CHAPTER IX
The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.
PSA. lxxiv, 20
The night that followed this conversation, Jyanough passed in Terah's lodge, and he nursed his suffering relative with gentle patience. But he saw no signs of recovery, although the women and the Cree Powows assured him that the fatal disease was driven away by Tisquantum's powerful incantations, and that, when the sun rose, he would see the spirit of Terah revive. So had the conjuror declared; and so these misguided heathens believed. But when the first beams of opening day entered the door of the lodge, which was set open to receive them, and fell on the dark and pallid features of the aged sufferer, Jyanough could no longer be deceived into hope. He saw that his revered uncle was dying, and he hastened to inform Henrich of the fact, and to entreat him to return with him to Terah's wigwam, and to prey to the Great Spirit in his behalf.
Henrich readily complied: and he, too, was convinced, by the first glance at the dying Indian, that no human aid, however skilful, could long retain that once powerful spirit in its worn and wasted tenement of clay. He knelt down by the side of Terah's couch, and Jyanough knelt with him; and, regardless of the wondering gaze of the ignorant attendants, he offered up a short and simple prayer to God for the soul of the departing warrior.
The Cree Powows who had watched the sick man during the night, had left the lodge as soon as daylight set in, to collect materials for a great burnt offering they deigned to make, as a last resource, in front of the Pince's dwelling. As Henrich and Jyanough rose from their knees, the heathen priest entered, bearing strings of wampum, articles of furniture, of clothing, food, tobacco, and everything of any value that they had been able to obtain from the friends of Terah. All these various articles were displayed before the dim eyes of the invalid, for whose benefit they were to be reduced to a heap of useless ashes; and a faint smile of satisfaction passed over Terah's countenance: but he spoke not. Jyanough then bent down, and pressed his lips to the cold brow of his almost unconscious uncle, and hurried with Henrich from the lodge; for he could not bear again to witness any repetition of the heathen ceremonies that had caused him so much shame the preceding day: neither could he endure to see his last relative leave the world, surrounded by a spiritual darkness which it was not in his power to dispel.
The young friends took their way into the forest, that they might be beyond the sight and the sound of those rites that were about to be performed for the recovery of one who had already begun to travel through the valley of the shadow of death. They had not, however, gone far in a westerly direction, before they chanced their intention, and resolved to return to the village. The cause of this change of purpose was their meeting with a band of Cree warriors, who had gone out, some weeks previously, on an expedition against a settlement of their enemies, the Stone Indians; and were now returning from the plains of the Saskatchawan, laden with spoils. Many of the Crees bore scalps suspended from their belts, as bloody trophies of victory; and all had arms, and skins, and ornaments that they had carried away from the pillaged wigwams of their foes.
Henrich could not help gazing with admiration at the party of warriors as they approached. The greater part of them were mounted on beautiful and spirited horses of the wild breed of the western prairies, which they rode with an ease and grace that astonished the young Englishman. They wore no covering on their heads, and their black hair was cut short, except one long scalp-lock hanging behind; so that their fine countenances, which were rather of the Roman cast, were fully exposed to view. Their dress consisted of a large blanket, wrapped gracefully round the waist, and confined by a belt, so as to leave the bust and arms bare; and so perfect and muscular were their figures, that they had the appearance of noble bronze statues. Their native weapons, consisting of spears and bows, with highly ornamented quivers suspended from their shoulders, and battle-axes hung to their belts, added much to their martial and picturesque effect. Behind the horsemen followed a band on foot, who carried the stolen treasures of the wasted village; and Henrich looked with curiosity at the various and beautifully decorated articles of dress, and hunting equipments, that had formed the pride and the wealth of the defeated Stone Indians.
But the part of the spoil that interested and distressed both Henrich and his companion more than all the rest, was a young Indian warrior, who, with his wife and her infant, had been brought away as prisoners to add to the triumph, and, probably, to glut the vengeance, of their conquerors. There was an unextinguished fire in the eye of the captive, and an expression of fearless indignation in the proud bearing with which he strode by the side of his captors, that clearly told how bravely he would sell his life but for the cords that tightly bound his wrists behind him, and were held by a powerful Cree on each side. Behind him walked his wife, with downcast features and faltering steps, and at her back hung her little infant, suspended in a bag or pouch of deer skin, half filled with the soft bog-moss, so much used by Indian squaws to form the bed—and, indeed, the only covering—of their children during the first year of their existence. The eyes of the captive young mother were fixed tearfully on the majestic form of her husband, who was too proud—perhaps, also, too sad—to turn and meet her gaze, while the eyes of his foes were upon him to detect his slightest weakness. Even the low wailing cry of her child was unheeded by this broken hearted wife in that sad hour; for she well knew the customs of Indian warfare, and she had no hope for the life of her warrior, even if her own should be spared.
