Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3

by James Athearn Jones

One day she went alone to his abode, to pay him her customary offerings in behalf of herself, the friends she loved, and her nation; she carried in her hand a broad belt of wampum, and a white honeycomb from the hollow oak; and on her way she stopped and plaited a garland of the gayest flowers of the season. On arriving at the spot, she went down into the narrow little glen, through which the brook flowed before it poured itself over the rock, and, standing near the edge, she dropped her gifts, one by one, into the current which instantly carried them to the waterfall. The pool, into which the water descends, was deeper than it is now; the continual crumbling and falling of the rocks from above, for many an age, having partially filled up the deep blue basin. The stream, too, at that time, had been lately swelled by profuse rains, and rushed down the precipice with a heavier torrent, and a louder noise, than she had ever known it to do before. In approaching more nearly to the edge, and looking down to see what had become of her offerings, she incautiously set her foot on a stone covered with the slimy deposit of the brook; it slipped, and she was precipitated headlong with the torrent into the pool below.

What followed she did not recollect—darkness, as deep as that of the grave, came over her, and all was still and hushed to her. When she came to her senses, she found herself lying on the margin of the pool, and awaking as if from an unpleasant sleep with a sensation of faintness at the heart. She thought at first that she must have been taken from the water by somebody who belonged to her nation, and looked round to see if any of them were near. But there was no human trace or sound to be discovered: she heard only the whisper of the wind, and the rush of the cascade, and beheld only the still trunks, and waving boughs, the motionless rock, and the gliding water. She spoke, thanking her deliverer, whoever he might be, in the softest tones of her soft voice, but there was no reply. On her return to the village where she lived, she made the most diligent enquiry to learn if any of her people had assisted her in the hour of danger, or if any thing was known of her adventure. Nobody had heard of it—none of the tribe had passed by the cascade that day; and the maiden and all her people became fully convinced that she had been preserved from a violent death by her guardian spirit—the Manitou of the waterfall. Her gratitude was in proportion to the benefit received; and ever afterwards she paid an annual visit to the cascade at the season when she was thus miraculously rescued, sometimes alone, and sometimes in company with the young females of her age. On these occasions, the dark rocks around were hung with garlands of flowers and belts of wampum, and bracelets of beads were dropped into the clear water, and a song was chanted, commemorating the maiden's deliverance by the benevolent spirit of the place. The woods around reverberated with the music of those dark-haired maidens who had assembled to warble their hymns of gratitude to the Manitou of the cascade.

The Indians, who lived above the Mountains, and those who possessed the country below, although belonging to the same great family of the Lenni Lenape, were not always on friendly terms. At the time of which I am telling my brother, there was a great quarrel between them, and the calumet had been buried in the hole from which the hatchet had been taken. An Indian of the tribe living above the mountains was found encroaching on the hunting-grounds below, and was killed in a fierce dispute which ensued. His people anxiously sought an opportunity to revenge his death, nor was it long before it was put into their hands. A young warrior of the lower tribe, burning with the ardour of youth, and ambitious to signalize himself by some act of heroic daring, boasted that, notwithstanding what had happened, he would bring a deer from the hunting-grounds to the north of where the great river broke through the mountains. Accordingly, he set out alone in one of the light canoes which are used by Indians, on his way up the river. He landed on the east bank, at the distance of a boy's walk of half a sun above the Cascade of Melsingah, and after no long search had killed a deer, dragged the animal to the canoe, and put off from the shore. So far he had made good his boast, and was busily employed in picturing to himself the glory that awaited him on his return, the loud praises of the men, and the silent, though more eloquent ones of the maidens, when his dreams were put to flight by the sudden coming upon him of his fierce and cunning enemies. His motions had been observed, and he had not yet gained the middle of the river, when a canoe, in which were five northern Indians, made its appearance, coming round the extremity of a woody peninsula, that projected with its steep bold shores far into the water. Immediately one of them bent his bow, and, raising it to his eye, levelled it in the direction of the young Mohegan; but another, who seemed to be the leader of the party, placed his hand deliberately on the arrow, which was immediately laid down, and an oar taken up in its place. A single glance served to show the warrior that they were all well armed, and that his only chance of escape lay in reaching the shore before them, and trusting to the swiftness of his feet to effect his escape. He therefore plied his oar with great diligence, and his canoe shot rapidly over the water, but his enemies were gaining fast upon him, and it was now evident that they must overtake him before he could reach the land. In an instant he had leaped into the water, and disappeared; but his pursuers were too well aware of his object to slacken their exertions, and held on their way towards the shore. When he rose again to the surface, their canoe was at no great distance. Two of the strongest of them plunged into the river; one of them, swimming with exceeding swiftness, soon overtook him, and seized him by the hair of the head. A desperate, but brief struggle ensued, in which both combatants went down. In a moment afterwards, the young warrior re-appeared without his antagonist, who was seen no more: but his pursuers had already surrounded him. They secured him without difficulty, carried him to the shore, and there binding his hands behind him with a strong grape-vine, led him towards their village.

