heaven," of the gold crown, of the
white dress, of the great music; and then he would tell of that
other strange place--hell. My father and I hated it; we feared it,
we dreamt of it, we trembled at it. Oh, if the "Blackcoat" would
only cease to talk of it! Now I know he saw its effect upon us, and
he used it as a whip to lash us into his new religion, but even then
my mother must have known, for each time he left the tepee she would
watch him going slowly away across the prairie; then when he was
disappearing into the far horizon she would laugh scornfully, and
say:

"If the white man made this Blackcoat's hell, let him go to it. It
is for the man who found it first. No hell for Indians, just Happy
Hunting Grounds. Blackcoat can't scare me."

And then, after weeks had passed, one day as he stood at the tepee
door he laid his white, old hand on my head and said to my father:
"Give me this little girl, chief. Let me take her to the mission
school; let me keep her, and teach her of the great God and His
eternal heaven. She will grow to be a noble woman, and return
perhaps to bring her people to the Christ."

My mother's eyes snapped. "No," she said. It was the first word she
ever spoke to the "Blackcoat." My father sat and smoked. At the end
of a half-hour he said:

"I am an old man, Blackcoat. I shall not leave the God of my fathers.
I like not your strange God's ways--all of them. I like not His two
new places for me when I am dead. Take the child, Blackcoat, and
save her from hell."

* * * * *

The first grief of my life was when we reached the mission. They
took my buckskin dress off, saying I was now a little Christian girl
and must dress like all the white people at the mission. Oh, how I
hated that stiff new calico dress and those leather shoes. But,
little as I was, I said nothing, only thought of the time when I
should be grown, and do as my mother did, and wear the buckskins
and the blanket.

My next serious grief was when I began to speak the English, that
they forbade me to use any Cree words whatever. The rule of the
school was that any child heard using its native tongue must get
a slight punishment. I never understood it, I cannot understand
it now, why the use of my dear Cree tongue could be a matter for
correction or an action deserving punishment.

She was strict, the matron of the school, but only justly so, for
she had a heart and a face like her brother's, the