Tales of a Vanishing River

by Earl H. Reed

When the moon beams came through the cobwebbed window frame, and crept along the floor to the ghostly old clock, it haunted the room with a vague impression of weariness and futility. It seemed to stand in mute and solemn mockery of the eternal hours that had passed on and left it in hopeless vigil by the wayside.

The watcher in the web—grim and silent, like a waiting sexton—awakened uncanny thought. There was gruesome suggestion in the dark stairway hole at the foot of the clock—as if it had been newly dug in the earth.

Like evil phantoms into an idle mind, a pair of bats glided swiftly in through the open window, circled noiselessly about, and departed.

The moon rays touched something in the rubbish at the further end of the room that reflected a dull light. After restraining my curiosity for some time, I arose, crossed the floor, and picked up a strange looking box. It was about fourteen inches long, nine inches high, and a foot wide. Its hasp and small handle on the cover appeared to be of wrought iron, but the embossed facing that covered the sides and ends, and the strips that protected the edges, were of brass, studded with nails of the same metal. It seemed in the dim light to be much corroded by time.

Hoping that something might be learned of its history in the morning, I placed the box on the floor near the bed, and was finally lulled to belated slumber by the crickets in the crevices of the logs, and the rustlings of tiny feet among the contents of the cradle. Speculations regarding the brass bound box softly blended into dreams.

During breakfast the next morning my host told me that the box had once belonged to a Jesuit priest; some Indians who formerly lived on the island had given it to his grandfather, and it had been in the attic ever since the house was built. He had often looked at its contents but could make nothing of them, and considered that “they were not of much account.” He said he would be glad to have me go through them and see if they were of any value. He also said that there was a bundle of old papers in the oak chest that he hoped I would look over, as his grandfather had written much concerning the river and the Indians that might interest me.

Filled with anticipation of congenial occupation during the rainy day, I went with Buck to the attic after breakfast. We dragged a decrepit walnut table to the window and dusted it carefully. Buck brought from the chest a small bundle that was tied up in brown paper and left it with me. The tenant of the muff had decamped, probably resenting the intrusion into his domain. I brought the brass bound box, found a comfortable hickory chair, lighted a tranquilizing pipe, and was soon absorbed in the stack of closely written manuscript that I found in the bundle.

Some parts of it were illegible and the spelling was unique. The old man probably considered correct spelling to be an accomplishment of mere literary hacks, and that it was not necessary for an author who had anything else to think of to pay much attention to it.

There was much information regarding the Indian occupation of the river country. It appeared that there were about fifty wigwams on the island when the red men were compelled to leave by the government. Most of them were taken to a reservation out west, and a number went to some lands of their kindred along the St. Joseph river in Michigan. Eventually a few returned and lived in scattered isolation, but their tribal organization was broken up.

The head of the village on Jerry Island was a venerable warrior named “Hot Ashes.” He was a friend of Buck’s grandfather, and it was he who gave him the brass bound box when the Indians left. He said it had been brought to the island by the “Black Robe” many years before, and that he had left it in the mission house when he went away.