Down the Lolo Trail
Brartain, Cullen
October 2, I929 THE C O M MONWEAL 559 , i i ill i his episcopal consecration, to visit his Brent kindred at Peace, which had been Margaret's plantation. The homes of all burned, the...
...Squaws went to pools for water...
...A colt trots along beside its mother and wants its dinner before the Mission is reached...
...She was fascinated...
...Then it was over and they filed out and went with their neighbors to the wagons and brought out the pails of lunch, and with salt-rislng bread and a drumstick to appease her hunger, the little girl recovered her spirits...
...The next day, out of the teacher's hearing, the boys had much to tell of the camp, which by morning had entirely disappeared...
...It was not necessary for any Indian woman to do any slapping...
...Bravely through all these years these stones in the wilderness withstood the storms, until the new Highway came near and they could point to us the gallant endeavor of these Catholic gentlemen and the liberal ideas of a Catholic King...
...and we girls had laid out on a chair by the bedside our starched, carefully ironed, embroidery-trimmed underwear and pettlcoats--two, so that our lawn dresses would stand out nicely--ready to hop into as soon as we awoke...
...Teacher came out to watch, too, and recess was prolonged...
...Corpus Christi Day dawned warm and sunny...
...The front of the church is filled with kneeling Indians the children in front with here and there a black-robed nun, and the adults behind...
...The horses plow through the dust...
...There was no end to her knowledge...
...Where--how--did she gather all that misinformation ? It did not take us long to walk home that night...
...October 2, I929 THE C O M MONWEAL 559 , i i ill i his episcopal consecration, to visit his Brent kindred at Peace, which had been Margaret's plantation...
...It belonged to De Smet Mission, as birthdays or wedding anniversaries belonged to certain people...
...We had had our baths the night before, in a wooden tub in the kitchen...
...DOWN THE LOLO TRAIL By CULLEN BRATTAIN N THAT particular section of the Palouse country the neighborhood was almost all Protestant, the school entirely so, but that did not prevent us from knowing when Corpus Christi Day was at hand...
...Someone in a long black dress came out and lit the candles, and then someone in a lace-trimmed dress came out and began to talk in a strange language, and the people behind her began to sing words she could not understand, and the little girl was very uncomfortable...
...The little girl was frightened, too, and hung on to her brother's hand, much to his disgust and embarrassment...
...But it has to wait...
...The front of the church was beautiful...
...but our house must be in absolute order before we left, and no one questioned the wisdom of this...
...At one side is a wardrobe--or so the little girl thinks--and she wonders what is kept there and why there is a little cross on top...
...The little girl was always counting so she counted them...
...Men took the last of the foundations to fill in the old bridge-head over the Acquia and that was years ago...
...The litle girl knew nothing except that she had been glad when they were out of it...
...The little girl is glad her father does not do, as some other men do, draw out to the side of the road and let the young animal satisfy its hunger...
...It was the most wonderful thing the little girl had ever seen, this poor, log chapd in the far West where saintly Father Cataldo earned his crown...
...The cloud of dust grew less as the ponies reached the fiat and we could watch the process of camp making...
...This was the time to recall the grewsome event...
...There was a long shelf covered with a lace-trimmed cloth, and above were little shelves with candles and vases of flowers...
...But Brother---~ways wise, Brother--remarked that if people went to other people's churches they ought to behave...
...The Indians ranged around three sides of an open square in front of the church, the priest walking between the kneeling devotees, the little Indian girls walking backward scattering flowers in his path, the salvo of shots when the church was entered again-how could her little mates talk and laugh...
...Indeed, one man who refused to go was shot and scalped by some stragglers...
...She was just going to kneel down when I looked at her...
...Then the someone who had been there the year before delivered a lecture on Catholic Church Behavior as Differentiated from Protestant Procedure...
...and behind them, in front of the hay and sack of grain for the horses, were two kitchen chairs for the boys--who, however, spent half their time standing, holding to the girls' seat, the better to talk and tease...
...But teacher said no, and the bragging must be done at a safe distance...
...She remembers the things the girl told at school and now she believes them...
...Everybody was quiet though...
...0 patient 8owerl...
...At last, however, we were ready...