Henrich gazed on the little group in pity; for be instinctively read their story, and their coming fate, in their countenances, and in the cruel glances that fell on them from their guards. He looked at Jyanough; and in his expressive features he saw a fell confirmation of his worst fears.
'They will sacrifice them to Maatche-Mahneto in the vain hope of lengthening Terah's life,' he softly whispered in Henrich's ear. 'Let us go back and seek Oriana. Perhaps, for her sake, Tisquantum may ask the lives of the squaw and her young child; and, as Chingook's honored guest, they would be granted to him; but there is no hope for the warrior. His blood will surely be shed to appease Maatche-Mahneto, and to atone for the death of several of the Cree braves who have fallen this year by the hands of the Stone tribe.'
Hastily Henrich turned; and, followed by Jyanough, took a by-path well known to them, and entered the village before the arrival of the warriors and their unhappy prisoners. A brief explanation was sufficient to enlist all the kindly feelings, and all the Christian spirit, of Oriana in favor of their project; and she lost no time in seeking her father, who had again repaired to Terah's hut, to superintend the costly sacrifice that was being offered in his behalf. She found him exulting in a partial improvement in his patient, whose senses had again returned with a brief and deceitful brilliance, and attributing what he called the aged Pince's recovery to the potency of his own spells.
This was no time for Oriana to argue with the elated Powow on the fallacy of his pretensions. She therefore listened patiently to his boastings; and then, with much feeling and natural eloquence, told him the cause of her interrupting him at such a moment, and besought him to exert all his great influence with the Crees, to induce them to spare the lives of the Stone captives.
Tisquantum listened with attention to her story and her petition, for he was always gentle to Oriana; but he gave her little hope of that fell success which her warm young heart desired, and anticipated.
'My child,' he said, 'I will do what you ask, so far as to request that the woman and child may be placed at your disposal. But the warrior's life I cannot demand, for it would be an insult to the brave Crees to suppose that they would suffer an enemy to escape, and tell his tribe that they were woman-hearted. No, he must die; and, if the soul of his ancestors dwells in him, he will exult in the opportunity of showing how even a Stone Indian can meet death.'
Oriana was repulsed, but not defeated, by this reply. 'Nay, my father,' she again began, 'either save all, or let all perish. Do not take the brave young warrior from his wife and child, and leave them in poverty and sorrow; but plead for mercy to be shown to him also—and so may mercy be shown to his conquerors, and to you, his deliverer, when—'
'Peace, child,' interrupted the Sachem, with more asperity than he usually showed to Oriana. 'These are the notions you have learned from your white brother, and I desire not to hear them. Tisquantum knows his duty. I will demand the lives of the woman and child of whom you speak; but the warrior must abide his fate. And think you that he would not scorn to live when honor is gone I Go'—he added more gently, as he saw the sorrow that dimmed her eye—'go, and tell Jyanough to meet me at the Sachem's lodge. Terah may yet be saved—this victim comes at s happy moment, and surely Mahneto demands his life as at offering for that of the venerable Pince.'
Oriana shuddered at what she saw to be her father's meaning. Once she would have felt as he did and have believed that their god could be propitiated by blood and agony. But now she knew that all such cruel sacrifices were worse than vain; and deeply she regretted her own inability to bring her countrymen, and especially her own beloved father, to a knowledge of the Gospel of mercy and peace; and thus save them from imbruing their hands in the blood of their fellow men, and thinking that they did good service to the Great Spirit.
She hurried back to her companions, and, weeping, told them of her partial success. It was all, and more than all, that Jyanough expected; and he immediately went to meet Tisquantum at the lodge of the Cree Sachem, Chingook, where he found the war party and their prisoners assembled. After a few words to Jyanough, Tisquantum commenced a long speech to his brother Sachem, in which he dilated on the friendship that subsisted between them, and the joy that he had felt in exercising his skill for the benefit of the brave and hospitable Crees. He then spoke of Terah's perilous condition, and his fears that even his powers had been baffled by the spirit of evil; and that the Pince would yet be taken from them, unless some offering could be found more precious than all that were now piled before his dwelling, and only waited for the auspicious moment to be wrapped inflame, us a sacrifice to the offended deity who had brought the pestilence. 'And have we not such an offering here?' he added, pointing to the captive warrior, who stood, with head erect, awaiting the sentence that he knew would be pronounced. 'Have we not here a victim, sent by Mahneto himself, at the very moment when Terah's life seems hanging on a breath? Lead him, then, to the sacred pile; and as his soul goes forth, the soul of Terah shall revive.
This speech was received with acclamations by the Crees; and already the warriors were hurrying away their captive, while his wife followed, as if mechanically, to share her husband's fate. Bat here Tisquantum interposed, and, in his daughter's name, requested the life of the woman and her child. His request was readily granted by Chingook; for of what value was a squaw in the eyes of these Indian braves?
