“I am Lenna,” she replied. It was the first time Casita or Jack had heard their language spoken by someone else in three years. “I am Mescalero,” she went on.
So Lenna wasn’t really of their people, but she was Apache like they were. She was the same age Juanita would be now. The little girl was a stranger to Casita, but it felt like her family had returned to her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I AM CASITA.” CASITA STARTED TO STICK HER HAND OUT, BUT then realized it was Indaa children who did that. Lenna would not understand. “This is my brother Jack. We are Cuelcahen Ndé.”
As Lenna took in every detail of Casita’s dress and boots and Jack’s grey pants and shirt, Casita knew she was wondering about their clothes and their English.
“After a raid killed our family, we lived with a white family at Fort Clark for three years,” Casita explained.
Lenna made an O with her mouth as she took in Casita’s meaning. “My people live on a reservation in New Mexico,” she said. “They are sending me to school to learn the ways of the Indaa.”
Casita didn’t know much about the Mescalero except that they were famous for the ways they could cook mescal and that they were allies of the Lipan.
“We are going to Carlisle, too,” Casita said.
“What do you have to learn? You are already like the Indaa.”
“Thank you,” Jack said, beaming. Once he had started his life in the Army, he had embraced everything Indaa. Unlike Casita, he never had doubts. He never worried that he was betraying the Ndé. For that, Casita envied him.
The train jerked forward, throwing them back against their seats. Lenna cried out and clung to Casita’s arm. Casita would have reassured her, but she was also scared by the train’s power and noise. As the train picked up speed, Casita couldn’t make out the scenes outside her window. It was like the world was spinning out of control and Casita couldn’t make sense of it all.
“It’s faster than any horse,” Jack shouted over the noise. “I’m going to see the engine.” As if he had been on a train dozens of times, Jack found it easy to adjust to its movements as he made his way through the car.
“He is very brave,” Lenna said.
“He’s not afraid,” Casita corrected. “Even when he should be.”
“I have a brother like that, too,” Lenna said, smiling.
“Is he coming to the school, too?”
Lenna’s face clouded. “He has to stay on the reservation. The Army only paid for one passage.”
Casita rubbed Lenna’s shoulders the way she used to comfort Juanita. “Don’t worry, you aren’t alone.”
The trip to Fort Hays took over twenty hours. Casita and Lenna watched the passing scenery until their eyes were red and aching. When the train finally stopped at Fort Hays, Corporal Quinn hurried them off the train. “This isn’t a regular stop on this line,” he said. “They won’t wait long.”
No sooner had they climbed down from their car than the train whistled and pulled out. The land was so flat that Casita could see the horizon in every direction. It was colder here and the wind whipped their bodies. Corporal Quinn brought them inside the depot, telling them they would be met by the representative from the school.
Staying close to each other, they hurried into the plain, square building. They stopped short at the sight of a dozen Indian children sitting inside, their backs to the wall. Unlike Casita and Jack, they wore tribal clothes. Jack drew in his breath when he saw the feathered headdresses. Lenna slipped her hand into Casita’s and whispered, “I’ve never seen Apache like them.”
“That’s because they aren’t Apache,” Casita replied.
A tall, grey-haired woman wearing spectacles approached them. “Corporal Quinn?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Here are your children from San Antonio.” He hurriedly signed a paper and left them without a word of farewell.
“I am Miss Mather,” the woman said. She peered at a stack of papers she had clipped to a board. “Lenna Cordova, Apache?”
Lenna nodded, too shy to speak.
Without looking at them, Miss Mather checked off Lenna’s name on her list. Then she called “Casita Smith, Lipan.” Check. “Jack Smith, Lipan.” Check.
Casita thought perhaps she should explain that Lipan meant Apache, too, but was it important? Captain Carter had told them that tribes would not matter at the school, since the point was to teach them to be like white people.
“Do any of you understand English?” Miss Mather asked.
Jack spoke up first. “I speak English very well.”
