Read Online Growing Up Native American by Bill Adler - Free Book Online

exactly right, where he could blow the ashes from his pipe into the fire. He was able to fill and light his pipe and to clean it out when he finished, having developed the habit during the last few years by sitting with eyes shut and doing things by feel, as though preparing for total blindness. At least he was already well able to take care of his smoking needs.
    The old man sat silently, with thoughts of his past activities. Waterlily threw back the fur rug and set up her play tipi on the ground for a pleasant time with her little dolls. She assigned them different roles and invented simple situations such as came up in the family. She carried on a spirited conversation as though the dolls were talking. After a long time she remembered herduty. “Grandfather! Grandfather! Water!” She held some water out to him. He groped for the dipper, saying “ Hao , grandchild,” by ways of thanks, and drank noisily.
    Soon he was back into his reverie, and Waterlily played on until she felt hungry. Opening out the container of food her grandmother had left for them, she offered some to the old man and then started to eat. But the food did not taste as good as that sweetened cake of pemmican hanging high up on the tipi pole. Suddenly she wanted some of it, so badly that she piled up many rawhide cases full of dried meat until she could reach it by standing on them.
    It was of a pemmican base, filled with wild fruits and held together in a hard cake by rich oils derived from bones. A little of it was enough, for it was the richest delicacy there was. But Waterlily ate and ate and could not leave off, until she began to feel miserable in her stomach. She was lying very still when Gloku returned. She could hear her outside feeding and thanking her dogs as she unhitched them.
    The old man called out, “Are you back?” He knew she was, but this was their way of saying hello. “Yes,” she replied. “I am back.” As she entered, he said, “You better see what the child has been up to. For a long time she played very nicely with her dolls. But since we ate our meal, she has been very still, and for a child to be that still is a bad sign. It seemed to me she was moving heavy things about and reaching upward—to judge by her grunting efforts. For a time she was all over the place and then she became very silent. I called to her, but she did not answer. See if something is wrong.”
    Very soon Gloku discovered the half-eaten pemmican cake and let out a cry of distress that brought her daughters and Waterlily’s mother running. “My grandchild has sickened herself! Oh, what is to be done?” Her only concern was for the child; that the pemmican cake was largely a loss was something she had no time to think of. But she did turn on the old man. “And you! Here you sit placid while terrible things go on! You might have called out to the others—our tipis all but touch!” Not a word from him.
    Waterlily’s aunts and mother tried to force medicine down her throat, but it seemed to Waterlily that the tipi was turninground and round. The tipi poles meeting overhead were a great spider web spinning rapidly; the anxious faces of the women whirled with the web until they were all of a piece, slowly fading into darkness.
    Fainting was considered the opening step in the dying process. To give in was to surrender to death. If the one fainting were allowed to recline and lose consciousness, permanent death could ensue. With such beliefs, the women shook the ailing girl and kept her in a sitting position though she toppled this way and that. They continually dashed water in her face. Gloku kept saying as she rubbed Waterlily’s cold wrists and temples, “Do not forget, grandchild. Keep remembering, or you will die.” Remembering also meant being conscious. But Waterlily was not frightened by the threat of dying; it was not important. “Let me alone. I just want to lie