Tales of a Vanishing River

by Earl H. Reed

When they found White Wolf in the morning the hair on one side of his head was matted with blood, and a small hole led into his stilled brain, but there was no clue to the motive or to the author of the tragedy. He was duly mourned and buried after the manner of his fathers. His taking off was numbered among the enigmas of the past, and was soon forgotten.

Nebowie continued her home life with her father and her little one, but tranquility was in her face. She felt within her the glow that retribution brings to the savage heart—whether it be red or white. A recompense had come to her tortured soul that softened the after years. The silver of the arrow point had achieved a mission that had failed when it bore the form of a cross.

During our exploration of the sites of the old Indian villages in the river country, we discovered a large pasture that had never been ploughed. Traces of two well worn trails led through it, and, on a little knoll near the center of the field, we found what appeared to be burial mounds.

We were reluctant to desecrate the hallowed spot, but finally yielded to the temptation to open one of them. We unearthed two skeletons. They were both in a sitting position. I picked up one of the skulls and curiously examined it. Something rattled within the uncanny relic and dropped to the grass. The small object proved to be a silver arrowhead, and Waukena’s story came home to us with startling reality. We replaced the bones and reshaped the mound as best we could, but carried with us the mouldy skull and its carefully wrought messenger of death.

Nearly all of the Indians in the river country were buried in a sitting position. The grim skeletons of the vanished race belong to the world that is under ground. In countless huddled hordes, they sit in the gloom of the fragrant earth, with hands outstretched, as if in mute appeal, and wait through the years for whatever gods may come.

In the darkness that may be eternal, the disputations of theologians do not disturb the gathering mould. The multitudinous forms of reward and punishment, that play in empty pageantry upon the hopes and fears of those who walk the green earth, touch not the myriads in its bosom.

The self appointed, who bear the lights of man born dogma, and the blessings and curses of imaginary deities, into the paths of the unknowable, grope as blindly among pagan bones as through cathedral aisles.

That evening we rowed up the river to carry our story to Waukena. She held the mouldy skull in her lap for a long time and regarded it with deep interest. Sealed fountains within her aged heart seemed to well anew, for there were tears in her eyes when she raised them toward us.

Waukena was the little girl that played around the stricken wigwam on the bayou, and she had treasured the stained shaft as a heritage from those she had loved. To her it was a sacred thing. The life currents it had changed had passed on, but they seemed to meet again as the gray haired woman sat before her flickering fire, with the mute toys of the fateful drama about her. We left her alone with her musings.

When we came one evening, a week later, the door was open, but the ashes on the hearth were cold. On the rough table lay the mouldy skull, that was once the home of relentless passion, and near it, before its eyeless caverns, was the blood stained shaft, with the silver point neatly fitted back into its place.