Thérèse sees Kateri, and wonders what she is thinking about. Thérèse has the dress and the look of an Oneida. Her glance is freer and bolder than Kateri's. She is older and not so shy, and has seen the sunshine and shadow of twenty-eight summers. Health and beauty and vigor attend on the young Oneida; but all at once her face grows thoughtful and sad. The chill of a terrible winter comes up from the past, and strikes on her heart as she watches the face of Kateri, so quiet and so collected. It was only an idle curiosity that brought her to look at the building; but now she is led by a strange attraction, and follows the Mohawk girl as she enters the chapel. The floor has recently been laid, and a man is at work on the wainscoting round the wall. No benches or seats are yet to be seen, nor any kind of divisions. Kateri turns to Thérèse, and gives her an Iroquois greeting. She is about to ask a question. The Oneida returns the salutation graciously, and a conversation begins in two slightly different dialects. Though one is using the Mohawk language and one the Oneida, they understand each other perfectly. Kateri asks Thérèse if she knows which portion of the church will be set apart for the women. Thérèse points out to her the place where she thinks they will be, and the conversation continues. It is all about the new building in which they are standing. Their thoughts chime well together; but Kateri, whose mind, as she came from Anastasia's cabin and wandered into the chapel, was dwelling less on what she actually saw before her than on her own internal wretchedness and unworthiness, suddenly exclaims, with a heavy sigh: "Alas! it is not in this building of wood and stone that God most loves to dwell. Our hearts are the lodge that is most pleasing to him. But, miserable creature that I am, how many times have I forced him to leave this heart in which he should reign alone! Do I not deserve that to punish me for my ingratitude, they should forever exclude me from this church, which they are raising to his glory?"
These words, with their spiritual thought and beautiful imagery, came rolling from the tongue of the Mohawk girl with all the eloquence of tone and gesture so natural to her race. They were spoken, too, with an added force that belongs only to the utterance of those who live in habitual silence concerning their inward life. Thérèse could not look upon them as a mere language of the lips, for she saw, as she watched the face of her companion, that the last words came like a sob from her very heart. They echoed strangely in her own soul. Her past life, that terrible winter in the woods, her vow to Heaven unfulfilled, conscience, remorse, an impulse of love and sympathy for the one who thus wailed out her sorrow in a direct appeal to her,—all this, and more disturbed the soul of Thérèse. She looked at Kateri, and then at the new-laid planks on the chapel floor. Her tongue was silent, but her eyes spoke out in a single glance, and said to the Mohawk girl, "If you only knew—if you only knew how it is with me!" And these were the words that she seemed to be reading along the boards that lay close to her feet: "She is better than I, or she would not speak like that. She can help me. God has sent her here. I will tell her what I have promised and left undone. She thinks she is wicked. I don't believe it; I want her to be my friend." She lifted her eyes again, and in a few quick words opened her heart to Kateri. "Insensibly the conversation led them," says Cholenec, "to disclose to each other their most secret thoughts. To converse with greater ease, they went and sat at the foot of a cross which was erected on the banks of the river." There, where the cross still stands as of old, near the great rapid, Thérèse told Kateri the story of her life; and there their souls were knit together in a friendship that would outlast death and time. Thérèse became a part of Kateri, and Kateri of Thérèse. Henceforth they were two souls leading but one life. The history of one is the history of the other, except that Kateri was necessarily, though often unconsciously, the leading spirit.
But what was the life of Thérèse Tegaiaguenta before she met her guiding spirit, and linked her soul to the soul of the Lily? What were the sins for which she resolved to do penance together with Kateri? What was the story she told, as they sat on the grassy bank at the foot of the tall wooden cross? The gloom of the evening fell about them before they could separate. When at last they turned their faces from the great river, and bent their footsteps toward the cluster of Iroquois lodges near the Portage, Kateri had learned much of what here follows concerning the life of her friend, and many secrets of her heart which have never been recorded.
