Indian Stories Retold From St. Nicholas

Whether the Indians really love their children, or know what genuine love or affection is, I cannot say; but they are so proud and careful of their little ones that it amounts to the same thing so far as the youngsters are concerned. Boy babies are always most highly prized, because they will grow up into warriors.

The little that is taught to Indian boys must seem to them much more like fun than instruction. They must hear the fairy stories and the gabble of the medicine-men or conjurers, and the tales of bloody fights and brave and cunning deeds which make the histories of their tribes. They learn not to take what does not belong to them unless it belongs to an enemy. They learn not to be impudent to any one stronger and bigger than themselves; they learn how to track animals and men, how to go without food when there is not any, how to eat up all there is at once when any food is to be had, how to ride and shoot and run and paddle, and smoke very mild tobacco. As for the rest, they "just grow," like Topsy, and are as emotional and fanciful and wilful as any very little white child ever was. They never get over being so. The older they grow to be, the older children they become, for they are all very much like spoiled children as long as they live.

The first Indians I ever saw, outside of a show, were boys at play. They were Onondagas, on their reservation near Syracuse, New York. They were big boys of from sixteen to twenty years old, and the game they were playing was "snow-snakes." The earth was covered with snow, and by dragging a stout log through this covering they had made a narrow gutter or trough about 500 or 700 feet long. Each youth had his snow-snake, which is a stick about eight feet long, and shaped something like a spear. All the snow-snakes were alike, less than an inch wide, half an inch thick, flat on the under side, rounded on top, and with a very slight turn upward at the point to suggest a serpent's head. The "snakes" were all smoothed and of heavy hard wood. The game was to see who could send his the farthest along the gutter in the snow. The young men grasped their snakes at the very end, ran a few steps, and shot the sticks along the trough. As one after another sped along the snow, the serpent-like heads kept bobbing up and down over the rough surface of the gutter precisely like so many snakes. I bought a snow-snake, but, though I have tried again and again, I cannot get the knack of throwing it.

But I have since seen Indian boys of many tribes at play, and one time I saw more than a hundred and fifty "let loose," as our own children are in a country school-yard at recess. To be sure, theirs is a perpetual recess, and they were at home among the tents of their people, the Canada Blackfeet, on the plains, within sight of the Rocky Mountains. The smoke-browned tepees, crowned with projecting pole-ends, and painted with figures of animals and with gaudy patterns, were set around in a great circle, and the children were playing in the open, grassy space in the center. Their fathers and mothers were as wild as any Indians, except one or two tribes, on the continent, but nothing of their savage natures showed in these merry, lively, laughing, bright-faced little ragamuffins. At their play they laughed and screamed and hallooed. Some were running foot-races, some were wrestling, some were on the backs of scampering ponies; for they are sometimes put on horseback when they are no more than three years old. Such were their sports, for Indian boys play games to make them sure of aim, certain of foot, quick in motion, and supple in body, so that they can shoot and fight and ride and hunt and run well. To be able to run fast is a necessary accomplishment for an Indian. What they call "runners" are important men in every tribe. They are the messenger men, and many a one among them has run a hundred miles in a day. They cultivate running by means of foot-races. In war they agree with the poet who sang:

"For he who fights and runs awayMay live to fight another day";

and afterward, if they were taken prisoners, they had a chance for life, in the old days, if they could run fast enough to escape their captors and the spears and bullets of their pursuers.

A very popular game that attracted most of the Blackfeet boys was the throwing of darts, or little white hand-arrows, along the grass. The game was to see who could throw his arrow farthest in a straight line. At times the air was full of the white missiles where the boys were playing, and they fell like rain upon the grass.

In another part of the field were some larger boys with rude bows with which to shoot these same darts. These boys were playing a favorite Blackfeet game. Each one had a disk or solid wheel of sheet-iron or lead, and the game was to see who could roll his disk the farthest, while all the others shot at it to tip it over and bring it to a stop. The boys made splendid shots at the swift-moving little wheels, and from greater distances than you would imagine.

