TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

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.] These are indicated by a dashed blue underline.

THE BOOK OF THE
AMERICAN INDIAN

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

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

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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.

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.

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.”

They debated voluminously all night long, and at last decided to fight—but in the early morning a terrible noise was heard below on the plain, and when they rushed to see—behold the warriors in blue were rushing to and fro on their horses, shouting, firing off their appalling weapons. It was plain they were doing a war dance out of wanton strength, and so terrible did they seem that the hearts of the small people became as wax. “We can do nothing against such men; they are demons; they hold the thunder in the palms of their hands. Let us submit; perhaps they will grow weary of the heat and sand and go away. Perhaps they will long for their wives and children and leave us. We will wait.”

Others said: “Let us send our children—what will it matter? We can watch over them, they will be near us, and we can see that they do not forget our teachings. Our religion will not vanish out of their minds.”

So the old men went again to the war chief, and, with bowed heads and trembling voices, said: “We yield. You are mighty in necromancy and we are poor and weak. Our children shall go to the Iron Khiva.”

Then the war chief gave them his hand and smiled, and said: “I do not make war with pleasure. I am glad you have submitted to the commands of my great chief. Live in peace!”

III

For two years the children went almost daily to the Iron Khiva, and they came to love one of those who taught them—a white woman with a gentle face—but the man in the black coat who told the children that the religion of their fathers was wicked and foolish—him they hated and bitterly despised. He was sour-faced and fearful of voice. He shouted so loud the children were scared—they had no breath to make reply when he addressed them.

But to even this creature they became accustomed, and the life of the village was not greatly disturbed. True, the children began to speak in a strange tongue and fell into foolish songs which did little harm—they were, in fact, amusing, and, besides, when the cattlemen came by and wished to buy baskets and blankets, these skilled children could speak their barbarous tongue—and once young Kopeli took his son who had mastered this hissing language, and went afar to trade, and brought back many things of value. He had been to the home of the Little Father, and the fort.

In short the Pueblans were getting reconciled to the Iron Khiva and the white people, and several years went by so peacefully, with so little change in their life and thought, that only the most far-seeing expressed fear of coming trouble—but one night the children came home in a panic—breathless and storming with excitement.

A stranger had arrived at the Iron House, accompanied by a tall old man who claimed authority over them—the man who lived in the big white man’s town—and they had said to the teacher, “we want six children to take away with us into the East.”

This was incredible to the people of the cliff, and they answered: “You were mistaken, you did not understand. They would not come to tear our children from our arms.”

A Cow-puncher Visiting an Indian Village

Far in advance of settlers, in those early days when every man had to fight for his right of way, the American cow-puncher used to journey along the waste hundreds of miles of the then far Western country. Like a true soldier of fortune, he adventured with bold carelessness, ever ready for war, but not love; for in the Indian villages he visited there was no woman that such a man as he was could take to his heart.

An Apache Indian

In the ’eighties the habitat of the Apaches was in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Arizona. When pursued the Apaches always took to the mountains. They were hideously cruel. The settlers entertained a perfect dread of these marauding bands, whose onslaughts were so sudden that they were never seen. When they struck, all that would be seen was the flash of the rifle, resting with secure aim over a pile of stones or a bowlder, behind which was the red-handed murderer.

But the little ones were shivering with fear and would not go back to the plain. They moaned and wept all night—and at sunrise the old men went down to the Iron House, and said:

“Our little ones came home last night, crying. They said you had threatened to carry them away into the East; what does this mean?”

Then the strange men said, “This is true. We want six of your children to take away to school. We will not hurt them. They will live in a big house, they will have warm clothing, they will want for nothing. We are your friends. We want to teach your children the ways of the white man.”

Passionately the grandsires responded. “We do not want to hear of these things. Our children are happy here, their hearts will break if you take them away. We will not submit to this. We will fight and die together.”

Then the old white man who had been speaking became furious. His voice was sharp and fierce. “If you don’t give up the children I will take them. You are all fools—your religion is wicked, and you are not fit to teach your children. My religion, my God, is the only God that is true and righteous, and I will take your children in order that you may be taught the true path and become as white men.”

Then the old men withdrew hurriedly, their lips set in a grim line. Their return—their report, froze every heart. It was true then—these merciless men of the East were planning to carry their children into captivity. Swiftly the word passed, the goats were driven into their corrals, the water bags were filled, the storehouses were replenished. “We will not go down to the plain. Our children shall go no more to the Iron House. If they take them, it will be when all our warriors are dead.”

