THE WIGWAM
“How much farther must we walk, Naki?” asked Mollie, after an hour’s hard tramping. “Surely Eunice and her grandmother must live somewhere near. Eunice could not have traveled such a distance to our hut every day.”
“An Indian girl flies like the wind,” Naki answered. “But another half hour will find us at the wigwam. The Indian woman lives in her tent. She will have nothing like the white race, neither house, nor friendships. She is the last of a lost race. She and the child live alone on the hill. Sometimes other Indians visit them, those of the race who have studied and become as white men. They have taught the child what she knows. But Mother Eunice, as the grandmother is known, still smokes her pipe by an open fireside.”
“Is the old woman also named Eunice?” Ruth inquired curiously. “I do not understand. Eunice is not an Indian name.”
Reginald Latham, who was walking next Ruth, panted with the exertion of climbing the hill; his breath came quick and fast. He seemed intent on Naki’s answer to Ruth’s simple question.
“Eunice is a family name in these parts among a certain tribe of Indians. But you are right; it is not properly speaking an Indian name. Many years ago a little girl named Eunice, the daughter of a white man, was stolen by the Indians. She grew up by their firesides and married an Indian chief. In after years, she would never return to her own people. And so her children and her children’s children have from that day borne the name of Eunice. The Mohawk Indians have the white man’s blood as well as the red man’s in their veins.”
Mollie was walking near Eunice, whom Naki still carried in his arms, and then Mollie would lean over every now and then and gently touch the child. Once or twice, during their long walk, she thought the little Indian girl lost consciousness. But never once did Eunice moan or give a cry of pain.
“Over there,” said Naki finally, “lies the Indian wigwam.” He pointed in front of him, where a solitary hill rose before them, shaded by dense woods.
“But I can’t see an opening there,” Ruth cried; “neither smoke, nor anything to suggest that people are living on that hill.”
Naki smiled wisely. “The Indians have forgotten much of their father’s wisdom,” he declared. “But not yet have they forgotten how to hide in their own forests.”