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account for it by the fact that I am a Redskin, but
I am something else, too—I am a woman.
I remember the first time I
saw him. He came up the trail with some Hudson’s
Bay trappers, and they stopped at the door of my father’s
tepee. He seemed even then, fourteen years ago, an old
man; his hair seemed just as thin and white, his hands
just as trembling and fleshless as they were a month
since, when I saw him for what I pray his God is the
last time.
My father sat in the tepee,
polishing buffalo horns and smoking; my mother, wrapped
in her blanket, crouched over her quill-work, on the
buffalo-skin at his side; I was lounging at the doorway,
idling, watching, as I always watched, the thin, distant
line of sky and prairie; wondering, as I always wondered,
what lay beyond it. Then he came, this gentle old man
with his white hair and thin, pale face. He wore a long
black coat, which I now know was the sign of his office,
and he carried a black leather-covered book, which,
in all the years I have known him, I have never seen
him without. [Page 163]
The trappers explained to my
father who he was, the Great Teacher, the heart’s
Medicine Man, the “Blackcoat” we had heard
of, who brought peace where there was war, and the magic
of whose black book brought greater things than all
the Happy Hunting Grounds of our ancestors.
He told us many things that
day, for he could speak the Cree tongue, and my father
listened, and listened, and when at last they left us,
my father said for him to come and sit within the tepee
again.
He came, all the time he came,
and my father welcomed him, but my mother always sat
in silence at work with the quills; my mother never
liked the Great “Blackcoat.”
His stories fascinated me. I
used to listen intently to the tale of the strange new
place he called “heaven,” of the gold crown,
of the white dress, of the great music; and then he
would tell of that other strange place—hell. My
father and I hated it; we feared it, we dreamt of it,
we trembled at it. Oh, if the “Blackcoat”
would only cease to talk of it! Now I know he saw its
effect upon us, and he used it as a whip to lash us
into his new religion, but even then my mother must
have known, for each time he left the tepee she would
watch him going slowly away across the prairie; then
when he was disappearing into the far horizon she would
laugh scornfully, and say: [Page 164]
“If the white man made
this Blackcoat’s hell, let him go to it. It is
for the man who found it first. No hell for Indians,
just Happy Hunting Grounds. Blackcoat can’t scare
me.”
And then, after weeks had passed,
one day as he stood at the tepee door he laid his white,
old hand on my head and said to my father: “Give
me this little girl, chief. Let me take her to the mission
school; let me keep her, and teach her of the great
God and His eternal heaven. She will grow to be a noble
woman, and return perhaps to bring her people to the
Christ.”
My mother’s eyes snapped.
“No,” she said. It was the first word she
ever spoke to the “Blackcoat.” My father
sat and smoked. At the end of a half-hour he said:
“I am an old man, Blackcoat.
I shall not leave the God of my fathers. I like not
your strange God’s ways—all of them. I like
not His two new places for me when I am dead. Take the
child, Blackcoat, and save her from hell.”
*
*
* *
*
*
The
first grief of my life was when we reached the mission.
They took my buckskin dress off, saying I was now a
little Christian girl and must dress like all the white
people at the mission. Oh, how I hated that stiff new
calico dress and those leather shoes. But, little as
I was, I said nothing, only thought of the time when
I [Page 165] should be grown, and do
as my mother did, and wear the buckskins and the blanket.
My
next serious grief was when I began to speak the English,
that they forbade me to use any Cree words whatever.
The rule of the school was that any child heard using
its native tongue must get a slight punishment. I never
understood it, I cannot understand it now, why the use
of my dear Cree tongue could be a matter for correction
or an action deserving punishment.
She was strict, the matron of
the school, but only justly so, for she had a heart
and a face like her brother’s, the “Blackcoat.”
I had long since ceased to call him that. The trappers
at the post called him “St. Paul,” because,
they told me, of his self-sacrificing life, his kindly
deeds, his rarely beautiful old face; so I, too, called
him “St. Paul,” though oftener “Father
Paul,” though he never like the latter title,
for he was a Protestant. But as I was his pet, his darling
of the whole school, he let me speak of him as I would,
knowing it was but my heart speaking in love. His sister
was a widow, and mother to a laughing yellow-haired
little boy of about my own age, who was my constant
playmate and who taught me much of English in his own
childish way. I used to be fond of this child, just
as I was fond of his mother and of his uncle, my “Father
Paul,” but as my girlhood passed away, as womanhood
came upon me, I got strangely wearied of them all; I
longed, oh, God, [Page 166] how I longed
for the old wild life! It came with my womanhood, with
my years.
