Indiana's State Motto: The Crossroads of America - adopted in 1937

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AN INDIAN TEACHER AMONG INDIANS

I.

MY FIRST DAY.


Though an illness left me unable to continue my college course, my pride kept me from returning to my mother. Had she known of my worn condition, she would have said the white man's papers were not worth the freedom and health I had lost by them. Such a rebuke from my mother would have been unbearable, and as I felt then it would be far too true to be comfortable.

Since the winter when I had my first dreams about red apples I had been
traveling slowly toward the morning horizon. There had been no doubt
about the direction in which I wished to go to spend my energies in a
work for the Indian race. Thus I had written my mother briefly, saying
my plan for the year was to teach in an Eastern Indian school. Sending
this message to her in the West, I started at once eastward.

Thus I found myself, tired and hot, in a black veiling of car smoke, as
I stood wearily on a street corner of an old-fashioned town, waiting
for a car. In a few moments more I should be on the school grounds,
where a new work was ready for my inexperienced hands.

Upon entering the school campus, I was surprised at the thickly
clustered buildings which made it a quaint little village, much more
interesting than the town itself. The large trees among the houses gave
the place a cool, refreshing shade, and the grass a deeper green. Within
this large court of grass and trees stood a low green pump. The queer
boxlike case had a revolving handle on its side, which clanked and
creaked constantly.

I made myself known, and was shown to my room,--a small, carpeted room, with ghastly walls and ceiling. The two windows, both on the same side, were curtained with heavy muslin yellowed with age. A clean white bed was in one corner of the room, and opposite it was a square pine table covered with a black woolen blanket.

Without removing my hat from my head, I seated myself in one of the two stiff-backed chairs that were placed beside the table. For several heart throbs I sat still looking from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall,
trying hard to imagine years of contentment there. Even while I was
wondering if my exhausted strength would sustain me through this
undertaking, I heard a heavy tread stop at my door. Opening it, I met
the imposing figure of a stately gray-haired man. With a light straw hat
in one hand, and the right hand extended for greeting, he smiled kindly
upon me. For some reason I was awed by his wondrous height and his
strong square shoulders, which I felt were a finger's length above my
head.

I was always slight, and my serious illness in the early spring had made
me look rather frail and languid. His quick eye measured my height and
breadth. Then he looked into my face. I imagined that a visible shadow
flitted across his countenance as he let my hand fall. I knew he was no
other than my employer.

"Ah ha! so you are the little Indian girl who created the excitement
among the college orators!" he said, more to himself than to me. I
thought I heard a subtle note of disappointment in his voice. Looking in
from where he stood, with one sweeping glance, he asked if I lacked
anything for my room.

After he turned to go, I listened to his step until it grew faint and
was lost in the distance. I was aware that my car-smoked appearance had
not concealed the lines of pain on my face.

For a short moment my spirit laughed at my ill fortune, and I
entertained the idea of exerting myself to make an improvement. But as I
tossed my hat off a leaden weakness came over me, and I felt as if years
of weariness lay like water-soaked logs upon me. I threw myself upon the bed, and, closing my eyes, forgot my good intention.




II.

A TRIP WESTWARD.


One sultry month I sat at a desk heaped up with work. Now, as I recall
it, I wonder how I could have dared to disregard nature's warning with
such recklessness. Fortunately, my inheritance of a marvelous endurance
enabled me to bend without breaking.

Though I had gone to and fro, from my room to the office, in an unhappy
silence, I was watched by those around me. On an early morning I was
summoned to the superintendent's office. For a half-hour I listened to
his words, and when I returned to my room I remembered one sentence
above the rest. It was this: "I am going to turn you loose to pasture!"
He was sending me West to gather Indian pupils for the school, and this
was his way of expressing it.

I needed nourishment, but the midsummer's travel across the continent to
search the hot prairies for overconfident parents who would entrust
their children to strangers was a lean pasturage. However, I dwelt on
the hope of seeing my mother. I tried to reason that a change was a
rest. Within a couple of days I started toward my mother's home.

