Traditions of the North American Indians Volume II Part 12

They stroked their heads gently with one hand, while with the other they released them from their oppressive burdens--their beaver skins and their maize--indeed they were too kind. Then to gratify them still further, they produced a burning water[A], which they distributed among them, a.s.suring them of its power to create pleasing images in the mind, and to make bright visions dance before the eyes of those who drank it. The Indians drank as they were bidden, and realised the predicted effects. What a wonderful medicine was the strong water!

Under its potent influence, the mirror of the soul became enlarged, and a thousand images, till then unseen, floated before the mental eye. Then might a man receive certain intimations of the object he should choose as his protecting spirit, and astonish his brothers by a medicine of strange proportions and great power. And secrets of the land of souls--the way to pa.s.s the "narrow bridge over the fearful river," and how to stay the anger of the dog that guards it at the point where the Huron pa.s.ses--how to tread the sharp and steep rock upon which the Chippewa finds entrance to his land of rest--all this, and much more, to be attained by no other means, was learned from the strong waters given to the Abnakis by the strange spirit. And w.a.n.gewaha, the dreamer, woke from his sleep, rubbed his eyes, and indulged in deep thought of what the dream might portend.

[Footnote A: Burning water, ardent spirits, commonly called by them the "fire-eater."]

Again he sunk to sleep, and again he dreamed. Still his dream was of strange creatures, aliens to his land, and usurpers of the rights of its native sons. But they had multiplied till their numbers were as the sands upon the sea sh.o.r.e. He stood in imagination upon a lofty hill, and cast his eyes upon the broad lands beneath him. How changed!

The forests had been swept away, the land was cleared of its mossy old oaks, and lofty pines, and cedars, but, where they once raised their leafy heads to the winds of heaven, now rose cabins, white as the folds of a cloud, and glittering in the sun like a sheet of ice in a winter's day. The broad and rapid river, as well as the waters of the Great Lake, was marked in streaks of white foam by the many clouds traversing it, like that he had seen in his first dream. The lofty mountains were seamed like the breast of a tattooed warrior(2), by the roads which the strangers had made over it. The vales waved with the yellow wheat, and, herds of tame bisons lay resting on the gra.s.sy knolls, or stood grouped at the outlets of the fields, which the industrious strangers had girded in with fences of rock.

And what had become of the former inhabitants of the soil? where were the dusky men who met the strange creatures upon the sh.o.r.e, and bade them welcome, and gave them the fat things of the sea and the land for their subsistence, and warm furs to protect them from the searching winds of the Snow-Moon, and taught them how to follow the trail of forest animals, and to thread, unerringly, their way for many successive nights through the lonely wilderness, by the flow of streams and the course of fishes, and the light of the Hunter's Star, and the moss upon the oaks, and the flight of birds? Listen, and I will tell you.

He sees upon the edge of a stream, overgrown with a thick grove of alders and luxuriant vines, an Indian man and woman. The woman held in her arms a dying child--at the feet of the man, lay a lean and famished dog. Deep thought was in the eye of the one, and absorbing grief in that of the other. Now the hunter cast his eyes into the depths of the river in anxious search for the signs of the approach of the finny people; now he laid his ear to the earth after the manner of his race, when they would detect the sound of footsteps.

"Didst thou see aught in the current, which thine eye is searching?"

asked the wife tremulously, fixing her bright black eye, moistened with a tear, upon her hungry infant.

"I saw nothing in the current," answered the hunter. "The net of the stranger hath swept from the flood that which was in part the food of our tribes, when he first became acquainted with these sh.o.r.es. The barbed spear no more brings up the sleeping conger; the Indian throws his hook into the once populous stream, but it returns with the bait untouched."

"Did thy quick ear catch the sound of aught in the mazes of the wood?"

asked the fond mother, and her tears fell thick on the cheeks of her little babe.

"My ear caught no sound in the mazes of the wood," answered the hunter. "How should it? The stranger hath left nothing save the mouse, and the mole, and few of them. He has swept away the beloved retreats of the bounding beauty of the forest, the nimble deer, and none are left in the glades, where once they were thicker than the stars. The bear, and the wolf, and the panther, love not their crafty brother, and have gone yet deeper into the forest. The wild duck feeds now in the deep waters only, the mother teaches her brood that death lurks behind the wood-skirted sh.o.r.e."

"Then must this little child--thine and mine--our first-born, die of hunger. Yet bethink thee. I see among yonder lofty trees a cabin, the whiteness of which tells us that one of the despoilers of our joys hath there taken up his abode."

"Wouldst thou have the son of Alknomook--the son of the rightful lord--himself the rightful lord of these wide regions--beg bread from the stranger?"

"Not to save thy life or mine would I ask it, but what would I not do to save the life of this beautiful babe, which the Great Spirit granted to my prayers, when for sixty moons I had lived in thy cabin a disgraced woman(3)."

"Not therefore should the soul of an Indian warrior bend to a master.

I cannot beg."

"What was the dream which thou hadst in the last Worm-Moon?"

"Thou sayest well--it was of vengeance had by means of the boy. The son of Alknomook will humble his pride--he will wipe off the war paint, which he laid as deep on his face as the memory of his wrongs weigh on his heart, and he will supplicate the stranger to give him food for his little one."

Still the sleeping chief continued to take note of the things which occurred. He beheld the enfeebled and emaciated Indians at the dwelling of the proud stranger. The stranger sat at the door of his lofty cabin, and thus he addressed the friendless outcasts:

"Why have you dared to trespa.s.s on my soil, to bruise my pretty flowers with your rude feet, and to frighten my flocks and herds with your shrill halloos?"

