Indian Stories Retold From St. Nicholas Part 1

Indian Stories Retold From St. Nicholas.

by Various.

INDIAN STORIES

INDIAN LULLABY

Sleep, sleep, my boy; the Chippewas Are far away--are far away.

Sleep, sleep, my boy; prepare to meet The foe by day--the foe by day!

The cowards will not dare to fight Till morning break--till morning break.

Sleep, sleep, my child, while still 'tis night; Then bravely wake--then bravely wake!

INDIAN STORIES

ONATOGA'S SACRIFICE

BY JOHN DIMITRY

ONCE, in the long ago, before the white man had heard of the continent on which we live, red men, who were brave and knew not what fear was in battle, trembled at the mention of a great man-eating bird that had lived before the time told of in the traditions known of their oldest chiefs.

This bird, which, according to the Indian legends, ate men, was known as the PIASAU.

The favorite haunt of this terrible bird was a bluff on the Mississippi River, a short distance above the site of the present city of Alton, Illinois. There it was said to lie in wait, and to keep watch over the broad, open prairies. Whenever some rash Indian ventured out alone to hunt upon this fatal ground, he became the monster's prey. The legend says that the bird, swooping down with the fierce swiftness of a hawk, seized upon its victim and bore him to a gloomy cave wherein it made its horrid feasts. The monster must have had an insatiable appet.i.te or a prolonged existence, for tradition declares that it depopulated whole villages. Then it was that the wise men began to see visions and to prophesy the speedy extinction of the tribe. Years of its ravages followed one upon another, until at length, according to the legend, was lost all reckoning of the time when first that strange, foul creature came to scourge their sunny plains. The aged men, whose youth was but a dim memory, could say only that the bird was as it had always been. None like it had ever been heard of save in vague traditions.

There was one, Onatoga, who began to ponder.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONATOGA IN THE FOREST]

Now, Onatoga was the great leader of the Illini; one whose name was spoken with awe even in the distant wigwams north of the Great Lake.

Long had he grieved and wondered over the will of the Great Spirit; that he should look upon the men of the Western prairies, not as warriors, but as deer or bison, only fit to fill the maw of so pestilent a thing as this monstrous bird! Before the new moon began to grow upon the face of the sky, Onatoga's resolve was taken. He would go to some spot deep in the forest where by fasting and prayer his spirit would become so pure that the Great Master of Life would hear him and once again be kind and turn His face back, in light, upon the Illini.

Stealing away from his tribe in the night, he plunged far into the trackless forest. Then, blackening his face, for a whole moon he fasted.

The moon waxed full and then waned; but no vision came to a.s.sure him that the Great Spirit had heard his prayers. Only one more night remained. Wearied and sorrow-worn, he closed his eyes. But, through the deep sleep that fell upon him, came the voice of the Great Spirit. And this is the message that came to Onatoga, as he lay sleeping in body but, in his soul, awake:

"Arise, Chief of the Illini! Thou shalt save thy race. Choose thou twenty of thy warriors; n.o.ble-hearted, strong-armed, eagle-eyed. Put in each warrior's hand a bow. Give to each an arrow dipped in the venom of the snake. Seek then the man whose heart loveth the Great Spirit. Let him not fear to look the Piasau in the face; but see that the warriors, with ready bows, stand near in the shadow of the trees."

Onatoga awoke; strong, though he had fasted a month; happy, though he knew he was soon to die! Who, but he, the Great Chief of the Illini, should die for his people--for was it not death to look on the face of the Piasau?

Binding his moccasins firmly upon his feet, he washed the marks of grief from his face, and painted it with the brightest vermilion and blue.

Thus, in the splendid colors of a triumphant warrior, he returned homeward. All was silent in the village when, in the gray light of early day, he entered his lodge. Soon the joyful news was known. From lodge to lodge it spread until the last wigwam was reached. Onatoga's quest was successful!

