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157 7 / Treaty Rights Are Like a Drumbeat T he war in Europe had been going on since, I think, 1914. The United States declared war in April 1917. Then World War I finally hit the whole United States. My brother had to register for the U.S. Army in April. All of the Indian boys of that age group, from twenty-one to twentyeight years old, had to sign up. We were all worried, really sick with worry, over my sister because she was dying. When she died at the end of May, as I said before, she died the same night my brother graduated from high school in Marysville. Then he was called up by the draft board and he left home. The first World War was something we read about in the newspaper. Incidentally, newspapers came here one or two days late. Today you can get your paper the same day it is printed, but way back then, the mail for Tulalip came from Seattle and Everett on the mail boat. People came on the mail boat, too—anybody who had business to do at the Indian agency. The mail boat arrived here at 11 o’clock, 11:15, or 11:30 a.m. Every time the mail boat came, you heard a whistle. Today mail is delivered by the mail carrier from Marysville. Robert and his cousin Clarence Shelton were called up together, and they both left on the same day to report to Fort Lewis. That was another big worry. There could not have been very many Indians to call up because the death rate had been so high. If I remember correctly, we had eight of the Indian boys from this reservation who served in the U.S. Army. They were in Fort Lewis for three months or ninety days. They had rifle and bayonet practice. When my brother got several days’ leave to come home, then we sat around and listened to him telling how to use or swing a gun with a bayonet on it. I felt as if I knew how, because he was telling us. Way back then, the Indian described everything he saw. We had a different language, since my brother talked in English, but he saw everything too. 158 / Treaty Rights Are Like a Drumbeat They had the bayonet practice over and over. They had a Frenchman, a soldier, who taught them. He had been severely wounded, and we could guess that he had an artificial leg. I remember Robert said, “You certainly have to see to it that the enemy doesn’t get to you first. The first thing you try to hit is just below the ribs, because if you do like that, but turn it, you are liable to have that bayonet in a rib; so that is why you jab and turn and pull. Try for here; try and jerk it down, because if you just try and cut a big vein—and then you also have your breathing tubes on each side.” So, hour after hour, the grandparents, cousins—everybody—are listening to him. Then, of course, there was the awful worry that American soldiers were going to be sent to France. My brother told about how they got an awful cussing when they first got there. But it was easy for him and his cousin to be in the Army because they had already been in an Indian boarding school. They knew exactly how to march. They knew which were “squads right,” “squads left,” “forward march,” and “come to a halt.” In Tulalip Indian School they knew how to do the right-hand salute by your numbers: “one,” and you had better have that little elbow out right at the end of your eyeball. You had better have your eyes front, chins up, chests out, stomachs in, and that is what they had to do in the Army. So it was easy. They already knew how, but for the others it was tough. They had to get up at five o’clock in the morning and run around out there in the cold, doing all kinds of exercises. At the end of the three months, then, we knew maybe my brother would be going. But the strangest thing happened to him. One night they loaded the regiment on the train. The officers were counting the men as they got on. My brother said they were loaded down with their cans of food...

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