 | The White Hour |  |
Austin, Mary. "The White Hour."
Munsey's Magazine 29 (April 1903): 88-92.
HOW EVALY JOHN, THE Paiute GIRL, BRIEFLY REALIZED THE AMBITION OF
HER FATHER, THE MEDICINE MAN.
WHEN it was told Mono John that a daughter was born to him, he named her after the most admirable white woman he knew, Eva Lee Matheson, teacher of the Tres Pinos school. He named her by ear, so that the child came to be called Evaly. Later, when she went to school, and understood that children must be known by their father's names, she called herself Evaly John.
The naming his daughter for the village teacher meant more to Mono John than the mere name's sake. It was a devotion and a consecration. By dim and unguessed ways there had come to the medicine man of the Paiutes a perception of knowledge as power, especially that knowledge peculiar to white men, which must reside in his people before the two races could come together upon anything like equable terms. Had he not seen, had he not proved? By as much as he could spell a little, sign his name, make change, and count the days of the month, could he not match himself better against his white employer than his tribesmen? Knowledge, then, the mastery of books and plows and groaning mills, was to bring back the great day of the Paiutes.
Mono John hugged this perception to himself as it had been a revelation, and found himself able, although he was then in middle life and all his sons were dead, to rejoice that a daughter was born. It had not happened to him to see men as school-teachers, and how else was knowledge to come to the campoodie of Tres Pinos except one of their own women rose to that office?
Concerning this matter you must have a word of explanation. The Indians of Angustora had a longer exemption from over-lording whites than most Western tribes; but the invaders came at last, with the discovery of rich ores in those desert-compassed hills; and after the first sharp resistance, made more futile by the certainty of what had befallen their affiliated clans, the Paiutes fell into the estate of hangers on. Afterwards the arm of the government reached out and gathered most of the tribe into the Northern Reservation; but those of Angustora, finding life still tolerable, and loving the land too much, chose to fend for themselves, trusting the crafts and the gods of their fathers.
They prospered better, on the whole, than their brothers of the Reservation. The land was big enough to keep them and a few small mining towns without elbowing; their necessities kept them active, and the standard of living in the settlements was not yet too complex to serve as an example. They established their campoodies on the water borders near the towns, finding employment on the ranches and among cattle men, and acquired an aptitude for ready made clothing and tinned foods. The women washed for the village housewives, and copied the styles of their gowns, with delicate stitchery and amazing hues; and all the evil that the white people did the Paiutes did after them.
Although the Indians of Angustora drew no rations, the government gave them a gentle shove now and then along the line of their noblest bent. So it happened at Black Rock and Maverick that when the little Paiutes grew too many and mischievous for the gardens and orchards, the Indian commissioner sent them a teacher and an order that they should be put to school. Tres Pinos was the smallest of the settlements, with perhaps a score of children; and until the daughter of Mono John had seen the pink flush of wild almond creep six times up the mesa from the town, there had never been a Paiute put to school at Tres Pinos.
Indians are good at waiting; so all those six summers Mono John made no
There is no law against Indian children attending the public schools of the whites, only a prejudice; so when Mono John brought his daughter to the schoolhouse door there seemed to be no reason why she should not come in; provided, said the teacher, that she was kept clean. If you had seen Evaly's home, you might have thought that an impossible condition. It was like all Paiute huts, a mere hole in the ground, planted round with willow boughs bent over to form a dome, thatched with reeds and sod, snug, smoky, and foul with the reek of unwashed bodies. But somehow out of her love and hand-craftiness the mother contrived to send the child daily in clean cotton frocks, with braided hair, and a handkerchief—which was washed every night—pinned to her belt; in short, not very different from the children of the village. How much of desire and renunciation, pride, faith, and simple savagery, went down the trail with her was hidden under the bronze impassivity of the Indian, but enough of it filtered through to the teacher to make her more than kind to shy, dumb, unsmiling little Evaly John.
