CHAPTER XV.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream:
The boy was sprung to manhood; to the wilds
Of distant climes he made himself a home.
And his soul drank their beauties; he was girt
With strange and dusky aspects; he was not
Himself like what he had been:—on the sea,
And on the shore, he was a wanderer.' BYRON.
On the border of a green meadow, watered by a narrow stream, the wigwams of a large Indian settlement were lighted up by the slanting beams of the setting sun, as they shone, soft and bright, through the tall dark pines and gently-waving birch trees beneath which the village was erected. The deep red trunks of the ancient fir trees contrasted beautifully with the silvery bark of the birch; and between the shadows which were cast by the gigantic boles of these, and many other varieties of timber, the sunbeams played on the smooth soft turf, and illuminated a scene of peaceful joy and contentment.
Towards the center of the broken and irregular semi-circle in which the huts were arranged, rose two wigwams, of a size and construction superior to the rest; and around them were planted many flowering shrubs and fruit-bearing plants, that clearly showed the habitations to have been permanently fixed for some seasons, and to have been occupied by persons who possessed more of good taste and forethought than are commonly displayed by the improvident natives. Many climbing plants also threw their luxuriant branches over the sides and roof of these rude, but picturesque dwellings, and the brilliant blossoms hung gracefully around the eaves and the doorway, and moved gently in the evening breeze.
On a neatly-carved bench, in front of one of these wigwams, sat an aged Indian Chief, and by his side a young woman, who seemed to possess all the ease of manner and refinement of a European, but whose clear brown skin, and glossy jet-black hair and eyes, at once showed her to be of the same race as her venerable companion. Her dress was also Indian, but arranged with a taste and delicacy that rendered it eminently becoming to her graceful figure; while her hair, instead of being either drawn up to knot on the crown of the head, or left loose and disheveled in native fashion, was braided into a truly classical form, and simply adorned with a beautiful white water-lily—a flower that Oriana always loved.
Two other figures completed the group that was formed near the wigwam door. One of them was a young man of tall end muscular form, whose dress and richly-carved weapons would have proclaimed him to be an Indian warrior and chieftain, had not his curling brown hair, and deep blue eyes, spoken of a Saxon lineage. Courage and intelligence gleamed in those fearless eyes, but no Indian fierceness or cunning were there; and as the tall warrior stooped towards the ground, and lifted up in his arms a laughing little child that was reclining on the mossy turf, and tearing to pieces a handful of bright-colored flowers that his father had gathered for him, the smile of affection and happiness that lighted up those clear blue eyes, showed that a warm and manly heart was there.
'Ah! Ludovico!' said the happy young father, as he fondly kissed the child, whose azure eyes, and long black eyelashes and curling raven hair, showed his descent both from the fair race of Britain, and America's wild wandering children. 'Ah, Ludovico! how well I remember your uncle, when he was a merry infant like you, and used to roll on the grass in my sweet sister Edith's garden, and tear its gaudy blossoms, as you do these flowers of the forest. Those were happy days,' he added—and the bright smile of careless mirth changed to one of pensive sadness—'yes; those were happy days that never can return. If my sisters, and my playful little brother, yet live, they must be changed indeed from what they were when last I saw their sweet faces on that eventful evening, that fixed the course of my destiny. Edith must now be a woman—a lovely woman, too; and little Ludovico a fine open- hearted boy. And my beloved parents, too: O, that I knew they were alive and well and that ere long they would see and bless my Oriana and my child!'
And Henrich seated himself by the side of his young Indian wife, and gazed in the face of his laughing boy, with an expression at once so sad and sweet, that the child became silent and thoughtful too; and, dropping the flowers that filled his little hands, he gently clasped them as if in prayer, and looked long and searchingly into his father's eyes.
'There, now you look exactly as my brother used to do when he knelt at my mother's knee, and she taught him to lisp his evening prayer,' exclaimed Henrich and his eyes glistened with emotion, as home, and all its loved associations, rushed into his mind.
