Big and Little Sisters: A Story of an Indian Mission School — A Reader’s Guide

It was a Saturday morning in December at the Indian Mission School. Two young Sioux girls were going up the stairs--Hannah Straight Tree and Cordelia Running Bird. It was their Saturday for cleaning. The two girls drew a heavy breath in prospect of the difficult task that confronted them. The great unplastered mission building was a chilly place throughout the winter, and the halls and stairway that morning were drafty from the blustering wind that swept the Dakota plains and came through the outer doors below, where restless children kept going to and fro continually. The young hall-girls shivered on the upper landing, and stepped back in a sheltered niche in which the brooms were hanging. They had thrown their aprons over their heads and shoulders, and were dreading to begin their work.

"My floor and stairs always look nicer than your floor and stairs," said Hannah Straight Tree to Cordelia Running Bird.

"Because you have the teachers' side, and that's always nicer, to begin with, than the girls' side," answered Cordelia Running Bird. "You know the teachers never walk whole-feet when you are scrubbing. If they have to go by, they walk tiptoe, and their toes are sharp and clean and do not make big tracks. But all the children on my side walk whole-feet over the wet floor when I am scrubbing, and their shoes are big and muddy. Ugh! big tracks they make! But I have learned the motto, every word, and I can speak that when I feel discouraged with my work." Cordelia Running Bird gazed at the motto, while the dormitory girls flocked by, and when the hall was quiet she repeated it in the peculiar monotonous tone with which an Indian pupil usually recites:

"Those who faithfully perform the task of keeping clean the dark places, the cold places and the rough places, are they to whom it may indeed be said, 'Well done.'"

"I shall not try to learn the motto, for it makes my memory tired," said Hannah Straight Tree. "I do not like to think hard or work hard. I am glad I have the teachers' side."

"If you do not think hard you will have a heart that is a dark place, like the scrub-pail closet, and it will he hard to keep it clean of wrong thoughts, like the white mother talked about in Sunday-school. The motto means inside of us as well as places where we live. I like to think hard," said Cordelia Running Bird. "I heard the teacher tell the white mother that I had the best memory of any middle-sized girl, and she said it was as good as many white girls' memories of my age, and that is 'most fourteen. So I am to speak the longest middle-sized piece in the Christmas entertainment."

"Ee!" cried Hannah Straight Tree, "hear her brag because she has a white memory! If the teacher praised me, I should be ashamed to tell it!"

"She will not praise you, for you are always very dumb in school. You will not try to speak a lesson only with the class in concert," said Cordelia Running Bird. "I shall try to finish very fast this morning. There are only two more Saturdays till Christmas, and to-day I want to feather-stitch the little new blue dress for Susie. She will wear it every day when she is here Christmas. Many white and Indian visitors will be here."

"And you will feel so proud because the visitors and the school will look at Susie, and the middle-sized and little girls will always choose her in the games. They would not choose my little sister if she played," said Hannah Straight Tree, with a sudden downcast look.

"Dolly is so shy I do not know if she would go into the middle of the ring if they should choose her, and she would not know the way to choose back," answered Cordelia Running Bird.

"Ee! She would! She would!" disputed Hannah Straight Tree. "Dolly is as brave and smart as Susie--smarter, too, for she is shorter! She could play the games if I would let her!"

"But you will not," replied the other; "you must not scold about my little sister. Susie knows the motions in the Jack Frost song so well the teachers says that she can motion with the children in the Christmas entertainment."

"She does not motion right," said Hannah Straight Tree. "She gets behind, and when they sing:

"'He nips little children on the nose, He pinches little children on the toes, He pulls little children by the ears, And brings to their eyes the big, round tears,'

she is only nipping her nose when the rest are pulling their ears."

"But she is so little she looks cute, and the visitors and school will laugh at her and praise her," said Cordelia Running Bird, undismayed. "She will not wear the blue dress in the Jack Frost song. She will wear a red dress from my mission box. I asked the white mother if I could not buy the red cloth for an entertainment dress for Susie with the money that she paid because I tended baby one month till the nurse-girl came. And she said if I wished I could put a nickel on the missionary plate twenty Sundays, which would be one dollar, and so buy the cloth. She said it would be teaching me to give, as well as to receive. She keeps the nickel with the school pennies, and I take one every Sunday."

