It was a Saturday morning in December at the Indian Mission School.
Two young Sioux girls were going up the stairs--Hannah Straight Tree and
Cordelia Running Bird. It was their Saturday for cleaning. The two
girls drew a heavy breath in prospect of the difficult task that
confronted them. The great unplastered mission building was a chilly
place throughout the winter, and the halls and stairway that morning
were drafty from the blustering wind that swept the Dakota plains and
came through the outer doors below, where restless children kept going
to and fro continually. The young hall-girls shivered on the upper
landing, and stepped back in a sheltered niche in which the brooms were
hanging. They had thrown their aprons over their heads and shoulders,
and were dreading to begin their work.
"My floor and stairs always look nicer than your floor and stairs," said
Hannah Straight Tree to Cordelia Running Bird.
"Because you have the teachers' side, and that's always nicer, to begin
with, than the girls' side," answered Cordelia Running Bird. "You know
the teachers never walk whole-feet when you are scrubbing. If they have
to go by, they walk tiptoe, and their toes are sharp and clean and do
not make big tracks. But all the children on my side walk whole-feet
over the wet floor when I am scrubbing, and their shoes are big and
muddy. Ugh! big tracks they make! But I have learned the motto, every
word, and I can speak that when I feel discouraged with my work."
Cordelia Running Bird gazed at the motto, while the dormitory girls
flocked by, and when the hall was quiet she repeated it in the peculiar
monotonous tone with which an Indian pupil usually recites:
"Those who faithfully perform the task of keeping clean the dark places,
the cold places and the rough places, are they to whom it may indeed be
said, 'Well done.'"
"I shall not try to learn the motto, for it makes my memory tired," said
Hannah Straight Tree. "I do not like to think hard or work hard. I am
glad I have the teachers' side."
"If you do not think hard you will have a heart that is a dark place,
like the scrub-pail closet, and it will he hard to keep it clean of
wrong thoughts, like the white mother talked about in Sunday-school.
The motto means inside of us as well as places where we live. I like to
think hard," said Cordelia Running Bird. "I heard the teacher tell the
white mother that I had the best memory of any middle-sized girl, and
she said it was as good as many white girls' memories of my age, and
that is 'most fourteen. So I am to speak the longest middle-sized piece
in the Christmas entertainment."
"Ee!" cried Hannah Straight Tree, "hear her brag because she has a white
memory! If the teacher praised me, I should be ashamed to tell it!"
"She will not praise you, for you are always very dumb in school. You
will not try to speak a lesson only with the class in concert," said
Cordelia Running Bird. "I shall try to finish very fast this morning.
There are only two more Saturdays till Christmas, and to-day I want to
feather-stitch the little new blue dress for Susie. She will wear it
every day when she is here Christmas. Many white and Indian visitors
will be here."
"And you will feel so proud because the visitors and the school will
look at Susie, and the middle-sized and little girls will always choose
her in the games. They would not choose my little sister if she
played," said Hannah Straight Tree, with a sudden downcast look.
"Dolly is so shy I do not know if she would go into the middle of the
ring if they should choose her, and she would not know the way to choose
back," answered Cordelia Running Bird.
"Ee! She would! She would!" disputed Hannah Straight Tree. "Dolly is
as brave and smart as Susie--smarter, too, for she is shorter! She
could play the games if I would let her!"
"But you will not," replied the other; "you must not scold about my
little sister. Susie knows the motions in the Jack Frost song so well
the teachers says that she can motion with the children in the Christmas
entertainment."
"She does not motion right," said Hannah Straight Tree. "She gets
behind, and when they sing:
"'He nips little children on the nose,
He pinches little children on the toes,
He pulls little children by the ears,
And brings to their eyes the big, round tears,'
she is only nipping her nose when the rest are pulling their ears."
"But she is so little she looks cute, and the visitors and school will
laugh at her and praise her," said Cordelia Running Bird, undismayed.
"She will not wear the blue dress in the Jack Frost song. She will wear
a red dress from my mission box. I asked the white mother if I could
not buy the red cloth for an entertainment dress for Susie with the
money that she paid because I tended baby one month till the nurse-girl
came. And she said if I wished I could put a nickel on the missionary
plate twenty Sundays, which would be one dollar, and so buy the cloth.
She said it would be teaching me to give, as well as to receive. She
keeps the nickel with the school pennies, and I take one every Sunday."
"And you lift your hand so high and drop the nickel very too loud, so
all the school can hear, when Amy Swimmer passes you the plate!" cried
Hannah Straight Tree. "Just like it says, 'Ee! I am putting on a
nickel, and the rest can only give one penny! And _I_ earned my money,
and the pennies are money that their people sent them.'"
"You are very jealous," was the calm reply. "I shall hire a large girl
to cut it fine and help make the red dress very fast. The sewing
teacher has not time for such dresses. Ver-r-y pr-r-etty it will look!"
Cordelia Running Bird smiled prospectively, displaying small white teeth
and two round dimples. "Christmas evening I shall curl Susie's hair
with a slate pencil, and she will wear fine shoes, and black stockings
with the red dress. My father brought them with the blue dress, and I
keep them in my cupboard."
"You are much vain because your father is an agency policeman and earns
money, so he buys nice things for Susie," Hannah Straight Tree said,
with growing envy. "Dolly has to wear the issue goods, and she will not
look pretty Christmas time! Her dress will be a kind that looks black,
and Lucinda only knows a way to make it look like an Indian dress. She
will wear cowskin shoes so much too large, and very ugly-colored
stockings. If her dress gets torn before she comes, Lucinda will not
mend it nice--only draw it up so puckery. Very lots of grease spots
will be on it, and her hair will be so snarly I shall have to comb her
very fast."
