[Illustration: BAH, THE LITTLE INDIAN WEAVER]
_The_ LITTLE
INDIAN WEAVER
BY
MADELINE BRANDEIS
_Producer of the Motion Pictures_
"The Little Indian Weaver"
"The Wee Scotch Piper"
"The Little Dutch Tulip Girl"
"The Little Swiss Wood-Carver"
Distributed by Pathè Exchange, Inc., New York City
_Photographic Illustrations by the Author_
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_by arrangement with the A. Flanagan Company_
_COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY A. FLANAGAN COMPANY_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To every child of every land,
Little sister, little brother,
As in this book your lives unfold,
May you learn to love each other.
CONTENTS
Chapter I Page
The Corn Ear Doll 9
Chapter II
Something Terrible Happens 32
Chapter III
At the Trading Post 43
Chapter IV
The Prayer Stick 62
Chapter V
At Bah's Hogan 75
Chapter VI
Billy Starts His Story 88
Chapter VII
All About the Indians 101
Chapter VIII
Who Wins the Radio? 119
[Illustration: BAH AND CORNELIA]
The Little Indian Weaver
CHAPTER I
THE CORN EAR DOLL
How would you like to have a doll made from a corn ear? That is the
only kind of doll that Bah ever thought of having. Bah was only five
years old and she had never been away from her home, so of course she
couldn't know very much.
But she knew a bit about weaving blankets, and she was learning more
each day from her mother, who made beautiful ones and sold them.
You see, Bah and her mother were American Indians, and they belonged
to the Navajo tribe. Their home was on the Navajo Reservation in
Arizona, and they called it an Indian village. But if you went there
you would not think it very much of a village in comparison to the
villages you know.
As a matter of fact, all you could see was a row of funny little round
houses, looking very much like large beehives, put together with mud
and sticks and called hogans. A street of hogans in each of which lived
a whole family of Indians, a few goats and sheep, a stray dog or two,
an Indian woman sitting outside her hogan weaving a blanket, perhaps a
child running with a dog--this, then, was a Navajo village.
[Illustration: THE LITTLE INDIAN WEAVER]
How different from your villages with their smooth stone buildings,
their stores and gasoline stations, and pretty shrub-covered bungalows!
Most Indian women have many babies, and the whole family lives
together in one room which is the living room, bedroom, kitchen and
dining room all rolled into one. In the top of the hogan is a hole, so
that the smoke from the cooking fire in the middle of the room can go
out.
Bah did not spend much time in her hogan. No sooner was she up in the
morning than she was outside gathering sticks for the breakfast fire.
From the time she put her little brown face outside the hogan door,
bright and early in the morning, until nightfall when she cuddled down
in her warm Navajo blanket, she was out in the air--and the air is so
fresh out there in the desert; so much fresher than it is in the big
smoky cities.
Bah was a bright-eyed, healthy little girl, and the way she dressed
will sound queer to you, for her clothes were made just like her
mother's. On rainy days you have no doubt "dressed up" in mother's
clothes and thought it quite a lark. But when the game was over, how
glad you were to come back to your own little dresses and short socks.
But Bah had always dressed in the same way--and that is, in a long full
cotton skirt, a calico waist with long sleeves, and many strings of
bright beads about her neck. Her hair was long, black and shiny, and
her mother tied it up in a knot at the back of her neck with a white
cloth.
Every morning Bah had a lesson in weaving, just as you have a drawing
lesson or a sewing lesson. Her father had made her a tiny loom which
stood outside the hogan door next to her mother's big loom.
The morning when Bah planned the corn ear doll she was in the midst of
her weaving lesson. Mother's fingers were flying in and out, and Bah's
fingers were slow--oh, so slow, but her mind was not. Her mind was at
work on a doll. She had once seen the picture of a doll, a real one. It
was such a lovely doll! She wanted to cuddle it. How she would love to
hug a doll close to her and rock it to sleep!
