The Lost Ones

by Michaela MacColl

  Casita shivered. This was a man who believed in his cause. She wondered what would happen if someone crossed him.

  “You are coming to us as ‘blanket children,’ but when you leave Carlisle you will be Americans.” He finished, “Your new life begins now.”

  As the translator explained the plan to the boys, Casita couldn’t decide if Pratt’s last words were a promise or a threat.

  After dinner, Casita hoped to talk with Jack. But he was already first in line, marching out after Lieutenant Pratt without even looking back. She would find him later.

  Casita, Eyota, and Lenna followed Miss Mather across the quad to the girls’ dormitory. It was another square white building. From a narrow porch that ran the length of the building, they stepped into a large cold room. The gaslights were turned down low, so Casita couldn’t see into the corners. Where were the other girls? Casita wondered. There had to be more than just the three of them. A battered table and chairs in the corner hinted that others lived here, but it was eerily quiet.

  A heavyset woman with a stack of papers and a stern face was waiting for them in a small office off the main room. Miss Mather introduced her as Miss Burgess. “She is one of your teachers. She also runs the print shop. Carlisle has its own newspaper, thanks to her.” A small woodstove warmed the air, and Casita and the others crowded close, rubbing their hands.

  A newspaper? Casita had practiced reading aloud from the papers from San Antonio and Chicago that arrived at Fort Clark weeks or even longer after they were printed. She wouldn’t mind learning how to print the news.

  Miss Burgess called out the girls’ names one by one. “Lenna Cordova.” Lenna raised her hand.

  “How old are you, Lenna?” Miss Burgess asked. She held up her fingers. Understanding, Lenna held up both hands, all the fingers splayed out except for one.

  “Nine. Very well. You will be in room 210.”

  Then it was Casita’s turn. “Casita Smith,” Miss Burgess read off her list.

  Casita stepped forward. “Excuse me, but may I room with Lenna?” she asked.

  “We don’t allow children from the same tribe to stay together. We want you to stop speaking Indian.” Mrs. Burgess checked the list. “It says that Lenna is Apache. What tribe are you?”

  “Lipan,” Casita answered, praying that Mrs. Burgess knew nothing about the number of tribes that might be called Apache.

  “You’re the first Lipan we have had. Where do you come from?” Mrs. Burgess asked.

  “We came from Kansas,” Casita began, but before she could explain she was from Texas, Mrs. Burgess was finished with her. “Very well. Casita Smith . . . Smith. That’s not a good name. They’ll think we have no imagination at all. Let’s call you Roosevelt. Casita Roosevelt, you will be in room 210. That’s on the second floor.”

  Casita stepped away and Eyota took her place. She confirmed her name and tribe. Yes, Eyota spoke English. Casita was only half listening. She was confused about the change to her last name. What made Roosevelt a better name than Smith? She had never heard that name before and didn’t know why Mrs. Burgess had given it to her. Smith might not have been the name she was born to, but Mollie had liked it. How dare they change her last name without even asking? She turned back to Mrs. Burgess and Eyota. “Why did you change my name?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Miss Burgess said.

  “Why did you change my name?” Casita repeated. “What is wrong with Smith?”

  “I am not accustomed to being questioned by students,” Mrs. Burgess said coldly. “Roosevelt is a much better name.” Casita hesitated, unsure how much she could say. But after all, what did her name really matter? Castro. Smith. Roosevelt. Did any of her names really define who she was?

  Miss Burgess returned her attention to Eyota. “Since you are Sioux, you will be in room 210 with the other two girls.”

  Miss Burgess gathered up her papers and stood up. “It is almost time for you to go to bed. I’ve assigned Hazel to give you a tour of the building.” She indicated an Indian girl who was waiting in the doorway. Finally, Casita thought, another girl. Hazel was Indian but wore a dark brown dress and brown leather boots that laced up. In fact, she and Casita wore practically the same clothes. She was a little older than Casita. “Hazel has strict instructions only to speak English. That is the rule here. I know that you two,” she nodded to Casita and Eyota, “speak English, but Lenna doesn’t. For tonight, you may translate for her.”

