Olathe High School - Eagle Yearbook (Olathe, KS)

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bustling about in its village, the squaws building the fire for the evening meal, some pounding tfhe maize between the rocks, others with large earthen pots of clay going and returning to the springg some gatlhering fagots and sticks for th fire, others tighten- ing the fiaps of the wigwams for the approaching night. The village dogs began their twilight yelping and their last good-by to the sun. The trader lifted his gaze from the camp in the distance and looked far to the west. The-re was the camp of the Kaw In- dians. He turned his gaze to the south and there in the distance were the camps of the Delaware and Miami. As fhe looked a gleam shot out of the West and the sun which was a great red ball slowly lost itself and then finally disappeared and the dying day gave away to twilight. The blue faded into purple and the purple into nig'ht. The man turn- ed to gog then stopped. On his left was the coming of man's civilization: on his right was the primitive man as God first made him. He looked at both and wonderedg then slowly shook his head, smiled, and went down off the bluff in the twilight, slowly be- taking himelf to his cabin. Then night came and reigned in accompaniment with the night bird's song and the howling of the dogs in the distant Shawnee village. A storm raged on the plains that night. Storms come quickly on a prairie. It beat the waters of tlhe rivers into waves and swished them about in giddy pools. It was a summer thunder storm, sharp and fierce. The lightning lit the country up- far and wide and the thunder rolled like giant trees falling in the forest. A sparrow blew against the door of the trader's cabin, flutered, and fell to the ground. The storm continued and was raging in its wildest fury when a knock was heard on the door of the cabin, Again a knock came and again. 'Dhe trader roused by the storm, hearing the kn-ock knew not whether it was the blowing of limbs against the door or of some person in distress. A length he heard a Shawnee shout, A-wa-wa- wa, He listened a momentg then hastened to the door, and beheld a Shawnee warrior, half carrying and holding a little Indian maiden. The brave fell into the room and the trader seeing the suffering of the little Indian, placed fher in his bunk. He caught sight of two fiery, bright eyes and two hot cheeks. She mumbled somebhing in Shawnee: then fell asleep. The trader looked at the Indian warrior who lay on the fioor with a ghastly wound in his side. He looked at the trader, then said in a gasping breathless voice, She very hot, very sick. Medicine man say slhe die and go to Great Spirit. She talk about things she know nothing about. Medicine man say slhe dixe. You white man, you know many things. You help. Me bring her to you. It dark. Me fall on the rocks. Me die soon, you help her. She no die. You keep her. His eyes were star- ing and bloodshot. As he leaned over the maiden he moaned O-la-thee, O-la-thee, Olaf he caught his side with a death-like clutch and slipped back to the floor. He was dead. The trader looked at the little Indian maiden. She was not more than ten years of age. Her cheeks were fiery red and her eyes were two bright spots. She was was a victim of the fever. The trader gave her medicine from his scanty supply which soon ouieted her. For days he watched her, cooling her head with fresh water from the spring. At last the fever broke. The crisis was past. Then 0-la-thee began to mend. She was shy at first and often looked longingly toward her early home. But the trader comforted her. Often they would go together to the bluff and there kneel at the little mound. Often she asked why they put a cross at the grave of her father and then the trader would tell her about the Great Spirit and the meaning of the cross. But youth soon forgets and O-la-thee was soon romping the hills with her Indian play- mates again. Years passed.