What mattered it to me now that
they had taught me all their ways?—their tricks
of dress, their reading, their writing, their books.
What mattered it that “Father Paul” loved
me, that the traders at the post called me pretty, that
I was a pet of all, from the factor to the poorest trapper
in the service? I wanted my own people, my own old life,
my blood called out for it, but they always said I must
not return to my father’s tepee. I heard them
talk amongst themselves of keeping me away from pagan
influences; they told each other that if I returned
to the prairies, the tepees, I would degenerate, slip
back to paganism, as other girls had done; marry, perhaps,
with a pagan—and all their years of labor and
teaching would be lost.
I said nothing, but I waited.
And then one night the feeling overcame me. I was in
the Hudson’s Bay store when an Indian came in
from the north with a large pack of buckskin. As they
unrolled it a dash of its insinuating odor filled the
store. I went over and leaned above the skins a second,
then buried my face in them, swallowing, drinking the
fragrance of them, that went to my head like wine. Oh,
the wild wonder of that wood-smoked tan, the subtilty
of it, the untamed smell of it! I drank it into my lungs,
my innermost being was saturated with it, till my mind
reeled and my heart seemed twisted [Page 167]
with a physical agony. My childhood recollections rushed
upon me, devoured me. I left the store in a strange,
calm frenzy, and going rapidly to the mission house
I confronted my Father Paul and demanded to be allowed
to go “home,” if only for a day. He received
the request with the same refusal and the same gentle
sigh that I had so often been greeted with, but this
time the desire, the smoke-tan, the heart-ache, never
lessened.
Night after night I would steal
away by myself and go to the border of the village to
watch the sun set in the foothills, to gaze at the far
line of sky and prairie, to long and long for my father’s
lodge. And Laurence—always Laurence—my fair-haired,
laughing, child playmate, would come calling and calling
for me: “Esther, where are you? We miss you; come
in, Esther, come in with me.” And if I did not
turn at once to him and follow, he would come and place
his strong hands on my shoulders, “Truant, truant,
Esther; can’t we make you happy?”
My old child playmate had vanished
years ago. He was a tall, slender young man now, handsome
as a young chief, but with laughing blue eyes, and always
those yellow curls about his temples. He was my solace
in my half-exile, my comrade, my brother, until one
night it was, “Esther, Esther, can’t I
make you happy?”
I did not answer him; only looked
out across [Page 168] the plains and
thought of the tepees. He came close, close. He locked
his arms about me, and with my face pressed up to his
throat he stood silent. I felt the blood from my heart
sweep to my very finger-tips. I loved him. O God, how
I loved him! In a wild, blind instant it all came, just
because he held me so and was whispering brokenly, “Don’t
leave me, don’t leave me, Esther; my
Esther, my child-love, my playmate, my girl-comrade,
my little Cree sweetheart, will you go away to your
people, or stay, stay for me, for my arms, as I have
you now?”
No more, no more the tepees;
no more the wild stretch of prairie, the intoxicating
fragrance of the smoke-tanned buckskin; no more the
bed of buffalo hide, the soft, silent moccasin; no more
the dark faces of my people, the dulcet cadence of the
sweet Cree tongue—only this man, this fair, proud,
tender man who held me in his arms, in his heart. My
soul prayed his great white God, in that moment, that
He let me have only this. It was twilight when we re-entered
the mission gate. We were both excited, feverish. Father
Paul was reading evening prayers in the large room beyond
the hallway; his soft, saint-like voice stole beyond
the doors, like a benediction upon us. I went noiselessly
upstairs to my own room and sat there undisturbed for
hours.
The clock downstairs struck
one, startling me from my dreams of happiness, and at
the same moment a flash of light attracted me. My room
[Page 169] was in an angle of the building,
and my window looked almost directly down into those
of Father Paul’s study, into which at that instant
he was entering, carrying a lamp. “Why, Laurence,”
I heard him exclaim, “what are you doing here?
I thought, my boy, you were in bed hours ago.”