The corn was ripe in the field which was not far away. After the lesson
she would pick an ear of corn, dry it nicely and dress it in a wee
Indian blanket. She would make some beads for its neck. She would stick
in two black beads for eyes. She would--
"Bah! you do not heed the lesson!"
It was Mother. And Mother was scolding. There were few times in Bah's
life when she could remember Mother having been cross. Bah was at once
attentive.
"I am sorry, Ma Shima (my mother)," she said, in the Navajo language.
"I was dreaming of something sweet."
"It is bad medicine to dream when one is awake, Bah," said Mother.
"You will never learn to weave--and a Navajo woman who cannot weave
blankets is indeed a useless one."
Bah hung her head in shame. But Mother laughed.
"Do not look that way, my little one, but try now to make the little
pattern which I teach you."
Bah did try. She had to rip out several rows of bad weaving caused by
her dreams of her corn ear doll. But not once, until the lesson was
over, did Bah think again of the doll.
The weaving lesson was at last over, and Bah ran quickly to the
cornfield, where she began to look eagerly for a proper ear of corn
with which to make a proper Indian doll.
As she was looking through the many waving stalks, she thought she
heard her name being called. But was it her name, and was it being
called? It sounded more like singing than like calling--and Mother did
not sing.
"Bah, Bah, Black Sheep
Have you any wool?"
This is what Bah heard.
She stopped in her search and looked around. There, a few yards away,
was some one coming towards her on a pony. Bah's first thought was to
run. She did not want to meet a stranger. So few came here to her home,
where the only people the little girl ever saw were Mother, Father,
and the few Indians who lived nearby.
White people were mysterious to Bah, and yet she often wondered about
the white children and how they played and worked and what they did all
day in school. Bah would go to school next year--to the big new school
just built on the Reservation for Indian children. White people built
it, and so it must be like the white children's school. Sometimes she
longed to go--and other times she was just a little bit afraid.
"Yes, sir, yes, sir,
Three bags full."
The pony which Bah had seen from a distance was now standing beside
her, and she could see the rider, although he could not see her, for
she had hidden and was crouching between the cornstalks.
[Illustration: BAH'S HOME]
The rider was a very small person--a boy--a white boy. Bah really
didn't feel as though he should be classified as white, for his skin
was a mixture of orange and brown--orange where the sun had burned him,
and over that a pattern of vivid brown freckles. Bah had never before
seen anything like him, and it is no wonder that the timid little
Indian hid herself.
The speckled boy took off his large cowboy hat and wiped his hot brow
with a cowboy's handkerchief.
"Gee, it's hot, Peanuts," he said aloud to the pony. "And I'd like to
know the way back--but looks as if we're lost."
Peanuts was presumably bored, for he let his head sink slowly, closed
his eyes and patiently waited for the next move. None came.
Bah, in her hiding place, was as dumb, if not as bored, as Peanuts. She
was tense with excitement, which obviously Peanuts was not, and did not
take her eyes from the boy's face. His every move very much interested
her. Here, then, was a white boy. He must be white, for he was not an
Indian and he spoke English.
Bah understood English, and of that she was very proud. Her mother and
father had always traded with the white man, so they had learned to
speak English, and had wisely taught their little girl. Now how much
easier it would be for Bah when she started to school.
But her knowledge did not help her at the moment when she looked up
from her cornstalk hiding place into the face of a live white boy.
Indeed she had even decided to run away, and was crawling noiselessly
through the corn.
"Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,"
again the boy began to sing as he started to turn away. Bah stopped
crawling. He did sing her name. He wanted her to come back. Maybe she
could help him find his way. And Oh! the pony was stepping all over the
corn. Didn't he know better than to do that?
The cornstalks rustled. The pony jumped to the side, and the boy turned
in his saddle and saw Bah standing.
"Oh, hello!" he said and turned back--the pony trampling upon a
beautiful stalk of corn. "I didn't see you before. Where were you?"
