And suddenly Fanny would stop quite still in the
midst of her tag game, struck with the beauty of the picture
it called from the past.
Little Oriental that she was, she was able to combine the
dry text of her history book with the green of the trees,
the gray of the church, and the brown of the monk's robes,
and evolve a thrilling mental picture therefrom. The tag
game and her noisy little companions vanished. She was
peopling the place with stealthy Indians. Stealthy,
cunning, yet savagely brave. They bore no relation to the
abject, contemptible, and rather smelly Oneidas who came to
the back door on summer mornings, in calico, and ragged
overalls, with baskets of huckleberries on their arm, their
pride gone, a broken and conquered people. She saw them
wild, free, sovereign, and there were no greasy, berry-
peddling Oneidas among them. They were Sioux, and
Pottawatomies (that last had the real Indian sound), and
Winnebagos, and Menomonees, and Outagamis. She made them
taciturn, and beady-eyed, and lithe, and fleet, and every
other adjectival thing her imagination and history book
could supply.
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