Gaut Gurley; Or, the Trappers of Umbagog: A Tale of Border Life

by Daniel P. Thompson

"It is even so, young man," responded the hunter, rousing himself from the reverie into which he also seemed to have fallen at the departure of his fair favorite; "it is even so; but, for all that, the very flower of all the womankind, white or red, according to my ideas, that ever graced the borders of these lakes."

"But how came she by those neatly-turned English features, and that clear, white complexion?"

"Why, her mother, who is now dead, was an uncommon handsome woman for a squaw, and had, as I perhaps should have qualified when I answered so about this girl, some white blood in her veins; or rather had, as the old chief once told me, somewhere away back among the gone-by generations, a female ancestor, a pure white woman, who was made captive by the Indians, and married into their tribe, and who was as handsome as a picture. But the white blood seemed to have been pretty much lost among the descendants, till the appearance of this nonsuch of a girl, in whom every drop of it seemed to have again been collected."

"Some might, perhaps, draw different conclusions in the case."

"Yes, and draw them very wrongfully, too, as I have no doubt many people do in such cases; for I have often noticed it among families, and ascertained it as a fact, that where a person of particular looks and character once lived, his or her like, though not coming out visibly in any of the descendants for a long time, is sure sooner or later to appear, and so will frequently leap out in a child four or five generations off; a complete copy, in looks, blood, and character, of the original (as far as can be judged from family tradition), who may have been dead an hundred years. This is my notion; and I hold that every person is destined to be at least once reproduced among some of his descendants. I, or the exact like of me, will likely enough be seen in some of my blood descendants, fifty or an hundred years hence, building dams or mills on these very falls, or even riding in a carriage around these wild lakes, where I have spent nearly my whole life in hunting moose, and the other wild animals known only in the unbroken forest."

"Your theory may be true, but it does not quite account, I think, for the evident intelligence and culture of this remarkable girl. To appear and converse as she does, she must have seen considerable of good society out of the forest, and, I should think, schools."

"She has, both. Her father, one fall, when she was a girl of ten or eleven, took her along with him to a city on the coast, where he went to sell his furs and nice basket-work, and where she, some how, excited the lively interest of a good family, and particularly of a wealthy gentleman then living in the family. Well, the short of the matter is, that they persuaded the chief to leave her through the winter; and, she becoming a favorite with them all, they instructed her, sent her to school, and dressed her as they would an own daughter, and would only part with her in the spring on condition of her returning in the fall. And so it has gone on till now, she living with them winters, and here with her father summers; for, though they would like to take her entirely out of the woods, she would not desert her father, who loves her as his life, and calls her the light of his lodge,—no, not for all the gold in the cities."

"You must then be well acquainted with this Indian family, and can give me their history."

"As far as is proper for me to tell, as well as anybody, perhaps. When I was a young man, I at times used to live with the chief, who always made me welcome to his lodge, and gave me his confidence. He was then but little past his prime, and one of the smartest men, every way, I ever knew. He was then worth property, and lived with his first wife, this girl's mother, who, as I told you, was very good-looking and intelligent. But his second wife was as homely as his first was handsome. As to Wenongonet himself, who has now got to be, though still active, an old man, he claims to have been a direct descendant of Paugus,—a grandson, I believe, of that noted chief,—who was slain in Lovewell's bloody fight, and whose tribe, once known as the Sokokis or Saco Indians, who were great fighters, it is said, were then forever broken up, the most of them fleeing over the British highlands and joining the St. Francis Indians in Canada. The family of Paugus, however, with a few of the head men, who survived the battle, concluded to remain this side of the mountain, and try to keep up a show of the tribe on these lakes, where they lived till Paugus' son, who on the death of his father became their sagamore or chief, died, when they gradually drew off into Canada, leaving Wenongonet, the last chief's son, the only permanent Indian resident, after a while, on these lakes. But come, young man, enough of Indian matters for to-day: we must now be stirring, or our day's work may come short. Help me to take my canoe up here into the lake; and, within four hours, the time to which I will limit my absence, we will see what can be done by each, in our different undertakings."

The employment of another half-hour fully sufficed to place the canoe of the hunter in the smooth water above the rapids; when the latter, with a cheery "heigh ho," at each light dip of his springy oar, struck off towards the foot of the pine-covered hills that lift their green summits from the western shores of the lake, leaving his young companion to proceed to his allotted portion of the sports or labors of the day. Preparing his long fishing-rod and tackle, according to the instructions which the hunter had given him for adapting his mode of fishing to the locality and season, Claud made his way along down the edge of the stream to a designated point, a short distance above the place where, on the occurrence of the incident before described, they had ceased to ascend the rapids in their canoes. He here found, as he had been told, below a traversing reach of bare breakers, a large, deep eddy of gently revolving water, in the centre of which lay tossing on the swell a broad spiral wreath of spotless foam. The hunter, in selecting these rapids, and especially this resting-spot of the ascending fish, as the place where he could safely warrant the taking of the needed supply of trout, had not spoken without knowledge; for it may well be doubted whether there could be found, in all the regions of the north, a reach of running water of equal length with this wild and singularly picturesque portion of the Androscoggin river, containing such quantities of this beautiful fish as are found about midsummer, swarming up the rapids on their way from the Umbagog to the upper lakes.