They play with arrows so frequently that it is no wonder they are good marksmen; yet you would be surprised to see how frequently they bring down the birds, rabbits, and gophers which abound on the plains. The houses of these plump little drab-colored creatures are holes in the turf, and as you ride along the plains you will see them everywhere around, sitting up on their haunches with their tiny fore paws held idle and limp before them, and their bead-like, bright eyes looking at you most trustingly – until you come just so near, when pop! suddenly down goes little Mr. Gopher in his hole. You may be sure the Indian boys find great sport in shooting at these comical little creatures. But the boys take a mean advantage of the fact that the restless gophers cannot stay still in one place any great length of time. When one pops into a hole it is only for a minute, and during that minute the Indian boy softly and deftly arranges a snare around the hole, so that when the gopher pops up again the snare can be jerked and the animal captured.

We gave the boys in the Blackfeet camp great sport by standing at a distance of a hundred yards from all of them and offering a silver quarter to whichever boy got to us first. You should have seen the stampede that followed the signal, "Go!" Blankets were dropped, moccasins fell off, boys stumbled and others fell atop of them, their black locks flew in the breeze, and the air was noisy with yelling and laughter.

These boys spin tops, but their "top-time" is the winter, when snow is on the ground and is crusted hard. Their tops are made of lead or some other metal, and are mere little circular plates which they cover with red flannel and ornament with tiny knots or wisps of cord all around the edges. These are spun with whips and look very pretty on the icy white playgrounds. Nearly all Indian boys play ball, but not as we do, for their only idea of the game is the girlish one of pitching and catching. All their games are the simplest, and lack the rules which we lay down to make our sports difficult and exciting.

The boys of the Papago tribe in the Southwest have a game which the fellows in Harvard and Yale would form rules about, if they played it, until it became very lively indeed. These Indian boys make dumb-bells of woven buckskin or rawhide. They weave them tight and stiff, and then soak them in a sort of red mud which sticks like paint. They dry them, and then the queer toys are ready for use. To play the game they mark off goals, one for each band or "side" of players. The object of each side is to send its dumb-bells over to the goal of the enemy. The dumb-bells are tossed with sticks that are thrust under them as they lie on the ground. The perverse things will not go straight or far, and a rod is a pretty good throw for one. The sport quickly grows exciting, and the players are soon battling in a heap, almost as if they were playing at foot-ball.

These are games that will not wear out while there are Indian boys to play them. On the oldest reservations, where even the grandfathers of the Indians now alive were shut up and fed by their government, the boys still play the old games. But wherever one travels to-day, even among the wildest tribes, a new era is seen to have begun as the result of the Indian schools, and Indian boys are being taught things more useful than any they ever knew before. The brightest boys in the various tribes are selected to be sent to these schools, and it is hoped that what they learn will make all the others anxious to imitate white men's ways.

THE CHILDREN OF ZUÑI

BY MARIA BRACE KIMBALL"Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,Little frosty Eskimo,Little Turk or Japanee,Oh, don't you wish that you were me?"

SO says the well-fed, well-dressed, well-housed little Scotchman in Robert Louis Stevenson's rhyme. But I don't believe that the small Indians of Zuñi would care at all to change places with the little "me" of Edinburgh or New York. In their village of mud and stone, on the sunny plains of New Mexico, they have lived for centuries in perfect contentment. Fine houses, green parks, and merry streets would be nothing to them; hats and parasols, candies and ice-cream would make them stare; and mere cleanliness would only astonish them. Indeed, if they saw us washing our faces and brushing our hair every day, they would probably one and all cry out in Zuñi words:

"Oh, don't you wish that you were me?"