"And you lift your hand so high and drop the nickel very too loud, so all the school can hear, when Amy Swimmer passes you the plate!" cried Hannah Straight Tree. "Just like it says, 'Ee! I am putting on a nickel, and the rest can only give one penny! And _I_ earned my money, and the pennies are money that their people sent them.'"

"You are very jealous," was the calm reply. "I shall hire a large girl to cut it fine and help make the red dress very fast. The sewing teacher has not time for such dresses. Ver-r-y pr-r-etty it will look!" Cordelia Running Bird smiled prospectively, displaying small white teeth and two round dimples. "Christmas evening I shall curl Susie's hair with a slate pencil, and she will wear fine shoes, and black stockings with the red dress. My father brought them with the blue dress, and I keep them in my cupboard."

"You are much vain because your father is an agency policeman and earns money, so he buys nice things for Susie," Hannah Straight Tree said, with growing envy. "Dolly has to wear the issue goods, and she will not look pretty Christmas time! Her dress will be a kind that looks black, and Lucinda only knows a way to make it look like an Indian dress. She will wear cowskin shoes so much too large, and very ugly-colored stockings. If her dress gets torn before she comes, Lucinda will not mend it nice--only draw it up so puckery. Very lots of grease spots will be on it, and her hair will be so snarly I shall have to comb her very fast."

"My little sister is not torn and dirty any time," said Cordelia Running Bird, "for my mother came to mission school when she was young and learned the neat way."

"My big sister only went to camp school just a little while," said Hannah Straight Tree. "When my mother died she had to stay at home and work and keep my little sister. Now again my father has got married, and Lucinda wants to come to school and bring my little sister. Dolly was five birthdays last Thanksgiving dinner."

"Susie was five birthdays while I was at home vacation. I would be so glad if she could stay at school next time she comes, but she was sliding on the ice, and she fell and broke herself right here." Cordelia touched her collarbone. "She is mended, but my mother is afraid to leave her with the children now," she added. "But next year she will leave her. If your big and little sister come to school they will have nice mission things."

"But they cannot for my father," Hannah Straight Tree said, with deepening gloom. "He would let Lucinda, but he says Dolly is too short; she must be ten birthdays when she comes. Lucinda loves Dolly, so she will not leave her, and my stepmother is cross-tempered. Lucinda will be twenty-one birthdays--much too old to come to school--when Dolly is ten birthdays."

"You can tell your father the teachers like the Indian children come to school when they are very short, so they can grow them more white-minded," said Cordelia Running Bird.

"I told him, but he says he does not want his children very white-minded. He says I came to school so short that they have grown me too white-minded. I tell him I am very Indian-minded, but he tells me I do not know white from Indian. Lucinda is so sad she will not try. She looks so horrid--Dolly, too--I am much ashamed of them. I shall not speak to them before the white visitors and the teachers--only down at camp."

"Then you will be very wrong," said Cordelia Running Bird. "I would not be ashamed to speak to my own people anywhere."

"Ee! You talk so good because your father wears a grand policeman's coat and trousers, and your mother's head is in a hood!" said Hannah Straight Tree, excitedly. "My father wears a very funny Indian clothes, and feathers in his hairs, and my big sister's head is in a shawl. All the girls will say on Christmas, 'Susie looked just like a fairy in the Jack Frost song. We shall give her very lots of candy from our Christmas bags.' Dolly knows the Jack Frost motions; I taught her, and she did them with the children down at camp. But I shall not tell the teacher, for Dolly has no pretty things to wear. That is why I won't let her play the games. If my father saw her in the Jack Frost songs and games, he would be glad she is so smart and just like he would let her come to school. But you would be so sorry if my big and little sister came to school. You think Susie is a skin-white girl and Dolly is a very copper-colored Indian."

