry on.”
Neeta smiled broadly, quite unabashed. “I’m all settled down now—no
more skylarking round. I’m keeping house.”
“Well, see that you keep settled. I don’t understand this change in
Nistina, but you tell her I’ll put her in charge of Mrs. Morten, and
we’ll do the best we can for her. But tell her to send all these
white men away; tell her not to listen to them.”
To Nistina Neeta said, “He says he will let you help his squaw, and
she will teach you how to read and write.”
Nistina’s heart failed her when she heard this, for she had seen
Mrs. Morten many times, and had heard many disturbing stories of her
harshness. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman, with keen gray
eyes and a loud voice.
At last Mr. Morten turned, and said: “Nistina, you may come this
afternoon after four o’clock, and we will arrange the whole matter. I
am glad you are going to forsake Indian ways, which are very bad. Be
a good girl, and you will be happy.”
When Neeta had explained what he said Nistina burst into a low cry,
and, covering her face with her blanket, rushed away.
“That’s the last you’ll see of her,” said Neeta, maliciously. “She
likes the Indian ways best.”
But Nistina was moved by a deeper impulse than fickle-hearted Neeta
could comprehend. A sick boy had returned from Florida a few days
before—a poor dying lad—and to Nistina he had brought word from young
Hawk. “I am studying so that I can send words on paper, like the
white man,” the message ran. “By and by I will send a white word to
you.”
This message instantly sank deep, although Nistina gave no sign. She
had more than the usual shyness of the maidens of her tribe, and it
was painful to her to have even this vague message transmitted by
another.
The girl thought long. She wished to send a message to her lover, but
for some days could not bring herself to confide in Neeta. Days went
by, and her resolution remained unformed. Nearly every evening she
had been going to see Neeta, but always her courage had failed her,
and then came the thought: “I, too, will learn to write and to read,
and then I can tell him how much I love him, and that I will wait
till I am old and I will love no one else.”
There was a great deal of gossip among the red women. “She is going
to marry a white soldier, that Nistina,” they said. “She is working
for money to buy fine beads and cloth.”
“It may be,” said her stepmother. “She does not open her heart to me.
She talks no more than an owl.”
The teachers marveled at ’Tina’s dullness in arithmetic and her
amazing progress in writing. In an incredibly short time she was able
to scrawl a note to her lover. It was a queer little letter, written
with painful exactness, in imitation of the copybooks:
I heard you words what you sent. They was good words. It made my
heart glad that words Black Fox which he brought. I am wait all
time for you. No one else is in my thoughts. This letter I am
written me myself all lone—no one is help me. No one knows that I
put it in puss-tofis. I send mogasuns.
NISTINA.
With this letter all stamped and directed, and the packages of
moccasins, she hurried with beating heart to the store in which
the post-office occupied a corner. There she hovered like a mother
partridge about its nest, coming and going, till a favorable moment
offered. She knew just what to do. She had rehearsed it all in her
mind a hundred times, and when she had slipped the letter into the
slit she laid the package on the window, and flew away to watch and
to wait for a word from the far-away land.
Weeks passed, and her heart grew sad and heavy. She dared not ask for
a letter, but lingered at the store till the clerks grew jocose and
at last familiar, and her heart was bitter toward all white men.
In her extremity she went to Macosa, who was now a matronly wife,
mother of a sturdy son, and asked her to go to the post-office and
inquire for a letter.
“A letter!” exclaimed she. “Who is going to write you a letter?”
After much persuasion she consented to go, but returned empty handed.
She had only half regarded Nistina’s request, but as the tears came
to her friend’s eyes, she believed, and all of the goodness of her
heart arose, and she said:
“Don’t cry. I will go every day and ask, if you wish me to.”
It is hard to wait for a letter when the letter is the one thing in
life worth waiting for, and Nistina was very silent and very sad
all the time, and her mistress wondered at this; but her questions
brought no reply from the girl, who kept at her writing diligently,
steadily refusing to confuse her mind with other things. She did
not seem to wish to talk—only to write at every spare moment, and
each day her writing grew in beauty of line till it was almost as
beautiful as the printed copy.
At last she composed another letter:
HAWK. My friend. I not hearing from you. If you are sick you
don’t write. My heart is now very sad. May be you die by this
time. Long time I am here waiting. Listening for your words I am
standing each day. No one my loving but you. Come home you get
away quick, for I all time waiting.
NISTINA.
