The Evening Herald

GRATITUDE OF A SIOUX SQUAW.

Anxiety While Dying of an Indian Woman to Fulfill Her Promise.

A woman on the West Side whose early predilections created a prejudice against Indians is now a friend of the decaying race. It came about in a pretty way, and the incident has also a sorrowful tinge. A Sioux Indian and his squaw, whom the woman's husband had known out west, were returning from Europe, where they had been as attaches of Buffalo Bill's Wild West. When they came to Chicago, they stopped over a day and hunted up the paleface whom they had known out west. He hired a carriage and took them out to his home, which surprised his wife not a little, and there they were entertained.

The squaw spoke no language but her own. Her man knew enough English to make himself understood. Both were in their visiting colors. They didn't like the blue points and oysters, but when the roast beef (wo-haw) was brought on the eyes of the squaw bulged out, and she clapped her hands. She devoured it slice by slice and in a manner calculated to shock the wife of the paleface.

After dinner the squaw sang for the paleface woman and her papooses to show gratitude. Then, through her man, she had the paleface woman take off her shoes and stand on a sheet of paper. The squaw took a bit of pencil and drew the shape of the feet. The squaw's man informed the paleface woman that she would make and send her a pair of split bead moccasins from the tepee as soon as they could be made. The Indians went away that night, westward bound, and months passed by.

The West Side wife playfully chided her husband about his lavish entertainment of the reds and their mock gratitude. He said, "Wait." In a year from the time of the visit a package was delivered to the house. It was opened, and there were the split bead moccasins made by the squaw. There also was the information that she had died about the time the moccasins were completed.

In a crude sort of way, but all the more tender on account of its simplicity, the Indian explained that his squaw would have sent the moccasins sooner, but she had been sick, and her work had been delayed, and that she was afraid she would not live to keep her word to the paleface woman who had entertained her with such good wo-haw.

There were some tender words spoken in the home of the West Side paleface that night, and even now, when the wife of the paleface tells the incident, there is a slight tremulation in the lips and a moisture about the eyes.—Chicago Times.