“Well, the Indians brought him up, anyhow. I don’t jestly know the rights of it; but they carried him off, with some others of his people, when he was a boy; part of them they tomahawked, and part they roasted alive; but one of the chiefs took him, and brought him up. He lived with them years and years, learnt their language and their ways, and was as good an Indian as the best of them. I’ve heard him say, he thought their kind of life was happier than ours; he never will get that wild nature out of him. When the Penobscots come here in the summer, and camp on his point, he’ll carry them beef, pork, potatoes, and milk, and says they have as good right here as he has, and better, too. He’ll give them anything except rum; he says that wasn’t made for an Indian, because it makes him crazy.”
“Don’t it make white people crazy, too, grandsir?”
“Hush, child; you put me out, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. For all he’s such a desperate working cretur, he’ll go down right in haying time, and set on a log, and talk with them, and seems just as uneasy all the time they’re about as John Godsoe’s geese.”
“What about John Godsoe’s geese?”
“Nothing, child.”
“Yes, there is; I know there is; do tell your little boy, grandsir.”
“Why, John’s got some wild geese that can’t fly, because one joint of their wings is cut off. They go in the pasture with the other geese as peaceable as can be; but in the spring, when the wild ones are flying over and konking, they’ll flap their old stubs of wings, and holler, and be as uneasy; that’s jest the way Isaac’s took when the Indians are round. I sometimes think he’d go off with them, if he could get his family to go.”
The horrors of Indian massacre were still fresh in the recollections of older people. Smullen’s first wife and old Mr. Yelf’s father were both killed by the Indians; and there was nothing more attractive to the youth of that day. No marvel, then, that a romantic interest mingled in the minds of the boys with the affection they entertained for Uncle Isaac.
It is frequently said, one boy is better than two boys, and that three is just no boy at all; but half a dozen of them would work all day for dear life, with Uncle Isaac, encouraged by the promise, always kept, of going on a tramp with him when the job was over. Boys don’t like to go gunning, and come home empty-handed. When they went with him, they always brought home game with them; for if they couldn’t shoot anything, he could. These attractions enabled him to exert a great influence over them, which he improved to the noblest ends, and made impressions that were never eradicated. He was neither in his own opinion, nor by profession, a religious man; but the teachings of a pious mother had laid deep in his young heart the foundation of faith and love. When torn from her by the savages, in the solitude of mighty forests, he had pored and prayed over them, till they ripened into a heartfelt love for Him “who causeth the grass to grow for cattle, and herb for the service of man.”
His teachings were therefore of such a nature, that while divested of the stiffness generally connected with all attempts at advice or instruction, they deepened every good impression, and stirred the young heart to the quick.