Then the warriors began to gather. Furtively, even in their gladness, they sought his lodge, for the fear of the Piasau was over all. A solemn awe fell upon them as they gathered around the chief, who, it was whispered, had heard the voice of the Great Spirit. Without, on that high bluff, they knew that the fiend-bird crouched, waiting for the morning light to reveal its prey. Within, in sorrowing silence, they heard how the people could be saved; but the hearts of the warriors were heavy. All knew the sacrifice demanded--their bravest and their best!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ONATOGA, NEVER CEASING HIS CHANT, FACED THE PIASAU FEARLESSLY"]

Onatoga chose his twenty warriors and appointed them their place, where the rolling prairie was broken by the edge of the forest. Then, when the sun shot its first long shafts of light across the level gra.s.ses, the chief walked slowly forth and stood alone upon the prairie. The world in the morning light was beautiful to Onatoga's eyes. The flowers beneath his feet seemed to smile, and poured forth richest perfumes; the sun was glorious in its golden breast-plate, to do him honor; while the lark and the mock-bird sang his praise in joyous songs.

He had not long to wait. Soon, afar off, the dreaded Piasau was seen moving heavily through the clear morning air. Onatoga, drawing himself to the full measure of his lofty height, raised his death-song. The dull flutter of huge wings came nearer, and a great shadow came rushing over the sunlit fields. Onatoga, never ceasing his chant, faced the Piasau fearlessly. A sudden fierce swoop downward! In that very moment, twenty poisoned arrows, loosed by twenty faithful hands, sped true to their aim. With a scream that the bluffs sent rolling back in sharp and deafening echoes, the foul monster dropped dead! The Great Spirit loved the man who had been willing to sacrifice his life for his people. In the very instant when death seemed sure, he covered the heart of Onatoga with a shield; and he suffered not the wind to blow aside a single arrow from its mark,--the body of the fated Piasau.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "CUNNING CARVERS CUT DEEP INTO THE ROCK THE FORM OF THE PIASAU"]

Great were the rejoicings that followed and rich were the feasts that were held in honor of Onatoga. The Illini resolved that the story of the great deliverance and of the courageous love of Onatoga should not die, though they themselves should pa.s.s away. The cunning carvers of the tribe cut deep into the living rock of the bluff the terrible form of the Piasau. And, in later years, when young children asked the meaning of this great figure, so unlike any of the birds that they knew upon their rivers and their prairies, then the fathers would tell them the story of the Piasau, and how the Great Spirit had found, in Onatoga, a warrior who loved his fellow-men better than he loved his own life.

WAUKEWA'S EAGLE

BY JAMES BUCKHAM

ONE day, when the Indian boy Waukewa was hunting along the mountain-side, he found a young eagle with a broken wing, lying at the base of a cliff. The bird had fallen from an aery on a ledge high above, and being too young to fly, had fluttered down the cliff and injured itself so severely that it was likely to die. When Waukewa saw it he was about to drive one of his sharp arrows through its body, for the pa.s.sion of the hunter was strong in him, and the eagle plunders many a fine fish from the Indian's drying-frame. But a gentler impulse came to him as he saw the young bird quivering with pain and fright at his feet, and he slowly unbent his bow, put the arrow in his quiver, and stooped over the panting eaglet. For fully a minute the wild eyes of the wounded bird and the eyes of the Indian boy, growing gentler and softer as he gazed, looked into one another. Then the struggling and panting of the young eagle ceased; the wild, frightened look pa.s.sed out of its eyes, and it suffered Waukewa to pa.s.s his hand gently over its ruffled and draggled feathers. The fierce instinct to fight, to defend its threatened life, yielded to the charm of the tenderness and pity expressed in the boy's eyes; and from that moment Waukewa and the eagle were friends.

Waukewa went slowly home to his father's lodge, bearing the wounded eaglet in his arms. He carried it so gently that the broken wing gave no twinge of pain, and the bird lay perfectly still, never offering to strike with its sharp beak the hands that clasped it.

