Children of the TenementsRiis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
General
Children of the Tenements
Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American; Tenement houses -- Fiction
General Ely S. Parker was the "big Indian" of Mulberry Street in a
very real sense. Though he was a clerk in the Police Department and
never went on the war-path any more, he was the head of the ancient
Indian Confederacy, chief of the Six Nations, once so powerful for
mischief, and now a mere name that frightens no one. Donegahawa--one
cannot help wishing that the picturesque old chief had kept his name
of the council lodge--was not born to sit writing at an office desk.
In youth he tracked the bear and the panther in the Northern woods.
The scattered remnants of the tribes East and West owned his rightful
authority as chief. The Canaghwagas were one of these. So these lost
ones had come straight to the official and actual head of their people
when they were stranded in the great city. They knew it when they
heard the magic name of Donegahawa, and sat silently waiting and
wondering till he should come. The child looked up admiringly at the
gold-laced cap of Inspector Williams, when he took her on his knee,
and the stern face of the big policeman relaxed and grew tender as a
woman's as he took her face between his hands and kissed it.
When the general came in he spoke to them at once in their own tongue,
and very sweet and musical it was. Then their troubles were soon over.
The sachem, when he had heard their woes, said two words between puffs
of his pipe that cleared all the shadows away. They sounded to the
paleface ear like "Huh Hoo--ochsjawai," or something equally
barbarous, but they meant that there were not so many Indians in town
but that theirs could be found, and in that the sachem was right. The
number of redskins in Thompson Street--they all live over there--is
about seven.
The old squaw, when she was told that her friend would be found, got
up promptly, and, bowing first to Inspector Williams and the other
officials in the room, and next to the general, said very sweetly,
"Njeawa," and Lightfoot--that was the child's name, it appeared--said
it after her; which meant, the general explained, that they were very
much obliged. Then they went out in charge of a policeman to begin
their search, little Lightfoot hugging her doll and looking back over
her shoulder at the many gold-laced policemen who had captured her
little heart. And they kissed their hands after her.
Mulberry Street awoke from its dream of youth, of the fields and the
deep woods, to the knowledge that it was a bad day. The old doorman,
who had stood at the gate patiently answering questions for twenty
years, told the first man who came looking for a lost child, with
sudden resentment, that he ought to be locked up for losing her, and,
pushing him out in the rain, slammed the door after him.
'TWAS 'LIZA'S DOINGS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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