Every Friday the medicine man stood at the schoolhouse door to hear the report of her progress, and found himself moved almost to tears with pride of achievement when she was able to write his name and her own.
Things moved on in this fashion for half a dozen years, not altering the faith and pride of Mono John, who was happily unaware of what had been plain to the teacher for this long time. Evaly was dull; patient, untiring, lovable, but hopelessly dull. In all the time that she went to school—nearly ten years—she never got beyond the third reader and the multiplication table, which latter she did not understand. The school at Tres Pinos grew to two departments, but Evaly stayed on in the primary room until she was head and shoulders taller than any child in it. So, as her slow wit perceived that the other children mocked her, she suffered as martyrs do, until the teacher, in an unaccustomed flash of understanding, moved her to the larger room. There, though she kept her old books, she moved and sat with children of her age.
Evaly was not interesting, not even pretty, as many Paiute children are, but stolid, broad-faced, with expressionless little eyes, and coarse black hair growing low on her forehead. How much of all this was plain to Mono John can hardly be guessed, nor is it of any use speculating what he would have done about it in any case. What happened was so much better, and, though grievous, kinder, leaving no sting of thinking that Evaly failed of anything required of her.
Mono John was the medicine man of his campoodie; for though he had sense of things as they should be, he was a Paiute of the Paiutes. Medicine men are chosen as the lot falls, but no one who knows Indians can deny the existence of considerable clairvoyant power among them, and more than a little knowledge of healing herbs. So though he was called upon to cure and curse, to detect thefts and foretell events, Mono John maintained his position with dignity and authority for fifteen years. It is the law of the Paiutes that when a medicine man loses three patients he must die at the hands of the tribesmen, and every incumbent enters the office with that understanding.
Of his post and all that pertained to it, of his pride and authority, of his growing unfaith in charms, Mono John talked to Evaly. Of the traditions of his people, and their spiritual significance which the unwise take for fact, and of his revelation concerning this thing called education, he talked often and long, while the twilight fell and the rosy peak of Oppapago swam above the dark. To his wife, except as it concerned the love and care of Evaly, he said little, for it is not seemly for a medicine man to talk much with his women; but this chosen one, wise in the books of white men, teacher to be, it was fit to counsel and instruct. Evaly lifted her dull eyes to him, loving and believing, and burned smolderingly towards the thought of that day when she should
So the time drew on towards the winter when Evaly should be sixteen years old, and she still blundering in long division. It had been a bad year all through, the spring rains scanty and long delayed, little water in the creeks, and few quail mating. Late, bitter frosts nipped the blossoms of the one-leaved pines, and cut off from the Indians their winter store of oily pine nuts. Along in the fall of that year broke out an epidemic of pneumonia, or something resembling it, carrying off great numbers of both white and brown. It was a quick sickness that took the strong and hardy between two breaths. It raged first among the whites, especially among the mining camps in the north end of the valley, working southward in the course of a month. Then it broke out in the campoodie, and ran with amazement and dismay the length of Angustora. The medicine men could do nothing, though they wearied themselves with incantations; the drugs which came in bottles at the stores lost their virtue; the white doctors, though they saved some patients, could do nothing for those who lived in the leafy huts and slept upon the ground.
When a people wax fat and well content they run after strange things, but in the hour of famine or pestilence they return to the gods of their fathers. Lax as the Paiutes had been of old customs, they had not forgotten. In all the campoodies there began to be murmurs against the medicine men. There had not been one killed in the valley for fifteen years, partly because for the last killing the whites had executed summary justice, and perhaps because there had been no real occasion. By a skilful use of his prerogatives, which include the right to refuse attendance if another doctor has been first called, and by keeping discreetly out of the reach of doubtful cases, a medicine man may avoid the penalty for a long time.
But now in every hut there was mourning, in every mind apprehension; unless help came swiftly there would be killing done in the campoodie. Word went out that there would be a gathering of clans in each district to choose new medicine men—nothing said about those still in office, but much understood.