Miss Mather glanced up. She nodded with approval at his suit, now crumpled from travel. “You do speak well,” she agreed.
“I learned at Fort Clark,” he said, puffing up his chest.
“So you were with a military family?” Miss Mather’s eyes rested on Jack’s short hair with approval.
“Yes,” Jack and Casita said together. Casita added, “I speak English, too. And I can read and write.”
“Excellent,” Miss Mather said, making a note. “Jack, I think you will do very well at Carlisle. Our train will arrive in an hour. In the trunk by the door, we have blankets and a lunch for each of you.” When they didn’t move immediately, she tapped the board with her pen. “Off with you, then.”
Casita lifted her eyebrows. Was that all they were to be at Carlisle? Names on a list? Well, maybe not Jack. Miss Mather seemed to like him.
They had to pass the row of students to get to the blankets. Casita was disappointed to see that they were all boys. Casita had almost given up hope when she saw a girl her age on a bench in the corner. She sat alone and Casita was sure it was by her choice. She had the look of someone impatient with other people. Her dress made Casita envious. It was made of hide dyed deep blue, with a decorative fringe. An intricate pattern of elk’s teeth and black beads was sewn across the bodice. She was beautiful, with skin that seemed to glow. But her lovely face was gaunt and her arms were very thin. While Casita watched, she had a coughing fit that left her breathless.
Jack wasted no time in getting to know the other boys. Some, although not many, spoke English, so he soon was able to tell Casita about all of them. The largest group was Sioux, but there were Arapaho and Kiowa children, too. They had been brought here from reservations by wagon and steamboat. They had been waiting for the train since the night before.
“Who is she?” Casita whispered to Jack.
“Her? Her name is Eyota. Her father is an important Lakota chief. He fought at Custer’s Last Stand.”
Casita and Jack eyed Eyota with even more interest. The Lakotas had wiped out the 7th Cavalry in one battle. Charles had been distraught, but Casita and Jack’s reaction had been more complicated. They were an army family now—but for many years the news of such a defeat would have been celebrated among the Ndé.
“The Army wants Eyota to go to school to make sure her father doesn’t make any trouble,” Jack said. “Like starting another war.”
“She’s a hostage.” Casita’s voice was flat. “No wonder she looks so cross.”
“Maybe she looks cross because she’s not a nice person,” Jack said. “The Sioux boys don’t like her. She acts like she’s better than they are. But their fathers are chiefs, too.”
A train whistle alerted them to the train’s arrival, and they scurried to their feet. Jack grabbed his things and rushed to the platform. They might be the last arrivals, Casita thought, but Jack wanted to be the first one on the train. When she saw how the other boys admired Jack’s bravery, she had to appreciate his tactics. He had just established himself as a leader.
Casita and Lenna trailed close behind. The Indian boys quickly followed, as if they couldn’t be shown up by the courage of two girls.
“Can I sit by the window?” Lenna asked as they slid onto a long, cushioned seat.
“Of course,” Casita said. It was an arrangement that would work very well for her. There was a vacant seat on her right and she hoped Eyota
might sit there. Eyota might be cross, but she was the only other girl there. Mollie’s suggestion that Casita could have friends her own age had found an echo in her heart. For too long she hadn’t had anyone to confide her secrets to. What better way to become friends than to share a long voyage together?
Eyota was the last to board. She made her way down the aisle, considering each vacant seat. When she came near Casita, Casita smiled at her and said, “You can sit here if you like.” She held her breath, hoping the Sioux girl spoke English.
A wary expression on her face, Eyota sat down, her body stiff. So she did speak English. That was good, because Casita knew nothing of the Sioux or their language. The blue of Eyota’s dress made her own dark grey skirt look drab, and Casita loved how the elk teeth made a clicking noise when the other girl moved. Now that she was so close to her, Casita heard the rasping of her breathing. Maybe it was just the cold or the dust at the station?
“My name is Casita,” she said. “I’m Lipan Apache.”