Thérèse was baptized by Father Bruyas in the Oneida country. When that missionary first arrived among her people, he converted Kateri Ganneaktena, who served as interpreter while he was learning the language, and who afterwards with her husband went to Canada and founded the Praying Castle at La Prairie. Tegaiaguenta, like Ganneaktena, was a young married woman when Bruyas converted and baptized her. She had been united to an Oneida brave after the Iroquois fashion, but unlike Ganneaktena, she did not succeed in converting her husband. On the contrary, she herself was led away by the force of evil example about her, and almost lost her Christian faith.
In the history of the Iroquois missions it is related that a certain brave Christian woman literally fought with tooth and nail to keep some of her infidel tribesmen from pouring fire-water down her throat. If they succeeded in making any of the Christians drunk, they often managed to win them away from the influence of the blackgowns.
Thérèse, less resolute than Ganneaktena and the woman just mentioned, fell a victim to this persistent policy of the infidel Indians. After her baptism they beguiled her into the prevailing sin of intoxication, for which she afterwards shed bitter tears and suffered many self-inflicted torments in company with Kateri.
Before she could be fitted, however, for the friendship of so pure a soul as that of the Mohawk girl, she had to pass a terrible ordeal. When she left the Oneida country and went to live at the Praying Castle with her husband's family, only a partial change was brought about in her lax, easy-going life; for Thérèse Tegaiaguenta, though capable of deep religious convictions, had an impulsive, pleasure-loving nature, very different from the reserved, self-sacrificing spirit of Kateri. The Lily of the Mohawks, from the first moment of her life, had never ceased to be attentive to the lightest whisper of divine grace. Tegaiaguenta could not be brought to listen to this voice till it spoke to her through the gaunt lips of bereavement and starvation. Then she forgot it again, till suddenly she recognized its echo in the looks and words of Kateri, when she met her at the chapel. The following is a brief account of the strange winter adventure of Thérèse Tegaiaguenta in the woods of Canada, as told by Cholenec:——
"She had gone with her husband and a young nephew to the chase, near the river of the Outaouacks [Ottawas]. On their way some other Indians joined them, and they made a company of eleven persons,—that is, four men and four women, with three young persons. Thérèse was the only Christian. The snow, which this year fell very late, prevented them from having any success in hunting; their provisions were in a short time consumed, and they were reduced to eat some skins, which they had brought with them to make moccasins. At length they ate the moccasins themselves, and finally pressed by hunger, were obliged to sustain their lives principally by herbs and the bark of trees. In the mean time the husband of Thérèse fell dangerously ill, and the hunters were obliged to halt. Two among them, an Agnié [Mohawk] and a Tsonnontouan [Seneca], asked leave of the party to make an excursion to some distance in search of game, promising to return, at the farthest, in ten days. The Agnié, indeed, returned at the time appointed; but he came alone, and reported that the Tsonnontouan had perished by famine and misery. They suspected him of having murdered his companion and then fed upon his flesh; for although he declared that he had not found any game, he was nevertheless in full strength and health. A few days afterwards the husband of Thérèse died, experiencing in his last moments deep regret that he had not received baptism. The remainder of the company then resumed their journey, to attempt to reach the bank of the river and gain the French settlements. After two or three days' march, they became so enfeebled by want of nourishment, that they were not able to advance farther. Desperation then inspired them with a strange resolution, which was to put some of their number to death, that the lives of the rest might be preserved."
When they were eating the flesh of the first victim, who was an old man, they asked Thérèse if it was allowable to kill him, and what the Christian law said upon that point, for she was the only one among them who had been baptized. She dared not reply. They gave her their reasons, which were that the old man had given them the right that he had to his life, saying that he would cause them a great deal of suffering on the journey.[61]
The little nephew of Thérèse had already died from hunger and fatigue. When her husband lay at the point of death, she and the boy had remained with him till he breathed his last, and then she had hastened on through the woods, carrying her nephew on her shoulder, till she caught up with the band, who had journeyed on in advance of her. The child died a little later, in spite of her care; and when the man of the party was devoured before her eyes, misery and starvation rendered her speechless. She saw that they were determined to sustain life at the expense of those among them who were unable to resist.