  Only tonight? Casita thought incredulously. She had learned her English over years, and Miss Burgess expected Lenna to manage in a day? She hoped the other expectations at Carlisle were more reasonable.

  “Good night, girls,” Miss Mather said. “I will meet you tomorrow at breakfast in the mess hall.”

  As soon as the teachers were gone, the girl introduced herself. “I am Hazel Dezay, Apache.”

  “What tribe?” Casita asked.

  “I am Chiracahua from New Mexico.”

  Lenna recognized the words Chiracahua and New Mexico. She smiled widely and spoke Ndé. “My name is Lenna and I am Mescalero from New Mexico, too.”

  Hazel frowned. Speaking to Casita in English, she said sternly, “Please tell Lenna that I am not permitted to talk Indian.”

  Even though Lenna could not understand English, she knew that she had done something wrong.

  Casita drew in a breath. She could sense that Eyota was also uncomfortable. Who could scold a child as sweet as Lenna? And what had this school done to Hazel, that she called her own language talking Indian?

  Casita knelt down and gave Lenna a quick hug. “Let me take your coat,” she said, unbuttoning Lenna’s jacket. An apple rolled out of her pocket onto the floor. Lenna ran after it and held it tightly in both hands.

  Hazel pursed her lips and shook her head. “We take our meals at the mess hall. It is forbidden to have food in the dormitory.”

  “Forbidden?” Eyota asked, her voice as cold as the air outside.

  “Yes. Many things are forbidden here. You will see.” She picked up two lit oil lamps, handing one to Eyota, then she led them out into the main room. “This is the common room. We are supposed to study here, but in the winter we prefer to study in our rooms.”

  “How many girls are there?” Casita asked.

  “Including you? I think twenty. Most are my age, but there are a few younger ones. There are a lot more boys than girls at Carlisle.”

  Eyota asked, “Where are they now?”

  “It’s almost time for lights out, so they are in their rooms getting ready for bed. We should hurry. We’re not allowed out of our rooms after lights out.” Moving stiffly, Hazel set off down a hall, dimly lit, to the rear of the building.

  “This is the water closet,” she said. Inhaling and then pinching her nose, she opened a small door. The small room was freezing and it reeked of excrement. A water tank hung high in the corner with a pipe that connected to a commode in the corner. A chain was attached to the tank and it hung within reach of the commode. Hazel explained how you pulled the chain and water would flush the bowl of the commode.

  “Where does it go?” Casita asked.

  “There’s a tank outside.”

  “We may be savages,” Eyota muttered, “but we don’t do that inside our houses.”

  Hazel snorted as if she agreed.

  She brought them up a narrow stairway to the second floor. As they passed rooms 200 through 209, Casita heard the murmur of girls’ voices inside.

  “Here is 210,” Hazel said. “We don’t have locks on the doors. The teachers inspect every Saturday.”

  Lenna rushed in the room; Eyota followed slowly. Casita was content to hang back. She wanted to talk with Hazel alone. “Is Carlisle a good place?” she asked.

  “It is wonderful. I am learning to be Indaa and I could not be happier.”

  But Casita sensed that she was not telling the truth. Maybe she would confide to Casita if they spoke Ndé? “One Apache to another. How is it, truly?”

&
nbsp; Hazel’s head jerked, checking up and down the hall for listeners. “Do you really want to know?” she asked.

  “Of course I do.”

  Hazel grabbed Casita’s hand and pulled her into room 211. They were alone. She lit a lamp and closed the door.

  “There are people listening everywhere,” Hazel warned. “But we should be safe enough in here.” She pulled up her skirt and turned away from Casita. Casita’s eyes widened as she saw the ugly red marks across the back of Hazel’s legs.

  Swallowing hard, Casita asked, “What happened?”

  “Miss Burgess beat me with her cane because she caught me stealing food.”

  “Do . . . do they do that a lot?” Casita stammered—and she could hear the fear in her voice. Among the Ndé, children were hardly ever beaten. Mollie the Quaker had not approved of corporal punishment either.