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'K l'l xX, Lf U l .ta-2 -,A iii., af '- - ' . ' rj 'Q ' ,sd T.: . .. I - Y EN Lg :nr i l- :t ' n f -. Indian Legend O-LA-THEE. At txhe beginning of the 18th century, the plains surrounding the mouth of the Kaw river, were covered with nothing but sage brush and a few lndian villages. At the junction of the Kaw and Missouri river stood a log cabin. It was a mere shack. The different Indian tribes traded their furs there for beads, guns, and novelties, new to their eyes. The man who stayed there was as rough an uncut as the timber that sur- rounded his trading post. His features were hardened by those winds and snows and sleet that come in that region. His religion was that of the survival of the i'lttest - the religion that precedes all others in a new country. He existed because he knew how to handle a gun, yet, he was the forerunner of the white man who brought both mission- ary and the outlaw. He was the out post of civilization, the sentinel that guards tlhe sleeping soldiers. His land was beautiful in its uneivilized sfate. Often as the sun set in the golden west he Would Climb one of the highest bluffs and look out over the country to- ward the setting sun. Behind him was the steady oncome of the white man. Behind him was the missionary who came to teach the Indian the religion of Clhristianity, the tilling of the soil, the turning of the waters into mill ponds. Behind him was the on- slaught of the pale faces. Behind him came the criminal escaping vengeance. Behind him came the evil, the good, the sinful and the religious, to this crude country to make it as the scupltor molds his clay. - Behind him was this, but in front of him was God's own country-those beau- tiful plains, rolling away to the horizon where they melted away into the blue and lJllI'l1l6 haze and mingled with the crimson of the sunset and then turned to a golden light and slowly lost themselves in tlhe blue sky. ln front of him was the silver Kaw, winding its way in the plains and bluffs and slowly but surely moving on and on and quickening its gait when it hears the swish of the Missouri, as if hastening to join its companion. Before him was the Crude man of the country. There a tribe of Shawnees, was busily LITERHTURE

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Steamboats took the place of canoes. Many cabins were built around the trad- er's post. Soon the white man began to mingle with the Indians and civilization began to belch forth its masses. The trader feared that the Great Spirit looked with disap- proval upon the actions of the pioneers. The trader often talked with O-la-thee of the growing wickedness which the palefaces were gradually spreading among the Indians and longed earnestly for assistance in carrying out his reforms. At length, vhis pray- ers were answered in the unexpected arrival of the Reverend Thomas Johnson, a former friend, who had come to reclaim tlhe savage Indians from his barbarous ways and give him the true understanding of the living God. In the 1830 the mission was built and the sclhool was begun. Many troubles arose because the Indians at first looked suspiciously at the church and the work shops as if they might be other of the White man's evils. O-Ia-thee and the old trader strove to make the Indians understand the good the mission would do for them and their chil- dren. As the mission grew so did the trading post and finally became a village. named Westport. Many more steamboats came after the first one, the Western Engineer, in 1819. A trading route was established between Independence and Santa Fe and many of the Indians took the trail and went further West, out where the white man had not yet penetrated. Mills were built and farms were cultivated near the mission. In 1832 Alexander Jolmson the first white baby the Indians had ever seen, was born at Shaw- nee mission. A year afterwards a tribe of Shawnee Indians journeyed from the Nebraska ter- ritory to the mission and among them was an Indian brave whose name was 'IVa-zi' meaning Bluebird. Often he went to the little mission chapel and there a Shawnee maiden's eyes sought his. Many times the two walked together under the big moon on the lonesome prairie. At last they knew and loved each other and one night in the little chapel the minister at the mission married them. Afterwards they we1'e married again in the Shawnee Camp by t-he medicine man according to the Indian custom. But as the prairie grass turned to corn fields, and cabins replaced the wigwams. while mills made the laughing waters work, the deer and the buffalo had either gone farther West or their bones lay bleaching on the prairie, the wlhite man slowly but sure- ly made his way farther and farther into the region of the Shawnees. Wa-zi grew im- patient and O-la-thee looked with sorrowing eyes, as her favorite hunting ground became the beaten trail of civilization. And so as time took its course, O-la-thee and Wa-zi de- termined that in the spring they would leave and go with their Shawnee kinsmen to the land of the setting sun where they could live in their former freedom. One cold, bleak February night as O-la-thee and VVa-zi were with Rev. Johnson and his wife in the mission, the minister said, recalling his first meeting with the shy Indian maiden and her faithful work among her people, O-la-thee, after all your educa- tion in the white 1nan's ways do you think you can go back to your people and live as they do and be satisfied? O-la-thee was quiet a moment and then said in her soft accented voice, But you don't understand, you can't. Once you have been an Indian, alW'ays that blood will call you and call you back again to the forest and prairies where your fathers once roamed. But, O, don't think I am ungrateful to you and your people for what you have d-one for me Don't you see. can't you understand that my home here is changed. The water, once clear, now muddy: so many people cross the river. Once many wigwams, now houses and cabins. Once many buffaloes and deer, now nothing but rabbits. Once