When Breaks the Dawn (Canadian West) Read online

  “We will be learning numbers and words and colors,” I continued, trying to make it sound fascinating, but the expressions before me did not change.

  Nimmie stepped forward to stand beside me. She began to speak to them in her own soft and flowing speech. I understood only a few of the words, but somehow they managed to convey to me, and to the children, a sense of wonder—an inspiration. A few eyes before me began to light.

  As we worked on the roll call, other stragglers arrived. Our schoolhouse was crowded. We didn’t have room to seat any more. I was exhilarated! Wait till I tell Wynn! I exulted. I remembered his words of caution.

  “Don’t be too disappointed, Elizabeth, if you have very few students. The value system of the people here varies greatly from ours. They do not see the need, or the advantage, of spending many hours trying to learn about things they will never see or know. What good is all that learning if it will not put food in the pot, or coax the fox to the trap?”

  And here we were with a full schoolhouse! Wouldn’t Wynn be surprised?

  About midway through the morning two women arrived, chattering as they entered and looking over the roomful of children and each item in it. They discussed freely what they observed. I guess they had never been told that one does not talk without permission in a school setting. They found a place on the floor and sat down.

  Later on more women joined them, singly or by twos or threes. I could hardly believe it! Our schoolroom was packed full of eager and willing learners—of all ages. We would need more room, more pencils and scribblers. I hadn’t thought of teaching the women, but of course they needed it too.

  Nimmie did not seem surprised. She only nodded a greeting to each one as they came and motioned them to a still-vacant spot on the floor.

  I decided to concentrate on the children and let the women learn by listening and observing, so I did not put any of the adult names in my roll book.

  After getting the names of the students recorded, which took a great deal of help from Nimmie, I proceeded with my first lesson. Taking my cards with the words and pictures, I held them aloft and pointed first at a picture and then at the English word. I said the word over two or three times and then Nimmie told the students to say the word with me. We went over it a number of times. Canoe. Canoe. Canoe. Then we went on to the the next one. Fish. Fish. Fish. I had the class say it together and then picked out students to try it on their own. They were shy about it, hesitant to make a funny-sounding word in front of others, so I went back to having them say it together.

  I took the two new words now and covered the pictures.

  “What does this say?” I asked them, and Nimmie repeated my question.

  No one knew. I uncovered the picture and asked the question again. They replied correctly almost in unison.

  We went over the two words again and again, and still they did not seem to recognize them when the pictures were covered.

  At last when I covered the picture and held one up, a small boy said, “Canoe.” He was right and I was ecstatic. There was whispering in the row where the boy sat and I saw Nimmie’s face crinkle with laughter.

  I couldn’t refrain from asking, “What did he say?”

  “His classmate asked him how he knew the picture, and he said the canoe card has a small tear at one corner,” explained Nimmie.

  I looked down at the picture. He was right.

  It set me back some, but then I realized it did prove he was observant and intelligent. Those ingredients made a scholar. I just had to find the right approach, that was all.

  I switched from the word cards to colors. I was aware that the Indians know much about color. They just don’t know what the white man calls them. The color lesson did not go well either. Every time I pointed to a color on an object, they thought I was asking for the name of the object, not the color.

  Nimmie explained to them, and things went a bit better. After much drilling, I was quite confident a good number in the class had learned “black” and “white.”

  We dismissed them, telling them to hurry back to the schoolroom the next morning when they heard the bell clang. I didn’t know if our admonition would avail or not. Most likely they would come when they felt ready.

  The students began to file out, some looking thankful for freedom. The women still sat on the floor. It appeared they didn’t intend to leave, and I thrilled with their interest in learning. I told Nimmie to express to them my happiness at seeing them at school and my promise to do my best to help them learn. Nimmie passed on my information in a flow of words, but the blank look on the women’s faces did not change.

  Little Deer said what all of them must have been thinking. “When tea?”

  We tried our best to explain that we didn’t serve tea at school, and with looks of disappointment, they got up and filed out one by one.

  I felt exhausted after the first morning. Nimmie looked as fresh and relaxed as ever, and little Nonita had roused only once, nursed and gone back to sleep.

  I gathered up my word cards, looked at the canoe to see if I might be able to fix the tear, abandoned the idea, and headed for home.

  I honestly did not know if our first day at school had been a success or not. We certainly had a roomful of students. But if they did not learn, was it worth their time to be sitting there? I decided not to do too much bragging to Wynn as yet.

  THIRTEEN

  The Three R’s

  We banged the barrel the next morning and again waited for our students to return. The room was not as full as it had been the previous day, but I was not concerned. I knew that as the morning progressed more students would arrive. I didn’t expect any of the ladies. They had felt cheated out of a tea party and would stay home beside their fires.

  When Wynn had asked about our first day, I could not refrain from boasting some about the numbers. Wynn just nodded encouragement without comment and I wondered if he was saying silently, “Elizabeth, don’t set yourself up for a heartbreak.”

  I’m not sure why I felt that way, except that I was getting to know the way Wynn thought. The expression in his eyes often said things he didn’t put into words.