  “It depends,” Hazel admitted. “If they like you—if you do well in school or are helpful to the teachers—then you aren’t disciplined. But they’ve never liked me. I’m a poor student and Miss Mather has heard me speaking Ndé too many times.”

  “So you’ve been beaten before?”

  “Only once, when I didn’t want to attend church.”

  Casita had never been to a church. Mollie told her how the Quakers liked to sit in a room and wait for God to speak to them. “What kind of church?”

  “The Christian kind. First they take away our language and then our gods. If you want to pray to Usen, better do it where no one can hear.”

  “So there’s nothing good here?” Casita asked. Three years could be a very long time.

  Hazel leaned against the door and stared up at the ceiling. Finally she said, “Some of the teachers are kind. They want us to do well. But they still think to be an Indian is to be less than human. They will respect us when we look and talk and think just like them. I heard Lieutenant Pratt tell a visitor that he wanted to kill the Indian to save the man.”

  Casita had seen enough of Indians killed to last her whole life. She had escaped the guns of the 4th Cavalry at El Remolino. Would this Pratt kill Indians with schoolbooks and a strap? She felt as helpless as she had at Fort Clark. “Thank you for telling me,” she said.

  Hazel came close and whispered in Casita’s ear. “There are girls here who try to win favor by reporting on the others. Don’t trust anyone.” She paused. “You could get me into trouble if you wanted to.”

  “You can depend on me,” Casita promised.

  Hazel brought her back to room 210. Lenna was bouncing on a white metal bed while Eyota stood at the small window.

  “Get some sleep,” Hazel said. “There are nightclothes for you in the chests. Later, we’ll get you dresses.”

  “What kind of dresses?” Eyota asked from the window.

  “Dresses like mine,” Hazel said, holding out her dark skirt. “The boys have uniforms and we wear this.”

  Eyota studied Hazel’s dress and turned back to the window. Casita suspected that Eyota would cause trouble and refuse to give up her buckskin dress.

  “When the bugle plays ‘Reveille’ tomorrow morning, it will be time to wake up.”

  “‘Reveille’?” Casita started to laugh. “For the last three years I’ve lived at an Army fort. I never thought I would wake up to ‘Reveille’ here, too.”

  “The bugle is our clock.”

  The bugling and discipline made sense, Casita thought, since Pratt was a military man.

  “Punctuality is very important to Lieutenant Pratt and Miss Mather. If you want to make them happy, remember that wasting time, either yours or anyone else’s, is a sin,” Hazel said. “After ‘Reveille,’ you have half an hour before we leave for the mess hall. Good night.” She slipped out the door.

  “Where did you go, Casita?” Lenna asked.

  “Never mind,” Casita said, looking round the room. Her voice echoed and Casita glanced up to see the ceiling was high. There were three beds against the walls and a table and chairs in the center of the room. Shelves were attached to one wall. Lenna and Eyota’s knapsacks were on two of the beds. Casita went to the third.

  “I have a chest,” Lenna said, pulling a small chest out from under the bed.

  “You can put all your treasures there,” Casita said.

  Lenna’s face fell. “But I don’t have any treasures.”

  Her words brought Casita back to a time when Juanita had made the same complaint. Casita had taken her to the river to find pretty stones. She could help Lenna, too. “I’ll share one of mine,” she offered. Rummaging through her knapsack, she found her shell necklace tucked inside her rolled-up needlepoint. Casita’s hand hovered between the two before she chose the embroidery. “You can take this for now.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Lenna said. “Did you make it?”

  “I did,” Casita said, thinking of all those hours on the porch at home. Mollie had despaired of teaching her, but Casita had finally learned the knack of using the thin needle. “You can keep it until you find a treasure of your own.”

  Casita knelt on the floor to unpack her knapsack, placing everything just so in the chest. Her thoughts were jumbled: the needlepoint was a reminder of a happy life only just taken from her. The necklace was from a past that she had left behind. But in that moment, she had chosen to keep the necklace. Mollie had been right: a reminder of her Ndé past was important here.

  Outside there came the mournful sound of “Taps.” Eyota peered outside.

  “It’s the way the Army says it is time to sleep,” Casita said. She translated for Lenna’s benefit.

