The Adventure of Old Sun’s WifeWhen a mere maid, the chief of the Gros Ventres Indians kidnaped her and, binding her securely to himself, rode off for his own village. When within sight of their destination the girl stabbed him, killing him. This feat not only won her the right to wear three eagle feathers, but Old Sun, the rich and powerful chief of the North Blackfeet Indians of Canada, made her his wife.Illustration fromCHARTERING A NATIONbyJulian RalphOriginally published inHarper’s Magazine,December, 1891
When a mere maid, the chief of the Gros Ventres Indians kidnaped her and, binding her securely to himself, rode off for his own village. When within sight of their destination the girl stabbed him, killing him. This feat not only won her the right to wear three eagle feathers, but Old Sun, the rich and powerful chief of the North Blackfeet Indians of Canada, made her his wife.
Robert, after ploughing all one cold, rainy afternoon, took a griping chill and developed a cough which troubled him for some days. He said nothing about it, and kept on with his work when he should have been in bed, for he dreaded the hospital, and was careful to minimize all his bad symptoms, but one morning he found himself unable to rise, and the doctor pronounced him a very sick boy—“Another case of pneumonia,” said he.
Robert was silent as they moved him across the road into the men’s ward of the little hospital; but his eyes, bright with fever, seemed to plead for something, and when the agent bent down to ask him if he wanted anything, the boy whispered, “Stay with me.”
“All right, Robert, I’ll watch with you to-night. I must go now, but I’ll come back at noon.”
It was a long day for the sick boy, who watched and listened, giving little heed to the nurse who was tirelessly active in ministering to his needs. He knew just what was going on each minute. He listened for the assembly bell at seven o’clock. He could see the boys in their uniforms lining up in the halls. Now they were marching to chapel. They were singing the first song—he could hear them. Now they were listening to the little talk of the superintendent—and all was quiet.
At last they went whooping to their games in the play hour just before bedtime, and it seemed hard to lie there and hear them and be alone and forgotten. “The teachers will come to see me,” he thought, “and some of the boys.” But they did not come. It began to grow dark at last, and the taciturn nurse lit a smoking lamp and sat down to read. When she asked him a question it sounded like the snarl of a cat, but her hands were tender and deft. Oh, it was hard to be sick and lie still so long!
When the agent came in the boy said: “Major, tell my mother. Let her come. Tell her I’m very sick, Major!”
“All right, Robert. I’ll take the first opportunity to send her word. But she’s a long way off, you know. I hear she went to Tah-You’s old camp. But I will watch with you, my boy. Go to sleep and rest.”
The boy grew very much worse in the night, and in his temporary delirium he called piteously for his mother and in his native tongue, and the agent told one of the policemen to carry word to the mother, “Pawnee Woman,” that her son was sick. “Say to her that we are doing all we can for him, and that he is in no danger,” he added.
That day was a long day to Robert, a day that was filled with moments of delirium as a June day is filled with cloud shadows. Each hour carried him farther from the white man’s religion and the white man’s medicine—only his good agent comforted him; to him he clung with ever-weakening fingers. The agency doctor, earnest to the limits of his powers (you can’t buy great learning at eight hundred dollars per year), drew the agent aside and said: “The boy is in for a siege, Major. His temperature is rising in spite of everything. He must be watched closely to-night.”
“I’ll look out for that,” said Williams. Weary as he was, he watched again the second night, for the boy would not let him go, and his heart was very tender toward him.
The next morning as he sat in his little office he heard the swift soft thud of moccasined feet in the hall, and a timid knock. “Come!” he shouted, and before he could turn, a Cheyenne woman ran swiftly in. Her comely face was set in tragic lines of grief, and sobbing convulsively, while the tears flooded her cheeks. She laid one hand upon the agent’s shoulder, and with the other she signed: “Father, my son is going to die. Your work and your lodge have killed him. Have pity!” As she signed she wailed heart-brokenly, “He will die.”
“Dry your tears,” he replied, “He is not going to die. Two nights I have watched with him. I have myself given him strong medicine. He is better.”
She moaned as if all hope were gone. “No, no. He is very sick, father. He does not know me. His eyes are like those of a dead boy. Oh, have pity! Come with me. Come and aid him.”
To comfort her the weary man went back to the hospital, and as they entered, the mother made a wild gesture of repulsion, and said to the nurse: “Go away, dog woman! You are killing my son.”
In vain Williams tried to tell her how faithful the nurse had been. She would not listen.
“Father, let me take my son to the lodge. Then he will get well.”
He shook his head. “No, that would not do. He would die on the way. Let him stay here till he is better. You and I will watch over him here. No harm will come then. See how nice and clean his bed is, how sheltered his room is. It will be cold and windy in camp; he will be made worse. Let him remain till he is able to stand. Then it will be safe to take him away.”
By putting forth all his powers of persuasion he comforted and reassured the distracted mother, and she sat down in the hospital; but an understanding that she wanted to have Tah-You the medicine man visit the boy and breathe upon him and sing to him ran round the school and the agency, and the missionaries and the nurse were furious.