...Smaller pails of morning's milk were wedged in between the others so they could not spill...
...The homes of all burned, the last Brent left the Northern Neck in 1845...
...and we would all rush to the edge of the hill to watch the moving cloud of dust through which could be seen the dim forms of ponies with their burdens of human beings or camp equipment...
...All the world, it seemed, was going to Corpus Christi Day at De Smet Mission...
...The graveyard remains, with its elegantly carved and fashioned tombs that date back as far as 1689, when Lady Baltimore's daughter by Richard Sewell, "Secretaire of Maryland," who had married Robert Brent, was buried...
...She wanted to kneel down like the Indian children up front were doing...
...She was a baby when that happened but her mother was afraid of Indians and so was she...
...Then some boy ventured the opinion that the upper road was out of his way and he intended to go the usual way...
...Fires were started and kettles put on...
...People gather in groups and walk slowly toward the church...
...After dinner she climbed up into a wagon with other little girls to watch the procession...
...I'm not afraid, let's go down to the road...
...It was a threehour drive over the hills and through pine woods (how we prairie children loved woods0 to the upper end of Hangman Creek where De Smet Mission was located, and there was stock to feed before we could eat our own breakfast...
...The cross makes the litle glrl feel chilly and she walks closer to her mother...
...Even now, many years later, it is appalling to remember the weird things, related for truth, that we listened to that sunny June day in the shade of the log cabin...
...The little girl thought they must be angels...
...But those places were fenced in and off the county road, while the flat was open, offering a camping site for wayfarers...
...It was all right then for some people to kned in church but not for others...
...It was usually at afternoon recess when some sharp-eyed boy would raise the cry "Indians...
...Her father had taken them all over to see it last year and they were going this year, too...
...Desolation has come, too, over the town they built and the harbor for ships from the sea...
...The church is not like the Methodist one in the little town where the neighbors go to meeting...
...There were neighbors, we heard their names whispered at school, who did not make beds or wash dishes before starting on such a long trip...
...They had been on their journey two days now and would stop on the flat for their last rest before reaching their destination...
...There were fourteen...
...It has a decoration over the door like a half-sun and a tall cross rises from the front gable...
...One of the women always brings saltrising bread to picnics, and the little girl loves salt-rising bread...
...Some there were who were half afraid of these strange, fascinating beings...
...It was true, cross her heart, hope to die...
...We were wild to find out if we, too, might drive to the Mission and see them "shoot the devil...
...Such stories did r i not of course, frighten the boys but they did one little girl...
...One of the big girls said she would just like to see a squaw try to slap her, and another grew bloodthirsty in telling what she would do if one even thought of touching her, and she would laugh as much as she wanted to...
...The little girl blushed a deep crimson as the neighbors laughed and her mother spoke severely: "If you can't behave when you are in church we'll leave you at home next time...
...Veils were tied carefully over white straw hats, the long streamer being wrapped around the crown first...
...It was not funny, only very, very mysterious and beautiful...
...The Indians knelt on the floor...
...Someone whispered this and was answered by a brave boy: "Ho, ho, they wouldn't dare...
...W. B. Chilton, of Washington, gathered from old letters and musty records years ago...
...Only, that all-knowing brother had to talk: "Did you see CuUie...
...A squaw slap a white woman...
...The little girl began to be afraid her father would not care to go, but Brother said he probably would...
...Tents were set up and blankets spread around...
...Squaws with babies slung in skin cradles to their backs, slid from the ponies and began preparations for a meal...
...She glanced at her brother, that brother who could read her like a book, but his frown made her sit tight to the bench and clasp her hands in her lap...
...The little girl was glad her brother was not there to read her thoughts and deride her...
...They were in clouds...
...Was the teacher afraid of the Indians...
...The big boys, the tenand twelve-year-olds, thought she was, and spoke scornfully of "cowardy cats" as we went slowly along the upper road until we knew the teacher was safely over the hills in the opposite direction...
...They sat on the front seat with baby between them...
...The little girl is not hungry so why should the colt be ? It had its breakfast, the same as she did...
...But, the one who had been there last year defended hersdf and friends, you could hardly help laughing sometimes, everything was so queer...
