The Savage Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

cold wind. He was ashamed of being Sioux. She hadn’t realized the depth of it until tonight. Perhaps that explained why he rarely went home to South Dakota, why he didn’t speak of his cousins there, why he dressed so deliberately as a rich white man. He hadn’t cut his hair, though, so he might retain a vestige of pride in his background, even if he kept it hidden. She shook her head. So many of his people had been unable to do what he had, to resign themselves to living like whites, and the policies forbidding them their most sacred ceremonies and the comfort of their shamans were slowly killing their souls. It must have been easier for Matt to live in Chicago andfan the fires of gossip about his true background, than to go to the reservation and deal with it.
    She recalled the way soldiers and other white men had spoken to him when he lived with her and her father, and she bristled now as she had then at the blows to his enormous pride. Prejudice ran rampant these days. Nativism, they called it. Nobody wanted “foreigners” in this country, to hear white people talk. Tess’s lip curled. The very thought of calling a native American a foreigner made her furious. Out west, one still could hear discussion about eradicating the small remnant of the Indian people by taking away all their remaining lands and forcefully absorbing them into white society, absorbing them and wiping out their own culture in the process.
    Did no one realize that it was one hairbreadth from genocide? It turned Tess’s stomach. She’d always felt that the government’s approach to assimilating the Indians was responsible for the high rates of alcoholism, suicide and infant mortality on the reservations.
    She turned away from the cold wind and went inside the boardinghouse, her mind ablaze with indignation for Indians and women. Both were downtrodden by white men, both forbidden the vote.
    The two old ladies who lived upstairs, Miss Barkley and Miss Dean, gave her a cold stare as she tried to pass quickly by the open door to the parlor where they sat.
    â€œDecent young ladies should not stand in the street with men,” Miss Dean said icily. “Nor should they attend radical meetings or work in hospitals.”
    â€œSomeone must tend the sick,” Tess said. “I daresay it might do you both good to come to one of our meetings and hear what your sisters in life are bearing because society refuses to accept women as equals!”
    Miss Barkley went pale. “Miss…Meredith,” she gasped, a hand at her throat, “I do not consider myself the equal of a man, nor should I want to!”
    â€œFilthy, sweating brutes,” Miss Dean agreed. “They should all be shot.”
    Tess grinned. “There, you see, Miss Dean, you and I have much in common! You simply must come to a meeting with me.”
    â€œAmong those radicals?” asked Miss Dean, scandalized.
    â€œThey aren’t,” Tess returned. “They’re honest, hardworking girls who want to live life as full citizens of this country. We are a new type of woman. We will never settle back and accept second-class citizenship.”
    Miss Barkley was red in the face. “Well, I never!”
    Miss Dean held up a hand. “A moment, Clara,” she told her companion. “Miss Meredith presents some interesting arguments. These meetings are open to anyone?”
    â€œCertainly,” Tess said. “You may go with me next Tuesday, if you like, and see what they are about.”
    â€œIda, don’t you dare!” Miss Barkley fumed.
    â€œI should have gone, were I twenty years younger,” came the reply, and a smile. “But I am too old and set in my ways, Miss Meredith.”
    â€œTess,” she corrected.
    The older woman’s eyes twinkled. “Tess, then. I hopeyou achieve your goals. My generation will not live to see it, but perhaps yours will eventually gain the vote.”
    Tess went to