Wednesday, May 12, 2010
It's my life...
Friday, April 30, 2010
विवेकी (Viveki)...The Mad Indian (An Upcoming Novel)
An Indian Boy's Story
I was born in Mohadi,Bhandara district of Maharashtra,India, in August, 1987, during one of the periodical wanderings of my family, and my first recollection is concerning a house in Bhandara, in which I was living with my father and mother, brother and sisters. I could not have been much more than nine years old at the time.(A Upcoming Novel)
My father was a pure-blooded Indian of the mohadi, and our home was in the rural side of mohadi, but we were frequently away from that place because my father was an non-alcoholic man who made frequent journeys, taking his family with him.
This house in mohadi was winter quarters for us. In the summer time we lived in a tent. We had the upper part of the house, while some gypsies lived in the lower part.
All sorts of people came to consult the "Indian surveyor," and the gypsies sent them upstairs to us, and mother received them, and then retired into another room with my brother and myself. She did not know anything about my brother’s medicine, and seemed to hate to touch them. When my brother was out mother was frequently asked to sell the medicines, but she would not, telling the patients that they must wait until the doctor came home.
What made it all the more strange that mother would have nothing to do with the medicines was the fact that grandmother was, herself, a doctor of a different sort than my brother. Her remedies were probably the same but in cruder form. I could have learned much if I had paid attention to her, because as I grew older she took me about in the woods when she went there to gather herbs, and she told me what roots and leaves to collect, and how to dry and prepare them and how to make the extracts and what sicknesses they were good for. But I was soon tired of such matters, and would stray off by myself
-1994-
picking the berries -- raspberry and blackberry, strawberry and blueberry -- in their seasons, and hunting the birds and little animals with my bow and arrows. So I learned very little from all this lore.
My brother was rather a striking figure. His hair was long and black, and he wore a long Prince Albert coat while in the winter quarters, and Indian costume, fringed and beaded, while in the tent. His medicines were put up in pill boxes and labeled bottles, and were the results of knowledge that had been handed down through many generations in our tribe.
My brother and I also wore long hair, and were strange enough in appearance to attract attention from the white people about us, but mother kept us away from them as much as possible.
My brother was not only a doctor, but also a trapper, fisherman, farmer and basket maker.
The woods provided my father and grandmother with their herbs and roots, and they gathered there the materials for basket making. There were also as late as 1995 some beavers, muskrats and minks to be trapped, and pickerel, salmon and white perch to be caught in the streams. These last sources of revenue for the Indians no longer exist; the beavers, minks and muskrats are extinct, while the mills of the ever encroaching white man have filled the streams with sawdust and banished the fish.
We were generally on the reservation in early spring, planting, fishing, basket making, gathering herbs and making medicine, and then in the fall, when our little crop was brought in, we would depart on our tour of the white man's towns and cities, camping in a tent on the outskirts of some place, selling our wares, which included bead work that mother and grandmother were clever at making, and moving on as the fancy took us until cold weather came, when my father would generally build a little log house in some wood, plastering the chinks with moss and clay, and there we would abide, warm amid ice and snow, till it was time to go to the reservation again.
One might imagine that with such a great variety of occupations we would soon become rich -- especially as we raised much of our own food and seldom had any rent to pay -- but this was not the case. I do not know how much my father charged for his treatment of sick people, but his prices were probably moderate, and as to our trade in baskets, furs and bead work, we were not any better business people than Indians generally.
Nevertheless, it was a happy life that we led, and lack of money troubled us little. We were healthy and our wants were few.
Father did not always take his family with him on his expeditions, and as I grew older I passed a good deal of time on the reservation. Here, tho the people farmed and dressed somewhat after the fashion of the white man, they still kept up their ancient tribal ceremonies, laws and customs, and preserved their language. The general government was in the hands of twelve chiefs, elected for life on account of supposed merit and ability.
There were four Indian day schools on the reservation, all taught by young white women. I sometimes went to one of these, but learned practically nothing. The teachers did not understand our language, and we knew nothing of theirs so much progress was not possible.
Our lessons consisted of learning to repeat all the English words in the books that were given us. Thus, after a time, some of us, myself included, became able to pronounce all the words in the Fifth and Sixth readers, and took great pride in the exercise. But we did not know what any of the words meant.
Our arithmetic stopped at simple numeration, and the only other exercise we had was in writing, which, with us, resolved itself into a contest of speed without regard to the form of letters.
The Indian parents were disgusted with the schools, and did not urge their
-1997-
children to attend, and when the boys and girls did go of their own free will it was more for sociability and curiosity than from a desire to learn. Many of the boys and girls were so large that the teachers could not preserve discipline, and we spent much of our time in the school in drawing pictures of each other and the teacher, and in exchanging in our own language such remarks as led to a great deal of fighting when we regained the open air. Often boys went home with their clothing torn off them in these fights.
Under the circumstances, it is not strange that the attendance at these schools was poor and irregular, and that on many days the teachers sat alone in the schoolhouses because there were no scholars. Since that time a great change has taken place, and there are now good schools on the reservation.
I was an official of one of the schools, to the extent that I chopped wood for it, but I did not often attend its sessions, and when I was thirteen years of age, and had been nominally a pupil of the school for six years, I was still so ignorant of English that I only knew one sentence, which was common property among us alleged pupils:
"Please, ma'am, can I go out?" pronounced: "Peezumgannigowout!"
When I was thirteen a great change occurred, for the honey-tongued agent of a new Government contract Indian school appeared on the reservation, drumming up boys and girls for his institution. He made a great impression by going from house to house and describing, through an interpreter, all the glories and luxuries of the new place, the good food and teaching, the fine uniforms, the playground and its sports and toys.
All that a wild Indian boy had to do, according to the agent, was to attend this school for a year or two, and he was sure to emerge therefrom with all the knowledge and skill of the white man.
My father was away from the reservation at the time of the agent's arrival, but mother and grandmother heard him with growing wonder and interest, as I did myself, and we all finally decided that I ought to go to this wonderful school and become a great man -- perhaps at last a chief of our tribe. Mother said that it was good for Indians to be educated, as white men were "so tricky with papers."
I had, up to this time, been leading a very happy life, helping with the planting, trapping, fishing, basket making and playing all the games of my tribe -- which is famous at lacrosse -- but the desire to travel and see new things and the hope of finding an easy way to much knowledge in the wonderful school outweighed my regard for my home and its joys, and so I was one of the twelve boys who in 1999 left our reservation to go to the Government contract school for Indians, situated in a bhandara city and known as the -- -- -- -- Institute.
My surprise, therefore, was great when I found myself surrounded in the school yard by strange Indian boys belonging to tribes of which I had never head, and when it was said that my people were only the "civilized vicky," I at first thought that "vicky" was a nickname and fought any boy who called me by it.
I had left home for the school with a great deal of hope, having said to my mother: "Do not worry. I shall soon return to you a better boy and with a good education!" Little did I dream that that was the last time I would ever see her kind face.The first thing that happened to me and to all other freshly caught young redskins when we arrived at the institution was a bath of a particularly disconcerting sort. We were used to baths of the swimming variety, for on the reservation...
To be continued...