United States or Brazil ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Well, if I am bad I'm no pagan Indian Hottentot like you!" yelled the angry driver. "Take the dog, and begone!" "Me no Hottentot," said We-hro, slowly. "Me Onondaga, all right. Me take dog;" and from that hour the poor little white cur and the copper-colored little boy were friends for all time.
Oh, he was a thorough little pagan, was We-hro! His loves and his hates were as decided as his comical but stately step in the dance of his ancestors' religion. Those were great days for the small Onondaga boy.
"Not me save, just save by big wolf-brother. He teach me to make his cry, he answer me when I talk his talk to him." We-hro's Sacrifice A Story of a Boy and a Dog We-hro was a small Onondaga Indian boy, a good-looking, black-eyed little chap with as pagan a heart as ever beat under a copper-colored skin. His father and grandfathers were pagans.
It is the law that someone must always suffer for the good of the people. We-hro, would you have the great 'Black-Coat, the great white preacher, come to see our beautiful ceremony, and would you have the great Onondaga tribe fail to show the white man how we worship our ancient Great Spirit? Would you have us fail to burn the sacrifice?
The dog contented himself with what little food We-hro managed to carry to him, but the hiding could not keep up forever, and one dark, dreaded day We-hro's father came into the house and sat smoking in silence for many minutes. When at last he spoke, he said: "We-hro, your dog is known to me. I have seen him, white as the snow that fell last night.
We-hro was up to his little ears in work, when suddenly, above him, on the river road, he heard the coarse voice and thundering whipfalls of a man urging and beating his horse a white man, for no Indian used such language, no Indian beat an animal that served him. We-hro looked up. Stuck in the mud of the river road was a huge wagon, grain-filled.
It was the law of this great Indian tribe that no other burnt sacrifice could possibly be offered than the strangled body of a white dog. We-hro heard all the great chiefs talking of it all. He listened to plans for searching the entire Reserve for a dog, and the following morning he arose at dawn, took his own pet dog down to the river and washed him as he had seen white men wash their sheep.
Stumbling and panting and breathless, We-hro hurried after his pet, and, seizing the dog in his arms, he wrapped his own shabby coat about the trembling, half-dry creature, and carried him to where the cedars grew thick at the back of the house. Crouched in their shadows he hugged his treasured companion, thinking with horror of the hour when the blow would surely fall.
Oh, little pagan We-hro had his life filled to overflowing with much that the civilized white boy would gave all his dimes and dollars to know.
Then the brutal driver's whip came down, curling its lash about the dog's thin body, forcing from the little speechless brute a howl of agony. Then We-hro spoke spoke in all the English he knew. "Bad! bad! You die some day you! You hurt that dog. White man's God, he no like you. Indian's Great Spirit, he not let you shoot in happy hunting grounds. You die some day you bad!"
Word Of The Day