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“You are not white. They will not have you, Pauline.” The Indian mother repeated the words after a moment, her eyes grown still more gloomy; for in her, too, there was a dark tide of passion moving. In all the outlived years this girl had ever turned to the white father rather than to her, and she had been left more and more alone. Her man had been kind to her, and she had been a faithful wife, but she had resented the natural instinct of her half-breed child, almost white herself and with the feelings and ways of the whites, to turn always to her father, as though to a superior guide, to a higher influence and authority. Was not she herself the descendant of Blackfoot and Piegan chiefs through generations of rulers and warriors? Was there not Piegan and Blackfoot blood in the girl’s veins? Must only the white man’s blood be reckoned when they made up their daily account and balanced the books of their lives, credit and debtor–misunderstanding and kind act, neglect and tenderness, reproof and praise, gentleness and impulse, anger and caress–to be set down in the everlasting record? Why must the Indian always give way–Indian habits, Indian desires, the Indian way of doing things, the Indian point of view, Indian food, Indian medicine? Was it all bad, and only that which belonged to white life good?

“Look at your face in the glass, Pauline,” she added, at last. “You are good-looking, but it isn’t the good looks of the whites. The lodge of a chieftainess is the place for you. There you would have praise and honor; among the whites you are only a half-breed. What is the good? Let us go back to the life out there beyond the Muskwat River–up beyond. There is hunting still, a little, and the world is quiet, and nothing troubles. Only the wild dog barks at night, or the wolf sniffs at the door, and all day there is singing. Somewhere out beyond the Muskwat the feasts go on, and the old men build the great fires, and tell tales, and call the wind out of the north, and make the thunder speak; and the young men ride to the hunt or go out to battle, and build lodges for the daughters of the tribe; and each man has his woman, and each woman has in her breast the honor of the tribe, and the little ones fill the lodge with laughter. Like a pocket of deerskin is every house, warm and small and full of good things. Hai-yai, what is this life to that! There you will be head and chief of all, for there is money enough for a thousand horses; and your father was a white man, and these are the days when the white man rules. Like clouds before the sun are the races of men, and one race rises and another falls. Here you are not first, but last; and the child of the white father and mother, though they be as the dirt that flies from a horse’s heels, it is before you. Your mother is a Blackfoot.”

As the woman spoke slowly and with many pauses, the girl’s mood changed, and there came into her eyes a strange, dark look deeper than anger. She listened with a sudden patience which stilled the agitation in her breast and gave a little touch of rigidity to her figure. Her eyes withdrew from the wild storm without and gravely settled on her mother’s face, and with the Indian woman’s last words understanding pierced, but did not dispel, the sombre and ominous look in her eyes.

There was silence for a moment, and then she spoke almost as evenly as her mother had done.

“I will tell you everything. You are my mother, and I love you; but you will not see the truth. When my father took you from the lodges and brought you here, it was the end of the Indian life. It was for you to go on with him, but you would not go. I was young, but I saw, and I said that in all things I would go with him. I did not know that it would be hard, but at school, at the very first, I began to understand. There was only one, a French girl–I loved her–a girl who said to me, ‘You are as white as I am, as any one, and your heart is the same, and you are beautiful.’ Yes, Manette said I was beautiful.”