Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/177

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hunt, and track the deer and take the salmon! Beautiful? I think so. And then she is so fresh, innocent and affection ate. ... She is learning to read, and believes everything she has yet found in the school books... . We went down to the busy world below, . . . And little Calli Shasta, the last of her tribe? At school in San Francisco. Her great black eyes, deep and sad and pathetic, that seem to lay hold of you, that seem to look you through and understand you, turn dreamily upon the strange, strong sea of people about her, but she gazes unconcerned upon it all. She is looking there, but she is liv ing elsewhere. She is sitting there in silence, yet her heart, her soul, her spirit, is treading the dark and fragrant wood. She is listening to the sounding waterfall, watching the shin ing fish that dart below the grassy border. Seeing all things here, she understands nothing at all. What will become of her. The world would say that she should become a prodigy, that she should at once become civilized, lay hold of the life around her, look up and climb to eminence; crush out all her nature, forget her childhood; compete with those edu cated from the cradle up, and win distinction above all these. The world is an ass! "And whose child is she?" I hear you ask. Well now, here is a little secret. On her mother's side you must know that the last and best blood of a once great tribe is in her veins. And her father? Ah, that is the little secret. We only know. We laugh at the many guesses and speculations of the world, but we keep the little maiden's secret. If I fail in my uncertain ventures with an unschooled pen, as I have failed in all other things, then she is not mine; but if I win a name worth having, then that name shall be hers. Getting along in her new life? Well, here is a paragraph clipped from an article of many columns in a San Francisco jou