The spring had been cold and wet, and pneumonia was common throughout the reservation on the Rosebud, and yet the trained nurse whom the government had sent out to preside over the little school hospital had little to do.
She was a grimly conscientious person, but not lovable. Men had not considered her in their home plans, and a tragic melancholy darkened her thin, plain visage, and loneliness added something hard and repellent to her devotional nature. She considered herself a martyr, one carried to far countries for the love of the gentle Galilean. She never complained vocably, but her stooping walk, her downcast eyes, and her oft-bitten lips revealed her discontent with great clearness to the red people, who interpret such signs by instinct.
“Why does she come here?” asked reflective old Tah-You, the sage of the camp on the Rosebud.
“She comes to do you good, to give your children medicine when they are sick,” replied the subagent, speaking in signs.
“She is not happy. Send her away. We do not need her. I am medicine giver.”
“I can’t do that. Washington sent her. She must stay. She looks unhappy, but she is quite content. When your children are sick you should send them to her.”
To this Tah-You made slow answer. “For many generations we have taken care of our own sick in our own way,” said he. “I do not think Washington should require us to give up all our ways. You tell Washington that we are able to care for our sick.”
It was only later that the agent found that the little hospital, the pride of his eyes, had been tabooed among the tribe from thevery start. On the surface this did not appear. The children marched over, two and two, each morning, and took their prevention medicine with laughter, for it had a sweet taste, and the daily march was a ceremony. Their teacher took occasion to show them the clean white walls and the wide soft beds, and told them to tell their parents that this beautiful little house was for any one who was sick.
To this they all listened with that patient docility which is their most marked characteristic, and some of the old men came and looked at the “medicine house” and spoke with the “medicine woman,” and while they did not show enthusiasm, they were not openly opposed.
All this gave way to a hidden, determined aversion after one of the employees had died in the place. The nurse, being sheathed in the boiler iron of her own superstitions, could not understand the change in the attitude of the red people. It was not her business to give way to or even to take into account their own feelings. If they were sick she insisted that the superintendent hale them forthwith to her rooms and bind them on her beds of painful neatness. The opposition of the old people she would put down with the bayonet if necessary.
A group of the old men came to the agent and said: “Friend, a white man has died in the medicine house. That is bad. Among us we do not let any one use the lodge in which one has died—we burn it and all that is connected with the dead one. There is something evil which comes from the clothing of one who is dead of a disease. We do not wish our children to enter this medicine house.”
“Furthermore,” said Tah-You, “there are many bottles standing about in the house, and they stink very strong—they make us sick even when we go in for a few moments. It is not good for our children to sleep there when they are ill.
“More than this,” continued Tah-You, prompted by another,“the medicine woman drinks whisky in the night, and our children ought not to see that their medicine woman is a drunkard.”
Slowly and painfully Mr. Williams explained that all the bed-clothes were purified and the room made clean after a person died in it. Also that the smell of the bottles was not harmful. As to the medicine woman and her drinking, they were mistaken. She was taking some drink for her cough.
“We do not believe in keeping a house for people to die in,” repeated Tah-You. “Spirits and things evil hover round such a place. They cry in the night and make a sick child worse. They are very lonely. It is better that they come back to the tepee when they are ill. The children are now frightened, and we want you to promise that when any of them fall sick you will not send them to this lonesome house which is death-tainted.”
The face of the agent hardened. To this end he knew the talk would come. “Listen, friends. Washington is educating your children. He is feeding them. He has sent also a medicine man and a medicine woman to take care of you when you are ill. I have built a nice clean house for you to be sick in. When your children are sick they must go there. I will not consent to their returning to the tepee.”
This was the usual and unavoidable end of every talk. Every wish of the red man was necessarily thwarted—for that is manifestly the way to civilize them. They rose silently, sadly, with the patient resignation to which they had schooled themselves, and passed out, leaving the agent with a sneaking, heart-burning sense of being woefully in the wrong.
In the weeks that followed, the smug little hospital stood empty, for no sick one from the camp would so much as look toward its glass-paneled door. The children no longer laughed as they lined up for their physic. The nurse sat and read by the window, with no duties but those of caring for her own bed. She had the professed sympathy of all those who have keen noses for the superstitionsof other people, but none whatever for their own. She thought “the government should force these Indians to come in and be treated.”
And as for Tah-You, these people of a creed were agreed that he was the meanest Indian in the tribe, and it was his influence which stood in the way of the medicine woman’s curative courses, and interfered with the plan to convert them into Christian citizens. “The power of these medicine men must be broken,” said the Rev. Alonzo Jones.
Once in a while a child was made to stay overnight in the dread, sleek little rooms of the hospital, but each one escaped at the earliest moment. In one case, when the sick one chanced to be an orphan, she was made a shining decoy and coddled and fed on dainties fit for a daughter of millions, in order that her enthusiastic report of the currant jelly and chicken broth might soften the hearts of her companions toward the hard-glazed walls and echoing corridors of the little prison house. But it did not. She told of the smells, of the awful silence and loneliness, of the sour-faced nurse who did many most mysterious things in the deep of the night, and the other girls shuddered and laughed nervously and said, “When we are sick we will run away and go to camp.” The opposition deepened and widened.
The struggle came when Robert, the first sergeant of the school, the captain of the baseball team, fell sick. He was a handsome, steady, good-humored boy of twenty, of fine physical development, and a good scholar. He spoke English readily and colloquially, and was a cheering example of what a reservation school can turn out. The superintendent trusted him implicitly, and found him indispensable in the government of the school and the management of the farm and garden, and the agent often invited him to his house to meet visitors.
Indian agent conversing with cavalry soldiersAt an Apache Indian AgencyThis incident occurred in the days of the so-called “Indian Ring,” when the Interior Department used to appoint as Indian agents men whose sole object was to enrich themselves by stealing the property of their savage wards. As a result of their reckless operations there was constant friction between these agents and the men of the army.Illustration fromNATCHEZ’S PASSbyFrederic RemingtonOriginally published inHarper’s Magazine,February, 1901
At an Apache Indian AgencyThis incident occurred in the days of the so-called “Indian Ring,” when the Interior Department used to appoint as Indian agents men whose sole object was to enrich themselves by stealing the property of their savage wards. As a result of their reckless operations there was constant friction between these agents and the men of the army.Illustration fromNATCHEZ’S PASSbyFrederic RemingtonOriginally published inHarper’s Magazine,February, 1901
This incident occurred in the days of the so-called “Indian Ring,” when the Interior Department used to appoint as Indian agents men whose sole object was to enrich themselves by stealing the property of their savage wards. As a result of their reckless operations there was constant friction between these agents and the men of the army.
Girl with knife fighting her kidnapper