Chapter XIII: Indian Hospitality

Among the hoarded possessions of gentle “Mother Waring” which fell to her little girl, was a large and varied collection of Indian photographs. Stella had often turned them over and over, with almost painful interest; she did so once again; and after choosing with great care a single one, laid all the rest away.

The picture that now stood conspicuously on her old-fashioned bureau was a large one taken in Washington many years earlier. It showed a group of three strong faces belonging to leading men of the Sioux in the middle of the nineteenth century—the last, indeed, of their tribal leaders, trained in native ways.

“I don’t think that’s a very pretty picture,” remarked Cynthia, carelessly, one day when the three friends had gathered in Stella’s little chamber up under the eaves. “Why didn’t you pick out that one in the beaded shirt and eagle-feather war-bonnet down to his heels?”

“I liked the cunning little baby in its mother’s arms,” Doris suggested.

“Or that perfectly splendid young Indian man who’s in college somewhere, going to be a minister,” persisted Sin. “Seems to me these old Indians in long hair and plain clothes are rather a hard-looking crowd,” she added.

It was often difficult for Stella to explain herself. She was silent now, but her cheeks took on the dark flush they wore when she was deeply moved. Cynthia saw it, and hastened to add:

“After all, though, there’s something pretty _fine_ about them. That one in the middle, now; isn’t he sort of solid and hard and grand, like a big, gray boulder—or—or a charging buffalo?”

“I like to look at them every day,” murmured Stella, at last, with a grateful glance. Cynthia always understood; perhaps not just at first, but in time she was sure to understand. “You see, girls, those were real _men_; strong and just, faithful and truth-speaking. They were men who talked little and did much. We younger Indians who float along like chips on the current need to keep before our eyes the old strength of our race. Those faces seem to me carved, as you say, just like out of solid rock.”

* * * * *

A day or two later, a little knot of academy girls were all trying to talk at once, in excited voices of which only snatches could be heard.

“I shouldn’t think she’d want to push herself in where she isn’t wanted…”

“Nobody’ll speak to her if she does come.”

“Just as if our crowd cared to associate with shop-girls and—”

Apparently it was all an affair of the social club with the mysterious initials, which had held regular meetings since their sophomore year. It was a club that took pleasure in being exclusive, and had little regard for the point of view of the excluded. How foolish it was of them to feel sore or resentful! Rosey Bernstein, undoubtedly a star pupil, was vulgarly witty at the expense of the club and its unimportant secrets and foolish little mysteries.

There had never been any question about Stella’s membership—Stella whom she and two or three others had been inclined to persecute in the early days, but had given it up when they found to their surprise that the word “Indian” was held a title of honor, rather than a term of reproach. In scholarship they were neck and neck; but what won Rosey completely was the Indian girl’s unaffected admiration of the fat Bernstein baby, of whom the whole family was inordinately proud. Babies were Stella’s weak point, anyway.

But we are losing sight of our conversation, which concerned, not Rosey or Mary Maloney, but a little girl who had been obliged to drop out of her class in their Senior year, and go to work in the factory to help support a large family.

Poor Milly was so slight, so shy, so unpretending, that it did seem as if she might have been allowed to slip in without remark among her more fortunate classmates, on the Saturday half-holiday. It was soon settled, however, that she was “not their kind at all,” that it had been all a mistake having her in the first place, and she must be made to feel that now she had left school she ought _of course_ to resign from the Club. There being no dissent from this proposition, the girls were about to take up the programme for their next meeting, when a clear young voice with the least bit of foreign accent suddenly broke in upon the talk.

“Girls, I’ve been reading in an old book how the New England Indians made the first white men welcome and gave them the best they had, and how the poor exiles here and in Virginia would have starved many times if it hadn’t been for the Indians’ corn. I wondered, just at first, why they did it, because the strangers were so different, and you know we don’t usually like people who are a different color or race or even dress or live differently. And then I remembered that we Indians are always taught to be kind to strangers—to feed even our enemies if they come to us hungry or in trouble—what you call _hospitality_. The Christian white people don’t teach their children hospitality, do they?”

