Has an Indian been engaged for several days in the chace, and by accident continued long without food, when he arrives at the tent of a friend, where he knows his wants may be immediately supplied, he takes care not to show the least symptom of impatience, or to betray the extreme hunger by which he is tortured; but, on being invited in, sits contentedly down, and smokes his pipe with as much composure as if every appetite was allayed, and he was perfectly at ease; he does the same among strangers.
If you tell an Indian that his children have greatly signalized themselves against an enemy, have taken many scalps, and brought home many prisoners, he does not appear to feel any extraordinary pleasure on the occasion; his answer generally is, "It is well," and he makes very little further enquiry about it. On the contrary, if you inform him that his children are slain, or taken prisoners, he makes no complaints; he only replies, "It does not signify," and probably, for some time at least, asks not how it happened.
Their constancy in suffering pain exceeds any thing known of any other people. Nothing is more common than to see persons of all ages, and of both sexes, suffer for many hours, and sometimes many days, together, the sharpest effects of fire, and all that the most ingenious cruelty can invent to make it most painful, without letting a sigh escape.
Accustomed from their youth to innumerable hardships, they soon become superior to a sense of danger, or the dread of death, and their fortitude, implanted by nature, and nurtured by example, by precept, and by accident, never experiences a moment's allay.
V. THE CASCADE OF MELSINGAH.
The next night the ghost related to his eager listener the following tradition:—
A very long time ago, many ages before the feet of a white man had left their print on these shores, or the voice of his axe had been heard singing the song of destruction to the woods of our fathers, there dwelt in the Cascade of Melsingah, having his residence by daylight in the wave, and by night on the high rock which stood in its centre, a Spirit much reverenced by all the Indian nations. He was often seen by the Indian hunter, who passed that way soon after the going down of the sun. When seen at that hour, he appeared under the figure of a tall and mighty warrior, with abundance of the gray plumes of the eagle on his head, and a gray robe of wolf-skin thrown around him, standing upright upon his rock in front of the waterfalls. In the day time his appearance was more equivocal. Those who supposed they saw him saw something swimming about the cascade, as a frog swims under the surface. But none were ever permitted to behold him near, and face to face. As the observer drew nigh, the figure gradually disappeared, sinking into a kind of fog or mist; and in its place he found only the white sheet of water that poured over the rock, falling heavily among the gathering shadows into the pool below. Sometimes, also, but more rarely, he was seen in the early twilight before sun-rise, preparing to retreat from the fountain; and fortunate was the hunter to whom he showed himself at that hour, for it was an omen of success in the chace. None of the spirits of the surrounding country were oftener beheld in dreams by the Indians that made their haunts above the mountains; and, when the forms of the dead from the land of souls came to their friends in the visions of night, they were often led by the hand of the gigantic warrior in the wolf-skin and the eagle-plumes. He was never known to inflict personal injury on any one, and, therefore, was always considered as a kind and beneficent genius, who would befriend mortals in all cases of distress, and loved to behold them peaceful and happy.
Several generations have passed away—trees that were young and thrifty have become aged and mossy; and men have forgotten the number of the moons that have passed since there lived among the tribe who owned the broad lands above the mountains[50], whose banks frown upon the rapid river, a beautiful maiden, the daughter of a proud chief, whose name has not reached my time. But this we are told, that he was the greatest warrior of his day, fierce as the panther, and cunning as the fox; and she more beautiful than the sky lit up with stars, and gentler than a summer day, or a young fawn. She had lost her mother in early childhood; and, ere the suns of ten seasons had beamed on her head, her father, who loved her tenderly, and had brought her up not to do the tasks which are generally allotted to Indian women and girls, fell by the hand of disease, and she was left alone. A remembrance of his affection, and of the agony she felt, and of the deep tears she shed, at his loss, infused into her heart a softness and pity which continued through life, and rendered her ever after an unwilling witness of the scenes of fire and torture to which the customs of war among her countrymen gave occasion. When her beloved, and to her, kind father, left the earth for the land of spirits, she lived in the lodges of the older warriors who had been his companions in arms and brother councillors in the cabin where men met to debate on war and peace. Not in the cabins of the aged alone was she met with joy. She was welcomed wherever she went with kindness and affection; endeared to them as she was by the memory of the wise and brave warrior, her father, and by her own gentle disposition. When they spoke of her, they likened her, in their language, to whatever was most beautiful, harmless, and timid, among the animals—the fawn of the wood, the yellow bird of the glades, a spring wind sweeping over a field of grass, a dove that had found its long absent mate.
The beautiful maiden, of whom I am telling my brother, had beheld in her childhood, when her foot was little, and her heart trembling, the Cascade of Melsingah, and the form of the Manitou had once been revealed to her, as the evening was setting in, standing in his wolf-skin robes before the waterfall. After that she saw him often in her dreams, and, when she came to that age at which the children of the forest choose their protecting spirit, she chose for her's the Spirit of the Cascade of Melsingah. It was not long before a circumstance took place which strengthened her reverence and that of her people for the good Spirit, and proved the interest he took in the welfare of his beautiful charge.