“Indiana has no father, no tribe, no people; no blood of her father’s warms the heart of any man, woman or child, saving myself alone; but Indiana is a brave, and the daughter of a brave, and will not shrink from danger: her heart is warm; red blood flows warm here,” and she laid her hand on her heart. Then lifting up her hand, she said with slow but impassioned tone, “They left not one drop of living blood to flow in any veins but these,” and her eyes were raised, and her arms stretched upwards towards heaven, as though calling down vengeance on the murderers of her father’s house.
“My father was a Mohawk, the son of a great chief, who owned these hunting-grounds far as your eye can see to the rising and setting sun, along the big waters of the big lakes; but the Ojebwas, a portion of the Chippewa nation, by treachery cut off my father’s people by hundreds in cold blood, when they were defenceless and at rest. It was a bloody day and a bloody deed.”
Instead of hiding herself, as Hector and Louis strongly advised the young Mohawk to do, she preferred remaining as a scout, she said, under the cover of the bushes on the edge of the steep that overlooked the lake, to watch their movements. She told Hector to be under no apprehension if the Indians came to the hut; not to attempt to conceal themselves, but offer them food to eat and water to drink. “If they come to the house and find you away, they will take your stores and burn your roof, suspecting that you are afraid to meet them openly; but they will not harm you if you meet them with open hand and fearless brow: if they eat of your bread, they will not harm you; me they would kill by a cruel death—the war-knife is in their heart against the daughter of the brave.”
The boys thought Indiana’s advice good, and they felt no fear for themselves, only for Catharine, whom they counselled to remain in the shanty with Wolfe.
The Indians seemed intent only on the sport which they had come to enjoy, seeming in high glee, and as far as they could see quite peaceably disposed; every night they returned to the camp on the north side, and the boys could see their fires gleaming among the trees on the opposite shore, and now and then in the stillness of the evening their wild shouts of revelry would come faintly to their ears, borne by the breeze over the waters of the lake.
The allusion that Indiana had made to her own history, though conveyed in broken and hardly intelligible language, had awakened feelings of deep interest for her in the breasts of her faithful friends. Many months after this she related to her wondering auditors the fearful story of the massacre of her kindred, and which I may as well relate, as I have raised the curiosity of my youthful readers, though to do so I must render it in my own language, as the broken half-formed sentences in which its facts were conveyed to the ears of my Canadian Crusoes would be unintelligible to my young friends. [FN: The facts of this narrative were gathered from the lips of the eldest son of a Rice Lake chief. I have preferred giving it in the present form, rather than as the story of the Indian girl. Simple as it is, it is matter of history.]
There had been for some time a jealous feeling existing between the chiefs of two principal tribes of the Ojebwas and the Mohawks, which like a smothered fire had burnt in the heart of each, without having burst into a decided blaze—for each strove to compass his ends and obtain the advantage over the other by covert means. The tribe of the Mohawks of which I now speak, claimed the southern shores of the Rice Lake for their hunting grounds, and certain islands and parts of the lake for fishing, while that of the Ojebwas considered themselves masters of the northern shores and certain rights of water beside. Possibly it was about these rights that the quarrel originated, but if so, it was not openly avowed between the “Black Snake,” (that was the totem borne by the Mohawk chief,) and the “Bald Eagle” (the totem of the Ojebwa).
These chiefs had each a son, and the Bald Eagle had also a daughter of great and rare beauty, called by her people, “The Beam of the Morning;” she was the admiration of Mohawks as well as Ojebwas, and many of the young men of both the tribes had sought her hand, but hitherto in vain. Among her numerous suitors, the son of the Black Snake seemed to be the most enamoured of her beauty; and it was probably with some intention of winning the favour of the young Ojebwa squaw for his son, that the Black Snake accepted the formal invitation of the Bald Eagle to come to his hunting grounds during the rice harvest, and shoot deer and ducks on the lake, and to ratify a truce which had been for some time set on foot between them; but while outwardly professing friendship and a desire for peace, inwardly the fire of hatred burned fiercely in the breast of the Black Snake against the Ojebwa chief and his only son, a young man of great promise, renowned among his tribe as a great hunter and warrior, but who had once offended the Mohawk chief by declining a matrimonial alliance with one of the daughters of a chief of inferior rank, who was closely connected to him by marriage. This affront rankled in the heart of the Black Snake, though outwardly he affected to have forgiven and forgotten the slight that had been put upon his relative. The hunting had been carried on for some days very amicably, when one day the Bald Eagle was requested, with all due attention to Indian etiquette, to go to the wigwam of the Black Snake. On entering the lodge, he perceived the Mohawk strangely disordered; he rose from his mat, on which he had been sleeping, with a countenance fearfully distorted, his eyes glaring hideously, his whole frame convulsed, and writhing as in fearful bodily anguish, and casting himself upon the ground, he rolled and grovelled on the earth, uttering frightful yells and groans.
The Bald Eagle was moved at the distressing state in which he found his guest, and asked the cause of his disorder, but this the other refused to tell. After some hours the fit appeared to subside, but the chief remained moody and silent. The following day the same scene was repeated, and on the third, when the fit seemed to have increased in bodily agony, with great apparent reluctance, wrung seemingly from him by the importunity of his host, he consented to reveal the cause, which was, that the Bad Spirit had told him that these bodily tortures could not cease till the only son of his friend, the Ojebwa chief, had been sacrificed to appease his anger—neither could peace long continue between the two nations until this deed had been done; and not only must the chief’s son be slain, but he must be pierced by his own father’s hand, and his flesh served up at a feast at which the father must preside. The Black Snake affected the utmost horror and aversion at so bloody and unnatural a deed being committed to save his life and the happiness of his tribe, but the peace was to be ratified for ever if the sacrifice was made,—if not, war to the knife was to be ever between the Mohawks and Ojebwas.
The Bald Eagle seeing that his treacherous guest would make this an occasion of renewing a deadly warfare, for which possibly he was not at the time well prepared, assumed a stoical calmness, and replied,