Uncollected Pieces for Young Readers
Main ContentsTAME INDIANS.
Sarah O. Jewett. I was visiting a friend of mine in Boston not long ago, and one Sunday afternoon her younger brother and sister asked me to tell them a story; but I could not think of any, and proposed reading them one, instead.
"Oh! no," said Bessie; "tell us about something that you did once. Didn't the cars ever run off the track when you were traveling? Or tell us about something you have seen. I like that kind of story best."
"So do I," said Jack. "I like to hear Indian stories, too."
"Why," said I, "I can tell you about some tame Indians I saw once. I went to an Indian church out West." So we all went to the bay window to sit together on a cozy little sofa, and I began.
"It was in Wisconsin, about three hundred miles north of Chicago. I had been there a day or two and had said once or twice how funny it seemed to me to see the Indians walking about the streets. The only ones I had ever seen before were the forlorn creatures who live at watering-places in the summer and make fancy baskets to sell to the summer visitors."
"Yes," said Jack, "we used to go to see some at North Conway last summer. Don't you remember, Bessie?"
"When you are older, Jack," said I, "if you are still fond of war stories, you must read Mr. Parkman's books. There is one called 'The History of the Jesuits in North America,' where you find a great deal about the old Indian tribes. I'm afraid you will not admire them quite so much as you do now -- they were so horribly cruel. Though I suppose in these days we only know the worst side of the story."
"Does that book tell about fights and splendid Indians who knew all about hunting? I think I should like to read it now," said Jack: while Bessie said: "Please go on."
"There were two young ladies besides myself, and we started as early as eight o'clock; for it was a hard, long drive, at any rate, and some one told us the road was unusually bad just then. It was a sudden start -- just at dusk the night before. I had rushed to the window to see a passer-by, and came back to where my friend was standing, saying 'He wasn't an Indian, after all,' when she said:
"'What a pity you couldn't go out to 'the Mission' to church. You would see them there to your heart's content. But, for the life of me, I can't get up any enthusiasm. I think they are stupid, lazy creatures.'
"She said this because I was so excited about them and had been asking her to look at every one I saw. Next morning was Sunday, and I was waked very early and hurried all the time I was eating my breakfast, because we were really going to Oneida, and I was so glad. I can't tell you much about the drive, only that it was dreary and tiresome. There were no hills, but there were rough places enough in the road. It was November and the sky was gray. The day before had been rainy, and we had a dozen miles to drive, most of it through the forest, or what had been a forest before those awful prairie fires of 1871 had swept through it. We were not many miles from Peshtigo. You remember hearing of the terrible fires there, don't you, at the time Chicago was burnt -- when whole villages were destroyed and ever so many lives lost? I think those woods were more dismal than any place I ever had been in before. The green ferns and underbrush, which must have made it pleasanter in summer, had all been killed by the frost. There were half-frozen pools of water in the low places, and the charred and blackened trunks of the pine trees were standing everywhere as far as you could see, and black cinders and broken branches that had fallen were scattered over the ground. It seemed as if we never should come to the end of that forlorn road and find houses and fields again. But by and by we heard a church-bell ringing; and then the sun came out, and presently we saw the farms and the church itself, and there was the Mission at last, and we left the woods behind us. The driver whipped up his horses, and on we went in a hurry; but we still had some distance to go, and were late, after all."
"What did the wigwams look like?" said Jack.
"There were no wigwams at all," said I; "only log cabins and small frame-houses. It looked almost like any other little Western settlement. I was so disappointed, for it did not look at all as if Indians lived there. The church was like any little country church."
"Oh! what a pity," said both the children.
"But when we left the horses and went in -- oh! I wish you could have seen the congregation! If the houses had looked like ordinary houses, their owners certainly did not look like ordinary people. Their faces were just like the pictures of Indians in my old story-books, and I think I shouldn't have been much surprised if I had been scalped or tomahawked on the spot. They looked stupid and peaceable and seemed very devout; and the church was filled, all except the strangers' pew."