The daughter of our friend and benefactor shall be denied nothing that she asks,' replied the Cree Chief. 'Take the woman to Oriana's lodge, and let her be her slave.'
Jyanough approached to lead away the unhappy woman but she turned on him a look of despairing misery, and, laying her band on her husband's arm, said quickly, 'I will see my Lincoya die, and then I will follow you where you will, for Mailah has no home.'
Jyanough did not oppose her, for his heart was touched by her sorrow and her fortitude; and the captive warrior turned his head, and bent on her sad countenance one look of tenderness and approbation, that told how deeply he was sensible of her devotion.
He did not speak—perchance he could not trust his voice in that trying moment—but he followed his guards, and his eye was again steadfast, and his step was firm.
Henrich and Oriana waited anxiously for the return of Jyanough: but he came not; and they almost feared that Tisquantum's request had been too coldly urged to prove successful. It was a calm autumnal day; and as the sun rose high in the heavens, his beams were shrouded by heavy thunder clouds, while a low and distant murmur foretold an approaching storm, and added to the gloom that weighed heavily on Oriana's spirit. All the sin and degradation of the faith of her countrymen seemed to strike upon her mind with a force hitherto unknown, and to bow her down in shame and sadness. Even to Henrich—to her loved Christian friend and teacher—she could not now utter her feelings; and when, to divert her thoughts, and remove her from the village where he knew so cruel a scene would soon be enacted, he led her towards the forest, she followed him silently. They seated themselves beneath an overshadowing tree; and, for some time, no sound broke the oppressive silence save the soft rustling of the leaves, that seemed to be moved by the spirits of the air-for no wind was stirring.
Presently a shriek—one single cry of agony—arose from the village: and all was still again.
'It was a woman's voice!' exclaimed Oriana, in a tone of deep suffering. 'O, Henrich! they murder the helpless and the innocent; and my father consents to the deed!'
Henrich did not reply; he had no comfort to offer. But they both gazed towards the village, as if hoping to discover, through the impervious wood that surrounded it, some indications of what was going on in those 'habitations of cruelty.
Soon a dense cloud of smoke rose high in the still at; and flames shot up above the intervening trees. And then burst forth a mingled din of wild unearthly sounds, that told of sated vengeance, and malignant joy, and demoniac worship. Fiercely the war cry of the Crees rang in the air, while above it rose the shrill sound of clashing spears and tomahawks; and Oriana knew that the savages were dancing round a death- fire, and calling on Mahneto to accept their bloody offering.
But now the threatening storm broke suddenly on that dark place of the earth; and it seemed to Oriana's troubled spirit that the wrath of heaven was poured upon her benighted race. Peal after peal resounded in quick succession, and reverberated from the distant kills; while flashes of forked lightning followed one another rapidly, and dispelled, for a moment, the unnatural darkness. The young Indian clung trembling and terrified to her companion, and hid her face on his shoulder, to shut out the fearful scene, while Henrich spoke to her words of comfort and encouragement, and at length succeeded in calming her agitation. The rain poured down in torrents but so dense was the foliage that hung over Oriana and her companion that it could not penetrate their place of refuge; and they remained awaiting its cessation, and watching the curling smoke, that seemed to die away as the falling torrent extinguished the fire. But as it disappeared, another cloud arose near the same spot; and wider and fiercer flames sprang up, that defied the rain, and continued to burn with more and more strength. Whence could they arise? Surely the wigwams were on fire!
Henrich communicated this fear to Oriana, and they arose and hurried together towards the village, where an appalling scene met their eyes. In front of Terah's dwelling were the smoldering remains of the sacrificial fire, on which—still upheld by the stake to which he had been bound—the burnt and, blackened form of a man was visible; while close by the ashes lay a woman, so motionless that she seemed as totally deprived of life as the wretched victim himself, and a child was reclining on her shoulder, whose faint wailing cry showed that it yet lived and suffered.
None heeded the melancholy group; for the warriors, whose wild songs and frantic dances had been interrupted by the sudden violence of the storm, were all now engaged in fruitless efforts to extinguish the flames that were rapidly consuming the lodge of Terah. The lightning had struck it, and ignited its roof of reeds; and so rapidly had the whole dwelling become a prey to the dreadful element, that even the removal of the dying sage had been despaired of. But Jyanough, who had been a silent spectator of all the previous scene of cruelty, was not to be daunted by the smoke and flame that burst through the entrance, and drove from the chamber of death all the attendants of the sufferer. Boldly he rushed into Terah's dwelling; and, just as Henrich and Oriana entered the open space in front of it, they beheld him issuing forth, blackened with smoke and scorched with fire, and bending beneath the weight of his uncle's corpse.