Bah couldn't speak. She tried ever so hard, but the English words she
knew so well would not come.
The boy jumped down from his pony and went up to her. There was a smile
on his face and as he came closer she saw that his eyes were as blue as
the sky. That part of him was pretty, thought Bah, even if his skin was
not--and the smile was friendly. So she gained courage.
"You call my name?" she ventured.
The boy looked puzzled.
"No," he said, "I don't know your name, but I'm glad I've found you."
Again he smiled, and this time Bah smiled too.
"My name Bah," she said, "and you say 'Bah, Bah, back skip'--I think
you call me come back to you."
When it suddenly dawned upon the boy what she meant he opened his mouth
very wide indeed and laughed so hard that Bah again began to be afraid.
But he stopped suddenly, realizing perhaps that he had frightened her,
and said:
"Oh, no. That is a song we sing about 'black sheep' that goes 'bah
bah'! I didn't know you heard me singing it."
Bah looked a bit ashamed, and did not offer a reply. The boy kept on
talking--
"But, gee, where do you come from, Bah? Is your house around here?"
"Yes," said Bah. "Hogan over way, Bah come to find corn in cornfield."
"Oh, I see," said the boy, "for dinner, I guess."
"No," replied the Indian girl, looking up into his face, "Bah make so
pretty doll from corn ear. Will dress in blanket and beads. You ever
see little girl's doll?"
She looked so intent and innocent that the boy could not scoff at what
would have been, among members of his own group at home, a subject
entirely forbidden in the presence of growing gentlemen. Dolls! What
interest had he in dolls! But as he looked into the upturned face of
the little brown maiden, he suddenly realized that she had never heard
of a boy's dislike for dolls; in fact, she had probably never before
met a white boy nor seen a white doll.
"Oh, yes, plenty of 'em," answered the white boy, "but never made of an
ear of corn--"
Then, seeing a shadow pass over her face he resumed gallantly, "But it
ought to make a peach of a doll. Maybe I could help you make it."
Now Bah was certain that she would like the white boy. She had never
before had a human playmate, and the feeling was a pleasant one. But
she remembered that her new friend was lost.
"You no can find way home?" she asked.
The boy laughed.
"I guess you want to get rid of me," he said. Then, sobering, he
resumed. "Yes, really, I'm lost. Peanuts and I have been wandering all
morning. You see, we started from Tuba early and we just didn't watch
the trails, so here we are."
"Oh, Tuba," said Bah, "not so very far. I show you how to go."
"But first I'll help you fix up a corn doll," said the boy. "We'll
first have to find a good fat corn ear. Nice fat dolls are the best,
don't you think so?"
As he talked he began looking through the cornstalks, and Bah watched
him. He finally found what he considered to be an ideal ear, and
together the two children made it into a doll, black bead eyes,
cornsilk hair, blanket, and all.
"I have just the name for her," said the boy. "We'll call her
'Cornelia!' Shall we?"
Bah nodded happily. The name was a new one to her and she did not catch
its meaning in relation to her beautiful new doll, but it pleased her
nevertheless. In fact, everything about the boy pleased her, and she
was sorry when at last he said:
[Illustration: BAH AND CORNELIA]
"It must be getting late. You'd better tell me how to get home. Mother
will wonder what happened."
Bah pointed out directions and the boy, thanking her, held out his hand
and said: "You never even asked my name. Don't you want to know?"
Bah drooped her head shyly as she replied: "Indian never ask name. Very
bad manner."
The white boy's eyes opened wide.
"That's funny," he said. "Then how do you get to know people's names?"
"When one people like other people, they tell name. No ask," said Bah
seriously.
"Oh, then I'll tell you quick 'cause I like you. My name's Billy."
Bah did not reply, but stood watching Billy as he swung himself onto
his pony. Then, when he was seated and smiled down at her, she smiled
up sweetly and said:
"We have cow named Billy."
[Illustration: BILLY]