Indian Captive by Lois Lenski

Author:Lois Lenski [Lenski, Lois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Retail, Ages 10 & Up, Newbery Honor
ISBN: 9781453227527
Publisher: Open Road Media LLC
Published: 2011-09-13T07:00:00+00:00

“Please, Earth Woman,” she asked, suddenly, “could I not make a cooking-pot?”

“Ohè! You!” cried Earth Woman, astonished. “An ear of corn not half filled out?” She frowned, then with all the appearance of anger, broke out: “Do you not know then that it is hard work to make a cooking-pot? That the fingers which shape it must be trained to skill? That only Earth Woman, of all the women in the village, has the skill to make a perfect cooking-pot? No! A fledgling that lingers in the warmth of the nest has not yet the strength to fly. By and by, perhaps…”

“But if Beaver Girl can make one…She’s no bigger than I!” cried Molly.

“Ah, but Beaver Girl has dipped her hands in clay ever since she stepped out of her baby frame!” laughed Earth Woman. “And Beaver Girl is as strong as a beaver.”

“But I grow stronger day by day,” protested Molly. “See!” She held out her arm and doubled her elbow.

“Ohè!” Earth Woman laughed again. “Corn Tassel is as strong as a little humming-bird. Only a strong woman can do a strong woman’s work. The making of a pot is not easy. The clay must be gathered from the banks by the river bed. First Earth Woman prays to Mother Earth for permission to remove it. Then she digs it carefully and brings it home. She spreads it on the stone slab, she beats it with her hands and with stones; she treads it with her feet. When the clay-is soft and smooth, it must be mixed with ground clam shells or mica and be beaten smooth again. All this before the coils are rolled.”

“When I am strong like Beaver Girl, then may I make one?” asked Molly.

“Yes, little humming-bird, then you may try,” said Earth Woman, with a smile. “Meanwhile it is well to watch how a cooking-pot grows under hands of long experience. That is the best way to learn.”

Beaver Girl carefully turned and shaped the collar of her pot, and made a scalloped design on the edge. Then she set the pot aside, with others, to dry:

“When the water has been drawn out of the clay by the sun,” said Earth Woman, “the pots will be ready for firing. We will set them over a slow-burning fire and keep them there. The fire must not be too hot, because that would crack the pots. If it is too cool, it will smoke them. Oh, no—like all good things, a cooking-pot is not easy to make.”

When Molly went back to bed, Earth Woman’s sharp eyes noticed that she did not pick up her cornhusk baby, her little white woman, and look at it with tears in her eyes. Earth Woman’s kind face beamed with satisfaction, for she knew that the white girl captive had forgotten, at least for the moment, her sorrow. She was thinking of the cooking-pot which one day she would make.

Ah, a cooking-pot was good in more ways than one. A cooking-pot could make a white girl forget to be homesick.

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