  More students did straggle in as the morning went on. We went back to our two words of the day before. Everyone could now pick out the canoe once they had been given the secret of the torn corner. A few even recognized “fish”—without a tear on the card.

  I went on to another word. “Dog,” I said, holding high the card. Nimmie announced the Indian word for dog and then repeated it in English. There was a bit of tittering in the classroom and black eyes flashed secret messages of merriment. I turned to Nimmie.

  “They think it looks more like a skinny bear,” she informed me with a slight smile.

  I looked back at my picture. It certainly wasn’t a very good dog. I didn’t dare show them my deer or moose. I went on to the moon and the sun. They seemed to have some difficulty with these concepts as well.

  I tacked the cards to the wall and told them to open their scribblers, take a pencil and copy the words in their book.

  They were not clumsy naturally; in fact, they were unusually dexterous, but how to hold a pencil posed a good deal of difficulty at first. Many of Wynn’s carefully sharpened points were broken in the attempt.

  Nimmie and I circulated among them, showing them how to hold the pencil properly and how much pressure to put on the point. I laid aside all the pencils needing to be resharpened to take home to Wynn and his jackknife.

  Most of the students got “fish” and “canoe” entered in their new scribblers, though some of the attempts were hardly recognizable.

  I was surprised that some of the women did join us again, even though they knew that tea was not forthcoming. They settled themselves on the floor and appeared to listen—whether out of curiosity or interest, I did not know.

  As I went quietly from student to student, I was surprised by a boy of about twelve or thirteen. Not only had he printed his words, and rather neatly at tha
t, but he had also drawn the pictures. It didn’t take a teaching certificate to see that his pictures were far superior to mine. I hastened to Nimmie, excitement filling me.

  “Come here,” I whispered. “Look what he’s done.”

  The “he” was Wawasee. His father was a trapper, one of those whose trapline was some miles from the village. The mother had died in childbirth two years previously. Wawasee was left each winter to care for himself and two younger sisters. Had he been alone, he undoubtedly would have been taken out to the trapline, but two small girls out there would be more bother than help. I learned from Nimmie that Wawasee spent much of his time carving wood with a dull, broken knife that had somehow come into his possession.

  My heart reached out to this boy. He was dirty and unkempt, but his dark eyes glistened as he printed each word on the page and stroked in the pencil marks to skillfully create a picture. I must talk to Wynn about Wawasee, I determined.

  At the end of the morning session we dismissed our students and instructed them to leave their pencils and scribblers on the tables as they filed out. We would ring the “bell” at the same time the next morning.

  My interest in Wawasee was undoubtedly the reason I noticed that his scribbler and pencil did not stay behind. I had been so anxious to take it home to show Wynn.

  I looked around to see if it had been misplaced, but I did not spot it. I gathered up each of the other scribblers and placed them back on the shelf, still glancing under tables and benches. Nimmie noticed it.

  “Did you lose something?” she asked.

  “Wawasee’s scribbler. It isn’t here.”

  “I’m not surprised,” remarked Nimmie.

  I looked at her questioningly.

  “Wawasee cannot hear,” she stated simply. “He lip reads some, but I was not standing where he could see me when I repeated your instructions.”

  “Oh, Nimmie,” was all I could say.

  “But even if he had been able to hear the order, I don’t think Wawasee would have left his book,” Nimmie went on in a quiet voice.

  “Is he a … a …” I couldn’t say the word thief. It just didn’t seem to fit the child, and besides I didn’t want to think of him in that way.

  “Wawasee uses anything he finds to make pictures,” Nimmie explained. “He draws them in the dirt, on birchbark; he scratches them on tree trunks. And you have just passed to him a scribbler and a pencil. What would you expect him to do?”

  “He’ll draw?”

  “He’ll probably have half the pages full by morning.”

  I stood rooted to the spot, thinking of the little Indian boy, with a full-grown man’s responsibility, no hearing, and a great talent for art.

  “Would you like me to go and get the scribbler?” Nimmie was asking.

  I turned back to her. “No,” I said, “but I would like to talk to the boy. Could you come with me? I don’t know how to make him understand me.”

  Nimmie agreed, and we tramped our way through the softly swirling snow of another winter storm to the unkempt cabin of the boy and his two little sisters.

  Nimmie opened the door and went in, and there, just as she expected to find him, was Wawasee. His concentration was totally taken with the pencil in his hand and the picture forming beneath it. He was not aware of our presence in the cabin as he sketched a moose running through the dense undergrowth, a wolf fast on its heels.

  Nimmie crossed to him and laid her hand on his arm. He looked up in surprise and then alarm. Slowly he slid the scribbler off the table and hid it on his lap as if to protect it. His eyes were dark and pleading. I thought of Kip when he wanted to go someplace with me.

  Nimmie smiled and some of the fear left Wawasee’s eyes.

  Somehow Nimmie was able to tell the boy that I wanted him to draw the pictures on the word cards for the class. In exchange for his work for me, he would be given a pencil and a scribbler all his own—one that would not need to go to school but that he could keep at home to use whenever he wished.

