Beginners' Book in Language Part 5

2. Of course you know that Indian children were not sent to school as you are. They did not learn to read books. Do you know what they did learn? Tell the cla.s.s what you know about it.

3. Read what an Indian says in the following true story. When this Indian boy grew to be a young man, he learned English. He has written a number of books about his boyhood. As you read what follows, notice how many things you are told which you never heard of before. Perhaps you had thought that little Indian boys were never afraid of the dark. This story tells how they get over it. What else does it tell that is interesting to you?

AN INDIAN BOY'S TRAINING[B]

My uncle was my teacher until I reached the age of fifteen years.

He was strict and good. When I left the tepee in the morning, he would say: "Boy, look closely at everything you see." At evening, on my return, he used to question me for an hour or so.

He asked me to name all the new birds that I had seen during the day. I would name them according to the color, or the shape of the bill, or their song, or their nest, or anything about the bird that I had noticed. Then he would tell me the correct name.

One day he told me what to do if a bear or a wild-cat should attack me. "You must make the animal fully understand that you have seen him and know what he is planning to do. If you are not ready for a battle, that is, if you are not armed, the only way to make him turn away from you is to take a long, sharp-pointed pole for a spear and rush toward him. No wild beast will face this unless he is cornered and already wounded."

[B] Copyright, 1913, by Little, Brown and Company.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KNIFE IN ITS BEADED CASE]

When I was still a very small boy, my stern teacher began to give sudden war whoops over my head in the morning while I was sound asleep. He expected me to leap up without fear, grasp my bow and arrows or my knife, and give a shrill whoop in reply. If I was sleepy or startled and hardly knew what I was about, he would laugh at me and say that I would never become a warrior. Often he would shoot off his gun just outside the tepee while I was yet asleep, at the same time giving bloodcurdling yells. After a time I became used to this.

My uncle used to send me off after water when we camped after dark in a strange place. Perhaps the country was full of wild beasts.

There might be scouts from warlike bands of Indians hiding in that very neighborhood.

Yet I never objected, for that would have shown cowardice. I picked my way through the woods, dipped my pail in the water, and hurried back. I was always careful to make as little noise as a cat. Being only a boy, I could feel my heart leap at every crackling of a dry twig or distant hooting of an owl. At last I reached the tepee.

Then my uncle would perhaps say, "Ah, my boy, you are a thorough warrior." Then he would empty the pail, and order me to go a second time.

Imagine how I felt! But I wished to be a brave man as much as a white boy desires to be a great lawyer or even President of the United States. Silently I would take the pail and again make the dangerous journey through the dark.--CHARLES A. EASTMAN (OHIYESA), "Indian Child Life" (Adapted)

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIAN ARROWS]

=Oral Exercise.= 1. Play that you are an Indian boy or girl. Make believe that you are walking through the dark woods. Remember, there may be wild beasts in the woods, or the scouts of warlike Indian bands. Show the cla.s.s how you would walk and how you would look about you as you picked your way to a spring to fetch water for the camp. Tell the cla.s.s what you might see and hear on this dangerous trip.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TEPEE]

2. Now let three or four of your cla.s.smates be white boys and girls.

They are pa.s.sing carefully through the same woods. Let these white children show the cla.s.s exactly how they would make their way through the woods. What might they be whispering to each other?

3. Play that suddenly you and the white hunters meet in these dangerous woods. At first you see them a little distance away. What do you try to do? But they have also seen you. What do they try to do? At length you find that they are friendly, and they see that they need not fear you.

When you meet them, what might you say to them? What questions might you ask them? What might they ask you?

4. Make believe that the white boys and girls know very little about Indian boys, and that they wonder why you are not in school studying your lessons. What will you tell them? When they ask you whether you never learn anything, tell them what you have learned in the woods.

5. Now tell them that you know nothing about the schools to which white children go. Ask them to tell you why they go to school and what they do there. Ask them more questions until they have told you all about their school.

=15. Studying Words=

When the first white men who came to this country met the Indians, they learned from them some new words. The white men used these Indian words more and more. To-day we think of the words as English words, and we have almost forgotten where we got them. In talking about Indians we shall need these words. Let us learn them at once. Then we shall make no mistakes when we use them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STONE HATCHET]

=Oral Exercise.= 1. Listen carefully as the teacher p.r.o.nounces each word in this list of Indian words. Then p.r.o.nounce it the same way. Then read the entire list distinctly and rapidly without making a single mistake.

tepee squaw wampum hominy toboggan wigwam papoose moccasin tomahawk tobacco

2. Which of these words do you already know? Make sentences using each of these to show that you know what they mean. Learn the meaning of the others and then use them in sentences.

=Group Exercise.= With each of the Indian words in the list make one interesting sentence. This the teacher will write on the board. Then the entire cla.s.s will make it as much better as possible. The teacher will write the improved sentence on the board under the other one. Thus, with the first word in the list, you might give this sentence:

The hunter saw a tepee.

The cla.s.s tries to make the sentence more interesting. At last the following sentence is seen on the board:

The brave Indian hunter saw a large new tepee in the woods.

=16. More Telling about Indians=

One way of starting fire was for several of the boys to sit in a circle and, one after another, to rub two pieces of dry, spongy wood together until the wood caught fire.--CHARLES A. EASTMAN (Ohiyesa), "Indian Child Life"

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLINT KNIVES]

=Oral Exercise.= 1. Do you know in what kind of houses the Indians lived? Explain to the cla.s.s how large you think an Indian house was, how it was made, and what kind of door it had. If you can, draw on the board a picture of the tepee about which you are talking.

2. In which of the following questions are you interested most? You probably know something about it already. Learn as much more as you can.

Ask your teacher and your father and mother, and try to find something about it in books. Then tell your cla.s.smates what you know. If you can draw on the board[26] a picture of the thing about which you are talking, it may help your cla.s.smates to understand you better. Or you may make a drawing on paper with colored crayons.

1. What sort of boat did Indians use and how did they make it?

2. What did the Indians wear?

3. How were the Indian babies taken care of?

4. What did the Indians use for money?

5. How are the Indians of to-day different from the Indians whom the first white men saw?

=Group Exercise.= 1. After each pupil's talk the cla.s.s should explain to the speaker, first, what they liked in the talk, and, second, how the talk might have been better.

2. One of these talks the teacher will write on the board.[16] Then the whole cla.s.s should study it together, improving it as much as possible.

The following questions may help in this work:

1. Is anything important left out?