Indian boy

“ This American boy was tall and straight and slender. His eyes were as black as ink, his hair as black as a crow's wing. He could run like a deer, swim like a fish and climb like a squirrel. He was as solemn as a little owl. When he grew to a man he wore a headdress of eagle feathers. His skin was not white like yours. It was nearly the color of an English penny or an American one cent piece. Now you know what he was. He was an American Indian. There are still a good many Indians in our country. They live in houses, on big farms. They dress like white boys, speak English and go to school. ”

“ As I write this article, I look out from my window and see an Indian boy with a roughly-made sled drawing his little sister up the hill so that she can slide down again behind him. Little Indians are not wholly unlike little white boys and girls. They eat and sleep, laugh and cry, but they do not fight. That comes with civilization. ”

“ The Indian keeps his "medicine" hung up in his tent, and prays to it,—dreams about it,—and if his dream is of good luck, he acts accordingly. This applies to hunting, going on war expeditions, etc.; in short, it is his sort of saint, to which he pays idolatrous worship.
INDIAN BOY'S EDUCATION.
When an Indian gets to be eighteen years old, it is expected that he will strike out for himself, and do some act to show his bravery; and that begins in striking somebody to kill them (a white or Indian of a hostile tribe) , and to steal stock, a horse, or mule, or cattle. ”

“ With the Indian boy, for instance, firmness and kindness must be judiciously blended. It is no good arguing with him in times of difficulty, or you will stir up that latent spirit of obstinacy. Rules concerning work or conduct must be clearly laid down, and deviations taken notice of at once. Almost all Indians require the stimulus of supervision to keep them up to their work. But many Indian boys are slow in learning the duties of their office, whatever it may be. ”

“ With these impulses at their purest and strongest, the Indian boy begins his career with the building of a sound and efficient body. The rivers and lakes present themselves as obstacles in his path, and as a very young child he starts in to swim, as naturally, almost, as he begins to walk. ”

“ Perhaps no other people enjoy good stories better, and are more apt at telling them, than are the Indians. This art, most highly prized in a race without books, serves as a necessary outlet to their imaginations, and wonderfully enlivens their social and family life. The time for telling Indian stories is in the evening—best of all, around a glowing wood fire, on the long nights of winter. Here, every accent, every gesture, has its meaning, no faintest shade of which is lost upon the circle of attentive listeners. ”

“ The Indian child rules the family. They are rarely, if ever, corrected. No Indian mother was ever known to strike her child. If they want anything they cry until they get it—and they know how to cry. In play they are as mirthful and boisterous as any white child. They ride mock horses, and play mud ball. The Indian boy [pg 33] prepares willow sticks, peels off the bark, then rolls the wet clay into balls, and, sticking the ball on the end of the twig, he throws it at a mark with great speed and accuracy. Perhaps the most popular sport among the children is what they term the stick game. ”

“ When he reached the age where the Indian youth leaves boyhood behind him and becomes a brave, he entered upon a fast, as every Indian boy must do before he can be counted a man. He first built a sweat lodge and purified himself with the steam bath; then he 127 blackened his face and went off by himself to a lonely rock ledge up the side of the mountain where he stayed for three days without eating anything, watching for some sign from the Great Spirit, which would be a guide for his future life. ”

“ Food is free—lodging free—everything free! All were alike rich in the summer, and, again, all were alike poor in the winter and early spring. However, their diseases were fewer and not so destructive as now, and the Indian’s health was generally good. The Indian boy enjoyed such a life as almost all boys dream of and would choose for themselves if they were permitted to do so.
The raids made upon our people by other tribes were frequent, and we had to be constantly on the watch. I remember at one time a night attack was made upon our camp and all our ponies stampeded. ”

“ It is a mistake to think that the Indian child receives no higher instruction. This, however, is effected by moral suasion alone, and physical punishment is extremely rare. Great good-humour prevails among the children, and fighting and quarrelling are practically unknown.
At about fifteen years of age the Indian boy undertakes a solitary fast and vigil, during which his totem or medicine spirit is supposed to instruct him regarding his future career. At about thirteen years of age the girl undergoes a like test, which signalizes her entrance into womanhood. ”

“ Turning from the serious and sentimental to the humorous or droll we will find that the Indian is by no means lacking in his sense of the ludicrous, neither is he slow in imitating by word and action any individual who excites his mirth. He is really a born mimic and the rehearsals around the camp fire are often as humorous as one would find in any comic play. There comes now to my mind a dirty little Indian boy who could easily make his mark in any of our theatres. ”

“ WHAT boy would not be an Indian for a while when he thinks of the freest life in the world? This life was mine. Every day there was a real hunt. There was real game. Occasionally there was a medicine dance away off in the woods where no one could disturb us, in which the boys impersonated their elders, Brave Bull, Standing Elk, High Hawk, Medicine Bear, and the rest. ”

“ We can understand now why the Indian baby is pinned down in its cradle and not allowed to move freely. It is its first lesson in endurance. It must learn to be uncomfortable and not to show that it is so. It must learn to bear pain, and neither cry nor pucker its mouth. It must learn to appear calm, no matter how it feels.
The hunt is pleasant sometimes, you see, but at others it is work of the hardest kind.
The second duty of the red boy's father is war. He must protect his home from human and wild beast enemies. But I'm really afraid that it is a pleasure for him to fight. ”

“ But, little Golden Hair, let me whisper to you one secret of the Indian baby’s happy life: he never gets spanked! They leave that to the uncivilized white mother. So, after all, the white boy does not have all the good in life; does he? Only think of sliding down hill a whole morning without even a board between the smooth snow and the trousers, going home with wet and worn clothes and not getting whipped ”