  “Can’t they see when it gets dark?” Eyota asked.

  Casita smiled, remembering her discussion with Charles.

  Eyota opened her chest. She lifted up the nightgown and examined it suspiciously. Rubbing the fabric against her cheek, she sneezed. “I don’t need their clothes,” she said, replacing the nightgown in the chest. She removed her moccasins and slipped under the covers.

  “Is she going to wear her dress to bed?” Lenna asked.

  “If she does, it is her choice.” But Casita remembered her talk with Hazel. Did they really have any choices here? She doubted Eyota would be able to wear her colorful dress for long.

  Casita helped Lenna into the nightgown, showing her how to use the buttons at the neck. Lenna loved her new nightgown. She danced around the room, letting it billow around her ankles. Casita unbuttoned her own dress and laid it over the metal bed frame. She massaged her skull with her fingertips; she was suddenly so tired. “How did you get that scar?” Lenna asked.

  It was the first time anyone had ever asked her. Everyone at Fort Clark, including Mollie, had assumed it was a wound from the raid. Even Jack hadn’t thought to ask more.

  “It happened a long time ago,” she said, pulling the nightgown over her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She blew out the lamp.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE NEXT MORNING THEY WERE ALL STILL ASLEEP WHEN “REVEILLE” sounded. Eyota sat bolt upright, her eyes darting about the room.

  “It’s all right,” Casita said. “Remember, they play it when it’s time to get up.”

  “Every day?” Eyota asked, dismayed.

  Casita shook Lenna, who was still sleeping soundly, a little snore escaping from her mouth. “Wake up! Hazel said breakfast will be in half an hour. We should get ready.” She put on her spare dress, a pale green one.

  Eyota looked as though she hadn’t slept. Her eyes were red and she couldn’t keep from coughing. She smoothed the hide of her blue dress with her fingertips. Today she didn’t seem as proud as she had before. She seemed alone and scared. Maybe, Casita thought, she needed a friend.

  She pulled a chair up to Eyota’s bed and asked gently, “Tell me about your dress.”

  Eyota answered simply, “I made this dress with my mother. We were planning another one when the Army took me away.”

  Eyota’s words were like a punch to Casita’s stomach. Her mother, too, had
planned a dress for Casita. A dress whose ashes had long since blown away in Mexico.

  In a low voice, so low that Casita didn’t know if she was supposed to hear it, Eyota said, “I hate it here. I want to go home.”

  “The Indaa word is homesick,” Casita said quietly. “You are sick for home.” She stood up. “We should get ready.”

  Downstairs, twenty girls waited for them. The older girls ignored them, except for Hazel, who said good morning. Miss Burgess was standing there, holding up a tiny clock that hung around her neck. “Punctuality is next to godliness, girls.” She blew a whistle and they marched across the quad to the mess hall.

  “We march everywhere,” Hazel said without moving her lips. “They think it’s good discipline for us.”

  “If I wanted to march,” Casita muttered to Hazel, “I would have stayed at Fort Clark.” Charles had once told her that the soldiers practiced marching together so they would all think as one unit.

  At breakfast, Casita saw that Hazel hadn’t exaggerated the number of boys; there must have been at least 150. It was like Fort Clark in that, too—Mollie had always complained about how few women there were to talk to. The boys wore uniforms and had short hair. It was easy to find the Indians who had traveled with them, with their long hair and their colorful clothes. It wasn’t so simple to find Jack. But when she did, he looked right at home. His clothes weren’t all that different from the uniforms. And hadn’t he gotten along with the soldiers at the fort?

  Lieutenant Pratt walked in, followed by Miss Mather, who seemed well rested and full of energy. One would never guess she had just come halfway across the country the day before. They stopped to chat with Jack.

  “Is that your brother?” Hazel asked across the table. When Casita nodded, she said, “If Miss Mather likes him, he’ll have no trouble at all.”

  After Lieutenant Pratt said grace, they ate their porridge. Then Miss Mather stood up to make several announcements. There was going to be a special outing for the oldest boys in town. A reverend was coming to be the special guest at Bible study this evening. The ice on the pond was not yet strong enough for skating.