To divert her mind from these recluse moods and tastes, she endeavored to bring about an alliance with a neighboring forester, who, though older than herself, had the reputation of being an excellent hunter, and active man, and he had even creditably been on the war path, though he had never brought home a scalp. To these suggestions Leelinau had turned rather a deaf ear. She had imbibed ideas of a spiritual life and existence, which she fancied could only be enjoyed in the Indian elysium, and instructed as she was by the old story-tellers, she could not do otherwise than deem the light and sprightly little men who made the fairy footprints as emissaries from the Happy Land. For this happy land she sighed and pined. Blood, and the taking of life, she said, the Great Spirit did not approve, and it could never be agreeable to minds of pure and spiritual moulds. And she longed to go to a region where there was no weeping, no cares, and no deaths. If her parents laughed at these notions as childish, her only resource was silence, or she merely revealed here motions in her eyes. She was capable of the deepest concealment, and locked up in her heart what she feared to utter, or uttered to deceive. This proved her ruin.
At length, after a series of conversational interviews on the subject, she announced her willingness to accede to the matrimonial proposals, and the day was fixed for this purpose. She dressed herself in the finest manner possible, putting flowers in her hair, and carrying a bunch of wild flowers, mixed with tassels of the pine-tree in her hand. One only request she made, which was to make a farewell visit to the sacred grove of the fairies, before she visited the nuptial bower. This was granted, on the evening of the proposed ceremony, while the bridegroom and his friends gathered in her father's lodge, and impatiently waited her return. But they waited in vain. Night came but Leelina was never more seen, except by a fisherman on the lake shore, who conceived that he had seen her go off with one of the tall fairies known as the fairy of Green Pines, with green plumes nodding o'er his brows; and it is supposed that she is still roving with him over the elysian fields.
WILD NOTES OF THE PIBBIGWUN.
CONTENTS.
- The Pibbigwun[307]
- The Chippewa Girl[307]
- Doubt[308]
- Fairy Whisperings[309]
- Song of the Opechee[310]
- Chant to the Fire-fly, the Watasee[311]
- Fairy Chief's Carol[312]
- Song of a Captive Creek Girl[312]
- Female Song[313]
- Male Song[313]
- Love of the Forest[314]
- Light of Christianity in the Wigwam[315]
- The Nocturnal Grave Lights[316]
- Manito[317]
- Niagara, an Allegory[318]
- Chileeli, a Spirit's Whisperings[319]
- Stanzas on the State of the Iroquois[322]
- The Loon's Foot—a Song[324]
- Tulco, Prince of Notto[325]
- On Presenting a Wild Rose plucked on the Sources of the Mississippi[326]
- The Red Man[327]
- The Skeleton wrapped in Gold[330]
- Waub Ojeeg's Death Whisperings[332]
- To the Miscodeed[333]
- The Star Family[335]
- Song of the Wolf-Brother[339]
- Abbinochi[341]
- To Pauguk[342]
NOTES.
THE PIBBIGWUN.[107] ]