"What kind of a church was it?" asked Bessie.
"Episcopal," said I, "and it was so strange that the Sunday before I should have been at Grace church, in New York, where everything is so beautiful and the people such a contrast to these; and then one week afterward here I was, a thousand miles away, at the Oneida Mission -- myself, my friends, and the clergyman the only white people to be seen in the congregation. I was so sorry that I was just too late to hear them say the Creed; but I heard the responses afterward, and they sang two hymns in their own language. One was 'Am I a Soldier of the Cross?' They do not have all the usual Church service; but a much shorter and simpler one, leaving out parts they could not understand. We had Prayer Books with the Indian on one side and the English on the other, and a few hymns translated at the end. They seemed to know the hymns by heart, and their singing was very good and interested me more than anything. The tunes sounded so familiar and the words so strange."
"Do you remember any of the words?" asked Jack.
"Not one. I'm so sorry! ["] The service was all in Indian, but the sermon was in English and there was an Indian interpreter. At the side of the pulpit, just inside the chancel-rail, was a place like a small, old-fashioned square pew; and here stood a solemn old Indian, who listened to the English sentence and then repeated it in his own language. He had a fine, deep voice and a grave manner, and used many gestures, so he reminded me of what I had read of the speeches the braves made around the council-fires."
"Was it like the sermons we have Sundays here?" asked Bessie.
"Yes, only shorter and much more simple--just such a sermon as would be preached to children. I remember I liked it exceedingly."
"How were they dressed? I suppose they wouldn't have feathers in their hair for church, anyway," said Jack.
"Oh! no," said I. "The men wore rough, plainclothes, like other men; but the squaws were very droll. They had no bonnets, though I used to see them in the town, sometimes, with big felt hats. There at church they all wore bright-colored handkerchiefs, folded once cornerwise and tied over their heads and under their chins. They wore gay-colored calico and woolen dresses, and some of their shawls, which they used now instead of the old-time blankets, were fairly dazzling. They all looked lazy and good-humored -- except a few of the older ones, whose eyes were like hawks -- and as if they never heard of going on the war-path, or of burning people's houses and murdering them in their beds, or of carrying them off captive through the woods in winter. They were not your favorite kind of Indians, Jack. I'm afraid they would disappoint you. I think the Oneidas were always a peaceable tribe. This company that I saw at Duck Creek, as they call the settlement, are all that are left of the great tribe, and it was pitiful to think how they have been pushed further and further back from the sea and are being crowded out of the world."
"But I'm ever so glad," said Bessie, energetically. "It makes me afraid even to read about Indians, and I think these are the nicest ones I ever heard of. I am glad there isn't room enough in the world for them. Wicked things!"
And I thought if we only would crowd the wicked thoughts from our hearts by putting better ones in it would be a capital plan, and then it flashed into my head that the Indians had been like weeds in the garden, which have to make room for the flowers always; but that the white people, some of them, have no right to the Indians' places, for they are no better than they were. And I was just going to say something about this to the children, when I happened to think how funny the Indian babies were.
"After service was over," said I, "we watched the people go away, and laughed to see all the pappooses ride off in state on their mothers' backs, rolled up so cozily in the shawls."
"Oh! do tell us some more about the pappooses!" said Bessie, eagerly. "Had they been in church all the time?"
"Why, certainly, and they behaved well; only sometimes one would talk a little, and that would put it into the minds of the rest, who would follow, like chickens. Once in a while one cried a little; but they were evidently used to being in church. There was such a serious baby in the next pew to me, who stared hard at me nearly all the time with his little, round, black eyes.
"After they had all gone away, we had a pleasant little talk with the missionary, who told us he had lived there twenty years, and that the people were going to build a new stone church soon. And he showed us bead-work and pretty moccasins that the squaws had worked, and told us how much they are like children, and that they rarely save money; so when they are ill and old they are very forlorn. They are superstitious and remember many of the strange old legends; and I should like so much to have talked a great while longer, and to have asked him to tell me the legends and more about his parish. He had a sweet, kind face and seemed so fond of them and so proud of their progress since he came to live with them. The mission-house was very pleasant and he did not seem lonely.