Oriana saw his sadness; and felt—as she often had done before on similar occasions—a pang of painful regret, and even of jealousy, towards those much-loved relatives whom her husband still so deeply regretted. She laid her hand on his, and raising her large expressive eyes to his now melancholy countenance, she gently said—
'Does Henrich still grieve that the red men stole him away from the home of his childhood, and brought him to dwell among the forests? Is not Oriana better to him than a sister, and are not the smiles of his own Ludovico sweeter to his heart than even those of his little brother used to be? And is not my father his father also? O Henrich—my own Henrich'—she added, while she leaned her head on his shoulder, and tears burst from her eyes, and chased each other down her clear olive checks, to which deep emotion now gave a richer glow—'tell me, do you wish to be set free from all the ties that bind you to our race, and return to your own people, to dwell again with them; and, perhaps, to lift the tomahawk, and east the spear against those who have loved you, and cherished you so fondly? Often have you told me that your Indian wife and child are dearer to you than all that you have left behind you at New Plymouth. But tell it to me again! Let me hear you say again that you are happy here, and will never desert us; for when I see that sorrowful look in your dear eyes, and remember all you have lost, and still are losing, to live in a wilderness with wild and savage men, my heart misgives me; and I feel that you were never made for such a life, and that your love is far too precious to be given for ever to an Indian girl.'
The smile returned to Henrich's eyes, as he listened to this fond appeal; and he almost reproached himself for ever suffering regret for the blessings he had lost to arise in his mind, when those he still possessed were so many and so great.
'Dear Oriana, you need not fear,' he replied, affectionately; 'I speak the truth of my heart when I tell you that I would not exchange my Indian home, and sacrifice my Indian squaw, and my little half-bred son, for all the comforts and pleasures of civilized life—no, not even to be restored to the parents I still love so dearly, and the brother and sister who played with me in childhood. But still I yearn to look upon their faces again, and to hear once more their words of love. I well know how they have all mourned for me: and I know how, even after so many years have passed, they would rejoice at finding me again!
'Yes; they must indeed have mourned for you, Henrich. That must have been a sad night to them when Coubitant bore you away. But I owe all the happiness of my life to that cruel deed—and can I regret it? If my "white brother" had not come to our camp, I should have lived and died an ignorant Indian squaw—I should have known no thing of true religion, or of the Christian's God—and,' continued Oriana, smiling at her husband with a sweetness and archness of expression that made her countenance really beautiful, 'I should never have known my Henrich.'
'Child!' said old Tisquantum, rousing himself from the half-dreamy reverie in which he had been sitting, and enjoying the warm sunbeams as they fell on his now feeble limbs, and long white hair. 'Child, are you talking again of Henrich leaving us? It is wrong of you to doubt him. My son has given me his word that he will never take you from me until Mahneto recalls my spirit to himself, and I dwell again with my fathers. Has he not also said that he will never leave or forsake you and his boy? Why, then, do you make your heart sad? Henrich has never deceived us—he has never, in all the years that he has lived in our wigwam, and shared our wanderings, said the thing that was not: and shall we suspect him now? No, Oriana; I trust him as I would have trusted my own Tekoa: and had my brave boy lived he could not have been dearer to me than Henrich is. He could not have surpassed him in hunting or in war: he could not have guided and governed my people with more wisdom, now that I am too old and feeble to be their leader: and he could not have watched over my declining years with more of gentleness and love. Henrich will never desert us: no, not if we return to the head-quarters of our tribe near Paomet,[*] as I hope to do ere I close my eyes in death. So long as I feared my white son would leave us, and return to his own people, I never turned my feet towards Paomet; for he had wound himself into my heart, and had taken Tekoa's place there: and I saw that he had wound himself into your heart too, my child; and I knew that he was more to us than the land of our birth. Therefore I have kept my hunters wandering from north to south, and from east to west, and have visited the mountains, and the prairies, and the mighty rivers, and the great lakes; and have found a home in all. But now our Henrich is one of us, and never will forsake us for any others. Is he not Sachem of my warriors, and do they not look to him as their leader and their father? No; Henrich will never leave us now!'
