Evelyn walked among the village of tipis, in which most of the Indian families still preferred to live. Log cabins had been built for them, but they did not like being surrounded by hard walls and having a solid roof over their heads.
“They feel they cannot reach the Great Spirit when they are so confined,” Janine explained.
“I am aware of their feelings about white man’s homes,” Evelyn replied. “I remember one particular Indian my mother and I befriended back in Oklahoma saying that he could not reach the spirits if he was inside a building. With a tipi, they can pray over the smoke of their fires, and the sacred smoke drifts through the top to the heavens, even in winter.”
“Many of these tipis are important for more reasons than that,” Janine told her. “They are sewn and painted by the women, and are personally precious to each woman for that reason. The tipi is her castle. When the Indians were nomadic and would migrate with the seasons, the tipi went with them. They didn’t leave their homes behind like we do. They dismantled them and took them along. The pictures painted on them are always symbolic of their spiritual guide, or perhaps depictions of something important that happened in their lives.”
The village they visited was east of agency headquarters, not far from a trading post used by whites and Indians alike. Janine stopped and nodded to a woman who was cooking something in an iron pot over an open fire. The woman smiled at Janine, but she looked suspiciously at Evelyn. “This is Red Foot Woman. We have given her the Christian name of Sara Eagle. Her husband is White Eagle, and Sara’s sister, Yellow Sky, is also his wife. Sara is thirty-one, as far as we can determine. White Eagle is forty, and his other wife, Sara’s sister, is twenty-four. They all understand some English, but they feel better speaking in the Sioux tongue.” She turned and introduced Evelyn to Sara, who rose from the fire and shook her head.
“No school,” she said, a look of fright in her eyes.
Janine started to explain further, but Evelyn interrupted, speaking to Sara in her own language. “I have not come to take your children from you,” she said. “I live right here on the reservation, and if you will bring them to my school, I promise I will only keep them for a few hours each day.”
Janine was glad to see that Sara seemed impressed at how fluently Evelyn could speak her language. She and John had never mastered it very well. They had picked it up some while working among the Sioux, but had never had the opportunity to actually study the language.
Evelyn smiled and gently asked Sara to tell her about her children. She had never met a woman yet, of any race, who did not like to brag about her offspring. Sara told her she had a fourteen-year-old son, Hides-The-Sun, whom the “white priest,” meaning John Phillips, had named Joseph Eagle. Broken Feather, called Robert by the missionaries, was ten. He-Who-Hunts, William, was eight; and Flower Girl, Martha, was five.
“My husband’s other wife, my sister, Yellow Sky, is called Sharon by the missionaries,” she went on. “She has a son, Little Feather, James Eagle. He is six. And she has a daughter who is four summers, Buffalo Girl. The whites call her Rose Eagle.”
“Could I please meet the children? Would you allow me to at least talk to them?” Evelyn asked.
Sara shook her head. “White Eagle says no. No children to go white man’s school. Not even on reservation. You teach them white man’s ways. They forget old ways. They get bad ideas.”
“No, Sara. I teach only good things, things that will help your children for the new way they must live now. I will teach them white man’s knowledge, which will help them take care of themselves if and when they are able to leave the reservation and live a new way. Everything is changed now, Sara. Surely you see that. It is good that they know and remember the old ways. They should never forget that first they are Sioux. I would never try to take that away from them. But they must also understand the white way now. It is the only way your people will continue to survive.”
“No.” The woman shook her head. “I have seen those who go away to white man’s schools. They are different when they come back. Sometimes they want nothing to do with their own family anymore, or with the old ways. They scoff at us. Many who go to these schools die, sometimes in body, sometimes in spirit.”
“Not Anita Wolf. I have not met Anita yet, but Janine tells me she went away to the Genoa Industrial School and knows how to cook and sew and bake the white way. She knows how to do numbers and can read and write in English. She is a very smart girl and she understands that her people must learn the new way, yet she is proud of being Sioux. She has not forgotten old customs, and she respects them.”
Sara sniffed. “Anita’s father is one of the lazy drunks who hangs around the fort and the agency buildings to beg for food. He runs after the white men, doing things for them so they will pay him with tobacco, and with firewater, when he can get it. He has deserted his people. He has no pride. His wife has been long dead, and his son, Anita’s brother, Broken Knife, he is as lazy and shameful as his father. Anita only went away to school because it was bad for her at home. Her father sometimes hit her and made her do all the work. Anita only turned to white man’s schooling to get away from home. She is no longer Sioux at heart. She thinks the white man’s way is the only way, but she is wrong.”
Evelyn was anxious to meet Anita, who Janine said was gracious and quite pretty. She hoped having Anita’s aid in teaching would help get others to send their children to school, since one of their own would be helping teach. This was her first day out “recruiting,” and already she could see that those who told her how hard it would be were right. She folded her arms and held her chin proudly. “Tell me, Sara, what if the one called Black Hawk sent his son, Little Fox, to school? Would you send your own children then?”
Sara laughed. It was only then that Evelyn realized the woman had a tooth missing in front. “Black Hawk will never send his son to a white man’s school.”
“But what if he did? Would you then agree to send your own?”
