“Oh, come and hear what cruel wrongs Befel the Dark Ladye.”—COLERIDGE.
THE Mohawk girl was in high spirits at the coming of the wild fowl to the lake; she would clap her hands and laugh with almost childish glee as she looked at them darkening the lake like clouds resting on its surface.
“If I had but my father’s gun, his good old gun, now!” would Hector say, as he eyed the timorous flocks as they rose and fell upon the lake; “but these foolish birds are so shy, that they are away before an arrow can reach them.”
Indiana smiled in her quiet way; she was busy filling the canoe with green boughs, which she arranged so as completely to transform the little vessel into the semblance of a floating island of evergreen; within this bower she motioned Hector to crouch down, leaving a small space for the free use of his bow, while concealed at the prow she gently and noiselessly paddled the canoe from the shore among the rice-beds, letting it remain stationary or merely rocking to and fro with the undulatory motion of the waters. The unsuspecting birds, deceived into full security, eagerly pursued their pastime or their prey, and it was no difficult matter for the hidden archer to hit many a black duck or teal or whistlewing, as it floated securely on the placid water, or rose to shift its place a few yards up or down the stream. Soon the lake around was strewed with the feathered game, which Wolfe, cheered on by Lewis, who was stationed on the shore, brought to land.
Indiana told Hector that this was the season when the Indians made great gatherings on the lake for duck-shooting, which they pursued much after the same fashion as that which has been described, only instead of one, a dozen or more canoes would be thus disguised with boughs, with others stationed at different parts of the lake, or under the shelter of the island, to collect the birds. This sport was generally finished by a great feast.
The Indians offered the first of the birds as an oblation to the Great Spirit, as a grateful acknowledgment of his bounty in having allowed them to gather food thus plentifully for their families; sometimes distant tribes with whom they were on terms of friendship were invited to share the sport and partake of the spoils. Indiana could not understand why Hector did not follow the custom of her Indian fathers, and offer the first duck or the best fish to propitiate the Great Spirit. Hector told her that the God he worshipped desired no sacrifice; that his holy Son, when he came down from heaven and gave himself as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, had satisfied his Father, the Great Spirit, an hundred-fold.
They feasted now continually upon the waterfowl, and Catharine learned from Indiana how to skin them, and so preserve the feathers for making tippets, and bonnets, and ornamental trimmings, which are not only warm, but light and very becoming. They split open any of the birds that they did not require for present consumption, and these they dried for winter store, smoking some after the manner that the Shetlanders and Orkney people smoke the solan geese: their shanty displayed an abundant store of provisions, fish, flesh, and fowl, besides baskets of wild rice, and bags of dried fruit.
One day Indiana came in from the brow of the hill, and told the boys that the lake eastward was covered with canoes; she showed, by holding up her two hands and then three fingers, that she had counted thirteen. The tribes had met for the annual duck-feast, and for the rice harvest. She advised them to put out the fire, so that no smoke might be seen to attract them; but said they would not leave the lake for hunting over the plains just then, as the camp was lower down on the point [FN: This point, commonly known as Anderson’s Point, now the seat of the Indian village, used in former times to be a great place of rendezvous for the Indians, and was the site of a murderous carnage or massacre that took place about eighty years ago; the war-weapons and bones of the Indians are often turned up with the plough at this day.] east of the mouth of a big river, which she called “Otonabee.”
Hector asked Indiana if she would go away and leave them, in the event of meeting with any of her own tribe. The girl cast her eyes on the earth in silence; a dark cloud seemed to gather over her face.
“If they should prove to be any of your father’s people, or a friendly tribe, would you go away with them?” he again repeated, to which she solemnly replied,