people.




THE WIDESPREAD ENIGMA CONCERNING BLUE-STAR WOMAN


It was summer on the western plains. Fields of golden sunflowers facing
eastward, greeted the rising sun. Blue-Star Woman, with windshorn braids
of white hair over each ear, sat in the shade of her log hut before an
open fire. Lonely but unmolested she dwelt here like the ground squirrel
that took its abode nearby,--both through the easy tolerance of the land
owner. The Indian woman held a skillet over the burning embers. A large
round cake, with long slashes in its center, was baking and crowding the
capacity of the frying pan.

In deep abstraction Blue-Star Woman prepared her morning meal. "Who am
I?" had become the obsessing riddle of her life. She was no longer a
young woman, being in her fifty-third year. In the eyes of the white
man's law, it was required of her to give proof of her membership in the
Sioux tribe. The unwritten law of heart prompted her naturally to say,
"I am a being. I am Blue-Star Woman. A piece of earth is my birthright."

It was taught, for reasons now forgot, that an Indian should never
pronounce his or her name in answer to any inquiry. It was probably a
means of protection in the days of black magic. Be this as it may,
Blue-Star Woman lived in times when this teaching was disregarded. It
gained her nothing, however, to pronounce her name to the government
official to whom she applied for her share of tribal land. His