NANCY AND MARTHA.

New Zealand Times, Volume LVX, Issue 3129, 15 May 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

NANCY AND MARTHA.

A STOEY OF AN AMEKICAN-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 tho first scholars admitted to our now school. Sho was brought in from tho mountains on a bitterly cold dayby “Sunday James”'—as the Indians called him, from his peculiar idea that no work was to be done on Sunday. Indued, James was not too fond of doing work on week days either, but on Sundays ho was, ns to work, inexorable. Nancy was scarcely fifteen years of age, but looked fully thirty. Sho was dressed in a single, filthy buckskin garment which came down just below her knees, and showed her dirty brown limbs and moecasiuod foot below. * Sho was soroeyoj, gaunt with hunger, and had some rather serious burns to bo oared for. As she stood before us, glancing furtively out of the corners of her largo black eyes, wo were somewhat alarmed at the prospect. This was scarcely what wo expected, but we had corns a long distance, full of zeal for tho welfare of badly-1 routed Indians, to help to civilize and Christrianise them. Wo desired, above all tilings, to bo kind and consistent. Here \vc found—as probably others have found bofoio us—that it is sometimes difficult to be consistent in a world so largely made up of compromise.

However, we gingerly began on Nancy. On investigation we 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 boon brought homo by a party of scalp-hunters, after a long raid over in the Sioux country, when a mere child. Sho was given to Moses, tho grandfather of one of tho hunters, and, as sho grow older, began to carry him water and bring him wood. Nancy grow very fond of old Moses, which was nothing extraordinary, seeing sho had nothing else to care for. Moses, too, was fond of Nancy, and as she grow 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. Not long after Moses had spent Iho fifty dollars and eaten up—by the help of his friends —the throe sheep, Nancy came hack again, there being no appearance of tho 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 account for that strange fact! Indeed, it would have been stranger if she had liked him. The child had evidently been burned and brutally beaten, and one of her anus was broken near the shoulder, Moses just wrapped up her arm and Nancy got well again. Tho next time Moses sold her it was for a double-barrelled gun and a box of cartridges. Tho 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 have stayed on with Moses, who never beat her, but patted her on the head. Still sho went with her new husband.

This matrimonial 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 broughttotha noivly-opened Mission School established by U.S. Government as 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 sho was sitting on, sho began to see a glimmer of meaning in all this puzzling work, and in an incredibly short space of time could read and write. Sho 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 tho half-breed interpreter onoo a week from tho nearest white settlement, 68 miles away. We had no more diligent pupil than Nancy in the Indian school. “Time went on as time must do,” but time seemed to ptand still with-Nancy. Indeed tho 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 tho 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 iu her veins. Her somewhat unstable form sho imprisoned m 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 sho 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 tha,t bitterly cold day to bo admitted into the Indian school.

Another girl named Martha was admitted about tho same time, but sho 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 wero 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 sho 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 ona else iu the valley could compete with her in successfully tanning buffalo hides, which wero brought home by the men from their long hunts. No one could judge as well as she just how much of the fleshy ekin it was best to scrape off (with the long buffalo knife, strapped with a leathern thong to tho wrist) before the tanning mixture was applied. The river bank under the cotton trees was tho theatre 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 grew handsomer everyday. 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. Nottliathehad shown any great ability in his studies. Ho was thought by tte superintendent to take a great interest in tho civilisation of hia tribe. Certainly he had made himself very busy among his people preaching to them and showing them 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 largo and muscular, a fine male animal, with heavy features, usually overspread with an unearthly solemnity of expression. Still, he was a rara avis among Indian men, such as he was. Thus it came about that we beheld our hero, in a new tweed suit, depart for realms unknown, to be absent at least three years. At long intervals his friend the superintendent received letters from him. Although 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 be done “when ‘Sunday James’came homo a''a in." So when the time actually drew near when his return was expected, Nancy 3 schoolmates laughed at her. At last one Sunday morning our rotomed student gravely and decorously =at in a front seat in church, which was onlv a little, white-painted, weather-boarded building, a large central portion of tha bare floor being occupied by half-naked Indians —men, women and children (not to mention dogs without number). All were solemnly proud of “ Sunday James," who, stolidly self-possessed, looked welL

IVhon Nancy came homo from church that morning she proudly showed Martha a yellow silk handkerchief which James had given her. So matters began and wont on all summer, and everyone connected with the school concluded that the next interesting incident in our somewhat monotonous life would be the marriage, by the minister, of Nancy and “Sunday James.” Indeed, we teachers had begun to consider w net presents we were going to give them. Bat it fell out far otherwise, for James, on returning from a preaching tour “wav down the river,” suipnsod our superintendent by showing him a marriage certificate, setting forth that he had married Martha at the other Mission about two weeks before returning homo to the valley. , . f , T*io dazocl minister «oo£ea ujs liope.ai convert full in the face, and uttered the one word, “ Nancy?”

*oh,” said James, “ Nancy’s spoiled. She is a white woman now. She can’t cut ■wood and bring water. Martha can work. I would ratfieir. have Martha-”; ... Certainly James knew what he , wanted, which is often ah advantage at such times in many ways. How Nancy xeceived this information we could not U4L - As the days went by we watched in vam for some signs of mental distress. She said nothing—only looked a little whiter than before. _ . . , . In a month or so wo were almost glacl 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. Ineteady of the cheery, fir© and the boiling pot of succotash. hanging oyer/ 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 buffalcj knife in flier 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 1 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 tile white pillow a little red bow was pinned. It had been i playfully put. im her hair one day by .our, youngest teacher when she caught Nancy watching at the garden hedge for “ Sunday James.” Nothing was taken away. Evorthing she left behind her..- But Nancy was gone. A week later the half-breed interpreter, ■ on bis 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 ho said the man who rode ahead was urging his tired horse, which was bleeding at the nose, j 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 tho horse’s side, I’hey wore making straight for tho wild Sioux country, from which Nancy had been stolon 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 tho garden, James sits in a comfortable rocking chair in front of his Government-built house and smokes cigars which cost 25 cents apiece. If Nancy is still living over among the Sioux, she 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 hermit is as she used to look in tho Mission School garden, in her pretty red dress, with tho frills of her little white apron over her graceful shoulders, just as she used to stand against tho green hedge, with the red bow iu her hair, watching for “ Sunday James.”