“The idea of that nasty old heathen coming into the hospital!” said the nurse to one of the teachers. “If he comes, I leave—that’s all!”
The doctor laughed. “The old cuss might do him good. Who knows?”
The Reverend Jones pleaded with Williams: “Don’t permit it. It will corrupt the whole school. Deep in their hearts they all believe in the old medicine man, and if you give in to them it will set them all back ten years. Don’t let them take Robert to camp on any plea. All they want to do is to smoke and make gibberish over him.”
To these impassioned appeals Williams could only say: “I can’t order them not to do so. They are free citizens under our present law, and I have no absolute control over them. If they insist on taking Robert to camp, I can’t stop them.”
Mr. Jones went away with a bitter determination to make some kind of complaint against somebody, to something—he couldn’t quite make up his mind to whom.
Then old Tah-You came, very grave and very gentle, and said: “Father, the Great Spirit in the beginning made both the white man and the red man. Once I thought we could not be friends and live on the same soil. I am old now and wise in things I once knew nothing of. I now see that the white man knows many good things—and I know also that the red man is mistaken about many other things. Therefore we should lay our medicines side by side, and when we have chosen the better, throw the worthless one away. I have come to put my curative charms and my lotions beside those of the white medicine man. I will learn of him, he will learn of me. This sick boy is my grandson. He is very ill. I ask you to let me go in to him, and look upon him, and smoke the sacred pipe, and breathe upon him, and heal him with strong decoction of roots.”
To this Williams replied: “Tah-You, what you ask I cannot grant. This medicine house was built for the white man’s doctor by people who do not believe as you do. Those who gave the money would be very angry at me if I let you enter the door.”
The old man’s face fell and his lips worked as he watched the signs made by the white chief.
“So be it,” he replied as he rose. “The white man’s heart is hard. His eyes are the eyes of a wolf. He gives only in his own way. He makes all men walk in his own road. He will kill my son and laugh.”
Williams rose also. “Do not harden your heart to me, friend. I know that much of your medicine is good. I do not say you shall not treat the boy. To-morrow, if he is no better, you can take him to camp. I cannot prevent that, but if you do and he dies I am not to blame.”
The old man’s face grew tender. “I see now that you are our friend. I am content.”
The Reverend Mr. Jones came down upon the agent again, and the nurse and the teachers (though they dared say nothing) looked bitter displeasure. It seemed that the props on which their sky rested, were tottering, but Williams calmly said: “To have the boy die in hospital would do us a great deal more harm than to have him treated by Tah-You. Were you ever young? Don’t you remember what it meant to have your old grandmother come and give you boneset tea and sit by your bed? Robert is like any other boy; he longs for his old grandfather, and would be quieted and rested by a return to the tepee. I will not sacrifice the boy for the sake of your mission. I won’t take any such responsibility.”
“It will kill him to be moved,” said the nurse.
“I’m not so sure of that. Anyhow and finally, these people, under the present ruling of the department, are citizens, and I have no authority to make them do this or that. I have given my consent to their plan—and that ends the matter.”
Early the next morning the father and mother, together with the grandmother, tenderly folded Robert in a blanket and took him away to camp, and all day the missionaries could hear the sound of the medicine man’s rattle, and his low chant as he strove to drive out the evil influences, and some of them were exceedingly bitter, and the chief of the big medicine house was very sad, for it seemed that his work was being undone.
Now it happened that Tah-You’s camp stood in the bend of the deep little river, and the tepees were based in sweet-smelling grasses, and when the sick boy opened his eyes after his swoon, he caught the flicker of leaf shadows on the yellowed conical walls of his mother’s lodge, and heard the mocking-bird’s song in the oaks. The kind, wrinkled face of his grandfather, the medicine man, bent over him, and the loving hands of his mother were on his neck. He was at home again! His heart gave a throb of joy, and then his eyes closed, a sweet langour crept over him, an utter content, and he fell asleep with the humming song of Tah-You carryinghim ever farther from the world of the white man’s worry and unrest.
The following day, as Williams lifted the door-flap and entered, Tah-You sat contentedly smoking. The mother, who was sewing on a moccasin, looked up with a happy smile on her face and said, “He is almost well, my son.”
“I am glad,” said Williams.
Tah-You blew a whiff from his pipe and said, with a spark of deep-seated humor in his glance:
“The white men are very clever, but there are some things which they do not know. You—you are half red man; that accounts for your good heart. You see my medicine is very strong.”
Williams laughed and turned toward the boy who lay looking out at the dear world with big, unwavering eyes. “Robert, how are you?”
Slowly the boys lips shaped the whispered word, “Better.”
“There is no place like home and mother when you’re sick, Robert. Hurry up and get well. I need you.”
As Williams was going, the mother rose and took his hand and cried out, poignantly: “You are good. You let me have my son. You have saved him from the cruel-hearted medicine woman. Do not let her make evil medicine upon us.”
“I will not let any one hurt him. Be at peace.”
Then the mother’s face shone with a wonderful smile. She stood in silence with heaving breast as her white chieftain went out. “He is good,” she said. “He is our brother.”
To this, serene old Tah-You nodded: “He knows my medicine is very strong—for he is half red man.”