“No, uncle, not in bed,
but in dreamland,” replied Laurence, arising from
the window, where evidently he, too, had spent the night
hours as I had done.
Father Paul fumbled about a
moment, found his large black book, which for once he
seemed to have got separated from, and was turning to
leave, when the curious circumstance of Laurence being
there at so unusual an hour seemed to strike him anew.
“Better go to sleep, my son,” he said simply,
then added curiously, “Has anything occurred to
keep you up?”
Then Laurence spoke: “No,
uncle, only—only, I’m happy, that’s
all.”
Father Paul stood irresolute.
Then: “It is—?”
“Esther,” said Laurence
quietly, but he was at the old man’s side, his
hand was on the bent old shoulder, his eyes proud and
appealing.
Father Paul set the lamp on
the table, but, as usual, one hand held that black book,
the great text of his life. His face was paler than
I had ever seen it—graver.
“Tell me of it,”
he requested. [Page 170]
I leaned far out of my window
and watched them both. I listened with my very heart,
for Laurence was telling him of me, of his love, of
the new-found joy of that night.
“You have said nothing
of marriage to her?” asked Father Paul.
“Well—no; but she
surely understands that—”
“Did you speak of marriage?”
repeated Father Paul, with a harsh ring in his voice
that was new to me.
“No, uncle, but——”
“Very well, then; very
well.”
There was a brief silence. Laurence
stood staring at the old man as though he were a stranger;
he watched him push a large chair up to the table, slowly
seat himself; then mechanically following his movements,
he dropped on to a lounge. The old man’s head
bent low, but his eyes were bright and strangely fascinating.
He began:
“Laurence, my boy, your
future is the dearest thing to me of all earthly interests.
Why, you can’t marry this girl—no,
no, sit, sit until I have finished,” he added,
with raised voice, as Laurence sprang up, remonstrating.
“I have long since decided that you marry well;
for instance, the Hudson’s Bay factor’s
daughter.”
Laurence broke into a fresh,
rollicking laugh. “What, uncle,” he said,
“little Ida McIntosh? Marry that little yellow-haired
fluff ball, that kitten, that pretty little dolly?”
[Page 171]
“Stop,” said Father
Paul. Then with a low, soft persuasiveness, “She
is white, Laurence.”
My lover started. “Why,
uncle, what do you mean?” he faltered.
“Only this, my son: poor
Esther comes of uncertain blood; would it do for you—the
missionary’s nephew, and adopted son, you might
say—to marry the daughter of a pagan Indian? Her
mother is hopelessly uncivilized; her father has a dash
of French somewhere—half-breed, you know, my boy,
half-breed.” Then, with still lower tone and half-shut,
crafty eyes, he added: “The blood is a bad, bad
mixture, you know that; you know, too, that
I am very fond of the girl, poor dear Esther. I have
tried to separate her from evil pagan influences; she
is the daughter of the Church; I want her to have no
other parent; but you never can tell what lurks in a
caged animal that has once been wild. My whole
heart is with the Indian people, my son; my whole heart,
my whole life, has been devoted to bringing them to
Christ, but it is a different thing to marry with
one of them.”
His small old eyes were riveted
on Laurence like a hawk’s on a rat. My heart lay
like ice in my bosom.
Laurence, speechless and white,
stared at him breathlessly.
“Go away somewhere,”
the old man was urging; “to Winnipeg, Toronto,
Montreal; forget her, then come back to Ida McIntosh.
A union of the [Page 172] Church and
the Hudson’s Bay will mean great things, and may
ultimately result in my life’s ambition, the civilization
of this entire tribe, that we have worked so long to
bring to God.”
I listened, sitting like one
frozen. Could those words have been uttered by my venerable
teacher, by him whom I revered as I would one of the
saints in his own black book? Ah, there was no mistaking
it. My white father, my life-long friend who pretended
to love me, to care for my happiness, was urging the
man I worshipped to forget me, to marry with the factor’s
daughter—because of what? Of my red skin; my good,
old, honest pagan mother; my confiding French-Indian
father. In a second all the care, the hollow love he
had given me since my childhood, were as things that
never existed. I hated that old mission priest as I
hated his white man’s hell. I hated his long,
white hair; I hated his thin, white hands; I hated his
body, his soul, his voice, his black book—oh,
how I hated the very atmosphere of him.
