Little Mission on the Clearwater by Wendy G. Lawton

Author:Wendy G. Lawton [Lawton, Wendy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2021-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

It wasn’t that Eliza wasn’t interested in elocution. Her father had the most refined voice she had ever heard. When he read the Bible, she could listen forever. But today, when the big girls were braising pork, mashing potatoes, and baking apple pies, before she even got to “blithe spirit,” she knew she would earn that embarrassing ruler snap on her cheek with Mr. Saunders muttering, “Enunciate, girl.”

But afternoons were pure joy. Miss Bewley, who traveled from the States with her brother, taught what she called the refined arts to the girls—those skills Eliza had never quite mastered back in Lapwai. Without the distractions of Ayi, Noah, and the printing press, she found she wasn’t quite as hopeless as she’d been led to believe. She, Helen, and Elizabeth were working on embroidered samplers. They were to complete them by mid-October and surprise Mrs. Whitman with the work of their hands, as Miss Bewley called it. Gertrude, Phebe, and Nancy were practicing watercolors. When they were done, they would switch and Eliza would try her hand at painting with watercolors. It reminded her of the paints she and Matilda had made out on the camas prairie. She was glad she had brought them with her. She wished she could find time to write in her journal.

At the end of the day came lessons in comportment—good manners. They studied proper table settings using Mrs. Whitman’s good china and silver. They practiced walking and sitting like a lady. Eliza even mastered a proper curtsy.

“Eliza,” whispered Helen, “I can’t stop thinking of how Mrs. Whitman called Nez Perce traditions strange.” She giggled. “If my mother’s people saw me walking around the classroom with a book on my head, they’d tease me forever.”

Eliza laughed. Helen was right. Now that she was immersed in the culture of white folk, for the mission had no Cayuse visitors to speak of, she felt as if she had entered a different world.

That’s what struck her as so strange. At Lapwai, the Nez Perce were as much a part of their lives at the mission as any emigrants or the Spaldings themselves. The native women walked right into Mama’s kitchen, bringing gifts of food or borrowing some apples or vegetables. The schoolroom back home at Lapwai served the Nez Perce of all ages, teaching them their own written language so they could read. The schoolroom here at Wai-i-lat-pu was for white settlers’ children and the children fostered by the Whitman family.

The Cayuse had never been allowed into the Whitman home, except for the room they called the Indian Room, which was reached by an outside door or Dr. Whitman’s surgery. But since Mrs. Whitman had decided to start the school, the Indian Room was used for a dining room and the Cayuse were no longer welcome.

This bothered Eliza. She’d watched young Cayuse men hovering around the door, muttering to each other. They didn’t know she could speak and understand their language. She was the only one at Whitman mission aside from the doctor who could.

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