The intense heat and the sticky car smoke that followed my homeward
trail did not noticeably restore my vitality. Hour after hour I gazed
upon the country which was receding rapidly from me. I noticed the
gradual expansion of the horizon as we emerged out of the forests into
the plains. The great high buildings, whose towers overlooked the dense
woodlands, and whose gigantic clusters formed large cities, diminished,
together with the groves, until only little log cabins lay snugly in the
bosom of the vast prairie. The cloud shadows which drifted about on the
waving yellow of long-dried grasses thrilled me like the meeting of old
friends.

At a small station, consisting of a single frame house with a rickety
board walk around it, I alighted from the iron horse, just thirty miles
from my mother and my brother Dawee. A strong hot wind seemed determined to blow my hat off, and return me to olden days when I roamed bareheaded over the hills. After the puffing engine of my train was gone, I stood on the platform in deep solitude. In the distance I saw the gently rolling land leap up into bare hills. At their bases a broad gray road was winding itself round about them until it came by the station. Among these hills I rode in a light conveyance, with a trusty driver, whose unkempt flaxen hair hung shaggy about his ears and his leather neck of reddish tan. From accident or decay he had lost one of his long front teeth.

Though I call him a paleface, his cheeks were of a brick red. His moist
blue eyes, blurred and bloodshot, twitched involuntarily. For a long
time he had driven through grass and snow from this solitary station to
the Indian village. His weather-stained clothes fitted badly his warped
shoulders. He was stooped, and his protruding chin, with its tuft of dry
flax, nodded as monotonously as did the head of his faithful beast.

All the morning I looked about me, recognizing old familiar sky lines of
rugged bluffs and round-topped hills. By the roadside I caught glimpses
of various plants whose sweet roots were delicacies among my people.
When I saw the first cone-shaped wigwam, I could not help uttering an
exclamation which caused my driver a sudden jump out of his drowsy
nodding.

At noon, as we drove through the eastern edge of the reservation, I grew
very impatient and restless. Constantly I wondered what my mother would say upon seeing her little daughter grown tall. I had not written her the day of my arrival, thinking I would surprise her. Crossing a ravine thicketed with low shrubs and plum bushes, we approached a large yellow acre of wild sunflowers. Just beyond this nature's garden we drew near to my mother's cottage. Close by the log cabin stood a little
canvas-covered wigwam. The driver stopped in front of the open door, and in a long moment my mother appeared at the threshold.

I had expected her to run out to greet me, but she stood still, all the
while staring at the weather-beaten man at my side. At length, when her
loftiness became unbearable, I called to her, "Mother, why do you stop?"

This seemed to break the evil moment, and she hastened out to hold my
head against her cheek.

"My daughter, what madness possessed you to bring home such a fellow?"
she asked, pointing at the driver, who was fumbling in his pockets for
change while he held the bill I gave him between his jagged teeth.

"Bring him! Why, no, mother, he has brought me! He is a driver!" I
exclaimed.

Upon this revelation, my mother threw her arms about me and apologized
for her mistaken inference. We laughed away the momentary hurt. Then she
built a brisk fire on the ground in the tepee, and hung a blackened
coffeepot on one of the prongs of a forked pole which leaned over the
flames. Placing a pan on a heap of red embers, she baked some unleavened
bread. This light luncheon she brought into the cabin, and arranged on a
table covered with a checkered oilcloth.

My mother had never gone to school, and though she meant always to give
up her own customs for such of the white man's ways as pleased her, she
made only compromises. Her two windows, directly opposite each other,
she curtained with a pink-flowered print. The naked logs were unstained,
and rudely carved with the axe so as to fit into one another. The sod
roof was trying to boast of tiny sunflowers, the seeds of which had
probably been planted by the constant wind. As I leaned my head against
the logs, I discovered the peculiar odor that I could not forget. The
rains had soaked the earth and roof so that the smell of damp clay was
but the natural breath of such a dwelling.

"Mother, why is not your house cemented? Do you have no interest in a
more comfortable shelter?" I asked, when the apparent inconveniences of
her home seemed to suggest indifference on her part.

"You forget, my child, that I am now old, and I do not work with beads
any more. Your brother Dawee, too, has lost his position, and we are
left without means to buy even a morsel of food," she replied.

