NANCY AND MARTHA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1316, 20 May 1897, Page 42

NANCY AND MARTHA.

A STORY OF AN AMERICAN-INDIAN MISSION SCHOOL, (Specially Written for the New Zealand Times.) BY LUCY STUART. Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence. Nancy was one of scholars admitted to our new school. She was brought in from the mountains on a bitterly cold day by " Sunday James " —as the Indians called him, from his peculiar idea that no work was to be done on Sunday. Indeed, James Avas not too fond of doing work on week days either, but on Sundays he was, as to work, inexorable. Nancy was scarcely fifteen years of age, but looked fully thirty. She was dressed in a single, filthy buckskin garment which came down just below her knees, and showed her dirty brown limbs and moccasined feet below. She was soreeyed, gaunt with hunger, and had some rather serious brims to be cared for. As she stood before us, glancing fur;, tively out of the corners of her large black eyes, we were somewhat alarmed at the * prospect. This was scarcely what we expected, but we had come a long distance, full of zeal for the Avelf are of badly-treated Indians, to help to civilize and Christrianise them. We desired, above all things, to be kind and consistent. Here we found—as probably others have found before us—that it is sometimes diiiicult to be consistent in a world so largely made up of compromise. . However, we gingerly began on Nancy. On investigation wo learned that here the usual order of things had been reversed. Nancy had lived her life first and came to school afterwards, and by no

means a smooth life either. She had been brought home by a party of scalp-hunters, .•il'ter a long raid over in the Sioux country, when a mere child. She was given to Moses, the grandfather of one of the hunters, and, as she grew older, began to carry him water and bring him wood. Nancy grew very fond of old Moses, which wa& nothing extraordinary, seeing she had nothing else to care for. Moses, too, was fond of Nancy, and as she grew taller and stronger, sold her as a wife to a slouching savage in a Government blanket for fifty dollars and three sheep. .Nancy cried, but went with her purchaser. is'ot long after Moses had spent tho fifty dollars and eaten up —by the help of his friends-—the three sheep, Nancy came back there being no appearance of the purchaser to claim his troublesome property. So Nancy was glad to stay with.,

old Moses again. She said she did not like her husband, and showed bruises and burns quite sufficient to accoiint for that strange fact 1 Indeed;, it would have been stranger if she had liked him. The child had evidently been burned and brutally beaten, and one o£ her arms was broken near the shoulder. Moses just v< rapped up her arm and Nancy got well again. The next time Moses sold her it was for a double-barrelled gun and a bos of cartridges. The man had buried his wife the week before;, and wanted another to dig the roots, get his dinner and make his moccasins. Nancy would rather havs stayed on with Moses, who never beat her, but patted her on the head. Still she [ went with her new Imsband* This matrimonjal experiment also proved a failure, Nancy being found a short time afterwards by "Sunday James" cooling her burns in the river, and old Moses was quite glad to see her again. She was then brought to the newly-opened Mission School established by U.S. Government nn part payment for the land. So Nancy became our pupil. At first she made little progress, but at last mastered the alphabet. Then when she found c-h-a-i-r meant what she was sitting on, she began to see a glimmer of meaning in all this puzzling work, and in an incredibly short space of time could read and write. She soon showed an Eve-like desire for knowledge (a line of thought which did not interest Adam in the least), and looked over with curiosity the local newspaper brought by the half-breed interpreter once a week from the nearest white settlement, 6S miles away. We had no more diligent pupil than Nancy in the Indian school. "Time went on ae time must do," but time seemed t© ctand still with Nancy. Indeed the relentless old Father, if he

moved at all, must have turned his hourglass the other way, as Nancy seemed to get younger every day. A young face blossomed out of the drawn and haggard old one, and a gentle, quiet, womanly expression appeared. In colour Nancy grew fairer every day. Cleanliness and regular food changed wrinkles into dimples, and protection from the weather revealed the fact that Nancy had distinctly a strain of white blood in her veins. Her somewhat unstable form she imprisoned in a snugfitting corset, and her red print dress became her well. A narrow strip of white collar showed pleasantly against the olive of her neck, and she looked even pretty when she wore a little white apron with the frills coming over her shoulders. Thus attired Nancy was a pleasant sight to. see, and not to be recognised as the doubtful object for instruction which presented itself to us when she came that bitterly cold day to be admitted into the Indian school.

Another girl named Martha was, admitted about the same time, but she did not stay long. Study did not agree with her, hence her name. Names—mostly

Scriptural—were given to our pupils when they entered school. When with their own people they were usually distinguished as " the boy," or " the girl," as the case might be. When they grew older the girls were given the name of a bird or a flower, and the boys that of some animal or weapon of warfare.

