Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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- Ll U - Lj- -Lju- -u|j u Ld Dn dD tlLki [L cD diki t] cQ tJ LDtcJt! LD[bc£]DJ A (Sift nf titp (grrat Spirit Prize Story HIS little seven-year-old girl and her grandfather were great I I W chums, and every morning before breakfast she would patter I I into his room, climb up on his knee and demand a story, a -J I— I I M really-truly story, Papa-Gran ' . This morning it was to n L-l be a story about Indians, the kind that the grandfather had I I known when he was a young man surveying Minnesota before it became a state. Q Well, before I ever knew Mama-Gran ' , five years before the war, the government sent some young civil engineers out West to make maps of all the land out there that belonged to Uncle Sam. I was among the engineers, and the place where I was sent was Minnesota. It wasn ' t a state then, and in it lived three different tribes of Indians. Q, The only somebody I had to help me was a half-breed. That means a man whose mother was an Indian and his father a white man. He didn ' t know much English, so I had to learn the three different languages that the Indians spoke. Q, Here the tale was interrupted by the little girl, because Papa-Gran ' must count up to ten for her in Indian. He did, and a peal of joyful laughter was his reward for the guttural monosyllables. Q Sometimes we were a hundred miles from another white man, and often far away from any signs of trees. I remember one night in July, when we had pitched our tent in the midst of the prairie with nothing but the high grass around us for miles, and every now and then a little prairie dog ' s home; we were in a pretty dangerous fix, and badly scared for a time. That night there was a hundred-pound keg of gunpowder, belonging to the government, in the center of our tent; we were going to use it soon for blasting. When we had cooked supper we noticed that it was rather sultry. By the time we were ready for bed, ' way over in the west you could see the lightning flash every once in a while, and I began to feel right uneasy about that keg of gunpowder in our flimsy tent in the midst of a summer thunder-storm. Q, Soon the storm came, and all night long the thunder crashed around our tent, followed right away by the lightning. I can tell you we were mighty k]D3c£lDj klDniJOr. klDacDlli. ' m DdcDcJ kiLcDoz La Ducat T3G= ' R]CF LotcDnz kiGuc t fnp D= Lnt Jt Lafc[Jt kiti lGz ti Jt P D= ■pP ' CFj- .d: Ducat. .=n ti ca t. fapSD f3pq]CF f P D

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□ [bc£]DJ Gfcc£lci. DtcDCzL ap ' =[] P CFT DCbdnJ ruLr- u-i 3P [:n r Lr Tji-n La Ch cO [Hlk] Dz) cQ qJ r P C=j =D[7 =[][ Indian Lullaby The winds wail soft in the marsh this night — Hush, my sweeting; The fire burns low by the tee-pee door — Hush thy weeping. The brave has gone on the last long hunt — Sleep, my wee one; The squaw ' s alone in the world save thee — Sleep, my own son. The night bird calls to her distant mate, Art thou sleeping? My mate is dead and alone I stay. With thee, weeping. NANCY COOPER = P CFj LnDzncD p]P tn k]tLc£l f p LnDncn 121! =3P D= ' [F ap cp

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' - ' Lr tJ lj- □ fccacJ DtcDtL :]PS]Cn -Liir -i u- -LJLr -iJLj- LaDncDGJ r Lj- -L|Lj- p][pt=[]C=j 3P glad when, ' long about morning, the storm died down and we could sleep a little bit. Q Next morning we got our breakfast of bacon and beans, and kept on up through the country. It was dark before we got to the Indian encampment, and all the men and women gathered ' round the camp-fire to see us. Q They seemed pleased when they found that I could speak their lan- guage, and the squaws were mighty tickled at the beads I gave them. The chief came up, stuck up his chin at me and grunted, which means, ' Want any dog? ' Q, But Papa-Gran ' , what did they want you to have the dog for? Q They eat dog, honey; they were just being polite. After I ' d given them all the presents I had for them, the squaws all sat down in a ring, with their funny little papooses strapped to their backs, sound asleep, and began to gamble for each other ' s gifts. The only play that Indian women have is gambling. A squaw will stake her last blanket, and never move a muscle when her brave beats her for losing it. Q, The men all sat ' round the fire and smoked, with every now and then a grunt or two. They took a lot of notice when I began working out some en- gineering figures. They had never seen a pencil before. There was one young warrior, a straight, fine-looking man, who came up and sat right beside me and never took his eyes off my work. G, I stayed there about a month, and we all got to be fine friends, ' specially the babies and I. They were funny little soft, brown bits of babyhood, and I made them paper dolls and little windmills, just like I do for you. G, One day there was a council of the tribe, and they were all sitting around the fire, dressed in their war paint, feathers and big red-and-black-striped blankets. I was sitting over in the corner with my back up against a tree. I took out my pencil and began to draw the young chief sitting yonder by the fire smoking his big soapstone pipe with all its bright-colored strings, shells and beads hanging from it. I hadn ' t gotten more than his headdress done when the young brave, who always watched so closely whenever I used my pencil, came over by me and looked over my shoulder. When he saw the picture of the chief, his eyes got all sparkly, as yours do when you see your Christmas tree, and he grunted some quick, glad-sounding little grunts; then he leaned over and took both the pencil and picture from me before I ' d half finished it. He bent over the paper, and held the pencil up in front of him while he said a short prayer to the Great Spirit — then q uick as a wink, he went to work and finished the picture a great deal better than I could have done it. You could almost see the smoke curl up from the thin lips of that picture, and when it was finished the whole council came over to see it, and made a big fuss over the FiP ' [ P ' =nc [Lc£]c=! f P ' c=