"How mighty are your gods!" she moaned. "I am yours. Save me from them."
Tawannears lifted her in his arms.
"Gahano need have no fear," he said proudly. "Tawannears' medicine is strong. All who oppose him shall perish. But Gahano is safe. Surely, Hawenneyu has us in His keeping that he should visit such destruction upon our enemies! He will send the Honochenokeh to guard us. Tharon the Sky-holder will let the clouds fall upon those who stand in our way. Gaoh will blow the winds against them. Tawannears' orenda will triumph over all!"
CHAPTER XX
THE SPOTTED STALLION
We were free, but new problems arose to confront us. Our only weapons were the knives and tomahawks in our belts. We were stranded all but defenseless in a desolate, unknown country. Without the protection afforded by our muskets 'twas exceedingly doubtful whether we could travel far in face of strong hostile opposition. The Awataba, any tribe of archers, easily could overwhelm us. Moreover, Winter was coming on. Autumn was actually at hand. There were the twin questions of food and shelter to be answered. And finally, we had a fourth comrade to feed, protect and clothe.
But on this final score we had no occasion for worry, as events soon showed. Kachina might acclaim the superior accessibility which Tawannears enjoyed with the high gods, but her native self-reliance, courage and intelligence refused to acknowledge the handicap of her sex. At the very beginning of her association with us she claimed and fulfilled the rôle of an equal—proving in this, as in countless other ways, that she was of Spanish blood, no ordinary Indian maiden to accept meekly the drab duties of a squaw. Tawannears, somewhat to my amusement, accepted her at her own valuation.
The Seneca possessed a streak of innate chivalry entirely different from the normal attitude of courteous toleration which the People of the Long House entertain for their women. No nation anywhere that I have read of in history give their wives and mothers greater honor than these barbarians of the forest. 'Tis the women who select the candidates for the high rank of Royaneh, the noble group of leaders who form the Hoyarnagowar, the ruling body of the Great League. They arrange marriages, and largely control clan politics. A warrior of the Hodenosaunee says that he is the son of his mother, not of his father, when you ask his name. Beyond all other Indians, ay, and beyond all white men they yield power and place to women.
But as a race they treat women as a sex apart. The lives the men live are denied to the women. Of love, in the sense that we entertain it, an affection transcending the arbitrary bounds of physical affinity, they are ignorant. Tawannears, alone, joined to the sex courtesy of the Hodenosaunee the white man's capacity for a flaming spiritual devotion. He loved with all his being, he worshiped, he felt a joyous sense of service based on an equality of partnership. So much, at least, of what they sought to achieve the missionaries had wrought into his character. Let it be said for them that they supplied him with the mainspring of his life.
So it was that, having asserted the protection of his gods, the superiority of his orenda over all powers which might be brought against it, he proceeded, with the naïveté that was a cardinal point of his character, to admit the validity of the aid she was able to give us, aid without which, I believe, we must have perished. Nor did he then or ever treat her as a squaw, a woman to be honored in the lodge and debarred from warriors' councils. And this, I must say clearly, has seemed most odd to me. For the real Gahano or any other Indian maid must naturally have adopted the habits, the ways of thought, bred into her. Yet never did Tawannears doubt the truth of the miraculous exploit he credited to himself.