Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 197, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1917 — AN ARIZONA POILU [ARTICLE]

AN ARIZONA POILU

Frenchman Makes Interesting Discovery in Redskin’s Cabin. Learns Story of How Son of Hopi Indian Squaw Crossed Great Water to Fight for His Father's People. It is in order to sell their products to a passing public that the Hopi Indians, one of the tribes of Arizona, the most marked for its nobleness and dignity of type, have established at the station of the Grand canyon a sort of shop, furnished within, as it is modeled without, after the manner of their dwellings of the desert, Anatole le Braz w*rites in The Outlook. Cubes of rough adobe, placed side by side or superimposed one on the other, constitute the abode, and serve as home for several families, who wait here, in the habitual attitude of taciturn and melancholy disdain, the line of white visitors. When I had penetrated into the first room, dinrty lighted by a small opening high up in the wall, it was some time before I was able to discern in the half-catacomb light the indistinct figure of a woman seated on the bare earth, before a screen of vertical threads, among which her fingers, moving in and out, were weaving the pattern of a mysterious design. My entrance did not cause her to raise her head. But I disturbed in his musing an old bronze sachem, who indicated by a gesture a collection of objects, more or less rude, ranged on shelves the length of one of the walls or partitions, while from half open lips he muttered In English the customary salutation: “You’re welcome, sir,” which manifestly to his mind, being interpreted, meant:

“You are not worthy, O 1 paleface, to appreciate the work of our but because times are hard for the deposed rulers of the prairie we accord you nevertheless the privilege to buy.” In response to his greeting I had begun to examine the display of articles, when my eye fell on a frame of colored straw in which I perceived the photograph of a. soldier. Approaching nearer, I exclaimed, in spite of myself: “God bless me, he is French!” It was quite true. There before my eyes, in the cabin of a redskin, thousands of miles from the battlefield, where at that very inoment, no doubt, he was fighting for his country, was the picture of one of our soldiers, in ♦he uniform of the daring Impetuous Chasseurs Alpins, or it may be of the foreign legion. To examine it better, I had taken it in my hands. “The frame alone is for sale,” interposed the old Indian, abruptly. '’“All right,” I said, “I will take it. But I should like to know how the picture found its way here.” He motioned toward the woman weaving. “It is that of my daughter’s son. He has sent it to us from the other side of the world.” “He is, then, in France?” “Yes.” “How is that?” “His father, a good miner, was born in the land of the French. When he came among us- he married that squaw. He died in the desert. But his spirit having spoken in the blood of his child, the boy has crossed the great water to fight the enemies of his father’s people.” I could not resist the temptation to take his hand. “Bravo!” I cried. And that he might pot be astonished at this somewhat brusque demonstration, if one could suppose that an Indian worthy the name ever could be astonished at anything, I hastened to add: “For I, too, am French.” •