“I can’t do that. Washington sent her. She must stay. She looks unhappy, but she is quite content. When your children are sick you should send them to her.”
To this Tah-You made slow answer. “For many generations we have taken care of our own sick in our own way,” said he. “I do not think Washington should require us to give up all our ways. You tell Washington that we are able to care for our sick.”
It was only later that the agent found that the little hospital, the pride of his eyes, had been tabooed among the tribe from the very start. On the surface this did not appear. The children marched over, two and two, each morning, and took their prevention medicine with laughter, for it had a sweet taste, and the daily march was a ceremony. Their teacher took occasion to show them the clean white walls and the wide soft beds, and told them to tell their parents that this beautiful little house was for any one who was sick.
To this they all listened with that patient docility which is their most marked characteristic, and some of the old men came and looked at the “medicine house” and spoke with the “medicine woman,” and while they did not show enthusiasm, they were not openly opposed.
All this gave way to a hidden, determined aversion after one of the employees had died in the place. The nurse, being sheathed in the boiler iron of her own superstitions, could not understand the change in the attitude of the red people. It was not her business to give way to or even to take into account their own feelings. If they were sick she insisted that the superintendent hale them forthwith to her rooms and bind them on her beds of painful neatness. The opposition of the old people she would put down with the bayonet if necessary.
A group of the old men came to the agent and said: “Friend, a white man has died in the medicine house. That is bad. Among us we do not let any one use the lodge in which one has died—we burn it and all that is connected with the dead one. There is something evil which comes from the clothing of one who is dead of a disease. We do not wish our children to enter this medicine house.”
“Furthermore,” said Tah-You, “there are many bottles standing about in the house, and they stink very strong—they make us sick even when we go in for a few moments. It is not good for our children to sleep there when they are ill.
“More than this,” continued Tah-You, prompted by another, “the medicine woman drinks whisky in the night, and our children ought not to see that their medicine woman is a drunkard.”
Slowly and painfully Mr. Williams explained that all the bed-clothes were purified and the room made clean after a person died in it. Also that the smell of the bottles was not harmful. As to the medicine woman and her drinking, they were mistaken. She was taking some drink for her cough.
“We do not believe in keeping a house for people to die in,” repeated Tah-You. “Spirits and things evil hover round such a place. They cry in the night and make a sick child worse. They are very lonely. It is better that they come back to the tepee when they are ill. The children are now frightened, and we want you to promise that when any of them fall sick you will not send them to this lonesome house which is death-tainted.”