Martha was a small, stunted, squarelybuilt girl, who never by any chance looked one fairly in the face. Her small, bead-like, black eyes were set far apart in her square brown face, and her smile was so broad as to almost shut them. Profile she had none, her flat nose being only seen from a front view. Still, as use, not ornament, is what is required from Indian women, Martha had one valuable virtue. No one else in the valley compete with her in successfully tanning buffalo hides, which were brought home by the men from their long hunts. No one could judge as well as she just how much of the fleshy skin it was best to scrape off (with the long buffalo knife, strapped with a leathern thong to the wrist) before the tanning mixture was applied. The river bank under the cotton trees was the thoatre of Martha's operations, and here she • worked and scraped mostly alone, for although she had no enemies, her friends did not care much for her. While Martha scraped, Nancy studied and errew handsomer every day. About this time a few philanthropists, who took an interest in Indian progress, endowed and opened, in an Eastern State, a college for the higher education of Indian boys (not girls.) One boy from each Mission School was the number for which accommodation was provided. "Sunday James " was ; the one selected by our superintendent as | the favoured student. Not that he had shown an .y great ability in his studies. He was thought by the superintendent to take a great interest in tho civilisation of his , tribe. Certainly ho had made himself very busy among his people preaching to them and showing the way they' should go. To unprejudiced people his chief occupation might seem rather like engineering matters so that everything in life which he deemed desirable might be drawn into his own

net, his tribe being used by him as a means to that end. We had. sincere converts, but " Sunday James" was not one of them. He was large and muscular, a fine male animal, with heavy features, usually overspread with an unearthly solemnity of expression. Still, he was a vara avis among Indian men, such as he was. Thus it came about that Ave beheld our hero, in a new tweed suit, depart for realms unknown, to bo absent at least three years. At long intervals his friend the superintendent received letters from him. A!- I

though they were full of Scriptural phrases, arrogance would be a mild term for his mental attitude. Nancy listened admiringly to his letters while they were being read in school. It was hoped that the brilliant success of ". Sunday James" might fire with ambition the sluggish brains of the rest of the scholars. It was noticed about this time that Nancy often spoke of what would bo done * c when c Sunday James' camo home again." So when the' time actually drew

near wnen nis return 1 was expected, Nancy's ' schoolmates laughed at her. ]

At last one Sunday morning our returned student gravely and decorously sat in a fiont seat in church, which was only a little, white-painted, weather-boarded i building, a large central portion of the bare flooi being occupied by half-naked Indians—meh> women and children (not to mention dogs without number). All were solemnly proud of " Sunday James," who, stolidly self-possessed, looked well.

When Nancy came home from church that morning she proudly showed Martha a yellow silk handkerchief which James had given her. So matters began and went On all summer, and everyone connected with the school concluded that the next interesting incident ;n our somewhat monotonous life would be the marriage; by the minister, of Nancy and " Sunday James." Indeed, we teachers had begun to consider what presents we were going to give them. But it fell out far otherwise, for James, on returning from a preaching tour " way down the river," surprised our superintendent by showing him a marriage certificate, setting forth that he had married Martha at the other Mission about two weeks before returning home to the valley^ The minister looked his hopeful convert full in the face, and uttered the one word, " Nancy ?" " Oh," said Jamesj " Nancy's spoiled. She is a white woman now. She can't cut wood and bring water. Martha can work. I would rather have Martha."

- Certainly James knew what he wanted, which is often an advantage at such times in many ways. How Nancy received this information we could not tell.

As the days went by we watched in vain for some signs of mental distress. She said nothing—only looked a little whiter than before. .

In a month or so we were almost glad to come upon her on the river bank talking with a friendly Sioux man who had piloted a party of another tribe down to the valley to have their corn ground at the Mission flour mill. By this time we thought she had almost—if not quite—forgotten " Sunday James." That same night, on his return to his wigwam, James found all was dark. Insteady of the cheery fire and the boiling pot of succotash hanging over it, and Martha's broad smile and eyes glittering with pleasure—all was dark ! He lifted the deerskin which served as a door, and stumbled over something soft, which lay on the ground just inside. He got a light and found it was little Martha, quite dead, with her own buffalo knife in her heart! Drawn through the wrist strap was the yellow silk handkerchief dabbled with blood, which James had given to Nancy on his return from college a year before.

The alarm being given, a search was made. We opened the door of Nancy's neatly kept little room, but she was gone ! On the neat white bed was carefully laid the red dress and the little frilled apron, and on the white pillow a little red bow was pinned. It had been playfully put in her hair one day by our youngest teacher when she caught Nancy watching at the garden hedge for " Sunday James." Nothing was taken away. Everthing she left behind her. But Nancy was gone. A week later the half-breed interpreter, on his way to the Valley Mission with our letters, reported having seen Nancy and a wild Sioux man out on the open prairie fifty miles away riding as if for bare life. On being questioned he said the man who rode ahead was urging his tired horse, which was bleeding at the nose. Some distance behind him came Nancy, in a single buckskin garment, bare-headed in the bitter wind. She sat astride her pony, and, strapped to its side, were three newly-cut tent-poles, while a cooking-pot hung on the horse's side. They were making straight for the wild Sioux country, from which Nancy had been stolen when a child.

There were no telegraphs in lonely places in those days, so they rode away, to be never seen or heard of by us again. Of course " Sunday James " soon married again, and regularly draws his Government pay of 25 dollars a month. So, while his wife gets wood and digs the garden, James sits in a comfortable rocking chair in front of his Government-built house and smokes cigars which cost 25 scents apiece.

*** * , If Nancy is still living over among the Sioux, sho must be by this time one of those filthy old squaws who sit doubled up at the wigwam fires, with their chins on their knees, being kicked out of everyone's way. But she is probably dead long ago. Squaws, as a rule, are seldom long-lived, which is a fortunate thing for them. But wo cannot think of Nancy in that way. When we remember her, it is as she used to look in the Mission School garden, in her pretty red dress, with the frills of her little white apron over her graceful shoulders, just as she used to stand against the green hedge, with the red bow in her hair, watching for " Sunday James."