After she had mailed this Nistina suddenly lost all interest in her
studies, and went back to the lodge of her father. In her heart she
said: “If he does not answer me I will go out on the hill and cry
till I die. I do not care to live if he is not coming to me.”
She took her place in her father’s lodge as before, giving no
explanation of her going nor the reason for her return. The kindly
old chief smoked and gazed upon her sadly, and at last said, gently:
“My daughter, you are sad and silent. Once you laughed and sang at
your sewing. What has happened to you? My child has a dark face.”
“I am older. I am no longer a child,” she said, unsmilingly.
And at last, in the middle of the third winter, when the white people
were giving presents to each other, a letter and a little package
came for Nistina, and Macosa came running with them.
“Here is your talking leaf,” she said. “Now I think you will laugh
once more. Read it, for I am very curious.”
But Nistina snatched the precious package and ran into her lodge, to
be alone with her joy.
It was a marvelous thing. There was the letter—a blue one—with her
name spelled on it in big letters, _Nistina_, but she opened the
package first. It contained a shining pouch, and in the pouch was a
necklace of wondrous beads such as she had never seen, and a picture
of her lover in white man’s dress. How strange he looked with his
hair cut short! She hardly knew him.
Her heart beat strong and loud as she opened the letter, and read the
first words, “Nistina, I am loving you.” After that she was confused,
for Hawk could not write as well as she, and she read with great
trouble, but the end she understood—“I am coming home.”
She rose and walked to her father’s lodge, where Macosa sat. She
entered proudly, the letter in her hand. Her head was lifted, her
eyes shone with pride.
“My letter is from Hawk,” she said, quietly. “He is coming home.”
And at this message Macosa and Vetcora covered their mouths in sign
of inexpressible astonishment.
Sunmaker smoked on with placid face till he began to understand it
all; then he said: “My daughter, you warm my heart. Sit beside me and
tell me of this wonderful thing.”
Then she spoke, and her story was to him a sweet relief from care.
“It is good,” he said. “Surely the white people are wonder-working
beings.”
THE IRON KHIVA
THE IRON KHIVA
I
For countless generations a gentle brown people had dwelt high on the
top of a mesa—far in the desert. Their houses rose like native forms
of sandstone ledges on the crest of the rocky hills—seemed indeed a
part of the cliffs themselves.
To join the old women climbing the steep path laden with water
bottles of goatskin, to mingle with the boys driving home the
goats—and to hear the girls chattering on the roofs was to forget
modern America. A sensitive nature facing such scenes shivered with
a subtle transport such as travelers once felt in the presence of
Egypt before the Anglo-Saxon globe trotter had vulgarized it. This
pueblo was a thousand years old—and to reach it was an exploration.
Therefore, while the great Mississippi Valley was being overrun these
simple folk lived apart.
They were on the maps of Arizona, but of this they had no knowledge
and no care. Some of them were not even curious to see the white man
who covered the mysterious land beyond the desert. The men of mystery
in the tribe, the priests and the soothsayers, deeply resented the
prying curiosity and the noisy impertinence of the occasional cowboy
who rode across the desert to see some of their solemn rites with
snakes and owls.
The white men grew in power just beyond the horizon line, but they
asked no favors of him. They planted their corn in the sand where
the floods ran, they guarded their hardy melons, and gathered
their gnarled and rusty peaches year by year as contentedly as any
people—chanting devout prayers and songs of thanksgiving to the
deities that preside over the clouds and the fruitful earth. They
did not ask for the corrugated-iron roofs of the houses which an
officious government built for them, nor for the little schoolhouse
which the insistent missionary built at the foot of their mesa.
They were a gentle folk—small and round and brown of limb, peaceful
and kindly. The men on their return from the fields at night
habitually took their babes to their arms—and it was curious and
beautiful to see them sitting thus on their housetops, waiting for
supper—their crowing infants on their knees. Such action disturbed
all preconceived notions of desert dwellers.
They had their own governors, their sages, their physicians. Births
and deaths went on among them accompanied by the same joy and sorrow
that visit other human beings in greener lands. They did not complain
of their desert. They loved it, and when at dawn they looked down
upon the sapphire mists which covered it like a sea, song sprang to
their lips, and they rode forth to their toil, caroling like larks.
