CHAPTER SEVEN MY INDIAN MOTHER
My Indian mother was as good and kind to me as any one could be, but she did not seem to realize that there was another loving mother miles and miles away whose heart was sorrowing because of my absence. To her mind must have come many times these words of the old song: “Oh, where is my wandering boy tonight?”
My Indian mother would often ask me a good many questions about my white mother. She asked me if I did not want to go home. I told her that I should like to see my folks very much, but if I went home they would keep me there, and I did not want to herd sheep. I told her that I would rather play with white boys than with Indian boys, but that I liked my bow and arrows, and father would not let me have these at home because I would be shooting at the cats and chickens all the time. “I like my pony too, and I could not take him home,” I said, “and I love you too. If I went away you could not go with me; so taking it all around I should rather stay with you.”
This always seemed to please her; for her face would light up and sometimes a tear would steal down her brown cheeks, and then she would grab me and hug me until you could hear my ribs crack.
Often she would tell me about her troubles. Her husband had been shot a few years before in the knee with a poisoned arrow by the Crow Indians. He lived a little over a year after the battle, but he suffered greatly before he died. Soon after his death her two boys named Piubi and Yaibi went out hunting mountain sheep. While they were climbing a steep hill, a snowslide crashed down and buried them in the deep gorge at the bottom of the canyon. Here they lay until late in the following spring. The Indians tried to find their bodies by pushing long sticks into the snow, but they could not locate them.
But their mother would not give up the search. She told me how she would go out every day and dig in the snow with a stick in the hope of finding her boys, until she got so sick that Washakie and some other Indians brought her home, where she lay for two months very near death from sorrow and exposure.
As soon as she could walk she went up to the snowslide again. The warmer weather by this time had melted some of the snow, and she found the body of one of her boys partly uncovered. The wolves had eaten off one of his feet. She quickly dug the body out of the snow, and near by she found the other boy. She was too weak to carry them back to the tepee, and she couldn’t leave them there to be eaten by the wolves, so she stayed all night watching over them.
The next morning Washakie found her lying on the snow beside the bodies of her children. He took them up tenderly and carried them back to the village. The poor old mother was very sick after that. During this sickness and delirium of grief, she dreamed that her youngest boy came back to her, and he was white. This dream put into her mind the strange notion that she wanted a white papoose.
She was just getting well when the band of Indians she was with came into the settlement where I lived and found me. When they found that I could talk the Indian tongue, they decided that I was just the boy for the chief’s mother. They asked Washakie about it. He would not let them steal me, but he said that if they could lure me away from home, it was all right with him. So they set to work, as I have told, and succeeded in tempting me to go away with them.
My old mother also told me many things that happened when she was a little girl. She said that her father was a Shoshone, and her mother a Bannock. She said she was sixty-two “snows” (years) old when I came. She had had four children, three boys and a girl. When the girl was seven years old, she was dragged to death by a horse. Her two sons were killed by the snowslide, so Washakie and I were the only ones she had left.
J. E. Stimson
Death’s Canyon, Teton Range, Jackson’s Hole, Wyoming; snow slide in ravine at left.
Her life, she said, had been filled with sorrow, but she was having better times now than she had ever had before. If I would stay with her, she would be happy once more. She said she had fifteen head of horses of her own. When she died she wanted Washakie and me to divide them between us. She also wanted me, when she died, to bury her as the white folks bury their dead, as she thought that way was the best.
She certainly was good to me, watching me night and day and doing everything she could for my comfort, and I tried to be good and kind to her in return, but sometimes, boylike, I forgot. One night I was playing with the Indian boys. Our game was killing white men. With our bows and arrows, we would slip up to the bunches of brush and shoot at them. If we clipped off a twig with the arrow, that was a scalp. We would stick it in our belts and strut about like big Injuns.
While our fun was on, I heard mother call, “Yagaki, come in and go to bed.” I paid no attention so she came out and said, “Why didn’t you come when I called you?” “I didn’t want to go to bed,” I answered sulkily. With that she grabbed me by the collar and jerked me toward the tepee. I begged and promised, but she kept me going till she got me inside; then she flung me down on a pile of blankets.
“Washakie,” she said, “you must do something with this boy. He won’t mind me.” With that she left the tent and I heard her crying outside.
The chief looked at me a minute, then he said quietly: “What is the trouble between you and mother?”
“Well, she won’t let me play,” I said; “she makes me come in every night before dark. The other boys stay out; I don’t see why I can’t.”
“Mother knows why,” he said. “You should be good to her and mind her; she is good to you—better than she ever was to me.”
Mother had come in again. “Yagaki,” she said, “you must not stay out after dark. Those papooses might kill you. They have been trained to think it is an honor to kill a white man. If they could do it without being seen, they would just as soon put an arrow through you as not. I know what is best for you, Yagaki. You must come when I call.”
I always obeyed her after that, and we got along very well. She was a dear old mother to me.
“I went flying toward the creek.”