This woman, here, she's ez sweet a creetur's ever I see; 'n' ez bound
up 'n thet baby's yer could ask enny woman to be; 'n' 's fur thet
man, can't yer see, Jeff, he jest worships the ground she walks on?
Thet's a fact, Jeff. I donno's ever I see a white man think so much
uv a woman; come, naow, Jeff, d' yer think yer ever did yerself?"
Aunt Ri was excited. The experience was, to her, almost
incredible. Her ideas of Indians had been drawn from newspapers,
and from a book or two of narratives of massacres, and from an
occasional sight of vagabond bands or families they had
encountered in their journey across the plains. Here she found
herself sitting side by side in friendly intercourse with an Indian
man and Indian woman, whose appearance and behavior were
attractive; towards whom she felt herself singularly drawn.
"I'm free to confess, Jos," she said, "I wouldn't ha' bleeved it. I
hain't seen nobody, black, white, or gray, sence we left hum, I've
took to like these yere folks. An' they're real dark; 's dark's any
nigger in Tennessee; 'n' he's pewer Injun; her father wuz white, she
sez, but she don't call herself nothin' but an Injun, the same's he is.
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