Kassie: An Indian Character Sketch

Kassie was a unique Indian character and my introduction to her was quite as unique. Camp Poplar River was one of our early and remote stations/ I found there a curious custom, at first almost startling. Any time of day, and especially at meal times, one could see at the windows of our quarters the dark faces of Indian squaws peering through the panes. There the poor, hungry or curious would stand for hours, their faces pressed against the glass, their hands shading their eyes as they watched us at our different avocations. Parlor, dining-room or bed-room windows were turned into peep-holes and the sudden and quite noiseless appearance of the faces was a shock to the nerves until one got used to it.

Often when I have looked up to encounter a pair of earnest hungry eyes, their owner would point to the table in a manner to signify they had nothing to eat. The squaws seemed to have a monopoly on the window-peering, for very seldom could a buck be found resorting to that means to discover or to study the daily habits of the white man. I soon came to pay little attention to the peepers, but one day I noticed among them an extraordinarily sad face. It was that of a middle-aged woman. Her large dark eyes never left my face, and I had even sensed her presence before observing her, so intent was her gaze. Her unkempt hair hung in strings around her face which seemed haggard and worn with sorrow.

When I looked at her she continued motionlessly to star, but unlike all the rest she made no pleading signs. Her face was plea enough for me, though, and I told her in sign language that she should have food in a few minutes. This acknowledgment of her presence worked a wonderful change in her countenance; eyes that had been somber like an unpromising dawn suddenly brightened and her whole face lighted up without a remaining sign of clouds. Her sweet smile literally began in her eyes and overspread her countenance. It was that first transforming smile that caught and held me, and as long as I knew her it never lost its charm.

When the woman had had something to eat, instead of starting away as the Indians usually did, she picked up a scrub bucket that was standing near preparatory to the day’s labor, and signified her willingness to work. She helped about the house that day and returned the next, getting her breakfast and doing anything that came to her hands. So the habit grew and it became quite the usual thing for Kassie to appear and undertake little chores, receiving in exchange any cold food that happened to be on hand to carry away.

It was upon asking her one day what she did with this food that I first heard of her family. She had a daughter in her teens and a son a few years younger still living. It transpired that her husband had participated in the Custer Battle, and that she herself had actually taken part in it – having helped to carry ammunition and to load the rifles. Her story of the battle from the Indian standpoint was pathetic. She told me more than once how they had been attacked and, although not wanting to fight, they had been obliged to defend themselves. In that battler he husband had been killed, and ever since his death she had been struggling to provide for herself and for her children. When she spoke of her trials it was a very matter of fact account she gave in the accustomed phlegmatic Indian way; but her low tones and her sad eyes indicated a depth of feeling not ordinarily apparent in an Indian.

However, I never knew her to give way to gloomy moods. In fact, she was one of those Indian women who impress one with inherent aristocratic reticence, keeping to herself the story of the struggles and disappointments of life.

The woman was not only possessed of a certain grave dignity but her reliability was a delight to all with whom she came in contact. Her word was absolutely inviolate, and her good humor was as certain as her daily appearance. Indeed, her beautiful character and her pleasant, quiet ways charmed me, and for her a genuine affection grew up in my heart that is a ceaseless pleasure to recall.

Her Indian name was long and not euphonious, so I bestowed upon her the name of “Kassie,” as from some character in fiction or some other reason I associated with it dignity and self-possession. Before long she was known to the whites and later among her own people, by no other name.

After a time there came a change in our household which brought her even closer to its daily routine and gave me abundant opportunity to know and to appreciate her. My cook, a capable girl whom I had brought from St. Paul, left me to marry a retired soldier and start a life for herself on a ranch; Kassie volunteered to take her place until it should be regularly filled. The Indian woman had been about the house so much that she knew more of the work than I had realized; she proved a very welcome and indeed competent assistant. She learned to cook many things very well and never wearied in her efforts to please my husband and me.

Even after I had procured another cook, Kassie regarded herself as one of the household and came and went about the various chores. Perhaps because she had known me so intimately she felt freer to confide all her home affairs to me. So it was that I heard of the courtship of her daughter, whom I had named “Susie.” The girl was really very beautiful; her long, black, glossy hair, big brown eyes, clear complexion, and regular features having won for her the reputation of being the handsomest girl in the Sioux tribe, although not a member of the aristocratic Polecat family which was noted for its pretty girls.

Susie naturally received much attention. One young brave found especial favor in her eyes; many times they met, for he waited constantly to intercept her as she went about the Agency. In this manner the courtship progressed calmly, without the surveillance of the chaperone to which the present day American girl so gracefully submits.

