There was no visible pattern for her to follow. She had that all mapped
out in her brain, and followed it instinctively. I asked her to describe
the way the rug would look when finished, and she said, "No can tell. Me
know here," tapping her forehead. I liked the way the weaving was begun,
and so I squatted there in the sunshine for two hours trying to get her
to talk. Finally I gave her ten dollars for the rug when it should be
finished and little by little she began to tell me the things I wanted
to know. We made no real progress in our conversation until I learned
that she had been a student at Sherman Indian Institute for eight years.
When she found that I knew the school well and some of the teachers, a
look of discontent and unhappiness came over her face. She said that she
had been very, very happy at Sherman. With a wave of her slender brown
hand she said: "Look at this!" Her eyes rested with distaste on the
flock of sheep grazing near, turned to the mud-daubed hogan behind us,
and swept on across the cactus-studded desert. "They teach us to sleep
in soft, white beds and to bathe in tile bathtubs. We eat white cooking.
We cook on electric stoves. We are white for years, and then they send
us back to this! We sleep on the earth, we cook with sheep-dung fires;
we have not water even for drinking. We hate our own people, we hate our
children when they come!" I was so startled at the outburst. Her English
was faultless. I had enough sense to keep still, and she went on more
quietly: "When I left Sherman I hoped to marry a boy there who was
learning the printer's trade. Then we could have lived as your people
do. My father sold me for ten ponies and forty sheep. I am a squaw now.
I live as squaws did hundreds of years ago. And so I try to be just a
squaw. I hope to die soon." And there it was, just as she said. Turned
into a white girl for eight years, given a long glimpse of the Promised
Land, then pushed back into slavery. We saw lots of that. It seemed as
though the ones that were born and lived and died without leaving the
reservation were much happier.