I would have returned at once had not my friend Davies told me to stay on and learn all I could. “Go to the top,” he said. “Do not halt in the middle of the trail. You will need to be very wise to help your people.”
He was a philosopher. He had no hate of any race. He looked upon each people as the product of its conditions, and he often said, “The plains Indian was a perfect adaptation of organism to environment till the whites disturbed him.”
His speech and his thought are in all that I write. He taught me to put down my words simply and without rhetoric. He gave me books to read that were both right and honest, and in all things he was truthful. “Your life can never be happy,” he said. “You will always be a red man in the clothing of the whites, but you will find a pleasure in defending your people. Your race needs both historian and defender. Your whole life should be one of teaching your people how to live and how to avoid pain. I am not educating you to be happy. There can be no shirking your duty. On the contrary, I believe your only way to secure a moment’s peace of mind after you return to your tribe is to help them bear their burdens.”
He warned me of the change which had come to me, as to them. “Your boyish imagination idealized your people and the life they led. You saw them under heroic conditions. They are now poor and despairing and you will be shocked at their appearance and position under the agent, but do not let this dismay you. The race is there beneath its rags and dirt, a wonderful race.”
I shall never forget those long talks we had in his study, high up in his little house, for he was not rich. Sometimes I could not sleep for the disturbing new thoughts which he gave me. Often he nullified all the teaching of the schools by some quiet remark.
“I counsel you to be a Sioux, my boy,” he repeated to me one night after I had been singing some of our songs for a group of his friends. “You can never be a Caucasian. There are dusky corners in your thought. The songs you sang to-night made your heart leap with memories of the chase. A race is the product of conditions, the result of a million years of struggle. I do not expect a red man to become a white man. Those who do, know nothing of the human organism. On the surface I can make some change; but deep down your emotions, your superstitions are red and always must be; that is not a thing to be ashamed of.”
I am giving this glimpse into my school days in order that my understanding of my chief and my race may appear plain. It is due to my good friend Davies, the noblest white I ever knew. I want everyone to know how much I owe to him.
It was strange to me and very irritating to find what false ideas of us and of our chief the Washington people held. When it became known that I was a Sioux and had been with The Sitting Bull, many were eager to question me about him, but I refused to do more than say: “We fought for our lands as Washington fought for his. Now you confine my chief as if he were a wolf. But he is a wise and gentle man, a philosopher, therefore he has laid his hands to the plow. His feet are in the white man’s road.”
This story is not of me, else I could tell you how beautiful some of the white women came to seem to me, and one small girl, fair as a spring flower, ensnared my heart and kept me like an eagle bound to my perch—only I did not struggle against the golden cord that bound me. It was all very strange to me, for I still loved a girl of my own race, who sent me presents of moccasins and who wrote through Louis to say she was waiting for me. It was strange, I say—for my heart clung to Anita, also, she was so fair and slender and sweet. She was associated with all the luxury and mystery of the white man’s life. She called to me in new ways—ways that scared me—while Oma spoke to something deeper in me—something akin to the wide skies, the brown hills, the west wind, and the smell of the lodge fire.