“Scalps cannot be taken from them that get off,” returned Peter, evasively. “We must first catch these pale-faces. When they are found it will be easy to scalp them. If the canoes are gone, I think the medicine-bee-hunter and his squaws have gone in them. We may find the whole down the river.”
To this opinion most of the chiefs assented, though the course of examining for a trail farther east was still approved. The band was so strong, while the pale-faces were so few, that a distribution of their own force was of no consequence, and it was clearly the most prudent to send out young men in all directions. Every one, however, expected that the fugitives would be overtaken on, or near, the river, and Bear's Meat suggested the propriety of their moving down stream, themselves, very shortly.
“When did my brother last see the pale-faces?” asked Crowsfeather. “This bee-hunter knows the river well, and may have started yesterday; or even after he came from the Great Council of the Prairie.”
This was a new idea, but one that seemed probable enough. All eyes turned toward Peter, who saw, at once, that such a notion must greatly favor the security of the fugitives, and felt a strong desire to encourage it. He found evasion difficult, however, and well knew the danger of committing himself. Instead of giving a straightforward answer, therefore, he had recourse to circumlocution and subterfuge.
“My brother is right,” he answered. “The pale-faces HAVE had time to get far down the stream. As my brothers know, I slept among them at the Round Prairie. To-day, they know I was with them at the council of the spring of gushing waters.”
All this was true, as far as it went, although the omissions were very material. No one seemed to suspect the great chief, whose fidelity to his own principles was believed to be of a character amounting to enthusiasm. Little did any there know of the power of the unseen Spirit of God to alter the heart, producing what religionists term the new birth. We do not wish, however, to be understood that Peter had, as yet, fully experienced this vast change. It is not often the work of a moment, though well-authenticated modern instances do exist, in which we have every reason to believe that men have been made to see and feel the truth almost as miraculously as was St. Paul himself. As for this extraordinary savage, he had entered into the strait and narrow way, though he was not far advanced on its difficult path.
When men tell us of the great progress that the race is making toward perfection, and point to the acts which denote its wisdom, its power to control its own affairs, its tendencies toward good when most left to its own self-control, our minds are filled with scepticism. The every-day experience of a life now fast verging toward threescore, contradicts the theory and the facts. We believe not in the possibility of man's becoming even a strictly rational being, unaided by a power from on high; and all that we have seen and read goes to convince us that HE is most of a philosopher, the most accurate judge of his real state, the most truly learned, who most vividly sees the necessity of falling back on the precepts of revelation for all his higher principles and practice. We conceive that this mighty truth furnishes unanswerable proof of the unceasing agency of a Providence, and when we once admit this, we concede that our own powers are insufficient for our own wants.
That the world, as a whole, is advancing toward a better state of things, we as firmly believe as we do that it is by ways that have not been foreseen by man; and that, whenever the last has been made the agent of producing portions of this improvement, it has oftener been without design, or calculation, than with it. Who, for instance, supposes that the institutions of this country, of which we boast so much, could have stood as long as they have, without the conservative principles that are to be found in the Union; and who is there so vain as to ascribe the overshadowing influence of this last great power to any wisdom in man? We all know that perfectly fortuitous circumstances, or what appear to us to be such, produced the Federal Government, and that its strongest and least exceptionable features are precisely those which could not be withstood, much less invented, as parts of the theory of a polity.
A great and spasmodic political movement is, at this moment, convulsing Christendom. That good will come of it, we think is beyond a question; but we greatly doubt whether it will come in the particular form, or by the specified agencies, that human calculations would lead us to expect. It must be admitted that the previous preparations, which have induced the present effort, are rather in opposition to, than the consequences of, calculated agencies; overturning in their progress the very safeguards which the sagacity of men had interposed to the advance of those very opinions that have been silently, and by means that would perhaps baffle inquiry, preparing the way for the results that have been so suddenly and unexpectedly obtained. If the course is onward, it is more as the will of God, than from any calculations of man; and it is when the last are the most active, that there is the greatest reason to apprehend the consequences.
Of such a dispensation of the Providence of Almighty God, do we believe Peter to have been the subject. Among the thousand ways that are employed to touch the heart, he had been most affected by the sight of a dying man's asking benedictions on his enemies! It was assailing his besetting sin; attacking the very citadel of his savage character, and throwing open, at once, an approach into the deepest recesses of his habits and dispositions. It was like placing a master-key in the hands of him who would go through the whole tenement, for the purpose of purifying it.