Rolf in the Woods

by Ernest Thompson Seton

The country's need of such is ever present and ever seeking. Those in power who know and measure men soon sought him out, and their messenger was the grisly old Si Sylvanne.

Because he was a busy man, Rolf feared to add to his activities. Because he was a very busy man, the party new they needed him. So at length it was settled, and in a little while, Rolf stood in the Halls of Albany and grasped the hand of the ancient mill-man as a colleague, filling an honoured place in the councils of the state.

Each change brought him new activities. Each year he was more of a public man, and his life grew larger. From Albany he went to New York, in the world of business and men's affairs; and at last in Washington, his tall, manly figure was well known, and his good common-sense and clean business ways were respected. Yet each year during hunting time he managed to spend a few weeks with Quonab in the woods. Tramping on their ancient trapping grounds, living over the days of their early hunts; and double zest was added when Rolf the second joined them and lived and loved it all.

But this was no longer Kittering's life, rather the rare precarious interval, and more and more old Quonab realized that they were meeting only in the past. When the big house went up on the river-bank, he indeed had felt that they were at the parting of the ways. His respect for Nibowaka had grown to be almost a worship, and yet he knew that their trails had yearly less in common. Rolf had outgrown him; he was alone again, as on the day of their meeting. His years had brought a certain insight; and this he grasped—that the times were changed, and his was the way of a bygone day.

“Mine is the wisdom of the woods,” he said, “but the woods are going fast; in a few years there will be no more trees, and my wisdom will be foolishness. There is in this land now a big, strong thing called 'trade,' that will eat up all things and the people themselves. You are wise enough, Nibowaka, to paddle with the stream, you have turned so the big giant is on your side, and his power is making you great. But this is not for me; so only I have enough to eat, and comfort to sleep, I am content to watch for the light.”

Across the valley from the big store he dwelt, in a lodge from which he could easily see the sunrise. Twenty-five years added to the fifty he spent in the land of Mayn Mayano had dimmed his eye, had robbed his foot of its spring, and sprinkled his brow with the winter rime; but they had not changed his spirit, nor taught him less to love the pine woods and the sunrise. Yes, even more than in former days did he take his song-drum to the rock of worship, to his idaho—as the western red man would have called it. And there, because it was high and the wind blew cold, he made a little eastward-facing lodge.

He was old and hunting was too hard for him, but there was a strong arm about him now; he dimly thought of it at times—the arm of the fifteen-year-old boy that one time he had shielded. There was no lack of food or blankets in the wigwam, or of freedom in the woods under the sun-up rock. But there was a hunger that not farseeing Nibowaka could appease, not even talk about. And Quonab built another medicine lodge to watch the sun go down over the hill. Sitting by a little fire to tune his song-drum, he often crooned to the blazing skies. “I am of the sunset now, I and my people,” he sang, “the night is closing over us.”

One day a stranger came to the hills; his clothes were those of a white man, but his head, his feet, and his eyes—his blood, his walk, and his soul were those of a red Indian of the West. He came from the unknown with a message to those who knew him not: “The Messiah was coming; the deliverer that Hiawatha bade them look for. He was coming in power to deliver the red race, and his people must sing the song of the ghost-dance till the spirit came, and in a vision taught them wisdom and his will!”

Not to the white man, but to the lonely Indian in the hill cleft he came, and the song that he brought and taught him was of a sorrowing people seeking their father.

“Father have pity on us! Our souls are hungry for Thee. There is nothing here to satisfy us Father we bow to Thy will.”