Yes; Terah was already a corpse! All the charms and incantations of the Powows bad failed to banish the disease that was sent to summon him away. All the treasure that had been destroyed, and the precious life- blood that had been spilled to propitiate false deities, could not for one moment arrest the fiat of the true 'Master of life,' or detain the spirit which was recalled by Him who gave it' That spirit had passed away amidst the noise of the tempest; and when Henrich sprang forward, and assisted his friend to lay the body gently on the earth, they saw that the spark of life had fled!
All further attempts at extinguishing the fire were now abandoned; and the Crees gathered round their departed friend to condole with Jyanough, who was his nearest relative, and to commence that dismal howling by which they express their grief on such occasions. All the property of the dead man was already consumed; but the best mats and skins that Jyanoughs wigwam contained were brought to wrap the corpse in; and when the site of his former dwelling could be cleared of ashes and rubbish, a grave was speedily dug in the center of it, and the, body laid by the simple sepulchre, around which the friends of the venerated Pince seated themselves, and howled, and wept, and detailed the virtues and the wisdom of the dead.
Jyanough was expected to act the part of chief mourner in these ceremonies; and the real affection he had entertained for his uncle induced him to comply, and to remain all that day, and all the following night, at the grate. But he refused to cover his face with soot—as is customary on such occasions of domestic sorrow—or to join the Powows in their frantic cries and exorcisms, to drive off the Weettakos from sucking the dead man's blood. The presence of Henrich seemed to annoy and irritate these priests of Satan; and he was glad to retire from a scene so repugnant to his better feelings, and to return to Oriana, by whose care and direction the unhappy Mailah and her infant had been promptly removed from the place of death and desolation, and conveyed to her own apartment in Tisquantums lodge.
Her kind efforts had restored the poor young widow to consciousness; and she now sat on the floor, with her child on her knee, listening with a calmness that almost seemed apathy, to the words of comfort that were uttered by the gentle Squaw-Sachem.
Mailah was very young. Scarcely sixteen summers had passed over her head; and yet—such is Indian life—she had already been a wife and a mother; and now, alas! she was a widow. Her grief had been passionate at the last, and had burst forth in that one wild cry that had startled Orianas ear in the forest. But that was over now, and she seemed resigned to her hard fate, and willing to endure it. Perhaps this was for her infant's sake; and, perhaps, her sensibilities were blunted by the life she had led, in common with the rest of her race and sex—a life in which the best feelings and sympathies of our nature are almost unknown. It was not until Oriana led her to speak of her past life, and the home of her youth—now desolate and in ruins—that tears of natural grief flowed from her eyes. Then she seemed roused to a full sense of all she had lost, end broke out into mournful lamentations for her murdered Lincoya, whose noble qualities and high lineage she eloquently extolled; while she sadly contrasted her present lonely and desolate position with her happiness as the squaw of so distinguished a warrior, and so successful a hunter.
Oriana said all she could to console her; and assured her of her protection and friendship, and of a home in her lodge when they returned to their own country, where she should live as her sister, and bring up her little Lincoya to emulate his father's courage and virtues: and, ere long, the simple young savage again grew calm, said lifted up her soft black eyes, and smiled gratefully at her new friend and benefactor. She said she bad no wish to return to her own tribe, for all her family and friends had been destroyed in the recent massacre; and the village where she had spent such happy days was reduced to ashes. She, therefore, was well content to remain with the youthful Squaw-Sachem, to whose intercession she knew she owed her own life and that of her child, and in whose service she professed her willingness to live and die.
Her manner and appearance greatly interested Henrich, for they were marked by much greater refinement than he had seen in any of the Indian females, except Oriana. This was to be accounted for by her noble birth; for in those days the Indian chieftains prided themselves on the purity and nobility of their lineage; and no member of a Sachem's family was allowed to marry one of an inferior race. A certain air of dignity generally distinguished the privileged class, even among the females; although their lives were not exempt from much of hardship and servitude, and they were regarded as altogether the inferiors of their lords and masters.
To Oriana the arrival of the young mother and her playful child was a source of much pleasure and comfort; for she had begun to feel the want of female society, and the women who accompanied Tisquantum's party, and assisted her in the domestic duties of the family, were no companions to her. In Mailah she saw that she could find a friend; and her kindness and sympathy soon attached the lonely young squaw to her, and even restored her to cheerfulness and activity. It was only when she visited the grave in which Henrich and Jyanough had laid the murdered Lincoya, and decked it with flowers and green boughs, that the widow seemed to feel the greatness of her affliction. Then she would weep bitterly, and, with passionate gestures, lament her brave warrior. But, at other times, she was fully occupied with the care of her little Lincoya, or in assisting Oriana in the light household duties that devolved upon her. And her sweet voice was often heard singing to the child, which generally hung at her back, nestled in its soft bed of moss.