The Cabin on the Prairie

by C. H. Pearson

“There is more than that intended,” returned the minister. “There was the bitterest irony and hatred expressed in those tones. If the authors of them dared, or it was in their plan to do so now, they would spring upon us with the eagerness of so many beasts of prey.”

The next day eight of the Indians walked into the village, one after the other, as is the Indian way, and called at the hotel to beg. They had found their tongues over night, and could manage, 180 not only to understand, when it was for their interest, what was said to them, but in broken English make reply. They were a fine set of men, physically–tall, broad-chested, erect; and, wrapped in their white and red blankets, they made a formidable appearance. There was no touch of fawning or crouching in their manner. They demanded the articles given them, rather than begged. You would have thought them lords of the soil, come to collect rent of tardy tenantry.

The young Indian, however, still preserved his individuality, and various romantic conjectures were conjured up in imaginative heads concerning him. Some went so far as to assert that he had no Indian blood in him, and started the theory that he must have had white parentage, and that he might have been stolen, when a child, from some noble white family. But the more experienced of the pioneers set that at rest by affirming that they could tell the pure, unmixed Indian, and that he was one.

Tom lingered much about him.

“O,” said he to the missionary, “if I could only talk with him, how I would love to teach him how to read, and speak to him of the blessed things in the Bible!”

“That is on my mind most of the time, Tom,” replied the good man. “I am often asking myself. 181 Can I not, in some way, lead these benighted souls to the Lamb of God? But how inaccessible they are! What an impassable barrier between them and us! and, with the exception of the youngest of them, how brutal and low! To see such splendidly-formed men spend their time squatted on the earth, playing jack-straws, or some equally silly game, from morning to night, is pitiful. And then their yelling and laughter are more like wild beasts or demons than human beings. These people seem to me the lowest, meanest, most treacherous, and hardened of the human race. I do not wonder that it is so difficult to civilize or Christianize them.”

Weeks went by, and the Indians remained in their lodge, daily growing bolder and more intrusive, till they had become obnoxious to the most benevolent of the settlers. It had come to be not over pleasant to the women of the neighborhood to look up from their domestic duties, and see that a grim savage had stolen into the house, and, unasked, seated himself in a chair, ready, as soon as he thought best, to nod, in a dictatorial way, towards some coveted article, in a manner which meant,–

“Hand that to me!”

Meanwhile Tom and the young Indian–who, whether that was his real Indian name or not, 182 was called Long Hair–had become quite intimate. Nevertheless, not many words passed between them, for Long Hair was more reticent, if possible, than the rest of his company. But without word-signs they managed to understand each other. Long Hair, indeed, appeared to read Tom’s thoughts intuitively, and Mrs. Payson was often made anxious for Tom, because he would be gone so long in the woods with Long Hair. The latter had selected a tree for a canoe, and Tom, with his sharp-edged axe, cut it down for him, and helped him dig it out and shape it. A strange sympathy had grown up between them, and one evening, as Tom was on his way to the prayer-meeting, chancing to meet Long Hair, he invited the latter to accompany him, trying, with great earnestness, to make him comprehend the object of the gathering. Long Hair seemed to gain a dim perception of what his friend meant, and, after much persuasion, entered with Tom the cabin in which the meeting was to be held. The Indian’s face gave evidence of great excitement as the services progressed; the deep solemnity of the prayers, and the devout strains of Christian song, took powerful hold of the red man’s feelings. Doubtless he understood little of the scene in which, for the first time, he mingled; but a potent influence went along with it, and so affected was he, that 183 his hand sought Tom’s, and he held it in a strong, tender grasp till the meeting closed, his frame trembling with emotion. And yet Tom could not converse with him afterwards; and what the nature of the emotion was that shook him so,–what thoughts were stirred, and with what result for eternity in the bosom of that silent son of the prairie, who, for the first time, had attended Christian worship,–no one knew. Tom could not induce him to attend again, and yet he did not seem offended at what he had heard; but when his white friend alluded to it, his eye gleamed with a new light, and his face looked thoughtfully, doubtfully serious.

Nearly every day Tom and Long Hair were together, the latter keeping but little in the wigwam, and seldom going with the other Indians. When they filed into town, and besieged the houses, trying the doors, peeping into the windows, accosting the street-passers, Long Hair was not with them; and when at evening they returned exultant from a successful hunt, singing their strong-lunged song of triumph,–their wild and scarcely human “Hi yar! hi yar!” growing nearer, till, entering the village, they sang their way through to their lodge, Long Hair was not of their number.