"My little sister is not torn and dirty any time," said Cordelia Running
Bird, "for my mother came to mission school when she was young and
learned the neat way."
"My big sister only went to camp school just a little while," said
Hannah Straight Tree. "When my mother died she had to stay at home and
work and keep my little sister. Now again my father has got married,
and Lucinda wants to come to school and bring my little sister. Dolly
was five birthdays last Thanksgiving dinner."
"Susie was five birthdays while I was at home vacation. I would be so
glad if she could stay at school next time she comes, but she was
sliding on the ice, and she fell and broke herself right here."
Cordelia touched her collarbone. "She is mended, but my mother is
afraid to leave her with the children now," she added. "But next year
she will leave her. If your big and little sister come to school they
will have nice mission things."
"But they cannot for my father," Hannah Straight Tree said, with
deepening gloom. "He would let Lucinda, but he says Dolly is too short;
she must be ten birthdays when she comes. Lucinda loves Dolly, so she
will not leave her, and my stepmother is cross-tempered. Lucinda will
be twenty-one birthdays--much too old to come to school--when Dolly is
ten birthdays."
"You can tell your father the teachers like the Indian children come to
school when they are very short, so they can grow them more
white-minded," said Cordelia Running Bird.
"I told him, but he says he does not want his children very
white-minded. He says I came to school so short that they have grown me
too white-minded. I tell him I am very Indian-minded, but he tells me I
do not know white from Indian. Lucinda is so sad she will not try. She
looks so horrid--Dolly, too--I am much ashamed of them. I shall not
speak to them before the white visitors and the teachers--only down at
camp."
"Then you will be very wrong," said Cordelia Running Bird. "I would not
be ashamed to speak to my own people anywhere."
"Ee! You talk so good because your father wears a grand policeman's
coat and trousers, and your mother's head is in a hood!" said Hannah
Straight Tree, excitedly. "My father wears a very funny Indian clothes,
and feathers in his hairs, and my big sister's head is in a shawl. All
the girls will say on Christmas, 'Susie looked just like a fairy in the
Jack Frost song. We shall give her very lots of candy from our
Christmas bags.' Dolly knows the Jack Frost motions; I taught her, and
she did them with the children down at camp. But I shall not tell the
teacher, for Dolly has no pretty things to wear. That is why I won't
let her play the games. If my father saw her in the Jack Frost songs
and games, he would be glad she is so smart and just like he would let
her come to school. But you would be so sorry if my big and little
sister came to school. You think Susie is a skin-white girl and Dolly
is a very copper-colored Indian."
"You do not speak true," was the denial. "I should not be sorry, and I
do not think Susie is a skin-white girl. She is very copper-colored,
too."
"But you do not wish Dolly would be in the Jack Frost song and wear a
red dress just like Susie's!" challenged Hannah Straight Tree,
disconcerting her companion with the piercing gaze habitual to her race.
Though not quite innocent of all the charges laid to her, Cordelia
Running Bird was a truthful girl, and she would not disown a failing
plainly set before her by another. She evaded her companion's gaze in
silence.
"You are thinking hard! You cannot say it!" was the fierce indictment
from Hannah Straight Tree.
"But--I wish she could be in another motion song--and wear a--green
dress," came the hesitating answer.
"Ee! You think they would not watch Susie all the time if Dolly
motioned Jack Frost, too, and looked like Susie! And you do not wish
that Dolly had a blue dress--only ugly green--and looked like Susie in
the games," said Hannah Straight Tree.
"But little white girls do not need to wear alike dresses," was Cordelia
Running Bird's argument. "Because the little white visitor last summer
looked just like a fairy in the pretty pink with white lace, did her
sister have to wish another little white girl looked the very too same?"
she asked.
"There is a difference, but I cannot tell," answered Hannah Straight
Tree, taking down her broom in puzzled moodiness.
The two girls went about their work in a most unfortunate state of mind.
Hannah's discontent at Dolly's lack and Susie's plenty, and the prospect
of Cordelia's triumphs through the petted little sister, grew upon her,
and resulted in unlooked-for trials to Cordelia, who was much
discomfited by the force of her companion's criticisms.
Cordelia Running Bird was a bright, attractive girl, quite conscientious
in discharging her industrial and school duties, and much interested in
the Sunday-school; but in a private talk the very day before, the
teachers had referred to her in some perplexity.
"I wish Cordelia Running Bird were a little different," said the
school-teacher. "She leads her class, and is a credit to the school in
most respects, but she is rather too ambitious to outdo others. It
creates jealousy."
"I have observed that she is notional in the making of her dresses,"
said the sewing teacher. "She is apt to want the skirt a little wider
and the hem a half-inch deeper than the regular uniform. And she asks
to have more buttonholes, which means more buttons, and an extra ruffle
on the waist. But she begs me so politely and appears so thankful, if I
grant these trifling favors, that I find myself indulging her too
frequently. She does the extra work herself, cheerfully and neatly, if
not speedily, but closely watched by others. She has learned as if by
intuition that variety is the spice of life, but she seems unconscious
of the fact that she makes the other girls discontented. But she is so
pleasant and obedient, as a rule, that minor faults may be forgiven
her," the white mother charitably concluded.