The son of the forest was about to reply fiercely, when his ear caught the plaintive moan of his famished child, and he controlled the tempest of wrath which was rising in his bosom.

"Thine eyes are the eyes of an owl by daylight," replied he calmly.

"They have seen a thing which has not happened. The son of Alknomook did not bruise the flowers of the pale face, nor frighten his flocks and herds by his shrill halloos. Wilt thou give me a morsel of food for my famished child?"

"Begone, thou Indian dog!" said the proud and cruel man. "Thou shalt have no food here."

"But my child will die of hunger."

"If thy child die of hunger, there will be a red skin less. Back to thy woods, and herd with wolves and panthers, thy fit a.s.sociates."

The soul of the stern but generous warrior filled with ire and the spirit of vengeance, as he poured out his feelings in the emphatic language of his people. "Not so spoke the Abnakis to the weary, naked, and hungry, men who came to their sh.o.r.es, and besought them to grant them shelter," said he. "We gave them the food from our own mouths, and took the skins which fenced our wigwams to protect them from the winds of the cold moon." Nor did he cease speaking till he had denounced upon the pale faces the wrath of the Great Spirit for the injuries they had inflicted upon the Indians.

Ah, what is that which draws tears to the eyes of the dreamer, and brings sighs to his labouring heart? He beholds an Indian mother lying dead in the skirts of the forest. Upon her arm is laid a little child, and beside them, leaning on a bow, is the husband of the one and the father of the other. Sorrow has bowed him down, as far as the soul of an Indian may be bowed--there are no tears in his eyes, yet distress is written on the features of his face, in letters of enduring agony.

For a while he surveys the scene of death in stern silence, but soon the memory of his wrongs weighs upon his soul and rouses him to action. He springs upon his feet, and his shrill war-whoop rings through the forest, like the echo of the tap of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r on the hollow beech. His eye flashes fire as he grasps his war spear, and his laugh, when he examines his good ash bow, is like the cry of a hungry panther. Is not vengeance his? Look at yonder flames! He hath kindled them. Listen to that wail of many over the slaughtered corpses of their friends, who lay down to rest at the beginning of darkness, and woke ere the sun came over the hills in the shades of the valley of death. Bitterly, deeply, deadly, has the son of Alknomook revenged his own, and the wrongs of his race.

Again the dreamer saw, and still his dream was of the land where he dwelt. He saw the two sister Genii sitting in the same spot where he had at first beheld them. She who was of the far clime still retained the beauty and grace which were her's when her little foot first touched the greensward of the hitherto, by her, untrodden island.

Still around her head was bound the grape-vine laden with rich, ripe, cl.u.s.ters, amongst which were intermingled locks of hair, of a hue resembling the yellow leaf. Still were her round and plump arms bound with the shining bracelets, and her long and slender fingers adorned with the glittering rings. The sheaf of nodding grain was still an emblem of her power, and the sh.e.l.l and sceptre another. But she wore no more the suppliant air which at first distinguished her. Pride and haughtiness, and command and oppression, were now written on her face, and ruled her gestures.

By her side stood the other Genius, the spirit of the land, her elder sister--but oh, how changed! Her once glossy black locks now hung uncombed upon a shoulder once beautifully rounded, but rounded no longer; her moca.s.sins were torn and soiled; and missing from her wrists and ancles the gay ornaments of bead and sh.e.l.l-work which adorned them in the day of her prosperity and pride. The feathers of the canieu or war-eagle, and the painted vulture, towered above her head no more, and gone from her shoulder was the emblem of the race over which she had borne rule, the bow and the arrow.

Anon these two sisters entered into speech with each other. She who was of the land, from the moment that the Bird of Ages planted it in the bosom of the waters, said to the other,

"Thou hast a most beautiful land."

"It is indeed a most beautiful land," answered the other, casting her eye proudly over the s.p.a.ce beneath her feet.

"It has lofty mountains."

"Its mountains are very lofty."

"It has many rapid and beautiful rivers."

"It has."

"Its suns--"

"Are bright as the eyes of a dove in the moon of buds."

"Its winds--"

"Soft and balm-scented as the breath of a young maiden."

"I should like to live in thy cabin, to range uncontrolled through thy green glades, and to listen in dreaming repose to the music of thy merry waterfalls."

"Ah, no doubt thou wouldst, but dost thou think I would permit thee?"

replied she, who was once a stranger in the land, but was a stranger no longer.

"Knowest thou not that we are sisters?" asked the dark Genius timidly.

"Nay, I knew it not," replied the other.

"We are, and so thou didst say when thou camest in the white cloud, and I gave thee hills, and mountains, and rivers, and lakes, and glades, and a part of the sea."

"The more fool thou, for admitting one to wrest from thee thy fair possessions."

"I deemed thee in want, and then wert thou not my sister?"

"If thou wert I have forgotten it," replied the other haughtily. "If thou didst me favours, thine impertinence in remembering them hath more than cancelled the obligation. Depart from me, and let me behold thy face no more."

The dark Genius withdrew at the bidding of her haughty sister, and the chief of the Abnakis awoke, and related his dream to his tribe. Hath it not come to pa.s.s? Look abroad on the land, and make answer. The race of the red man hath disappeared from the earth, as the snows disappear before the beams of a spring sun, or the hues of purple and gold on the western sky, at the approach of darkness. It is only in the regions of the Hunter's Star, where the pale face dare not venture, that the red man may now be found.