"You do not speak true," was the denial. "I should not be sorry, and I do not think Susie is a skin-white girl. She is very copper-colored, too."

"But you do not wish Dolly would be in the Jack Frost song and wear a red dress just like Susie's!" challenged Hannah Straight Tree, disconcerting her companion with the piercing gaze habitual to her race.

Though not quite innocent of all the charges laid to her, Cordelia Running Bird was a truthful girl, and she would not disown a failing plainly set before her by another. She evaded her companion's gaze in silence.

"You are thinking hard! You cannot say it!" was the fierce indictment from Hannah Straight Tree.

"But--I wish she could be in another motion song--and wear a--green dress," came the hesitating answer.

"Ee! You think they would not watch Susie all the time if Dolly motioned Jack Frost, too, and looked like Susie! And you do not wish that Dolly had a blue dress--only ugly green--and looked like Susie in the games," said Hannah Straight Tree.

"But little white girls do not need to wear alike dresses," was Cordelia Running Bird's argument. "Because the little white visitor last summer looked just like a fairy in the pretty pink with white lace, did her sister have to wish another little white girl looked the very too same?" she asked.

"There is a difference, but I cannot tell," answered Hannah Straight Tree, taking down her broom in puzzled moodiness.

The two girls went about their work in a most unfortunate state of mind. Hannah's discontent at Dolly's lack and Susie's plenty, and the prospect of Cordelia's triumphs through the petted little sister, grew upon her, and resulted in unlooked-for trials to Cordelia, who was much discomfited by the force of her companion's criticisms.

Cordelia Running Bird was a bright, attractive girl, quite conscientious in discharging her industrial and school duties, and much interested in the Sunday-school; but in a private talk the very day before, the teachers had referred to her in some perplexity.

"I wish Cordelia Running Bird were a little different," said the school-teacher. "She leads her class, and is a credit to the school in most respects, but she is rather too ambitious to outdo others. It creates jealousy."

"I have observed that she is notional in the making of her dresses," said the sewing teacher. "She is apt to want the skirt a little wider and the hem a half-inch deeper than the regular uniform. And she asks to have more buttonholes, which means more buttons, and an extra ruffle on the waist. But she begs me so politely and appears so thankful, if I grant these trifling favors, that I find myself indulging her too frequently. She does the extra work herself, cheerfully and neatly, if not speedily, but closely watched by others. She has learned as if by intuition that variety is the spice of life, but she seems unconscious of the fact that she makes the other girls discontented. But she is so pleasant and obedient, as a rule, that minor faults may be forgiven her," the white mother charitably concluded.

As something quite unusual at that season in the Dakotas, there had been a thaw the day before, and a great quantity of mud had been tracked in on the girls' side by the sewing classes coming from the schoolhouse, separate from the main mission building, to the upstairs room in which the sewing work was done.

Hannah Straight Tree quickly swept her portion of the hall, for there was but little mud on the teachers' side, and was proceeding to her stairs before Cordelia Running Bird was half way along her floor.

"You have not taken up your dirt! You have swept it over on my side!" exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, who, with all her close attention to her own work, kept a sharp eye on the other's movements.

"There is little, and it will not be much work to take it up with yours," was Hannah's reply. "When we finished yesterday I lent our dustpan to the middle dormitory girls--they said theirs was too broken --and they lost it. Now they say they can borrow the south dormitory dustpan, and they shall not hunt ours. You can always find things better than I can, so you must hunt it and take up my dirt," was Hannah Straight Tree's demand.

"Tokee! How strange you talk!" exclaimed Cordelia Running Bird, in amazement. "The dormitory girls must ask for a new dustpan if they break theirs. It is not the rule to lend things, for it makes confusion; if you lent the dustpan you must find it and take up your dirt, for I have more to do than you. It is Number 8, and you can tell it when you see it."

"You are very cross as well as proud and vain--and you have learned the motto, every word. If I had learned the motto I should try to be good," said Hannah Straight Tree.