Warming some water over the fire at the lodge, Waukewa bathed the broken wing of the eagle and bound it up with soft strips of skin. Then he made a nest of ferns and gra.s.s inside the lodge, and laid the bird in it. The boy's mother looked on with shining eyes. Her heart was very tender.

From girlhood she had loved all the creatures of the woods, and it pleased her to see some of her own gentle spirit waking in the boy.

When Waukewa's father returned from hunting, he would have caught up the young eagle and wrung its neck. But the boy pleaded with him so eagerly, stooping over the captive and defending it with his small hands, that the stern warrior laughed and called him his "little squaw-heart." "Keep it, then," he said, "and nurse it until it is well.

But then you must let it go, for we will not raise up a thief in the lodges." So Waukewa promised that when the eagle's wing was healed and grown so that it could fly, he would carry it forth and give it its freedom.

It was a month--or, as the Indians say, a moon--before the young eagle's wing had fully mended and the bird was old enough and strong enough to fly. And in the meantime Waukewa cared for it and fed it daily, and the friendship between the boy and the bird grew very strong.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE YOUNG EAGLE ROSE TOWARD THE SKY"]

But at last the time came when the willing captive must be freed. So Waukewa carried it far away from the Indian lodges, where none of the young braves might see it hovering over and be tempted to shoot their arrows at it, and there he let it go. The young eagle rose toward the sky in great circles, rejoicing in its freedom and its strange, new power of flight. But when Waukewa began to move away from the spot, it came swooping down again; and all day long it followed him through the woods as he hunted. At dusk, when Waukewa shaped his course for the Indian lodges, the eagle would have accompanied him. But the boy suddenly slipped into a hollow tree and hid, and after a long time the eagle stopped sweeping about in search of him and flew slowly and sadly away.

Summer pa.s.sed, and then winter; and spring came again, with its flowers and birds and swarming fish in the lakes and streams. Then it was that all the Indians, old and young, braves and squaws, pushed their light canoes out from sh.o.r.e and with spear and hook waged pleasant war against the salmon and the red-spotted trout. After winter's long imprisonment, it was such joy to toss in the sunshine and the warm wind and catch savory fish to take the place of dried meats and corn!

Above the great falls of the Apahoqui the salmon sported in the cool, swinging current, darting under the lee of the rocks and leaping full length in the clear spring air. Nowhere else were such salmon to be speared as those which lay among the riffles at the head of the Apahoqui rapids. But only the most daring braves ventured to seek them there, for the current was strong, and should a light canoe once pa.s.s the danger-point and get caught in the rush of the rapids, nothing could save it from going over the roaring falls.

Very early in the morning of a clear April day, just as the sun was rising splendidly over the mountains, Waukewa launched his canoe a half-mile above the rapids of the Apahoqui, and floated downward, spear in hand, among the salmon-riffles. He was the only one of the Indian lads who dared fish above the falls. But he had been there often, and never yet had his watchful eye and his strong paddle suffered the current to carry his canoe beyond the danger-point. This morning he was alone on the river, having risen long before daylight to be first at the sport.

The riffles were full of salmon, big, l.u.s.ty fellows, who glided about the canoe on every side in an endless silver stream. Waukewa plunged his spear right and left, and tossed one glittering victim after another into the bark canoe. So absorbed in the sport was he that for once he did not notice when the head of the rapids was reached and the canoe began to glide more swiftly among the rocks. But suddenly he looked up, caught his paddle, and dipped it wildly in the swirling water. The canoe swung sidewise, shivered, held its own against the torrent, and then slowly, inch by inch, began to creep upstream toward the sh.o.r.e. But suddenly there was a loud, cruel snap, and the paddle parted in the boy's hands, broken just above the blade! Waukewa gave a cry of despairing agony. Then he bent to the gunwale of his canoe and with the shattered blade fought desperately against the current. But it was useless. The racing torrent swept him downward; the hungry falls roared tauntingly in his ears.

Then the Indian boy knelt calmly upright in the canoe, facing the mist of the falls, and folded his arms. His young face was stern and lofty.

He had lived like a brave hitherto--now he would die like one.