One morning, upon emerging from their tipi, the family found a pony tethered t the door. It was the Indian lover’s customary avowal by which he made his desire known to the maiden’s household; thus the girl herself was left to make explanations without being subjected to exceptional embarrassment.

Upon learning to whom the pony belonged, the parent or guardian decided whether or not it was agreeable to receive the suitor into the family circle. In case he did not find favor in the parent’s eyes, his intercessory pony was turned loose and left free to return to its master. O the contrary, if the suitor was “persona grata” his pony had found a new home in the future father-in-law’s herd, whither several of its fellows eventually joined it in return for their last master’s new wife. For the acceptance of the first pony was merely an indication of acceptance of the suit. The price had yet to be agreed upon and might include ponies, guns, robes or other Indian chattels. It seems tous a degrading sale or barter. Through this custom, however, baby girls became sources of prospective revenue to their parents; otherwise their advent would probably be cause of regret and disappointment, as it is in some southern tribes. But with the Sioux the female offspring, if not destined to succeed to their father’s manly pursuits, at least meant an addition to the parental possessions when they should attain maturity. Without some such compensation for the lack of warrior attributes, I fear the infancy of my sex among the Sioux would have been as wretched as that which characterized it in womanhood.

Susie’s suitor proved acceptable, and as “long engagements” wee not the order of the day, the glad young buck soon afterward proclaimed the girl his wife in the eyes of their world by publicly escorting her from her mother’s lodge to his own, which was pitched with those of his family at “Deer Tail,” a half dozen miles away.

Time passed.

Susie seemed happy in her new life. But her absence was a constant sorrow to her mother who almost worshipped her. Only Kassie’s son, a promising lad whom I had named “Johnny,” was left in her home. Kassie had lost a daughter through death after her husband was killed. When I first knew her, indeed, her hair was still cropped as evidence of mourning for that daughter; one of the odd tokens of bereavement of the Sioux Indians being the cropping of their hair at the death of a relative. Sometimes also they mutilate the body by severing a joint or two of a finger. Kassie’s hair was growing long again, but still another time of mourning was at hand for the gentle, faithful soul into whose life had already been thrust so much sorrow.

One day she came to me weeping piteously. At first she could not control herself sufficiently to tell me her trouble, but soon I understood that she had received news of Susie’s death. She begged me to go with her to her daughter’s late home at Deer Tail and be present at the burial.

From the very first of our acquaintance, and especially when she spoke of her bereavements, I had talked to Kassie of the Life-to-come and the Father Who cares for His children when they leave this world. She seemed to have been much impressed, and was one of the very few Indians at the time to accept the Christian doctrine or even to appear to enter upon an appreciation of its meaning. The belief and trust that had grown in her heart now stood her in good stead. Not only did she turn to the “White Man’s God,” but she also wanted to have her daughter buried in the white man’s way. It seemed she was relying upon me to help her compass her desire.

In pity for her sore distress, I applied for and was granted the use of an escort wagon, and a teamster to drive us to the scene of mourning. There was at the Agency a lady whose husband had been sent out as a missionary by a Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Ohio. She was greatly interested in the work to which her husband had been called and, anxious to assist him, she had been applying herself to the study of the Sioux language, and had in the few months of their stay learned enough of it to read intelligibly to the Indians from the Scriptures which had been published in their own language. I asked her to accompany Kassie and me on our errand; so the three of us drove away.

Poor Kassie sat inert on the floor of the wagon bed and sobbed quietly to herself until we entered the small tipi village where Susie had come a bride just a year before. On our approach we had heard the sounds of Indian wailing. It seemed more than ever to unnerve the stricken mother.

As we entered the tent where Susie’s body lay, her husband arose and left, for was not the custom for the husband and mother to mourn together. In the center of the tipi lay the girlish form already wrapped for burial, surrounded by relative and friends of her husband’s, but with none of her own blood to attend it. Around the body, squatting on the ground with bowed heads and rocking bodies, sat the mourners uttering the most soul-stirring wails that it is possible to conceive. I have heard the wail of Indian mourning too many times to count, and I could never become accustomed to it, for the sound was as agonizingly pitiful, weird and heart-rending to me the last time I heard it as it was the first.

Without heeding those present, Kassie went to the head of the body and, touching it lovingly, murmured as though hoping to be heard by the dead. She seemed unwilling to take anyone’s word for it that her daughter was beyond recall; but actually began to remove the funeral wrappings from the body. Yards and yards of ticking were wound around it mummy fashion, and when these were at one side, the mother tried to feel through the casing of yellow muslin in which the body had first been sewed, for any possible signs of life. Her exhibition of vain hope was pitiful, but finally she stayed her hand, and replaced the shrouding about the lifeless form that had been so dear to her – those present assuring her that Susie had died at sunrise.