  I knew that through lip reading and sign language, he understood all Nimmie had said, for he looked at me, back to his pencil, down at his lap, and nodded, his eyes shining with unshed tears.

  FOURTEEN

  Trials and Triumphs

  At the end of our first week of school, we were down to thirteen students. At first I pretended they had some reason which kept them from the morning class. Nimmie knew better. She did not even seem surprised. Instead, she said with excitement, “Thirteen. Elizabeth! Thirteen. Can you believe it? We still have thirteen who are interested.”

  I wanted to argue with her. Thirteen was only about half of what we had started with.

  By the end of the second week our number had dropped to five. Just five—when there was a village full of people who needed to learn to read and write. Nimmie was still not alarmed. “Five for our first year is wonderful. In the years to come the others will see the importance of knowing how to read, too.”

  I hoped Nimmie was right, but I will admit I was terribly disappointed.

  Our remaining five included Wawasee our artist, a young lad by the name of Jim Buck, two girls—one eight, one eleven—and a young married woman who came with her nursing baby. The young mother would often get so involved in what she was learning that she would forget the child in her arms. The fussing baby eventually would bring her back to reality, and she would lift the baby to her breast and go back to her book again. I had never seen anyone so eager to learn as Brown Duck.

  Kanika, our eleven-year-old, was not a quick learner, but she had a searching mind and would plod away to find the answers to the problems we assigned her.

  Susie Crooked Leg, on the other hand, was a brilliant little child. She rarely had to be told a new concept twice. Eagerly she grasped all the learning the small classroom was able to give her and reached for more. I knew that if Susie could be given a chance, she could make a real contribution to her world and even beyond.

  Wawasee was at a disadvantage. We had nothing in our classroom that could help a child with his handicap. He had not been born deaf but had been a bright, energetic, talkative, eight-year-old when measles left him without his hearing. We had to be sure we were directly in front of him with his eyes on our lips when we talked to him. This was not always easy to do, for Wawasee was interested only in his drawing. He drew when he should have been reading. He was not interested in numbers or letters, only shapes and colors.

  I was determined that he at least should learn the fundamentals. I prompted and urged and reviewed and encouraged. Once, when he had been at school for about a week and the other students had gone on to add a number of simple words to their vocabulary, Wawasee was still struggling with the first two.

  “Fish,” I would say over and over, enunciating carefully for the benefit of his eyes on my lips. “Fish.”

  Wawasee tried the word. It sounded good.

  I then put him to work printing the word over and over down his page. I even granted him the privilege of drawing a small fish to go with each of the words. After he had filled two pages with fish of various sizes and descriptions, I went to the board and with a piece of white chalk, printed in large letters F-I-S-H. After getting Wawasee’s attention, I asked him for the word.

  He shook his head. He did not know.

  I was frustrated. I walked back to his desk and opened the scribbler to the two pages of fish. Placing a finger under Wawasee’s chin, a signal we had developed to let him know we wanted him to watch our lips, I said again, “Fish. It is the same. Fish.” I pointed to the board, “F-I-S-H.” I pointed to his pages. “The same,” but Wawasee merely shrugged his shoulders.

  Lifting his eyes to my face again, I asked gently, “Do you understand?”

  He looked at me evenly, as though asking me to see it his way, “Not same,” he dared to say. “Yours white, mine black.” Wawasee thought in color.

  I realized then that I needed a new way to relate to Wawasee. If only I had many bright books with col
ored pages. Perhaps then he would be interested in learning. But I did not have them, and it would be months before it would be possible to get some. In the meantime I would simply do the best I could.

  One of my disappointments was that Wawasee’s two younger sisters did not come to school. I asked Wawasee about them many times. At first his answer, through Nimmie’s translation, was that they were not interested in drawing. When we reminded him that school was so much more than that, he looked for other answers. Each time we asked him, his reply was a little different, but it all came down to the fact that the little girls just were not interested and did not feel that classes were sufficient reason to leave the sheltered warmth of the cabin.

  After the fourth week Kanika dropped out. I felt like crying. I went to their cabin after school was dismissed hoping to learn that she had been ill or needed at home. She was fine and was playing rather than doing an assigned home task. Her mother just shrugged her shoulders.

  “Why you not go?” she asked the girl in English for my benefit, as though she had just realized that Kanika was at home and not at school.

  Kanika barely raised her head to answer. She looked puzzled, as though she couldn’t understand why she should be called upon to explain herself. It was plain to see that she just didn’t feel like going, so she didn’t go—that was all.

  Now we had four students. Wawasee was hardly to be counted, for though we worked with him to the best of our ability, his attention was on his artwork only.

  Jim Buck, Susie Crooked Leg and Brown Duck were doing well. All three were eager to learn.

  Then we had another disappointment. Brown Duck’s husband came home from his trapline for a few days and learned of her involvement in the classes. He could not understand her hunger for knowledge. He only knew that she was the only woman in the settlement who was leaving her work at home to go to class each morning. He could also see that skins were not getting tanned, moccasins were not getting sewn, and the cabin fire was not kept burning.