[Footnote: The native name for Cape Cod, near which the main body of the Nausetts resided.]
And the old man, who had become excited during this long harangue, smiled at his children with love and confidence, and again leaned back and closed his eyes, relapsing into that quiet dreamy state in which the Indians, especially the more aged among them, are so fond of indulging.
Tisquantum was now a very old man; and the great changes and vicissitudes of climate and mode of life, and the severe bodily exertions in warfare and hunting, to which he had been all his life exposed, made him appear more advanced in years than he actually was. Since the marriage of his daughter to the white stranger—which occurred about three years previous to the time at which our narrative has now arrived—he had indulged himself in an almost total cessation from business, and from every active employment, and had resigned the government of his followers into the able and energetic hands of his son-in-law. Henrich was now regarded as Chieftain of that branch of the Nausett tribe over which Tisquantum held authority; and so much had he. made himself both loved and respected during his residence among the red men, that all jealousy of his English origin and foreign complexion had gradually died away, and his guidance in war or in council was always promptly and implicitly followed.
And Henrich was happy—very happy—in his wild and wandering life. He had passed from boyhood to manhood amid the scenery and the inhabitants of the wilderness; and though his heart and his memory would still frequently revert to the home of his parents, and all that he had loved and prized of the connections and the habits of civilized life, yet he now hardly wished to resume those habits. Indeed, had such a resumption implied the abandoning his wife and child, and his venerable father-in- law, no consideration would ever have induced him to think of it. He had likewise, as Tisquantum said, on obtaining his consent to his marriage with Oriana, solemnly promised never to take her away from him while he lived; therefore, at present he entertained no intention of again rejoining his countrymen, and renouncing his Indian mode of life.
Still 'the voices of his home' were often ringing in his ear by day and by night; and the desire to know the fate of his beloved family, and once more to behold each fondly-cherished member of it, would sometimes come over him with an intensity that seemed to absorb every other feeling. Then he would devise plan after plan, by which he might hope to obtain some intelligence of the settlement, or convey to his relatives the knowledge of his safety. But never had he yet succeeded. Tisquantum had taken watchful care, for several years, to prevent any such communication being effected; and it was, as we have seen mainly with this object that he had absented himself from the rest of his tribe, and his own former place of abode.
He had led his warriors and their families far to the north, and there he had resided for several years; only returning occasionally to the south-western prairies for the hunting season, and again travelling northward when the buffalo and the elk were no longer abundant in the plains. In all these wanderings Henrich had rejoiced; and his whole soul had been elevated by such constant communion with the grandest works of nature—or rather, of nature's God. He had gazed on the stupendous cataract of Niagara, and listened to its thunders,[*] till he felt himself in the immediate presence of Deity in all its omnipotence.
[Footnote: O-ni-ga-rah, the Thunder of Waters, is the Indian name for these magnificent falls.]
He had crossed the mighty rivers of America, that seemed to European eyes to be arms of the sea; and had passed in light and frail canoes over those vast lakes that are themselves like inland oceans. And, in the high latitudes to which the restless and apprehensive spirit of Tisquantum had led him, he had traveled over boundless fields of snow in the sledges of the diminutive Esquimaux, and lodged in their strange winter-dwellings of frozen snow, that look as if they were built of the purest alabaster, with windows of ice as clear as crystal. And marvelously beautiful those dwellings were in Henrich's eyes, as be passed along the many rooms, with their cold walls glittering with the lamp-light, or glowing from the reflection of the fire of pine branches, that burnt so brightly in the center on a hearth of stone. Well and warmly, too, had he slept on the bedsteads of snow, that these small northern men find so comfortable, when they have strewn them with a thick layer of pine boughs, and covered them with an abundant supply of deerskins. And then the lights of the north—the lovely Aurora, with its glowing hues of crimson and yellow and violet! When this beauteous phenomena was gleaming in the horizon, and shooting up its spires of colored light far into the deep blue sky, bow ardently did Henrich desire the presence of his sister—of his Edith who used to share his every feeling, and sympathize in all him love and reverence for the works of God! But in all those days and months and years that elapsed between the time when we left Henrich in the hunting-grounds of the west, and the time to which we have now carried him, Oriana had been a sister—yes, more than a sister-to him; and she had learnt to think as he thought, and to feel as he felt, till he used to tell her that he almost fancied the spirit of Edith had passed into her form, and had come to share his exile.