Grudgingly, as though she would prefer to spend the journey in silence, Eyota gave her name and tribe.
“I like your dress,” Casita offered.
“I made it. My father said we should honor the school by wearing our best.” That explained why the boys wore their finery. Eyota’s gaze traveled down the length of Casita’s Indaa dress. “That is a white woman’s dress,” Eyota said dismissively. “Are you sure you are Apache?”
“Of course I am,” Casita said indignantly. “I was captured on a raid. I lived with a white family. They gave me this dress. But I am still Apache.”
“Where I come from, if an Indian dresses like a white woman, smells like a white woman, and speaks their language, then she’s not an Indian anymore. She is a traitor.”
“I’m no traitor. Take that back. I’m as Indian as you are!” Casita almost shouted.
“You are nothing like me.” Eyota stood up and moved to a different seat two rows up, just as the train lurched into motion. While the others moaned and hung onto their armrests as if they feared being sucked under the wheels of the locomotive, Eyota sat perfectly motionless. Either she wasn’t scared at all, or she was petrified. From her calm manner, it was impossible to tell which.
While Lenna watched the passing fields, Casita kept her eyes on the back of Eyota’s head, wondering that the Sioux girl took it for granted that you had to be either Indian or white. Just because Casita had chosen to live as Indaa didn’t mean she wasn’t Ndé. Casita was used to dealing with people like Caleb who didn’t like her because she was Apache. But Eyota didn’t like her because she seemed too white. Mollie had done her job well. What on earth was Casita going to do at a school that aimed to civilize Indians? Wasn’t she white enough already?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON WHEN MISS MATHER ANNOUNCED THEY were approaching Carlisle. Casita and Lenna pressed their faces against the window, trying to make out any details about their new home. As she had for the whole journey, Eyota sat alone and acted indifferent.
The train slowed down and they saw the tracks went right through a main street of town. Casita could see brick banks and shops built into the bases of four-story stone buildings. They had been here a long time, she guessed. A horse and wagon were moving along the same path; the driver looked at Lenna as the train passed and waved. People were walking down the street with shopping baskets on their arms. They stopped to watch the train go by.
“What kind of place is this?” Lenna asked.
“A wealthy place,” Casita answered.
The hiss and groan of the brakes signaled the train was finally stopping. A small group of well-dressed men and women were waiting, stomping their feet on the frozen ground to keep warm. When they saw the children at the windows, they started to wave.
Miss Mather led the students off the train. As the children climbed down, the cold was the first to meet them. They huddled together, pulling their blankets tight around their shoulders.
“There’s no snow,” Jack said, disappointed.
Casita glanced up at the sky, heavy with dark clouds. “I’m sure there will be,” she said. “Remember Mollie’s stories. This is Pennsylvania.” But she was disappointed, too. If it was going to be this cold, she thought, there should be snow.
A gentleman in a cavalry uniform advanced to meet Miss Mather. “Welcome home, Miss Mather!” he said for the benefit of the crowd. He didn’t look like a stiff and clean-cut soldier. This man was pear-shaped with untidy white hair.
“Lieutenant Pratt, what a lovely welcome for our new students,” she said, smiling warmly. She turned to the children, “This is the founder of our school, Lieutenant Pratt.”
“I look forward to meeting the children,” Lieutenant Pratt said. “But for now, it is rather cold. The good townspeople of Carlisle offered to transport our new arrivals to the school.” He waved a hand toward two large wagons painted a bright cherry red. They were drawn by a team of six enormous horses that were much bigger than the cavalry horses Casita was used to. Casita wouldn’t even come up to their shoulders. Jack couldn’t take his eyes off them.
“A hot meal is waiting for us at the school,” Miss Mather said. “Hop in.” Jack headed for the far wagon, but she stopped him. “Jack, come sit with me and Lieutenant Pratt. I’d like him to meet you.”