A sly look came into the woman’s eyes. “I will agree, because you will never get Black Hawk to agree. You cannot even find him unless he wants to be found.”
“You just remember your promise.”
As Sara chuckled again, a naked little girl came running up to her and grabbed the skirt of her worn, thinning buckskin dress. She stared at Evelyn. Evelyn guessed she was the five-year-old daughter called Flower Girl. She reached into her pocket and took out a piece of hard candy, handing it out to the child and introducing herself. The girl smiled and grabbed it, then ran off again. A young, pretty Indian woman came toward them, carrying a basket on her head that was filled with clothes. A little boy and girl followed close behind. Because of the heat, they were also naked, like most of the children who played about the area. The woman who appeared to be their mother set down the basket and ordered the children to stay back. She looked Evelyn over cautiously.
“This is my sister, Yellow Sky,” Sara told Evelyn. She explained to Yellow Sky, who was also called Sharon, about Evelyn’s reason for being there. Sharon backed away, reaching out to keep her children behind her.
“You will not take my children from me,” she declared.
Evelyn felt frustrated. “I have not come here to do that, Sharon, I assure you,” she told her in the Lakota tongue. “I just want to meet everyone and tell them that the school is available for anyone who wants to use it. Your children can stay right here and come home every evening. You can continue to practice your old customs when they are home. I don’t want them to forget them any more than you do. Please think about it. The teaching must begin.”
Sharon shook her head. “If I take my little ones to your school, I will never see them again. You will sneak them off to the schools far away, and when they come home, I will no longer know them.”
Evelyn closed her eyes in exasperation.
“We all told you it wouldn’t be easy.”
Evelyn sighed and faced Sara and Sharon. “I am hon
ored to meet both of you and your children,” she told them. “I hope you will change your minds. I mean only good things for your children. I have lived among Indians most of my life. I understand and respect your ways.” She turned away and walked toward another cluster of tipis.
“Don’t give up,” Janine told her.
“Oh, I’m not about to do that.” Evelyn stopped walking and faced her. “Janine, last night I was awakened by the strangest sound—like a man far away yipping and howling like a coyote in the middle of the night. It gave me the shivers.”
Janine smiled knowingly. “It used to frighten me, too, until I got used to it. You will hear the sound many times. It is Black Hawk. He often rides closer to the agency at night to taunt the soldiers and give voice to his stubborn refusal to comply with reservation rules. He knows his war whoops won’t disturb his own people. It will only bother the whites.”
Evelyn looked out toward the distant hills. “I need to talk to him.”
“To Black Hawk?” Janine laughed in the same disparaging way as Sara had. “I already told you, you’ll never get near him if you go looking for him. Besides, it could be dangerous.”
Evelyn thought about Wild Horse, and how close he and her mother had been. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, first he has to be found. Why don’t you just wait until you have a chance to talk to him when he comes in to the agency?”
“How often does that happen?”
“Not often. The best thing to do is befriend his sister, Many Birds. We haven’t met her yet. She lives with her old grandmother in the next village. She will be sixteen the first of August. That’s only a couple of weeks away. You wait until then. I am guessing Black Hawk will come in to help celebrate her sixteenth birthday. He’ll bring her something, maybe fresh meat or some kind of gift. You stay close to her around that time, and you just might get to meet her brother and nephew, but don’t expect to make much progress.”
Evelyn could still hear the man’s calls, was convinced he was the Indian in her dream. If that was true, and if Black Hawk was as spiritual as most Indians she knew, he would know when he saw her that she was something important to him. He would allow her to say her piece. He would feel this powerful vision that had plagued her for months.
Her heart pounded at the very idea of meeting him. If he looked like the ghostly rider of her dreams…
She looked past Janine toward a big, clattering farm wagon that was making its way toward the trading post. The back of it was stacked with ears of corn. A gray-haired man drove the wagon, and two young girls sat beside him. “Seth Bridges,” she muttered. “We’ll visit more of the families later, Janine. I am going to talk to that man.”
“I’d stay away from him, Evy.”
The younger girl that Evelyn had seen working in the yard the day she arrived at the reservation looked over at her then. Evelyn could see she recognized her, and she saw a cry for help in those big blue eyes.
She looked at Janine. “You brought medicine for a little girl you said had a bad cough.”
“Yes. Little Otter is the daughter of Three Bears and Owl Woman. So far they have refused white man’s medicine, but I thought I’d try once more.”
“You go ahead then. How far is it?”
Janine pointed to a sagging little frame house a good quarter of a mile distant. “Out there. Why?”
“I just wanted to know so I can catch up with you later.”
“Evelyn, our responsibility is to the Indians. Seth Bridges’s girls are white, and he is not a part of the government program. He’s just a farmer who sells food at the trading post. He can make trouble for all of us if you make him angry. He doesn’t like anyone sticking their noses in his business. My brother and I already found that out. Believe me, he’s a man to stay away from.”
“Those girls are in a bad way, Janine. Anyone can see that. My job is to teach and to help, and those girls need both. I intend to do something about the situation.” She stormed toward the wagon, determined to follow it until it came to a stop. She would find out a few things about Seth Bridges and his “adopted” little slaves! She heard Janine call for her to come back, but she ignored the plea.
