"But, Cheyenne Annie, I love Chief White Eagle, your son, and 'Whither thou goest, I will go - Thy people shall be my people."

"You do not understand, little golden hair squaw, what it means to give up your own people, their methods of living, their civilization, to take up the life of an Indian squaw, to bear the burden that the traditions and habit have placed upon her shoulders."

In the shade of a covered wagon, seated upon a gaily colored blanket, the two women so widely apart in looks and race talked of a problem age old, wherever the young of any race meet and fall in love. Ruth Jennings, fair haired with eyes as blue as the Oklahoma summer sky, the other woman a wrinkled weather-beaten Indian woman, known far and wide as Cheyenne Anne, from whose lips fell her words in perfect English, with but an occasional lapse to her native language and eloquent signs with her hands.

Cheyenne Annie, upon being told of the growing attachment between her son White Eagle and the white girl, had driven many miles from her allotment to the agency headquarters to learn the truth.

"Listen to old Cheyenne Annie, little white squaw, never have I told my people all that I am telling you." "Many, many moons ago, I was a pretty young maiden too, not all gold and sunshine like you, but dark like a stormy night. I went away to school, learned everything the white girls learned and stayed there so many years that I no longer talked the language of my tribe. I came back to the Territory and taught in the Indian schools. By this time the Government had allotted our people and the land was filled by white settlers.

Near the school where I taught was a fort and a young lieutenant who won my heart. When his term of enlistment ended we were married by a white preacher and I went with him to his home in an eastern city. In my environments the marriage had seemed right, but when they tried to make a white girl of me, some age old instinct of tribal pride rebelled and I sulked. My husband was young and loved going with his former friends and soon I became fiercely jealous of every girl to whom he paid attention.

I realize now that I must have been most unreasonable, but the only thoughts I seemed to have in those days was a savage hatred toward all the white people in whose midst I lived. I knew that I could never be happy in those surroundings and begged my husband to take me back to the reservation and remain with me in the tepee of my parents. He refused, and I returned. He followed me and begged me to return to his people and learn their ways. I insisted upon him remaining with me and becoming one of my people, which he refused to, and although we loved each other, race instinct was stronger and we parted forever.

I married Chief Red Feather and tried to forget. I even tried to forget the language my white husband had spoken. I discarded the pretty clothes he had bought for me and put on the blanket and moccasins of the women of my tribe. I gave up all the things I learned at school. The piano upon which my friends told me I was a genius, and on which I had poured out my soul, I no longer played. My hands have not touched the keys for more than thirty years. I soon became a squaw in every sense that the word implies, and am, as the world knows me, only old Cheyenne Annie. The one happy spot in my life is my son White Eagle and now you say you love him and will marry him. I am telling you all this after keeping my lips sealed ever since my unhappy experience of trying to live the life of another race of people. It cannot be done, except in one way, for you to put aside your racial traditions and civilization and become an Indian woman and live among the Indians, or for White Eagle, who some day will be the tribal chief, to forsake the tepees of his tribe and become a white mane among your people. Which shall it be, little white squaw? I am only trying to save you and my son both, from my unhappy experience."

The old squaw ceased, and with tears in her eyes, Ruth answered her in the age old words of that other Ruth in which tribal traditions were also strong.

Had we of the Indian agency foreseen the end, we would have hesitated about securing for Ruth the clerkship in the office. Daughter of a homesteader, whose crops has been burned up by the Oklahoma sun, and his fields parched by the devastating drouth.

The work at the agency was heavy and more help needed. The Indians were bewildered by the many orders sent out from Washington. Many of them were sullen and would have rebelled had not a company of soldiers been but a few miles away. Many tried to obey the orders but were like children. Only the agents and their helpers fully realized what it meant to a race of people to give up their habits and traditions of centuries and all at once take on so literally different manners of living and a civilization foreign to them.

Young White Eagle, right from Carlysle Indian School, was employed as an interpreter to assist in the work among his tribe. He was a handsome young athlete, a star in his college football team. Ruth and White Eagle soon became sweethearts, a fact which we busy harassed employees of the agency were slow to recognize, and when we realized the love story being enacted before our eyes, it was too late.

White Eagle and Ruth were married, first by the mission preacher, and then came the tribal wedding; exchange of gifts, ponies, blankets, dried meat, beadwork, flour and other articles was made, and preparation for the three days dance were made. The tepees were made ready at the big camp, and with Indian tom-toms beating, and a ceremony as old as the tribe itself, little golden hair Ruth, clad in a gorgeous beaded buckskin robe and moccasins, hair in braids, trimmed with strips of bright beads, rode into camp on a spotted pony. The pony was led by Cheyenne Annie to fulfill the old tradition that if the brides mother-in-law led the pony upon which the bride entered the camp, there would always be peace in the tepee of the grooms parents where the young people must live. Cheyenne Annie led the pony gravely through the winding road among the many tepees up to the opening of her tent where White Eagle stood to greet his bride, and with elaborate ceremony presented her to the waiting groom, who also for the occasion was arrayed in the blanket, paint, feathers, and beaded moccasins of his tribe.

I stood with the bride's parents and others from the agency, watching the ceremony of transforming a beautiful white girl into an Indian, and as the tepee closed upon her we turned away realizing that we had been in the presence of a great absorbing, self-sacrificing love, and left Ruth there with her chosen people. As we turned away, we seemed to hear a voice out of the dim past saying:

"Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest, I will go. Where thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God."

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