American Indian stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 117 pages of information about American Indian stories.

American Indian stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 117 pages of information about American Indian stories.

On such an evening, I remember the glare of the fire shone on a tattooed star upon the brow of the old warrior who was telling a story.  I watched him curiously as he made his unconscious gestures.  The blue star upon his bronzed forehead was a puzzle to me.  Looking about, I saw two parallel lines on the chin of one of the old women.  The rest had none.  I examined my mother’s face, but found no sign there.

After the warrior’s story was finished, I asked the old woman the meaning of the blue lines on her chin, looking all the while out of the corners of my eyes at the warrior with the star on his forehead.  I was a little afraid that he would rebuke me for my boldness.

Here the old woman began:  “Why, my grandchild, they are signs,—­secret signs I dare not tell you.  I shall, however, tell you a wonderful story about a woman who had a cross tattooed upon each of her cheeks.”

It was a long story of a woman whose magic power lay hidden behind the marks upon her face.  I fell asleep before the story was completed.

Ever after that night I felt suspicious of tattooed people.  Wherever I saw one I glanced furtively at the mark and round about it, wondering what terrible magic power was covered there.

It was rarely that such a fearful story as this one was told by the camp fire.  Its impression was so acute that the picture still remains vividly clear and pronounced.

III.

The beadwork.

Soon after breakfast mother sometimes began her beadwork.  On a bright, clear day, she pulled out the wooden pegs that pinned the skirt of our wigwam to the ground, and rolled the canvas part way up on its frame of slender poles.  Then the cool morning breezes swept freely through our dwelling, now and then wafting the perfume of sweet grasses from newly burnt prairie.

Untying the long tasseled strings that bound a small brown buckskin bag, my mother spread upon a mat beside her bunches of colored beads, just as an artist arranges the paints upon his palette.  On a lapboard she smoothed out a double sheet of soft white buckskin; and drawing from a beaded case that hung on the left of her wide belt a long, narrow blade, she trimmed the buckskin into shape.  Often she worked upon small moccasins for her small daughter.  Then I became intensely interested in her designing.  With a proud, beaming face, I watched her work.  In imagination, I saw myself walking in a new pair of snugly fitting moccasins.  I felt the envious eyes of my playmates upon the pretty red beads decorating my feet.

Close beside my mother I sat on a rug, with a scrap of buckskin in one hand and an awl in the other.  This was the beginning of my practical observation lessons in the art of beadwork.  From a skein of finely twisted threads of silvery sinews my mother pulled out a single one.  With an awl she pierced the buckskin, and skillfully threaded it with the white sinew.  Picking up the tiny beads one by one, she strung them with the point of her thread, always twisting it carefully after every stitch.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
American Indian stories from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.