Certainly, the mind and feelings of the Indian girl did ripen and expand with wonderful rapidity; and, as she grew to womanhood, her gentle gracefulness of manner, and her devoted affection towards Henrich, confirmed the attachment that had been gradually forming in his heart ever since he had been her adopted brother, and made him resolve to ask her of the Sachem as his wife.
Since the conduct of Coubitant had excited—as we saw in a former chapter—the suspicions of Tisquantum, and had so evidently increased the dislike of Oriana, the Chieftain had abandoned all idea of bestowing his daughter's hand on him or of making him his successor in his official situation; and the departure of the cruel and wily savage had been to him, as well as to Oriana and Henrich, a great satisfaction and relief. None of them wished to see his dark countenance again, or to be exposed to his evil machinations; and all were fully aware that the marriage of the white stranger to the Sachem's lovely daughter was a circumstance that would arouse all his jealousy and all his vengeance. Nevertheless, this apprehension did not deter the old Chief from giving a joyful consent to the proposal of Henrich to become his son in fact, as he had long been in name and affection; and the summer of the year 1627 had seen the nuptials celebrated in Indian fashion. On the same day, also, the young widow, Mailah, became the wife of Henrich's chosen friend and companion, Jyanough, who had never left the Nausetts since first he joined them, but had followed his brother-in- arms in all his various wanderings.
It was a joyful day to the tribe when this double marriage took place; and great was the feasting beneath the trees on the shores of the mighty lake Ontario, where their camp was pitched. Game was roasted in abundance, and much tobacco was consumed in honor of the happy couples, who were all beloved by their simple followers; and for whom fresh wigwams were built, and strewed with sweet sprays of pine and fir, and furnished with all that Indian wants demanded, and Indian art could furnish. With some difficulty, Henrich prevailed on the Sachem to permit his daughter to forego the native custom of cutting off her hair on the day of her marriage, and wearing an uncouth head-dress until it grew again; but at length he was successful, on the plea that Oriana, being a Christian, and about to unite herself to a Christian also, could not be bound to observe the superstitious and barbarous ceremonies of her race. Her fine black locks were, therefore, spared; but Mailah was a second time robbed of hers, and appeared for many months afterwards with her head closely shrouded in the prescribed covering.
Much did Henrich wish that he and his bride could have received the blessing of a minister of the Gospel, as a sacred sanction of their union. But this could not be: and he endeavored to supply the deficiency, and to give a holy and Christian character to what he felt to be the most solemn act of his life, by uniting in earnest prayer with Oriana, Mailah, and Jyanough, that the blessing of God might rest upon them all, and enable them to fulfil their new and relative duties faithfully and affectionately and 'as unto the Lord.'
Three years had elapsed since that day, and no event had occurred to interrupt the domestic happiness of those young couples, or to disturb the perfect friendship and unanimity that reigned between them. They were a little Christian community—small indeed, but faithful and sincere, and likely to increase in time; for little Lincoya was carefully instructed in the blessed doctrines which his mother and his step-father had received, and when Henrich's own son was born, he baptized him in the name of the Holy Trinity, and gave him the Christian name of his own loved brother Ludovico; and earnestly he asked a blessing on his child, and prayed that he might be enabled to bring him up a Christian, not in name only, but in deed and in truth.