True, pestilences swept over them from time to time—and droughts
afflicted them—but these they accepted as punishment for some
devotional remission on their part and redoubled their zealous
chants. They had no doubts, they knew their way of life was superior
to that of their neighbors, the Tinné; and their traditions of
the Spaniards who had visited them, centuries before, were not
pleasant—they put a word of fervent thanks into their songs that “the
men of iron” came no more.
But this new white man—this horseman who wore a wide hat—who sent
pale-faced women into the desert to teach a new kind of song, and
the worship of a new kind of deity—this restless keen-eyed, decisive
_Americano_ came in larger numbers year by year. He insisted that all
Pueblan ways were wrong—only his were right.
Ultimately he built an Iron Khiva near the foot of the trail, and
sent word among all the Pueblo peoples that they should come and
view this house—and bring their children, and leave them to learn the
white man’s ways.
“We do not care to learn the white man’s way,” replied the head men
of the village. “We have our own ways, which are suited to us and
to our desert, ways we have come to love. We are afraid to change.
Always we have lived in this manner on this same rock, in the midst
of this sand. Always we have worn this fashion of garments—we did not
ask you to come—we do not ask you to stay nor to teach our children.
We are glad to welcome you as visitors—we do not want you as our
masters.”
“We have come to teach you a new religion,” said the missionary.
“We do not need a new religion. Why should we change? Our religion is
good. We understand it. Our fathers gave it to us. Yours is well for
you—we do not ask you to change to ours. We are willing you should go
your way—why do you insist on our accepting yours?”
Then the brows of the men in black coats grew very stern, and they
said:
“If you do not do as we say and send your children to our Iron House
to learn our religion, we will bring blue-coated warriors here to
make you do so!”
Then the little brown people retreated to their rock and said: “The
iron men of the olden time have come again in a new guise,” and they
were very sad, and deep in their cavelike temples in the rocks, they
prayed and sang that this curse might pass by and leave them in peace
once more.
Nevertheless, there were stout hearts among them, men who said: “Let
us die in defense of our homes! If we depart from the ways of our
fathers for fear of these fierce strangers—our gods will despise us.”
These bold ones pushed deep into the inner rooms of their khivas,
and uncovered broken spears, and war clubs long unused—and restrung
their rude bows and sharpened their arrows, while the sad old
sages sang mournful songs in the sacred temples under ground—and
children ceasing their laughter crept about in coveys like scared
quail—dreading they knew not what.
Then the white men withdrew, and for a time the Pueblans rejoiced.
The peaceful life of their ancestors came back upon them. The men
again rode singing to the purple plain at sunrise. The old women,
groaning and muttering together, went down to the spring for water.
The deft potters resumed their art—the girls in chatting, merry
groups, plastered the houses or braided mats. The sound of the
grinding of corn was heard in every dwelling.
But there were those who had been away across the plain and who
had seen whence these disturbing invaders came—they were still
dubious—they waited, saying: “We fear they will come again! They are
like the snows of winter, bitter and not to be turned aside with
words.”
II
One day they came again—these fierce, implacable white men—preceded
by warriors in blue, who rode big horses—horses ten times as large
as a burro, and they were all agrin like wild cats, and they camped
near the Iron Khiva, and the war chief sent word to all the men of
the hill to assemble, for he intended to speak to them. “Your Little
Father is here also, and wishes to see you.”
All night this imperious summons was debated by the fathers, and
at last it was agreed that six old men should go down—six gray
grandsires—and hear what this war chief had to say.
“We can but die a few days before our time,” they said. “If they
carry us into the East to torture us—it will not be for long. Our old
bones will soon fall apart.”
So while all the villagers sat on their housetops to watch in silence
and dread, the aged ones wrinkled, gray, and half blind, made their
sad way down toward the peace grove in which the white lodges of the
warriors glittered. With unfaltering steps led by the chief priest of
the Antelope Clan, they approached and stood in silence before the
war chief of the bluecoats who came to meet them. Speaking through a
Tinné interpreter, he said:
“The Great Father, my chief, has sent me to tell you this. You must
do as this man says,” and he pointed at the man in black. “He is your
teacher. He has come to gather your children into that Iron House and
teach them the white man’s ways. If you don’t—if you make war—then I
will go up against you with my warriors and my guns that go _boom_,
_boom_, _boom_, a hundred times, and I will destroy you. These are
the commands of my chief.”
When the old men returned with this direful message, despair seized
upon the people. “Evil times are again upon us,” they cried. “Surely
these are the iron men more terrible than before.”