Dawee was a government clerk in our reservation when I last heard from
him. I was surprised upon hearing what my mother said concerning his
lack of employment. Seeing the puzzled expression on my face, she
continued: "Dawee! Oh, has he not told you that the Great Father at
Washington sent a white son to take your brother's pen from him? Since
then Dawee has not been able to make use of the education the Eastern
school has given him."

I found no words with which to answer satisfactorily. I found no reason
with which to cool my inflamed feelings.

Dawee was a whole day's journey off on the prairie, and my mother did
not expect him until the next day. We were silent.

When, at length, I raised my head to hear more clearly the moaning of
the wind in the corner logs, I noticed the daylight streaming into the
dingy room through several places where the logs fitted unevenly.
Turning to my mother, I urged her to tell me more about Dawee's trouble,
but she only said: "Well, my daughter, this village has been these many
winters a refuge for white robbers. The Indian cannot complain to the
Great Father in Washington without suffering outrage for it here. Dawee
tried to secure justice for our tribe in a small matter, and today you
see the folly of it."

Again, though she stopped to hear what I might say, I was silent.

"My child, there is only one source of justice, and I have been praying
steadfastly to the Great Spirit to avenge our wrongs," she said, seeing
I did not move my lips.

My shattered energy was unable to hold longer any faith, and I cried out
desperately: "Mother, don't pray again! The Great Spirit does not care
if we live or die! Let us not look for good or justice: then we shall
not be disappointed!"

"Sh! my child, do not talk so madly. There is Taku Iyotan Wasaka,[1] to
which I pray," she answered, as she stroked my head again as she used to
do when I was a smaller child.

[Footnote 1: An absolute Power.]




III.

MY MOTHER'S CURSE UPON WHITE SETTLERS.


One black night mother and I sat alone in the dim starlight, in front of
our wigwam. We were facing the river, as we talked about the shrinking
limits of the village. She told me about the poverty-stricken white
settlers, who lived in caves dug in the long ravines of the high hills
across the river.

A whole tribe of broad-footed white beggars had rushed hither to make
claims on those wild lands. Even as she was telling this I spied a small
glimmering light in the bluffs.

"That is a white man's lodge where you see the burning fire," she said.
Then, a short distance from it, only a little lower than the first, was
another light. As I became accustomed to the night, I saw more and more
twinkling lights, here and there, scattered all along the wide black
margin of the river.

Still looking toward the distant firelight, my mother continued: "My
daughter, beware of the paleface. It was the cruel paleface who caused
the death of your sister and your uncle, my brave brother. It is this
same paleface who offers in one palm the holy papers, and with the
other gives a holy baptism of firewater. He is the hypocrite who reads
with one eye, 'Thou shalt not kill,' and with the other gloats upon the
sufferings of the Indian race." Then suddenly discovering a new fire in
the bluffs, she exclaimed, "Well, well, my daughter, there is the light
of another white rascal!"

She sprang to her feet, and, standing firm beside her wigwam, she sent a
curse upon those who sat around the hated white man's light. Raising her
right arm forcibly into line with her eye, she threw her whole might
into her doubled fist as she shot it vehemently at the strangers. Long
she held her outstretched fingers toward the settler's lodge, as if an
invisible power passed from them to the evil at which she aimed.




IV.

RETROSPECTION.


Leaving my mother, I returned to the school in the East. As months
passed over me, I slowly comprehended that the large army of white
teachers in Indian schools had a larger missionary creed than I had
suspected.

It was one which included self-preservation quite as much as Indian
education. When I saw an opium-eater holding a position as teacher of
Indians, I did not understand what good was expected, until a Christian
in power replied that this pumpkin-colored creature had a feeble mother
to support. An inebriate paleface sat stupid in a doctor's chair, while
Indian patients carried their ailments to untimely graves, because his
fair wife was dependent upon him for her daily food.

I find it hard to count that white man a teacher who tortured an
ambitious Indian youth by frequently reminding the brave changeling that
he was nothing but a "government pauper."