There was a minute’s surprised silence.

“After all, girls, it won’t hurt us a bit to let Milly come whenever she can; prob’ly it won’t be very often,” hesitated Doris.

“Have any of you seen her lately?” Cynthia broke in. “She was always little, you know, but now! Why, there’s nothing to her at all. She looks just as neat and nice as ever, but oh my! Just as if she didn’t get enough to eat. Her father doesn’t work regularly, you know; and her mother was in the hospital six months; Milly earns three dollars a week and has to work from seven in the morning until six at night, except Saturday afternoons and Sundays. I asked her why she hadn’t been to Sunday-school lately, and she said she spent all day Sunday washing and ironing her clothes, because she was so tired she simply couldn’t do it evenings; but I think it was partly because she dreaded meeting the girls she used to go with.”

Here Doris began to cry quietly, and the other girls, who were really good-hearted enough at bottom, looked so ashamed of themselves that Stella slipped away as soon as she could.

“There’s one thing more I must speak about, girls,” she said, as soon as the three inseparables were out of hearing. “You know I haven’t taken my turn at entertaining the Club—and this is our third year—and each of you has had them at your house two or three times. I’ve been thinking and thinking.”

“Oh, don’t, Jibby darling!” cried Doris, distressed. “Nobody _expects_ you to entertain; we all understand.”

“Everybody in Laurel knows _Miss Sophia_,” declared Cynthia, with bitter emphasis.

“I can’t help it; I _must_ do something for the others, just once! No, I can’t ask Miss Sophia to have them at her house, even if I buy all the refreshments with my own money. She is very particular about her floors—and the dishes—a cup might get broken or something. But oh, Doris! _do_ you suppose Uncle Si—?”

“Why, of course! why didn’t we think of it before? A picnic in Wolcott’s Woods; why, it would be just _scrumptious_!” interrupted Doris, while irrepressible Sin seized an arm of each and whirled them round and round till all were laughing and out of breath.

“How about a week from Saturday?” “It’s nearly always fine, this time of year.” “How will you get us all out there?” “What shall you have to eat, Jibby?” Poor Stella was fairly buried under the rush of eager questions and exclamations.

* * * * *

When the great day came at last, a perfect afternoon in late September, Uncle Si’s springless farm wagon, cushioned with golden oat straw and drawn by a pair of sleek, black horses, rumbled merrily from door to door through the village, taking in some fifteen happy passengers. The first surprise came when it was found that not only shrinking little Milly, but every girl in the class was of the party. It had been Stella’s shy request to have the “undesirables” as her personal guests for the day, and that innocent little remark about “Christian white people” had somehow made it uncomfortable to refuse. The “B. N.’s” had yet to discover how much more satisfaction there is in getting people in than in merely keeping them out.

The democratic “straw ride,” a revival of an all but forgotten fashion, took exceedingly well, and it was a well-shaken-together crowd that tumbled out at Uncle’s “spring house,” where delicious, ice-cold buttermilk, sweet milk, or pure spring water was served to everybody. Of course, the girls’ throats were dry from much singing and shouting, so that nothing could have been better.

The next stop was at the big hay-barn, where all were invited to hunt for eggs in the clean, sweet-smelling mows. This was great fun; and when the eggs proved to be hard-boiled, the plan of this progressive picnic began to declare itself.

At the kitchen door, which stood invitingly open, stood a beaming neighbor woman with a bucket of steaming coffee and a basket of fried chickens, done to a turn, and these were quickly conveyed to the near-by apple orchard, where a few boards and sawhorses had been converted into a rustic table, fancifully decorated with ferns and autumn leaves in Cynthia’s original style.

But the nicest surprise of all was a blazing bonfire at a convenient distance, with—yes, it was actually Ethan, attired as an Indian brave and lavishly feathered, bending dutifully over it, flanked by a mammoth heap of late roasting ears.

