“Help me, O bloody war spirit, to strangle my enemy, Curly Bear, even as I strangle this serpent. Give me the strength to mash him, smash him, scalp him and cut him into very small bits.”
It was the forbidden snake dance. By such heathenish rites, the teacher knew, Flatfoot braves in the unregenerate days of yore had whipped themselves into a fury before going on the warpath.
The teacher descended, outraged, on Ug, confiscated the worm on the spot, and chastised Ug corporeally on another spot. What, demanded the teacher, did Ug mean by this? Ug, frightened, replied that he didn’t know. Once, years and years before, when he was little more than a papoose, he had seen his father and the other men of the tribe do this dance in a secret spot. He had not thought of it since; but on this evening, as he was wandering past the grove, smarting under the insults and kicks of Henry James Curly Bear, an earthworm had crossed his path; and suddenly, somehow, the idea had come to him to do the dance. He could not explain why.
“It just came over me, like, teacher, please,” he said.
That night the teacher thought long over the problem of civilizing Ug.
“I must do more than make him accept the ways of white men,” the teacher said. “I must make him like them. But how? First, I must get hold of his imagination. I must find the secret spring in his nature to which he will respond with genuine enthusiasm.”
The teacher was unlike many teachers in this: He did not think that every little Indian was exactly like every other little Indian. He set about the task of prodding for Ug’s own particular secret spring. It took days, but he found it at last. It was pride; ardent patriotic pride.
Mostly, when the teacher was talking of fractions or verbs or such things, Ug was in a species of torpor, with dull face. But when the teacher conducted the class in history and civics and spoke of Uncle Sam, Ug, the teacher noticed, straightened his backbone and brightness came into his black eyes. The clue was enough for the astute teacher. He dilated on the power of Uncle Sam and his love for all in the country, but particularly for his wards, the Indians, and most particularly of all for a certain youthful Flatfoot named George Washington Ug. Ug was impressed; that was plain. He became passionately devoted to Uncle Sam; he appeared to derive unlimited comfort and inspiration from the fact that a benevolent old gentleman in a tall gray hat, a star-spangled vest, striped trousers and a goatee was his friend and protector. Tho Ug’s notions of what a ward is were slightly fogbound, he was very proud of the fact that he was a ward of Uncle Sam. He rather looked down on the white farmers whose land adjoined the reservation; they were mere citizens; he was a ward. No longer, when larger Indians kicked him, did he plan to massacre them as they slept. Instead, he said, “Just you wait! I’ll tell my Uncle Sam on you some day when I see him.” And he wrote down their names in a small note-book.
From the day that Ug discovered Uncle Sam he became a changed Flatfoot. Gladly he embraced the ways of the white man. “Uncle Sam won’t like you if you don’t do this or that,” the teacher would say; it would be enough.
No longer with reluctance did Ug wash his ears. He attended church cheerfully; he brushed his derby hat without being told; he contributed an occasional penny to the missionary box; he learned empirically that it is unwise to use the fingers in eating custard and he desisted from doing so; he voluntarily abandoned the notion of keeping a family of pet skunks under his beds; he discontinued the practise of putting grasshoppers down the necks of smaller Indians during Sabbath school; he expressed at various times ambitions to be a railroad engineer, a moving-picture actor and a big-league shortstop; he told lies only when it was necessary, and sometimes not then. The teacher felt that Ug at last was headed in the right direction; the last of the Flatfeet was destined to be completely civilized.