Five
Evelyn half ran to keep up with Seth Bridges’s wagon, following it to the log trading post run by Bill Doogan, a middle-aged ex-soldier. Doogan was a redheaded Irishman who had married a Sioux woman who, Janine told Evelyn, had been orphaned several years earlier and had been living with a brother who liked his whiskey. The brother, one of those who gave up his pride and the fight long before Wounded Knee, had literally sold his sister to Doogan for a good supply of tobacco. Doogan was a pleasant-enough-looking man who seemed to treat his family decently, but his wife was shunned by many of her people because she was married to a white man, and her half-breed children, four of them, lived torn between two worlds, accepted in neither.
Doogan operated the trading post for the government, buying supplies from whoever wanted to furnish them and sending the bill to Washington. The supplies were rationed out to the Indians, and the government repaid Doogan with an extra percentage tacked on for his duties handling the trading post. Evelyn did not doubt that he tacked on his own little extra with the original bill, making a profit much tidier than what the government paid him. No one was there to keep an eye on what Doogan really bought—a hundred bushels of corn, or a thousand. She had only been here a few days, and she could already see how easy it would be to cheat both the government and the Indians. Men like Doogan could make a killing. He dressed well, and was a hefty man who apparently also ate well.
Cheating and thievery were rampant in dealings between the government and Indian agencies. Evelyn intended to do some letter writing to Washington and see that something was done about it. Just yesterday a supply of beef had arrived by riverboat salted and packed in lard, but still half rotten. The soldiers in charge of handing it out to the Sioux had said it was nearly always that way. Obviously the meat-packing houses in Omaha were being paid by the government to deliver good quality meat but were sending spoiled meat instead. As Janine had explained it was difficult to pin down the culprits, as the meat packers swore their innocence and blamed those who owned the freighting services, claiming they must sell the good meat somewhere along the way and collect someone else’s spoiled meat. Each person had someone else to blame, and the government seemed to have no interest in investigating the situation, even though it was they and the Indians who suffered in the end.
Seth Bridges pulled the wagon around the back of the trading post, and Evelyn marched right behind it, calling out to the man as soon as he pushed on the brake and started to climb down. He hesitated, then jumped to the ground to face her with a warning look in his blue eyes. Evelyn could feel his daughters staring at her, but they kept silent as she held a steady gaze on Bridges, refusing to show any fear. She felt sick at the way his bloodshot eyes moved over her. His whiskered face not only needed shaving but also a good scrubbing, and there were old sweat stain on the faded shirt he wore under his coveralls. He adjusted his floppy hat as he stepped closer. “Somethin’ you want, missy I’ve never seen you around here before.”
Evelyn faced him squarely. “I am Miss Evelyn Gibbons, the new schoolteacher here on the reservation.”
Lucille and Katy both watched the confrontation, both of them thinking Miss Evelyn Gibbons was just about the prettiest lady they had ever seen, both of them longing to be so ladylike and well spoken, aching to fix their hair pretty like that and wear clean, neat dresses. Katy leaned over and whispered to her sister, “She’s the lady I told you I saw go past in a wagon the other day.”
Lucille put a hand over her sister’s mouth, quietly warning her Seth had told them not to speak if anyone approached them at the trading post. She watched in both fear and admiration as Miss Gibbons faced Seth unafraid—or at least she appeared to be unafraid.
“And just what can I do for you, Miss Gibbons?” Seth ask
ed rather sarcastically, stressing “Miss” in a mocking way.
The tone in his voice and the look in his eyes readily told Evelyn what he would like to do with her. You filthy old man, she thought. What went on behind closed doors at the Bridges home? What kind of hell were Lucille and Katy living in? Bridges stood nearly six feet tall, making him seem even more imposing against her five-foot-four-inch frame, but she refused to let him intimidate her.
“I would like to talk to you about sending your girls to school,” she told him. “I will be teaching full-time here on the reservation, but my students certainly do not have to be only Indian children.”
The man turned and looked up at Lucille and Katy. “Quit starin’ like a couple of pups and get busy unloadin’ that corn!” he barked.
Both girls hurriedly climbed down.
“Go on inside and tell Bill Doogan to get some bushel baskets out here for you,” Seth ordered.
They ran inside without a word, reminding Evelyn of trained dogs. Seth turned to look at her then, taking a menacing pose. “My girls don’t need schoolin’, lady,” he told her. “The oldest is already sixteen, a woman. Katy is gettin’ old enough that she don’t need no more schoolin’, neither. They both got all they needed when they lived at the orphanage back in New York. Besides, I need them on the farm.”
The girls came back outside, each carrying a stack of empty bushel baskets. “So you can lie around and do nothing while they do all the work?” Evelyn asked Seth.
Lucille nearly dropped the baskets when she heard the bold question. She looked at Katy. Neither girl was sure what might happen next. They quietly set down the baskets, each of them taking one and pretending to pay no attention.
Seth’s jaws flexed in anger. “I do my share, lady. I adopted them girls out of the goodness of my heart, and because I had a wife dyin’ on me. She needed help around the house—”
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