The People: And Other Uncollected Fiction Read Online Free PDF Page A

worthy. Perhaps you can help us. We will teach you many things we know. When the old ways die we must think and speak in better ways.”
    Yozip answered almost in fright: “Please, Mr. Chief, I told you I am not educated. Also you hear how I tulk with my eccent. What can such a man do for you?”
    “I do not hear this accent. It does not say any words in my ear. I have told my braves and sub-chiefs we must do more than in bygone moons to protect our tribe. They say they understand my words and will preserve them. They know and have agreed with me that if you go through our rites and vigil we may ask you to live with us and speak for us. We will ask you to speak from your heart. You must tell the white men to let us live in peace on our land. We will not be led like animals to another reservation. This is our dear land. My father told me when I was a young man and he was old and dying: ‘You may give up anything but you must never give up the land. The bones of your father will soon lie on the land and you must guard these bones forever.’”

    The chief then said: “The white men must respect our ways. He must live in peace with us and not kill Indians with bad thoughts and words that burn. You must say this to them with drops of blood in your mouth.”
    “Naturally,” Yozip said. “But how can I be an Indian if I was born in Zbrish, in Russia? This is a different country, far away, where was born my father and mother. I live now in America, and also maybe I am by now a citizen. I will know when I see my cousin Plotnick in Chicago, if you will be so kind to tell me where to buy a ticket for the train.”
    “If our tribe accepts you,” said the chief without moving an eyelash, “you will be a red man of this tribe. The Great Spirit spoke this to me in words of smoke and fire. When you see yourself in a silver glass you will see your true color.”
    Yozip looked around for something that might resemble the baptismal font he had seen one day when he had peeked into a church in Antwerp, on his way to America. What he saw now at the top of the tepee was a smoke hole through which a shaft of sunlight shone.
    “Peace is the word of Quodish,” said the chief. “It is the best word.”
    “Peace comes first,” Yozip said, “and after comes business.”
    He considered wringing his hands for his freedom, but the chief then offered the ex-peddler his peace pipe. The smoke was strong and bitter but Yozip drained the hot pipe to its core, although in the process he felt like vomiting.
    “Yah,” said the chief.
    As Yozip clawed at the flap of the tepee to let in a breath of air and escape the heartburn and sickness he had got from the chief’s bitter pipe, he walked into a warrior entering the tent, who beheld him with contempt as he spat into Yozip’s eye.
    The eye felt as though it had been plucked out of his head. The old chief, trembling with anger, threatened the warrior with severe punishment, as the young man reluctantly apologized.

FOUR
    The Tribesman
    “THIS is the tepee of solitude.”
    Yozip was led by the chief’s plump daughter to a thin, tall tepee. She was a woman of eighteen who wore a bone necklace and large circular metal earrings.
    After her announcement she paid him scant attention. She was assured, calm, almost austere. He admired and feared her. An Old Country boy finds it hard to forget where he was born.
    Their walk through the high grass, the sight of the long valley below sloping upward toward distant green hills, awoke in Yozip a hunger to be out of the forest and on his way. If only a man knew where to go. It shamed him still to think that one place was as good as another. What does one attach himself to?
    Yozip had never been able to understand his inclination for a complex fate. Many men lived lives that flowed easily. Others tangled their fates with every word they spoke: Yozip was that type. Best say little.
    He dutifully followed the Indian girl. She was good-looking though stout, her