After the substantials had been consumed, somebody offered a prize for the biggest apple, which was easily won by Cynthia, the best climber and biggest tom-boy in the crowd. Meanwhile, a huge, frosted cake had appeared upon the table, Doris’ mother’s contribution to the feast, and Ethan slyly suggested that treasure was sometimes found in woodpeckers’ nests, which led to another joyous scramble, and the discovery of handfuls of pop-corn balls and Shaker sweetmeats in tempting hollows of the old apple-trees.

By-and-by the whole company gathered in a circle around the dying bonfire, and Cynthia, with apparent unpremeditation, proposed an hour of story-telling.

Doris set the ball rolling with the very old tale of the Ash and the Elm, the father and mother of mankind, as told by the Abenakis, the Indians of New England. Both trees grew in Uncle’s door-yard; and her hearers, looking up, seemed to realize for the first time the graceful femininity of the drooping elm, and the sturdiness of the more robust and straight-limbed ash-tree.

“There was once a chief who had three daughters,” began Rosey, promptly, “and the youngest daughter was much the prettiest, so that all the young men wanted to marry her. After all, she married the Turtle, who was very lazy, and lounged about the camp-fire while the others fished and hunted. They all hated him because he had won the handsomest girl in the village, and yet did nothing to keep her. One day, they caught him out of sight of home, and at once told him that they had decided to build a big fire, and roast him alive.

“‘Ah, that is what I like!’ boasted the Turtle. ‘You can’t get it too warm to suit me.’

“Then some one suggested that they had better drown him instead, and the Turtle appeared to be much worried. He cried and begged for mercy, but they seized hold of him in spite of his struggles, and threw him into the lake near by.

“‘Ha, ha! now I am at home!’ exclaimed the Turtle, and he dived down into the cool water and left them all gaping and angrier than ever.”

After everybody had laughed at the expense of the disappointed suitors, Cynthia began the story of Lox, the mischief-maker, who one day uprooted a wild plum-tree and set it on his head, so that he scattered ripe fruit as he walked.

“Pretty soon,” related Sin, “he met two fun-loving girls, who begged that they too might be allowed to wear such charming and surprising head-dresses.

“So Lox planted on each of their heads a small plum-tree, by his magic power fastening the roots firmly in their long black hair. The girls went home very proud and pleased, and soon found themselves the talk of the village.

“After a while they grew tired of being pointed at, as well as of carrying the plum-trees on their heads, and each tried to pull the other’s tree out by the roots. They pulled and pulled with all their might, and at last they got them out; but, because all their beautiful hair was pulled out too, the girls cried bitterly, and wished they had not been so foolish.”

So it went all round the ring; and when it came the turn of their hostess, she could scarcely speak for surprise and pleasure in the pretty compliment to her well-loved people. After she had capped the climax with one of her best Dakota tales,[1] they were all delighted to hear the sound of a rustic, rollicking dance-tune played on the old fiddle by Uncle Si himself, who had certainly entered into the spirit of the occasion with all the zest of a boy.

Uncle was sitting out on the side porch in his shirt-sleeves, and there was a nice, level stretch of turf inviting to the dance. Tune followed tune until everybody was out of breath, and the frolic ended with a weird, make-believe “Ghost Dance,” and a most realistic scalp-dance, in which the girls held at arms’ length one another’s fallen tresses, while going through steps and figures that would certainly have put an Indian brave to the blush.

The sun was getting low when the straw-lined Cinderella’s coach, driven by Ethan this time, drew up at the farmhouse porch for its happy freight of tired girls. It really did seem as if the class of 19—— had never known each other so well before, never felt so close to the soil and so pleasantly alive to the spirits of the past, as after they had shared the hospitality of the Indian girl and her big-hearted Uncle Si.

[1] _For the story told by Stella, see “Wigwam Evenings,” by Charles A. and Elaine G. Eastman._