“ Perhaps there are little children in some of the beautiful homes in the cities who cannot understand that the Indians are not all born grown up, with feathers on their heads and tomahawks in their hands. One little blue-eyed girl once said to me with a very long O-o-o-o and her hand over her mouth, “Oh, o-h! I did not know there were little Indian boys and girls!” but let me tell you, little Golden Hair, there are Indian boys and girls. ”

“ But these cases are exceptions to the general rule, which is that education is looked upon by Indians as a degradation rather than otherwise. Great difficulty is often experienced in persuading parents to allow their children to be taken to the training schools at all, and so much compulsion is often necessary that an appearance of kidnaping is imparted. The first thing that is done with an Indian boy or girl admitted to one of these schools, is to wash the newcomer with considerable vigor from head to foot, and to cut off the superfluous, and, generally speaking, thickly matted hair. ”

“ I do not know how to give a better name to a superstitious practice which is very common among the Indians, and, indeed, is universal among those nations that I have become acquainted with. By certain methods which I shall presently describe, they put the mind of a boy in a state of perturbation, so as to excite dreams and visions; by means of which they pretend that the boy receives instructions from certain spirits or unknown agents as to his conduct in life, that he is informed of his future destination and of the wonders he is to perform in his future career through the world. ”

“ Before he reached his mother's wigwam, his arrows had brought back game for their evening meal.
From the day when the boy met the little Jo gah oh mother in the wood, and was given the stone, he had good luck. Whatever he did, all went well with him. If he went on the chase, he brought back deer. If he planted corn, it grew tall and fine. No boy could throw a ball as far, or could run as fast as he. He could shoot his arrows to the sky, and could send his snow-snakes skimming far beyond the rest.
So lucky was this Indian boy, that his tribe called him "Luck-in-all-moons." ”

“ Such boys get ahead. Some Indian boys are naturally very gentle in their manner, and although their clothing may be ragged and dirty, and the homes in which they live are not nearly so bright and attractive as perhaps your father's stable is, yet these boys appear as gentlemanly as if accustomed to the little courtesies of the parlor in civilized life. One verse in the Bible says: "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he," and I think it is the gentle thoughts in the hearts of these Indian boys that make some of them so truly gentlemen, notwithstanding their surroundings and lack of training. ”

“ Some schoolboys, with a money-lender's disposition, make a fortune by selling marbles cheap to small and inexperienced boys and then promptly winning them back again.
Spinning tops is an amusement of which the Indian boy never grows weary, and he only leaves off regretfully because its season comes to an end. If he has nothing else to do he will be happy spinning his top, on and off, from morning until nightfall, and naturally grows skilful in the art, although, if he has no companion, it does not admit of much variety. ”

“ They bring him fruit and sugar-cane, and all the things he likes best to eat, and they stay by him, talking to him and singing till he grows quite at home with them. Sometimes they can loosen his cords within a fortnight, and lead him off between two others.
There are many other strange sights and sounds in the jungle, and some of them are greatly feared by Indian boys. ”

“ We take him up in the following legend at a period of advanced youth, when we find him living with his grandmother. And at this time he possessed, although he had not yet exercised, all the anomalous and contradictory powers of body and mind, of manship and divinity, which he afterward evinced. The timidity and rawness of the boy quickly gave way in the courageous developments of the man. He soon evinced the sagacity, cunning, perseverance, and heroic courage which constitute the admiration of the Indians. ”

“ Indian boys are very much like white boys in every respect, except that they are subject to no restraint, and carry their mischievousness to all bounds. Their ideas of play being founded on the ways of things about them, they are warriors, wild animals, horses, and the hunters, and the hunted by turns. Bands of these little Crows scarcely past toddling ranged the camp, keeping dogs, ponies, and women in a constant state of unrest. Occasional justice was meted out to them with a pony-whip, but in proportions much less than their deserts. ”

“ Indian boys are like many English rustics in their disregard for the feelings of animals—they appear honestly to think that they have none—and they delight in forming a chain of scorpions by making them grip each other, which they do fiercely, and hang on tenaciously. ”

“ In much the same way the boy represents in his growth the different stages of civilization from the savage to the civilized man. Some time the average boy typifies the Indian, the cowboy, prizefighter, pirate, sailor, soldier; and all classes of rough, wild men are wonderfully attractive to him. He wishes to be like them and plays at being one of them. For more than a year I was greatly attached to the ruffians on the wharves, and to such of the Montville Indians as I could make friends with. ”

“ Are the Indians willing to make the change? Yes, for the most part, they desire it.
2. Are their sons capable of receiving education and acquiring a knowledge of the various trades sufficient to make a livelihood? We refer to the appended letters from the masters of the various trades that our boys are learning: and as to education, our own experience is that Indian boys can learn as fast as white boys, and many of them will retain what they have learnt a good deal better. They read distinctly, without any foreign accent, write a capital hand, and are very fair arithmeticians. ”

“ She waited a year for her “Yagaki” to return, then her sorrow became so great she couldn’t bear it longer and she started out to hunt me up. The Indians told me later that after I had been gone a few months my old [193] mother would roam off in the mountains and lonely places and stay until hunger would drive her home. Finally she came to my white mother’s home in Grantsville to find her boy. My mother made her welcome, taking my Indian mother into her home, feeding her, and providing her with a room as one of the family. ”

“ This was done by washing him in a decoction 272of herbs, with soap; and after being dressed in the Indian fashion, with shirt, leggins, breech-clouts and moccasins, he was considered as one of the tribe. It is not to be wondered at that it was long before he could become in any way reconciled to his new way of life, and that he should mourn for that home which he never again expected to see. For all one year, the poor boy longed to return to his mother, brothers and sisters. ”