"Then we came away, and, as we had brought our lunch in a basket, we had a merry time eating it, and the sun was bright, and we were quite jolly going home. We passed several Oneida families, and they never walked side by side, but in true 'Indian file,' children and all, and the pappooses peeping out from the shawls. It was such a wonder to me that they didn't slip down to the ground."
"Suppose we try with Tatters? There's Mamma's carriage-shawl in the hall," said Jack, who is fond of experiments. But the little dog was nowhere to be found, and his master came back to ask if there was any more of the story.
"No, there is not," said my friend, his elder sister, who had come down-stairs. "But we are going for a walk and to see the sunset, and you and Bessie may come too, if you like."
NOTES"Tame Indians" appeared in The Independent (27:26) on April 1, 1875. Probable errors are corrected and indicated with brackets. If you see errors or items in need of annotation, please contact the site manager.
[ Back ]three hundred miles: By 21st-century roads, the distance from Chicago to Green Bay, Wisconsin, is closer to 200 miles.
[ Back ]North Conway: North Conway is in east central New Hampshire.
[ Back ]Parkman's books. There is one called 'The History of the Jesuits in North America': Francis Parkman (1823-1893) published The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century in 1867. He wrote several other books that dealt extensively with Native Americans, such as The Oregon Trail (1849) and The History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851).
[ Back ]Oneida: The Oneida tribe lived in western New York when European colonists arrived, and they were one of the earlier tribes to be converted to Christianity. Despite joining Americans in the American Revolution, they were persuaded to move to reservations in Wisconsin in the 1820s. Duck Creek, near the present city of Green Bay, was one of the first permanent Oneida villages in the area. In Sarah Orne Jewett, Elizabeth Silverthorne reports that Jewett visited Green Bay, Wisconsin and the Oneida reservation in the early 1870s. She wrote to Professor Parsons that she found the visit to a settlement "fascinating" and described "a visit to an Episcopal church in which all of the congregation were Indians, looking just like those in her picture books" (64). She might, with diligence or luck, have been able to read Franklin B. Hough's Notices of Peter Penet, and of His Operations among the Oneida Indians : Including a Plan Prepared by Him for the Government of That Tribe (1867) to learn more of the history of the tribe.
[ Back ]those awful prairie fires of 1871: Violent forest files swept through extensive areas of Michigan and Wisconsin on October 8-14, 1871, killing more than 2000 people, according to the Dictionary of American History. More than 1100 people died near Peshtigo, the hardest hit area.
[ Back ]Peshtigo: Peshtigo is north of the city of Green Bay, on the Peshtigo River, which flows into the bay from the north.
[ Back ]the time Chicago was burnt: The great Chicago fire began on October 8, 1871.
[ Back ]the Creed; but I heard the responses afterward, and they sang two hymns in their own language. One was 'Am I a Soldier of the Cross?': The Apostle's Creed - with some variations - is the statement of faith in most denominations of Christianity. "Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" (Sources give two composition dates: 1709 and 1724) is by Isaac Watts (1674-1748). Text and music appear at this URL: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/m/amiasold.htm
The hymn begins:Am I a soldier of the cross,
A follower of the Lamb,
And shall I fear to own His cause,
Or blush to speak His Name?(Research assistance: Rich Adkins)
[ Back ]Wicked things: Bessie's fear of Indians would not have been unusual when this story appeared. Wars between Indian tribes and various representatives of the United States were frequent in the 1860s and 1870s. The Battle of Little Big Horn was fought in June 1876.
[ Back ]pappooses: Jewett uses this spelling throughout the story; I have not changed it to the modern spelling.
[ Back ]Edited and annotated by Terry Heller