The young Mohegan, finding all attempt to escape useless, resigned himself to his fate, with all the indifference which an Indian always assumes, though he may not feel it. At first he scarcely thought that he should be put to death, for he knew that the people into whose hands he had fallen were celebrated throughout the land for the mildness of their character, and their disposition to mercy; and he relied still more on their known dread of his own warlike and formidable tribe, equally famous for their disposition to have blood for blood, and to suffer no grass to grow in their paths till they had tasted the sweets of revenge. However, he prepared himself for the worst, and began to steel his heart against the fear of death. He did well, for, soon after they began their march, his captors commanded him to sing his death-song. The youth obeyed, and in a strong deep chant began the customary boast of endurance and defiance of pain. He sung of the glories of his nation, and how often they had made the hearts of their enemies, of his captors, leap with fear, and their knees shake, by their wild halloo of war. He told them that, though his years were few, he had seen a Northern die in his grasp; though his eyes were but young, they had looked on the last struggle of one of their brothers. He took up the strain at intervals, and in the pauses his conductors preserved a deep and stern silence.

At length the party came upon a kind of path in the woods, which they followed for a considerable distance, and then suddenly stopped short. All at once a long shrill startling cry burst from them. It was the death-cry for their drowned companion. It rang through the old woods, and was returned in melancholy echoes from the neighbouring mountains. At its frightful sound the birds flew up from their nestling-places in the leafy thicket; the eagle, and the hawk, and the raven, soared aloft; and the deer was seen scampering away to a safer and more distant covert. When the last of their cries had died away, the party put their hands to their mouths, and uttered a second cry, modulated into wild notes by the motion of their fingers. An interval of silence ensued, which was at length broken by a confused sound of shrill voices at a distance, faintly heard at first, but growing every moment more audible. In a minute two young warriors, who seemed to come by a shorter way than the usual path, broke through the shrubs, and took their station, without speaking a word, by the party who were conducting the prisoner. Presently a crowd of women and children from the village appeared in the path, shouting and singing songs of victory; and these were followed by a group of old men, who walked in grave silence. As soon as they came up, the party resumed their march, and led their prisoner in triumph to the village.

The village consisted of a cluster of cabins, irregularly scattered, as Indian villages always are, over a large space. It stood in a natural opening of the great forest, on the banks of a stream which brawled over a shallow, stony bottom between rocky banks, on its way to mingle with the Great River. The Indian name of this wild stream was Mawenawasigh.

It happened well for the captive youth that the chiefs and principal warriors of the tribe were absent on a hunting expedition, and it was necessary, in so grave a matter, to delay the decision of the prisoner's fate until their return, which was expected in a few suns. He was therefore taken to an unoccupied cabin and placed on a mat, bound hand and foot, and fastened with a strong cord made of the sinews of the deer to a tall post in the centre, supporting the roof. It was the office of one of his captors to keep watch over him during the day time, and at night two of them slept in his cabin. For the first two suns his prison was thronged with the idle, the revengeful, and the curious. The relatives of the drowned man, and of him who was slain below the Mountains, came to taunt him on his helplessness, to assure him of the certainty of death by torture, and to exult in the prospect of a deadly vengeance. They pointed to him a stake driven in the earth, to which a young Mohegan should be lashed, and a fire kindled around him of the driest materials, while hot pincers were applied to know when his flesh was sufficiently roasted, to form a suitable dish for the banquet. Others came and gazed at him with unfeeling curiosity. I should have mentioned to my brother that he was of Mohawk parents, the son of a warrior adopted into a Mohegan tribe, and that he possessed the stately and manly form, and the bold look, and the calm eye, which belongs to the former nation, and may be traced wherever their blood is found. They spoke to each other, commending his fine warlike air, his lofty stature, and well-turned limbs, and said that he would die bravely. One only seemed to regard him with pity. A beautiful female face looked in several times at the door, and turned sorrowfully away.

As the time for the return of the warriors drew near, the captive's contempt for life, and his passion for a glorious death, diminished much. His sleep was filled with dreams of the clear and pleasant waters of his tribe, and his mind by day could not forbear busying itself with the plans of glory and ambition which he had formed. It was hard, too, to leave a world in which dwelt such lovely beings as she who had visited him with the tear of pity and sympathy bedewing her soft eye. It was worth while to live, he thought, if it were only that he might have the opportunity of convincing her that he was not ungrateful, and that his heart, though shut to the fear of death, was open to her beauty and goodness. The artificial fortitude to which he had wrought himself, in obedience to the principles which had been taught him, began to waver, and the glory of a death of torture, and calm endurance of pain, to lose its value in his eyes. "Would it not be better," said he to himself, "to share a long life with the beautiful maiden, who has just left me, to drive the deer and the wolf for her sake, and to come home loaded with game in the evening, to the hearth that she should keep burning brightly for my return?"

Night came, but it brought no sleep to the young warrior, until its watches had nearly expired. On awaking, he saw, through the opening that served as a door to the cabin, that the great star of day was risen, and the surly Indian who guarded him was standing before it. The moments passed heavily away; no one came to the cabin save an old woman, who brought him his morning meal. The curiosity of the tribe was satisfied, and the relatives of the deceased were weary of insulting him. At length the shadow of a human figure fell upon the green before the door, and the next instant, the well remembered form and face of beauty made its appearance. The maiden laid her hand on the shoulder of the sentinel, and pointed to the sky where a bold eagle was sailing away to the east. The majestic bird at length alighted on the top of a tall tree, at the distance of four or five bowshots, balanced himself for a moment on his talons, then closed his wings, and, settling on his perch, looked down into the village, as if seeking for his prey. "If thy bow be faithful, and thy arrow keen," said the maiden, "I will keep watch over the prisoner until thy return." The Indian threw a glance at the captive, as if to assure himself that everything was safe, and immediately disappeared in the forest.

The young maiden then entered the cabin. As she approached the captive, a blush stole to her dark cheek, her eye was downcast, and her step trembling, and, when she spoke, her voice was low, but soft as the whispers of the spring wind in a grove of willows.