"The motto does not say a girl can tell us we must do a work that is not ours, and we must mind her. I shall sweep your dirt back," was the warm reply.

Cordelia Running Bird gave her broom a sudden push and sent the sweepings flying backward in a cloud.

"Now look how mean you are! Again I have to sweep my floor!" cried Hannah Straight Tree, angrily. "Proud--vain--cross--mean!" She counted the four failings on her fingers.

"Not the least bit do I care," replied Cordelia Running Bird, stung beyond endurance by Hannah's taunts. "I was not cross at first, but now I am, because you call me four bad names. I am now glad your little sister cannot play the games, or motion in one song, or even have an ugly green dress. I am not sorry that your big and little sister cannot come to school, and very much I wish I had not learned the motto."

Here the young Sioux girl, who was compelled to battle with hereditary pride and stubbornness in every effort to do right, forgot the white mother's admonition that the heart might be a dark place and a cold place needing to be cleansed of evil thoughts.

Hannah Straight Tree did not hunt the dustpan, but with perseverance worthy of a better cause, she brushed the sweepings from her floor and stairs upon a ragged palm-leaf fan which she discovered in a corner, and, dropping them into the scrub-pail, took them out of doors. Cordelia brought a shoe-box from her cupboard in the playroom and applied it as an inconvenient dustpan. Meanwhile dustpan Number 8 remained in the darkest corner of the middle dormitory closet, where it had been pushed in the rush of clearing up the day before.

Cordelia Running Bird's work of making clean her floor and stairs was even harder than she had expected. Never had there seemed so many errands to and fro by those who did the weekly cleaning in the three dormitories, numbering quite a force. The thaw had ended in a freezing snow squall in the night, but a sufficient quantity of mud was clinging to the broad soles of the government shoes that tramped across Cordelia's wet floor to insure a startling trail of footprints.

"I cannot keep them up, they come again so fast," she murmured to herself in grim despair, while wringing out her mop-rag to attack a line of tracks imprinted by the largest girl in school, in going to and from the laundry to dispose of laid-off sheets and pillow-cases. "_Ver-ry hor-r-i-d_ pictures of the ugly issue shoes. I will not wear them. I am wearing kid store shoes my father buys for every day. The dormitory girls are shovel-feeted, and I Wish they could not walk one step--only lie in bed!"

She was overheard by Hannah Straight Tree, coming up the girls' stairs at that moment. Hannah's own work had been done with little difficulty, and she had obtained permission to help the middle dormitory girls, for reasons all her own.

The reckless speech was repeated to the dormitory girls by Hannah Straight Tree, much to their displeasure.

"The dormitory girls are shovel-feeted, and she wishes they could not walk one step, only lie in bed!" exclaimed the largest girl, sitting down on a straw-tick to discuss the matter. "Then we should be cripples, and, tokee! how many cripples there would be!"

"If they came from both the other dormitories into this to lie down with the middle dormitory girls, there would be one cripple in each bed, and in one there would be two cripples," said a broom girl, who was quite expert at figures, having studied on the problem with the aid of broom-straws representing cripples.

This portrayal of the startling situation, if Cordelia Running Bird's wish could be fulfilled, increased the shock of indignation in the dormitories.

"Ee!" cried one, "we hate the ugly government shoes, of course, and wish that we could wear the nice shoes from our mission boxes every day. But we cannot, only Sundays--and we have to change them after Sunday-school --and when we wear our best clothes for white visitors. Cordelia Running Bird will not wear the government shoes because her father is an agency policeman, and can buy store shoes for every day."

"I was always much ashamed of my big feet, and now I am more ashamed," complained the largest girl. "If the dormitory girls are shovel-feeted, every large girl in this school is shovel-feeted."

"Cordelia was very cross about the dustpan, too, but we can pay her back," said Hannah Straight Tree, adding fresh fuel to the fire.

"Now I shall not show her how to feather-stitch the little blue dress," said the largest girl, who was quite famous at embroidery, and had partly promised to instruct Cordelia Running Bird in her work that day.