...A mile below where there were willows and service bushes, black with fruit, the ponds were deeper and there was always running water...
...Ponies were hobbled and turned loose or staked out at the end of a long rope...
...In the Catholic Church people did not worship God (her voice dropped to a whisper as she told this) but they knelt down before pictures...
...No one opposed him, so down the hill we plunged and walked right through the middle of the camp, exchanging greetings with the men, and frightening one or two papooses...
...The schoolhouse, an abandoned one-room and lean-to log cabin, stood on the brow of a little hill, at whose foot was a broad flat traversed by Pine Creek, which, by June, was only a series of pools of varying sizes...
...We did not believe it...
...The windows are high so that not even the grown people can see out...
...Best dresses, of course, were not put on before breakfast, but a clean, long-sleeved apron covered the glory of stiff whiteness until the meal was over, dishes were washed, floors swept and beds made...
...She could not have told why, but it did seem as though she ought to kneel, as though everybody ought to kneel...
...There were in the group huddled together on that grassy hill several who could remember, more or less distinctly, Joseph's uprising in '77, when the people, fearful that the Lolo trails near by would be chosen by the Indians for their journey to the battle-field, had fled to CoHax...
...Over our lawn dresses with bows and belt of pink or blue ribbon were drawn the long-sleeved aprons as a protection against the fine dust...
...The boys scorned this care of finery...
...Neighbors had already begun to pass along the road and the little girl was afraid of being late...
...The girls were on the seat back...
...We knew all about them...
...Over the fields first plowed by the Catholic pioneers have tramped the armies of two wars, and then followed the desolation of marsh and bramble and honeysuckle...
...Of the whole enterprise there remain only the facts that the industry of Mr...
...She hopes everybody keeps quiet inside...
...No, she had not seen it but a lady had told her mama, a lady who never told a lie...
...She did not like to be laughed at...
...The boys said they were cooking dogs for supper, and some of us believed them...
...The people who sang were up high in the back of the church...
...The lunch of roast chicken, always roast chicken, sliced ham, bread, butter, pies and cakes and bowls of cottage cheese, was packed in big milk pails with a tablecloth on top and a newspaper wrapped tightly over that to keep out dust...
...We were up early and needed to be called but once...
...We were called into the schoolroom finally, and before dismissal the teacher instructed those whose homeward way led past the camp to keep well up on the hill on the upper road...
...The little girl did not know that Corpus Christi Day happened any place except at De Smet Mission...
...Pretty woods surround the Mission and the little girl's father chooses a good place to leave the wagon and horses and later come back to for dinner...
...She does not want to see anyone slapped...
...And above all the shelves hung a large picture of a beautiful woman with a baby in her arms...
...She was queer already and did not want to be any queerer...
...It was reassuring when they were at last out on the highway to see others still behind...
...But the seed was sown, to come to fruition after many years in a sunnier clime, a friendlier environment...
...But both parents were enveloped in long linen dusters...
...someone who had been over there and knew all about it...
...They had once owned all this country and even now might get mad and try to take it back...
...Some particularly friendly neighbors are not far away, and the little girl knows they will all eat together and is happy...
...The little girl wished her people were the kind that knelt, but she did not look at her brother as she wished it...
...Ho, ho...
...They had come from the reservation to the south and were on their way to the De Smet Mission for the Corpus Christi Day celebration...
...One woman had laughed last year and a squaw had slapped her...
...There was a meeting in the church and after dinner a procession all around the Mission grounds and they "shot the devil...
...And no one could laugh or whisper, they would be put out if they did...
...Around the wall are pictures with little crosses at the tops of the frames...
...They could "brush off...
...Then someone began to tell what the Indians did at the Mission...
...They go in and find places on benches in the back of the church...
...The little girl listened, appalled at the amount of information a schoolmate no older than herself and who could not read nearly so well had been able to 56o THE COMMONWEAL October z, I929 i acquire from one visit to the Mission...
...She was almost ashamed that her parents and neighbors did not kneel...
...Other children said they were going, the teacher had talked to two of the directors and they had said she might dismiss school so everybody could go...
...The priests wore long dresses, awful pretty, with lace on them...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 22