The little half-civilized children of Zuñi so aroused our curiosity that we drove through forty miles of sand and sage-brush, from the railroad at Fort Wingate, to pay them a visit. As the Indians do not provide for travelers, we took our hotel with us – tents, beds, and food – and camped just outside their village. The village looks like a huge beehive made of clay and stuck fast to the top of a sandy knoll. The hive is filled with a mass of cells – three hundred single rooms, placed side by side and piled in rows one on top of another. In each of these rooms lives a Zuñi family. There are no inside stairways leading from story to story, but if the boys and girls living in one row wish to pay a visit to a house above them, they must go outdoors and climb a ladder. On the slope between the village and the Zuñi River are a number of small vegetable-gardens, each one inclosed by a mud wall. Zuñi has no inns, no shops, no saloons, not even proper streets, but only narrow alleys that thread their way through the strange town. As we walked through the village, all the world came out to see us. Girls and boys clustered on the roofs or sat on the ovens, – queer little cones of mud which seem to grow up out of the house-tops, – while fathers, mothers, and babies peered out from dark doorways, to stare at the visitors. When we had finished our tour of the roofs and alleys, we were hospitably invited indoors; even there the children followed us, and as we glanced up to a hole in the ceiling which served as a window, a girl's laughing face filled the opening. We must have looked strange enough in our hats and gloves and long skirts.

The Zuñi child spends his early days in a cradle. But a cradle in Zuñi-land does not mean down pillows, silken coverlets, and fluffy laces; it is only a flat board, just the length of the baby, with a hood like a doll's buggy-top over the head. Upon this hard bed the baby is bound like a mummy – the coverings wound round and round him until the little fellow cannot move except to open his mouth and eyes. Sometimes he is unrolled, and looks out into the bare whitewashed room, blinks at the fire burning on the hearth, and fixes his eyes earnestly on the wolf and cougar skins that serve as chairs and beds and carpets in the Zuñi home.

By the time he is two or three years old, he has grown into a plump little bronze creature, with the straightest of coarse black hair and the biggest and roundest of black eyes. He is now out of the cradle, and trots about the house and the village. When the weather is bad he wears a small coarse shirt, and always a necklace of beads or turquoise.

As he grows older, he adds a pair of loose cotton trousers to his costume, and, if anything more is needed to keep him warm, he girds on his blanket, just as his forefathers have done in all the three hundred years since white men first knew the Zuñis. His long hair, either flying loosely in the wind or tied back with a band of some red stuff, serves him both as hair and as hat.

His little sister, however, has a more elaborate dress. Her mama weaves it for her, as she does her own, in a rude loom. She makes two square blankets of black cotton, finishes them neatly across top and bottom, sews them together at the sides with red yarn, and the dress is ready to try on. It always fits perfectly, as the part which forms the skirt is simply held in place by a sash, and the waist is made by drawing two corners of the blankets up over the left shoulder. The sash, woven in gay colors, is also the work of Mama Zuñi. A long, narrow piece of cotton cloth is draped from the other shoulder, and swings easily about, serving as pocket, shawl, or pinafore. In cold weather, moccasins, leggings, and blankets are also worn. These articles, too, are made at home. While the mother is the dressmaker and tailor, the father is the family shoemaker. A few of the Zuñi girls have dresses like those of American girls. These clothes have come to them through the mission-school which adjoins the village.

The Zuñis have a language of their own – no very easy one for boys and girls to learn, judging from its many-syllabled, harsh-sounding words. They also speak a little Spanish, as does nearly everybody in New Mexico.

The little Zuñis amuse themselves with running, wrestling, jumping, and playing at grown folks, just as civilized children do. They have their bows and arrows, their rag-dolls, – strapped like real babies to cradles, – and their shinny sticks and balls. The children also make themselves useful at home. The older girls take care of their younger brothers and sisters, and the boys tend the goats. There are large herds of goats belonging to the village, and they must be taken every morning to graze on the plain, and brought home at night to be shut up in the corrals, or folds, safe from prowling wolves.

The little children often go with their mothers to draw water from the village well, about a hundred yards from the houses. At the top of a flight of stone steps they wait, playing about in the sand, while their mothers go down to the spring. There the women fill the jars, then, poising them on their heads, climb the hill and mount the ladders to their homes. As all the water used by the village has to be brought to it in these ollas (water-jars), carried on the women's heads, it is not surprising that the boys' clothes are grimy and the girls have apparently never known what it is to wash their faces.