To Evaly and Mono John it came with the force of a death warrant. For whatever the medicine man of Tres Pinos believed, the old customs bound. Paiute he was, and after the manner of the Paiutes he would die, even though he knew it to be foolishly. It came to this with him, that he said dumbly in his own fashion: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do"; but because of the child who had not come to full years, he would have avoided it if he could.
Rumor of the impending tragedy ran in the wickiups and reached even the whites in the towns. At Black Rock the government teacher stirred up influential citizens to warn and admonish the Paiutes; but here at Tres Pinos the pestilence bit sore, and the townspeople were busy with their own griefs.
The medicine dance was set for Thursday night. On Sunday Mono John heard of it.
"It is the law," he said, but he looked at Evaly and his heart shook.
His wife went into the hut and covered her head with her blanket. On Monday they heard what was done at Black Rock, and how the counsels of white men prevailed.
"Is there not one," said Evaly, "who could persuade the people?"
"None that they would hear," said her father, "unless it might be Johnson Sides, and he is at Winnemucca."
"Bring him, my father."
"Daughter, I am watched, I dare not go away; and I have no son."
Johnson Sides was a very great man among the affiliated clans of the Paiutes—an orator by gift, a high priest in authority, notably a man of pacific tendencies and modern ideas. Winnemucca lay within the reservation, two hundred miles north.
Evaly's slow wit traveled the length of the whole affair. Then came a glow as of reflected fires upon her face; she stood up, her bosom filling, and you could see how tall and strong she was.
"These people are fools," she said. "I will go, my father."
Mono John looked up, and was smit with the glow of her exaltation.
"Go," he said. He stood up, and she leaned her young body against him; so much of a caress was permitted a medicine man of the Paiutes. Some message, some assurance, passed between them without words.
The railroad that runs past Tres Pinos is a small affair, twisting and looping in the desert hills to tap the mines of that region. It crosses the lands of the Paiutes under consideration that they may ride free at will in either direction. They ride in empty freight cars, if there are any, or on the platforms or tops of the passenger cars, but never inside.
The daily train at that time passed through Tres Pinos about four in the morning. On Tuesday before the medicine dance, the daughter of Mono John crept out of the willow scrub beside the station where she had spent the night, and crouched on the rear platform of the one passenger coach. The wind blew coldly, foul with dust and cinders; towards daylight a chilly rain came on. It drove upon her with the wind, and dripped from the roof of the car. Evaly drew her blanket over her head and possessed her soul in the inimitable patience of her kind. There were no other passengers, and it was nearly noon before the train men discovered her. The promptings of human kindness were not supposed, in that region, to include Indians; but there might have been some appeal in the fact that she was a woman and young. They gave her leave to come into the caboose, where there was shelter and a fire. She sat down dumbly to steam in her wet garments. Something in the urgency of her errand made a kind of isolation for her. Her eyes burned dully, and in the long waits at stations had a hunted look. The men offered her broken food at noon, which she hardly tasted; but she said thanks very prettily for a cup of coffee.
So they wore through Tuesday as the train crawled up the summit of a treeless range. At night, because she knew the men would use their bunks, Evaly crept out to the platform again, shivering and sleepless, drawing her breath lightly not to wake a slumbering pain in her side.
They had crossed the range, speeding on a high, windy mesa, when Evaly dropped off at a little way station to watch the remnant of the night out among the freight bales. This was Winnemucca, a settlement of half a hundred Indian families, the real capital of the Paiutes. Here she would find Johnson Sides. What she would do, or what say, she had not questioned; no doubt her great need would bear her out.
Daybreak found her making the round of the wattled huts, asking for Johnson Sides. It was part of the serious exaltation of her mood that she felt no dismay to learn that he was gone to Haiwai, a matter of fifteen miles inland. Well, she would go also to Haiwai. How? Ah! Evaly, who did not understand the multiplication table, and played with colored kindergarten papers, had grown a woman in the night and used a woman's means.
She gave the young men a sidelong glance and a smile. All the girls at Tres Pinos, she said, could ride.