Laurence sat motionless, his
face buried in his hands, but the old man continued,
“No, no; not the child of that pagan mother; you
can’t trust her, my son. What would you do with
a wife who might any day break from you to return to
her prairies and her buckskins? You can’t
trust her.” His eyes grew smaller, more glittering,
more fascinating then, and leaning with an odd, secret
sort of movement towards Laurence, he [Page
173] almost whispered, “Think of her
silent ways, her noiseless step; the girl glides about
like an apparition; her quick fingers, her wild longings—I
don’t know why, but with all my fondness for her,
she reminds me sometimes of a strange—snake.”
Laurence shuddered, lifted his
face, and said hoarsely: “You’re right,
uncle; perhaps I’d better not; I’ll go away,
I’ll forget her, and then—well, then—yes,
you are right, it is a different thing to marry one
of them.” The old man arose. His feeble fingers
still clasped his black book; his soft white hair clung
about his forehead like that of an Apostle; his eyes
lost their peering, crafty expression; his bent shoulders
resumed the dignity of a minister of the living God;
he was the picture of what the traders called him—“St.
Paul.”
“Good-night, son,”
he said.
“Good-night, uncle, and
thank you for bringing me to myself.”
They were the last words I ever
heard uttered by either that old arch-fiend or his weak,
miserable kinsman. Father Paul turned and left the room.
I watched his withered hand—the hand I had so
often felt resting on my head in holy benedictions—clasp
the door-knob, turn it slowly, then, with bowed head
and his pale face wrapped in thought, he left the room—left
it with the mad venom of my hate pursuing him like the
very Evil One he taught me of. [Page 174]
What were his years of kindness
and care now? What did I care for his God, his heaven,
his hell? He had robbed me of my native faith, of my
parents, of my people, of this last, this life of love
that would have made a great, good woman of me. God!
how I hated him!
I crept to the closet in my
dark little room. I felt for a bundle I had not looked
at for years—yes, it was there, the buckskin dress
I had worn as a little child when they brought me to
the mission. I tucked it under my arm and descended
the stairs noiselessly. I would look into the study
and speak good-bye to Laurence; then I would——
I pushed open the door. He was
lying on the couch where a short time previously he
had sat, white and speechless, listening to Father Paul.
I moved towards him softly. God in heaven, he was already
asleep. As I bent over him the fullness of his perfect
beauty impressed me for the first time; his slender
form, his curving mouth that almost laughed even in
sleep, his fair, tossed hair, his smooth, strong-pulsing
throat. God! how I loved him!
Then there arose the picture
of the factor’s daughter. I hated her. I hated
her baby face, her yellow hair, her whitish skin. “She
shall not marry him,” my soul said. “I will
kill him first—kill his beautiful body, his lying,
false heart.” Something in my heart seemed to
speak; it said over and over [Page 175]
again, “Kill him, kill him; she will never have
him then. Kill him. It will break Father Paul’s
heart and blight his life. He has killed the best of
you, of your womanhood; kill his best, his
pride, his hope—his sister’s son, his nephew
Laurence.” But how? how?
What had that terrible old man
said I was like? A strange snake. A snake?
The idea wound itself about me like the very coils of
a serpent. What was this in the beaded bag of my buckskin
dress? this little thing rolled in tan that my mother
had given me at parting with the words, “Don’t
touch much, but some time maybe you want it!”
Oh! I knew well enough what it was—a small flint
arrow-head dipped in the venom of some strange snake.
I knelt beside him and laid
my hot lips on his hand. I worshipped him, oh, how,
how I worshipped him! Then again the vision of her
baby face, her yellow hair—I scratched
his wrist twice with the arrow-tip. A single drop of
red blood oozed up; he stirred. I turned the lamp down
and slipped out of the room—out of the house.
*
*
* *
*
*
I
dream nightly of the horrors of the white man’s
hell. Why did they teach me of it, only to fling me
into it?
Last
night as I crouched beside my mother on the buffalo-hide,
Dan Henderson, the trapper, [Page 176]
came in to smoke with my father. He said old Father
Paul was bowed with grief, that with my disappearance
I was suspected, but that there was no proof. Was it
not merely a snake bite?
They account for it by the fact
that I am a Redskin.
They seem to have forgotten
I am a woman. [Page 177]
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