The ollas, which answer the purpose of family china and of kitchen-ware, are made by the Zuñi women from the clay of the river-bank. The wet earth is shaped by hand into jars of all sorts and sizes; the jars are then painted with gay colors, in queer patterns, and burned. It is a pretty sight, of an evening, to see the fires of the kilns dotted all over the terraces of the village. Each piece of pottery is shut up inside a little wall of chips, which are set on fire; when the chips are burned up, the article is baked and ready for use. The Zuñi mamas make not only the jars for family use, but also clay toys for the children, curious rattles, dolls' moccasins, owls, eagles, horses, and other childish treasures.

The Zuñi has learned that American coffee and tobacco are better than Indian herb tea and willow bark. As he must have ready money in order to buy such articles, he has contrived various ways of earning a few reales (Spanish for shillings). When spring comes and the snows have melted, he collects the jars and bowls and trinkets that have been made during the winter, ties them up in the several corners of his blanket, and trudges off to market at Fort Wingate, forty miles away. Bows and arrows, and canes made from a singular cactus which grows near Zuñi, are also added to the stock in trade. If the Indian is lucky enough to own a burro, he and one of the boys mount the patient creature, while the family, big and little, with some of the neighbors, complete the party. Once in the garrison, the Zuñi family need only walk up and down to advertise their wares; the boys and girls help to carry the jars, while the babies follow. The group, with its bright blankets and gay pottery, soon attracts attention and sales begin on the sidewalks and verandas. Little is said by the Zuñi merchants, but when the bargaining is finished, they stand silent, waiting with a hungry look for the usual invitation to the kitchen. There, seated in a circle on the floor, they gratefully eat and drink whatever is set before them. Their store of words does not include "Thank you," but their faces brighten, and the older people politely shake hands with a "Bueno, bueno, señora" ("Good, good, madame"), while the babies munch and crumble their cake and cry for more, just as our own white babies do. The thoughtful mamas do not forget the miles of "home stretch" before the family, and wisely tuck away in their blankets the last bits of cheese and crackers.

When they have looked over the fort, tasted its bread and coffee, and sold their cargo, they cheerfully go home to their mud village and Indian habits. Old and young, they all are children, easily pleased, contented with things as they are, and quite certain in their own minds that the Zuñi way is the right way to live.

THE INDIAN GIRL AND HER MESSENGER-BIRD

BY GEORGE W. RANCK

ONCE upon a time, there was an Indian who lived in a big wood on the banks of a beautiful river, and he did nothing all day long but catch fish and hunt wild deer. Well, this Indian had two lovely little daughters, and he named one Sunbeam, because she was so bright and cheerful, and the other he called Starlight, because, he said, her sweet eyes twinkled like the stars.

Sunbeam and Starlight were as gay as butterflies, and as busy as bees, from morning till night. They ran races under the shady trees, made bouquets of wild flowers, swung on grape-vine swings, turned berries and acorns into beads, and dressed their glossy black hair with bright feathers that beautiful birds had dropped. They loved each other so much, and were so happy together, that they never knew what trouble meant until, one day, Starlight got very sick, and before the big moon came over the tree-tops the sweet Indian child had closed her starry eyes in death, and rested for the last time upon her soft, little deerskin bed. And now, for the first time, Sunbeam's heart was full of grief. She could not play, for Starlight was gone, she knew not where; so she took the bright feathers out of her hair, and sat down by the river and cried and cried for Starlight to come back to her. But when her father told her that Starlight was gone to the Spirit-land of love and beauty, and would be happy for ever and ever, Sunbeam was comforted.

"Now," said she, "I know where darling Starlight is, and I can kiss her and talk to her again."