When the father-in-law saw us two ladies he betrayed an ugly disposition and ordered us away. I told him we had come at Kassie’s request, and that we were going to have to have Susie’s body buried the way we were accustomed to put away our dead. That angered him still more; he told us that arrangements were made for the body to be disposed of in Indian fashion, and brusquely added that we had nothing to say about the matter.

The Indian method of burial was to fasten a corpse upon cross sticks supported on poles in the ground or in the boughs of the tree-tops. Here the air and the elements silently disposed of the lifeless clay, until in a year or so but little remained to bear evidence of a tomb – perhaps some broken sticks in the top, and a few scattered beads or human bones beneath the burial place. I cannot conceive of anything more pitifully gruesome than an Indian burial ground of this type. I have seen them in the fall of the year when the winds were shaking and swaying the platforms and wringing the leafless trees, flaunting the burial rags like signals of distress from the bones and neglected remains of those who had many a time withstood the tempest and storm when the breath of life stirred within them.

When Kassie had readjusted the wrappings, the other lady who was with us sat in the tipi and read aloud in their own tongue the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. I did my best to expound and make it plain while the tent was as still as the dead, except when form near-by came the piercing wail of the bereaved husband, mourning alone. Him we could not comfort.

Soon they proceed to the ceremony of cutting their hair and preparing to kill the ponies that were to accompany the soul of the departed to the “Happy Hunting Ground.” Upon realizing what was to be done, I besought him to desist. Again the husband’s father interposed with the argument that his son had already cut off the joint of a finger, and that all but one of the ponies were to be killed – the husband sparing only his own saddle horse. We explained to them best we could that the ponies would be of no benefit to Susie, while they were very valuable to the living; also that the Big Chief (Indian Agent) only provided rations for those who were not able to get food enough for themselves, and that if they killed their ponies it would show that they were rich enough and did not need any help. If they did not listen to me, I declared I would send word to the Big Chief, and he would surely stop their rations. This argument was too much for them, for big game in the vicinity by this time had become so scarce that, without government rations, it was almost impossible for the most thrifty Indians to get along. Flour, bacon, baking-powder, tea and so forth were the necessary staples which, with the small game procurable, furnished their diet. So finally my arguments had the desired effect, and the usual gory sacrifice was averted, and further objection to our plans for a white man’s burial for Susie, as her mother wished were not urged.

Taking from around my neck long silk scarf I measured the body for its coffin. Sometime before, I had gotten up an entertainment for the founding of a charitable fund, and with some of the proceeds we had a plain coffin made for Susie in which she was buried.

With the added weight of this most recent sorrow, Kassie began to fade. Only at rare intervals would she smile and she maintained her quiet dignity, never intruding her sorrow upon others. She continued conscientiously about her duties and displayed as evident desire to please as ever.

She remained with us until we left Poplar River, and our parting was indeed painful. She seemed to take my going quite to heart, and begged as a parting gift a lock of my hair and a small picture of myself, which she had admired. Gladly I granted the request, and she was very pleased with the little tokens. She wrapped them up carefully and put them away together in a tiny trunk in which her very few valuables were kept.

The trunk was one of a lot that, the trader having ordered out, proved a very popular line of goods, delighting the Indians as a novelty. The trunks were nothing but “doll luggage,” just large enough for the few keepsakes that the Indians prized sufficiently to preserve. Each was supplied with a key, and it was not unusual to see a tiny key suspended by a string around the neck of an Indian buck or squaw.

When my husband and I left the Agency we said our farewell to old “Kassie,” for we were never to meet again.

Some three years later, while riding horse-back near Fort Yates, South Dakota, I met a party of Sioux Indians form Poplar river on their way to visit at Standing Rock Agency. Just as we came abreast one of the bucks called out:

“How cola, How cola!”

He did not wait for his pony to stop but dismounted and ran over to greet us with great affection. It was Kassie’s brother; and between his manifestation of joy at seeing me, he told of his sister’s death which had occurred nearly two years previous. Then asking me to wait he ran over to a travots’ and from the conglomerate pile of household goods, kettles, clothing and so forth he brought out a doll’s trunk unlock and took out a small parcel.

With a sentiment far more tender than one would expect in a savage he stood in the dust o the road and the fierce glare of the sun beside my saddle and removed the wrapper after wrapper as he opened the package. It contained the lock of my hair tied with a red ribbon to one of my visiting cards and my picture which I had given to Kassie. I felt the hot moist tears coursing down my cheek as he recited the tenderness with which she had will them to him on her death-bed to care for as her most precious possession. It was proof unneeded of the enduring affection of a lofty-minded woman within her narrow horizon – brave amid misfortune; patient and uncomplaining in its endurance.