Casita knew that Jack wanted to be with the horses, but he followed Miss Mather into the nearer wagon. Casita wondered, not for the first time, why Miss Mather liked Jack so much. On the train, she had asked him. He had grinned and said, “Don’t you think Miss Mather is a good friend to have at the school?”
“Of course. But why you?”
“She said I remind her of a boy she used to know in St. Augustine.”
Good for Jack, she thought. He’ll do well here. She lifted Lenna into the wagon and climbed in after her.
Lenna huddled close to Casita. With two blankets around their shoulders, Casita and Lenna almost looked like one big bundle. “Don’t leave me,” Lenna whispered.
“I won’t.” Casita was happy to be Lenna’s protector, especially since Jack had already replaced her with Miss Mather.
The trip was short, a mile, perhaps two. The horses clip-clopped on paved streets, effortlessly pulling the wagons away from the town center through a sleepy neighborhood of wooden houses. They went up a gradual slope with fields on either side and through an open gate. Miss Mather told Jack to close the gate behind them. As he jogged past their wagon, Jack waved to Casita and Lenna.
The wagons continued over a bridge that spanned a large creek, then past an open square, bordered by square buildings. Except for the white bandstand in the center, it reminded Casita of Fort Clark. Then she remembered that Captain Carter had said the school was in a former Army barracks. The wagons pulled up in front of a long white building at the corner of the square.
Lieutenant Pratt stood up in the wagon. “I’ve already asked Cook to have some hot soup waiting for you. You must all be hungry.”
The children quickly crowded through the wide door. The room was lit by gas lamps and they saw ten or so rectangular tables and benches. Each table could seat six people. Three of them were already set with bowls of steaming soup, bread, and one apple for each of them. Tin cups had water. It’s the mess hall, Casita thought. After three years on an Army base, she had never eaten in one.
“Boys at those tables, girls at that one,” Miss Mather announced.
Eyota had to join Casita and Lenna at the girls’ table, whether she wanted to or not.
“I’ll have this one,” Lenna said, sitting in front of the fullest bowl of soup.
The children wanted to eat as soon as they sat down, even those who were unfamiliar with the tin spoons, but Miss Mather made them say grace first. “God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for our food. Amen.”
Casita and Jack knew the words; Mollie had taught them. They had had long discussions about what the Quakers believed and what the Ndé thought about God and gods.
The other kids had no idea they were praying to an Indaa god, not an Indian one. But Casita saw that Eyota understood and did not like it.
The soup smelled like chicken, but it was thin. There were more vegetables than meat. But the hungry children were soon wiping the bowls with the bread to sop up every last bit.
Lenna slurped the last of her soup. “Do you think they will give us more?” she asked.
“You liked it?” Casita asked. She had learned to cook over the past three years, and she found the soup tasteless. “It wasn’t very good.”
“It’s so much better than what we have at home,” Lenna said. “There’s not enough food at the reservation. That’s why my father sent me here—they promised to feed me.” She bit into her apple happily.
Casita couldn’t help but laugh. The school wanted to civilize the Indians, which meant to change them completely. Some would resist, but others, like Lenna, would gladly submit for three square meals a day.
“What did she say?” Eyota asked in English, not understanding any Apache words.
“Lenna only came to school so she could eat.”
A quick smile flitted across Eyota’s lips. She handed her apple to Lenna, who gladly pocketed it. Eyota’s not as proud as she pretends to be, Casita thought.
Lieutenant Pratt got up to speak after dinner.
“I know you have had a long journey, so I will be brief,” he said. Casita thought she would like to draw the Lieutenant’s face. She thought his eyes were like those of a giant eagle that could spot anything or see into the future. When Mother talked of keeping to the old ways, her eyes had looked like that, too. The resemblance made Casita wary of Lieutenant Pratt; how far would he go to get his way?
“Tonight you will be assigned your rooms in your dormitories. They are located across the square. We call it the ‘quad.’ Tomorrow we will place you in classes to learn English and mathematics and history. We will teach you a trade. You will go to church. Our rules are strict but fair. If you try hard, I will help you.”
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