So it was that when the agent and the missionaries climbed the mesa path they came upon a barricade of rocks, and men with bows and war clubs grimly standing guard. They made little talk—they merely said, “Go your ways, white men, and leave us alone. Go look to your own sons and daughters, and we will take care of ours. The world is wide to the East, go back to it.”

The agent said, “If you do not send your children down to school I will call my warriors, and I will kill every man with a war club in his hand.”

To this young Kopeli, the war chief, said: “We will die in defense of our home and our children. We were willing that our children should go down to the Iron Khiva—till now—now when you threaten to steal them and carry them afar into captivity where we can never see them again, we rebel. We will fight! Of what value is life without our children? Your great war chief will not ask this hard thing of us. If he does then he has our answer.”

Then with dark faces the white men went away and sent a messenger across the desert, and three days later the sentinels of the highest roof saw the bluecoat warriors coming again. Raising a wild song, the war song of the clan, the cliff people hastily renewed their defenses. They pried great rocks from the ledges, and set them where they could be toppled on the heads of the invaders. They built the barricades higher. They burnished their arrows and ground their sickles. Every man and boy stood ready to fight and die in defense of their right to life, and liberty, and their rocky home.

IV

Once again the timid prevailed; they said: “See this terrible white man, his weapons are most murderous. He can sit where he is, in safety, and send his missiles against our unprotected babes. He is too great. Let us make our peace with him.”

So at last, for a third time, the elders went down to talk with the conquerors, and said, “What can we do to make our peace with you?”

Then the tall, old man said, “If you will give us two of your brightest sons to go away into the East we will ask no more, but your other children must return to the Iron House each day as before.”

The elders withdrew, and the news flew about the pueblo, and every mother looked at her handsomest son in sudden terror, and the men assembled in furious debate. The war party cried out with great bitterness of clamor, “Let us fight and die! We are tired of being chased like wolves.” But at last up rose old Hozro, and said, “I have a son—you know him. He is a good son, and he has quick feet and a ready tongue. He is not a brawler. He is beloved of his teachers. Now, in order that we may be left in peace, I will give my son.”

His short and passionate speech was received with expressions of astonishment as well as approval, for the boy Lelo was a model youth—and Hozro a proud father. “What will the mother say?” thought all the men who sat in the council.

Then gray old Supela, chief priest and sage, rose slowly, and said, “I have no son—but my son’s son I have. Him I will dedicate, though he is a part of my heart. I will cut him away because I love peace and hate war. Because if the white man rages against us he will slaughter everybody.”

While yet they were in discussion some listening boys crept away and scattered the word among the women and children. “Lelo and Sakoni are to be bound and cast among the white men.”

There was wailing in the houses as though a plague had smitten them again—and the mothers of the lads made passionate protestations against the sacrifice of their sons—all to no purpose. The war chief came to tell them to make ready. “In the morning we must take the lads to their captors.”

But when morning came they could not be found in their accustomed places, they had fled upon the desert to the West. Then, while the best trailers searched for their footprints, the fathers of the tribe went down and told the white chief. He said:

“I do not believe it, you are deceiving me.”

“Come and see,” said Hozro, and led the way round the mesa to the point where the trailers were slowly tracing the course of the fugitives.

“They are running,” said young Klee. “They are badly scared.”

“Perhaps they go to Oraibi,” said one of the priests.

“We have sent runners to all the villages. No, they are heading for the great desert.”

They followed them out beyond all hope of water—out into the desolate sand—where the sun flamed like a flood of fire and only the sparse skunk-weed grew—and at last sharp eyes detected two dark flecks on the side of a dune of yellow sand.

“There they are!” cried Klee, the trailer.

The stern old white man spurred his horse—the soldier chief did the same—but Klee outran them all. He topped the sand dune at a swift trot, but there halted and stood immovably gazing downward.

At last he came slowly down the slope and, meeting the white man, the agent, and the soldier, he said, with a sullen, accusing face, and with bitter scorn:

“There they are; go get them; my work is done!”

With wonder in their looks the pursuers rode to the top of the hill and stood for a moment looking; then the lean hand of old Hozro lifted and pointed to a little hollow. “There they lie—exhausted!”

But Klee turned and said, “They are not sleeping—they are dead! I feel it.”