“Be seated, everybody,” said Uncle Teddy when 23 they had all arrived. “We are about to have a family council. I have just thought of a method of organization for the company while we are together here. We will be a tribe.”
“A real Indian tribe? Oh, goody!” cried Sahwah, jumping up and upsetting Gladys, who was sitting at her feet. “You can be the Big Chief.”
“Uncle Teddy will be the Big Chief!” they all echoed.
Uncle Teddy pounded on the tom-tom for silence, boom, boom!
“Hear and attend and listen!” he said. “If Mr. Evans hadn’t brought us up here there wouldn’t have been any tribe, so being in a sense the founder of the tribe he ought to be the chief.”
“But I didn’t propose bringing you all up here,” confessed Mr. Evans, “it was Mrs. Evans. So she’s the founder of the tribe, and, therefore, the Chief.”
“But I only said we’d come if Aunt Clara St. John would come along and help me look after the girls, because I didn’t feel equal to the responsibility myself,” said Mrs. Evans hastily. “So the founding of the tribe depended upon Aunt Clara.”
It was the most amusing situation they had ever faced, and the whole tribe laughed themselves red in the face while each one of the four candidates for the position of leader insisted that it belonged by right to one of the others. After half an hour’s arguing the question back and forth they were no 24 nearer a solution, when suddenly Katherine reached out and struck the tom-tom a resounding boom, boom, which was the signal that she had something to say.
“Why don’t all four of you be chiefs?” she suggested, when they had turned to her expectantly. “Four chiefs in a tribe ought to be four times as good as one. You each have an equal claim.”
“Fine!” cried the Winnebagos.