Sunbeam had heard her people say that the birds were messengers from the Spirit-land. So she hunted through the woods until she found a little song-bird, that was too young to fly, fast asleep in its nest. She carried it gently home, put it into a cage, and watched over it and fed it tenderly day after day until its wings grew strong and it filled the woods with its music. Then she carried it in her soft little hands to Starlight's grave; and after she had loaded it with kisses and messages of love for Starlight, she told it never to cease its sweetest song or fold its shining wings until it had flown to the Spirit-land. She let it go, and the glad bird, as it rose above the tall green trees, poured forth a song more joyful than any that Sunbeam had ever heard. Higher and higher it flew, and sweeter and sweeter grew its song, until at last both its form and its music were lost in the floating summer clouds.

Then Sunbeam ran swiftly over the soft grass to her father, and told him, with a bright smile and a light heart, that she had talked with dear Starlight, and had kissed her sweet rosy mouth again; and Sunbeam was once more her father's bright and happy little Indian girl.

HOW THE STONE-AGE CHILDREN PLAYED

BY CHARLES C. ABBOTT

NOT long since I wandered along a pretty brook that rippled through a narrow valley. I was on the lookout for whatever birds might be wandering that way, but saw nothing of special interest. So, to while away the time, I commenced geologizing; and, as I plodded along my lonely way, I saw everywhere traces of an older time, when the sparkling rivulet that now only harbors pretty salamanders was a deep creek, tenanted by many of our larger fishes.

How fast the earth from the valley's slopes may have been loosened by frost and washed by freshet, and carried down to fill up the old bed of the stream, we will not stop to inquire; for other traces of this older time were also met with here. As I turned over the loose earth by the brook-side, and gathered here and there a pretty pebble, I chanced upon a little arrow-point.

Whoever has made a collection, be it of postage stamps or birds' eggs, knows full well how securing one coveted specimen but increases eagerness for others; and so was it with me that pleasant afternoon. Just one pretty arrow-point cured me of my laziness, banished every trace of fatigue, and filled me with the interest of eager search; and I dug and sifted and washed the sandy soil for yards along the brook-side, until I had gathered at least a score of curious relics of the long-departed red men, or rather of the games and sports and pastimes of the red men's hardy and active children.

For centuries before Columbus discovered San Salvador, the red men (or Indians, as they are usually called) roamed over all the great continent of North America, and having no knowledge of iron as a metal, they were forced to make of stone or bone all their weapons, hunting and household implements. From this fact they are called, when referring to those early times, a stone-age people, and so, of course, the boys and girls of that time were stone-age children.

But it is not to be supposed that, because the children of savages, they were altogether unlike the youngsters of to-day. In one respect, at least, they were quite the same – they were very fond of play.

Their play, however, was not like the games of to-day, as you may see by the pictures of their toys. We might, perhaps, call the principal game of the boys "Playing Man," for the little stone implements, here pictured, are only miniatures of the great stone axes and long spear-points of their fathers.

In one particular these old-time children were really in advance of the youngsters of to-day; they not only did, in play, what their parents did in earnest, but they realized, in part, the results of their playful labor. A good old Moravian missionary says: "Little boys are frequently seen wading in shallow brooks, shooting small fishes with their bows and arrows." Going a-fishing, then, as now, was good fun; but to shoot fishes with a bow and arrow is not an easy thing to do, and this is one way these stone-age children played, and played to better advantage than most of my young readers can.

Among the stone-age children's toys that I gathered that afternoon, were those of which we have pictures. The first is a very pretty stone hatchet, very carefully shaped, and still quite sharp. It has been worked out from a porphyry pebble, and in every way, except size, it is the same as hundreds that still are to be found lying about the fields.

No red man would ever deign to use such an insignificant-looking ax, and so we must suppose it to have been a toy hatchet for some little fellow that chopped away at saplings, or, perhaps, knocked over some poor squirrel or rabbit; for our good old Moravian friend, the missionary, also tells us that "the boys learn to climb trees when very young, both to catch birds and to exercise their sight, which, by this method, is rendered so quick that in hunting they see objects at an amazing distance." Their play, then, became an excellent schooling for them; and if they did nothing but play it was not a loss of time.

The five little arrow-points figured in the second picture are among those I found in the valley. The ax was not far away, and both it and they may have belonged to the same bold and active young hunter. All of these arrow-points are very neatly made.