Though I burned with indignation upon discovering on every side
instances no less shameful than those I have mentioned, there was no
present help. Even the few rare ones who have worked nobly for my race
were powerless to choose workmen like themselves. To be sure, a man was
sent from the Great Father to inspect Indian schools, but what he saw
was usually the students' sample work _made_ for exhibition. I was
nettled by this sly cunning of the workmen who hookwinked the Indian's
pale Father at Washington.

My illness, which prevented the conclusion of my college course,
together with my mother's stories of the encroaching frontier settlers,
left me in no mood to strain my eyes in searching for latent good in my
white co-workers.

At this stage of my own evolution, I was ready to curse men of small
capacity for being the dwarfs their God had made them. In the process of
my education I had lost all consciousness of the nature world about me.
Thus, when a hidden rage took me to the small white-walled prison which
I then called my room, I unknowingly turned away from my one salvation.

Alone in my room, I sat like the petrified Indian woman of whom my
mother used to tell me. I wished my heart's burdens would turn me to
unfeeling stone. But alive, in my tomb, I was destitute!

For the white man's papers I had given up my faith in the Great Spirit.
For these same papers I had forgotten the healing in trees and brooks.
On account of my mother's simple view of life, and my lack of any, I
gave her up, also. I made no friends among the race of people I loathed.
Like a slender tree, I had been uprooted from my mother, nature, and
God. I was shorn of my branches, which had waved in sympathy and love
for home and friends. The natural coat of bark which had protected my
oversensitive nature was scraped off to the very quick.

Now a cold bare pole I seemed to be, planted in a strange earth. Still,
I seemed to hope a day would come when my mute aching head, reared
upward to the sky, would flash a zigzag lightning across the heavens.
With this dream of vent for a long-pent consciousness, I walked again
amid the crowds.

At last, one weary day in the schoolroom, a new idea presented itself to
me. It was a new way of solving the problem of my inner self. I liked
it. Thus I resigned my position as teacher; and now I am in an Eastern
city, following the long course of study I have set for myself. Now, as
I look back upon the recent past, I see it from a distance, as a whole.
I remember how, from morning till evening, many specimens of civilized
peoples visited the Indian school. The city folks with canes and
eyeglasses, the countrymen with sunburnt cheeks and clumsy feet, forgot
their relative social ranks in an ignorant curiosity. Both sorts of
these Christian palefaces were alike astounded at seeing the children of
savage warriors so docile and industrious.

As answers to their shallow inquiries they received the students' sample
work to look upon. Examining the neatly figured pages, and gazing upon
the Indian girls and boys bending over their books, the white visitors
walked out of the schoolhouse well satisfied: they were educating the
children of the red man! They were paying a liberal fee to the
government employees in whose able hands lay the small forest of Indian
timber.

In this fashion many have passed idly through the Indian schools during
the last decade, afterward to boast of their charity to the North
American Indian. But few there are who have paused to question whether
real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of
civilization.

Impressions of an Indian Childhood   The School Days of an Indian Girl   An Indian Teacher Among Indians   The Great Spirit The Soft-Hearted Sioux   The Trial Path   A Warrior's Daughter   A Dream of Her Grandfather   The Widespread Enigma of Blue-Star Woman   America's Indian Problem

This information is the research of many people across the United States and may contain errors. It is presented as the best information to date. Like all of those whose work I have incorporated herein, my research is a work in progress and subject to change without notice. A special thanks to Marlene Ricci of CA, Dwayne Meyer of CA, Jacqueline Bean of TX, Debbie Dick of IN, Milus Miller of IL, Carol Hendricks Miller of IN, Clarence Miller of IN, and Harold Glen Miller of IN. There are numerous others too; many of which are unknown, but their findings and stories are still much appreciated. Much of this would not have been possible with out their information. Also this website includes historical facts gathered from Washington County History, Indiana History, Rowan County and Salisbury North Carolina Historical sources and other US Historical sources.

James A. Miller- Great -Great -Great -Great Grandson of Adam Miller and Hannah Sheets.

©2007 The Millers of Washington County

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  Last Updated 01/22/07 10:36:05 AM -0800