Round one or two of the doors you see a group of lazy ones, men and
children, lying or squatting on the grass or in the dust of the bare
patch in front--the women you see through the open door at work inside
the house. The voices cease as you come in sight, but your salutation,
either in Chinook or English, is civilly returned, and a quick glance
takes in at once your personal appearance and that of your horse, and
every detail of your equipment. You see a few men at work in the
fields, but only a few. The men are better dressed than the women; torn
or ragged clothes are very rare, and nearly every man has a red or red
and yellow handkerchief loosely knotted round his head. Here come two
cantering after you on their ponies; one carries a rifle, and you
recognize him as one of the reservation Indian police. He asks you your
destination and business, and, as you are bound straight for the
agency, he lets you go on without a pass. They are bound to be strict,
and to see that unauthorized visitors do not enter, and, above all,
that no whisky comes within the reservation boundaries.
Four miles more along the road, nearly all the way through farms, or by
open pasture-fields, where grass and fern dispute possession, but all
through fine bottom-land, varying in width from one to two or three
miles across, brings you to the agency on the Middle Farm. What timber
is left standing are huge firs, splendid specimens of trees. Here is
the agency, the central spot of the reservation-life. The prominent
building there, two stories high, with overhanging eaves, spick and
span in new white paint and red shingles, is the boarding-house. Here
some forty or fifty Indian children of all ages are collected from the
outlying portions of the reservation, and are clothed, fed, and
trained; their actual teaching goes on in the adjoining school-house.
The low, gray house in the orchard, behind the boarding-house, is where
the agent lives; those other two white houses, each in its garden, are
inhabited by the farmer and the builder or head-carpenter and
millwright. In front of the boarding-house is a pretty, open
grass-field of six or seven acres; and that neat, white structure at
the lower corner of it is the store. The Indians' houses are dotted
round; the fields are better kept and cultivated than the Upper Farm;
there is a notable absence of loafers and stragglers round, and more
farming going on; several teams of horses are in sight.
[Sidenote: _INDIAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account