The young men snickered and nudged one another, and one swaggered a little. "Were all the girls of Tres Pinos as pretty as she?"
That was a true word, for the flush of fever and the beauty of high resolve lightened and brightened her face.
"Much prettier," said Evaly, "and the young men more polite."
So at the end of a quarter of an hour of chaffing and shy glances, Evaly was riding a borrowed horse out towards Haiwai, sitting astride, as Indian women do, and spurring cruelly, herself driven by a keener spur. The south bound train passed Winnemucca that night at eleven, and would reach Tres Pinos about the beginning of the medicine dance. Please God or whatever power, they would be in time, and Johnson Sides should save her father!
This was Evaly's white hour. All the Indian woman's habit of servility, all
In the end Johnson Sides came. It was just the sort of missionary effort that pleased his Christian soul, just the sort of situation that appealed to his savage dramatic sense.
Meanwhile Mono John had only evil looks and mutterings from his people. On Wednesday he heard how they had killed Winnenap at Maverick, and after that walked a little apart that he might meet his fate fairly. If the blow could be deferred until Evaly returned it might be avoided.
The preparations for "big medicine" went forward. The ground was cleared and the fetish pole set up. Thursday night fell, the fire was lit, and the old men gathered in to council. Mono John took his place with ears strained for the whistle of the train. Send it would not be late! Outside the circle of the council fire the women rocked themselves and wailed for the dead. Out in the sage the coyotes mocked them. "Oh—oo-o-ah!" wailed the women, "Ah-oo-aah!" the coyotes.
Bitterly, sullenly, but with every show of ceremony the council proceeded, harking back to the time and the law of the fathers. Still there was no train, and the dance for "big medicine" began.
This is the fashion of a Paiute big medicine dance. It takes place in a circular corral of wattled brush opening towards the east. In the center stands a peeled pine sapling hung with fetishes, in front of it a fire. A little to one side sit old men musicians, who keep up a kind of castanet rattle with split willow wands and a droning accompaniment of meaningless syllables, like the burden of old ballads. Round about in a circle sit the clan.
Mono John and two others stood up in the flare of the fire, stripped to the buckskin loin cloth, brave with paint and feathers. They began with the chanting of old songs, and leaped to the rhythm in the leaping light. On the turn of the medicine dance hung the issues of life and death. The leaping and stamping, the chanting, the clack of the willow, went on and on; the pulse beat with it, the breath sobbed in the body. The flood of savage emotion surged up with it, fell away, and increased like a tide. All through it Mono John felt for the moment of hypnotic control when he might reestablish his ascendency. Somewhere out on the slope of White Mountain the train was held by a hot box, and the medicine man, straining for the roar of its incoming, lost ground. Body and soul wearied under the strain. The moment came—and went against him.
Towards midnight, when the fire was burned to a red eye in the ash, and the ground under them was beaten to an impalpable fine dust, there went a bright gleam from man to man of the clan. It leaped to the head of the dancer on his left, a keen, new hatchet murderously bright; high above the chanting rang the voices of the young men in the death song of the Paiutes. Then into the dim-lit circle by the fetish pole stepped Johnson Sides, dropping his blanket as it had been the slough of old customs, and began the speech of his life.
It was a good speech, too, by all accounts, beginning at the point where the frenzy left off, and cunningly drawn out, past the point of reaction to exhaustion. As for the medicine man, he turned his back on his people and the reserve of sixty years, and hugged his daughter to his heart. Nor did he hear the end any more than the beginning of Johnson Sides' speech, being busy in the hut, laboring to relieve his daughter of the pain which gripped her.
The rain, the cold, and the spiritual strain had effected what neither the medicine man nor the doctor brought out from Tres Pinos could remedy. So it happened that in dying the daughter of Mono John added the final argument to the purely human inefficiency of the medicine man.
And this I take it was purely kind, for all the learning the patient labor had compassed, all the force and power that should have pieced out the long, lean years, had been burned out in Evaly's one white hour.
| The White Hour | |