Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/242

 your hand. Help me. I am just as Paddy says—‘I am a woman;’ I shall be while I live,” and then he cried out to Leggins, “Oh, brother, ask me to go with you to our dear Mother Earth, where we can lie alongside our father’s bones. Just say, ‘Come,’ I will be only too glad to go with you.”

I then said, “This paper says all that want to go can go. I say for one, Oytes, come, go with us, but all who want to can go.”

Then Leggins said, “Oytes, I have no right to say to you, ‘You have done wrong and you can’t go to your own country.’ No, I am only too glad to hear you talk as you do. We will all go back and be happy once more in our native land.”

Then they all said, “We will all go. Why leave one here?”

Then the head men said to me and to brother Lee, “We will go and see Father Wilbur right off, and tell him to send for soldiers to go with us, to keep the white men from killing us.”

So we all started up to see our good Father Wilbur. Our father did not want to talk to us. My people came every day to see him for four days. During the time there came some goods for my people. The storehouse was full of goods of all kinds. He came to me and said, “Sarah, I had some forty of your people working for me since you went away, some women, too. I want you to tell them to come and I will pay them right off. I have to pay them in clothing.”

I went and told them. My people said, “Now is the time to talk to him,” but he did not want to talk to them. Some got blankets, some calico for their wives. Some said, “I worked two months. Some three months. We ought to get more pay.” These words were not listened