Oak Openings

by James Fenimore Cooper

At this moment, Peter led the bee-hunter aside, telling his friends that he would speedily rejoin them. Our hero followed his savage leader along the foot of the declivity, in the rear of the hut, until the former stopped at the place where the first, and principal fire of the past night, had been lighted. Here Peter made a sweeping gesture of his hand, as if to invite his companion to survey the different objects around. As this characteristic gesture was made, the Indian spoke.

“My brother is a medicine-man,” he said. “He knows where whiskey grows—let him tell Peter where to find the spring.”

The recollection of the scene of the previous night came so fresh and vividly over the imagination of the bee-hunter, that, instead of answering the question of the chief, he burst into a hearty fit of laughter. Then, fearful of giving offence, he was about to apologize for a mirth so ill-timed, when the Indian smiled, with a gleam of intelligence on his swarthy face, that seemed to say, “I understand it all,” and continued—

“Good—the chief with three eyes”—in allusion to the spy—glass that le Bourdon always carried suspended from his neck—“is a very great medicine-man; he knows when to laugh, and when to look sad. The Pottawattamies were dry, and he wanted to find them some whiskey to drink, but could not—our brother, in the canoe, had drunk it all. Good.”

Again the bee-hunter laughed; and though Peter did not join in his mirth, it was quite plain that he understood its cause. With this good-natured sort of intelligence between them, the two returned to the canoes; the bee-hunter always supposing that the Indian had obtained his object, in receiving his indirect admission, that the scene of the previous night had been merely a piece of ingenious jugglery. So much of a courtier, however, was Peter, and so entire his self-command, that on no occasion, afterward, did he ever make any further allusion to the subject.

The ascent of the river was now commenced. It was not a difficult matter for le Bourdon to persuade Margery, that her brother's canoe would be too heavily loaded for such a passage, unless she consented to quit it for his own. Pigeonswing took the girl's place, and was of material assistance in forcing the light, but steady craft, up stream. The three others continued in the canoe in which they had entered the river. With this arrangement, therefore, our adventurers commenced this new journey.

Every reader will easily understand, that ascending such a stream as the Kalamazoo was a very difficult thing from descending it. The progress was slow, and at many points laborious. At several of the “rifts,” it became necessary to “track” the canoes up; and places occurred at which the only safe way of proceeding was to unload them altogether, and transport boats, cargoes, and all, on the shoulders of the men, across what are called, in the language of the country, “portages,” or “carrying-places.” In such toil as this, the corporal was found to be very serviceable; but neither of the Indians declined to lend their assistance, in work of this manly character. By this time, moreover, Gershom had come round, and was an able-bodied, vigorous assistant, once more. If the corporal was the master of any alcohol, he judiciously kept it a secret; for not a drop passed any one's lips during the whole of that toilsome journey.

Although the difficult places in the river were sufficiently numerous, most of the reaches were places having steady, but not swift currents toward the lake. In these reaches the paddles, and those not very vigorously applied, enabled the travellers to advance as fast as was desirable; and such tranquil waters were a sort of resting-places to those who managed the canoes. It was while ascending these easy channels, that conversation most occurred; each speaker yielding, as was natural, to the impulses of the thoughts uppermost in his mind. The missionary talked much of the Jews; and, as the canoes came near each other, he entered at large, with their different occupants, into the reasons he had for believing that the red men of America were the lost tribes of Israel. “The very use of the word 'tribes,'” would this simple-minded, and not very profound expounder of the word of God, say, “is one proof of the truth of what I tell you. Now, no one thinks of dividing the white men of America into 'tribes.' Who ever heard of the 'tribe' of New England, or of the 'tribe' of Virginia, or of the 'tribe' of the Middle States? [Footnote: The reader is not to infer any exaggeration in this picture. There is no end to the ignorance and folly of sects and parties, when religious or political zeal runs high. The writer well remembers to have heard a Universalist, of more zeal than learning, adduce, as an argument in favor of his doctrine, the twenty-fifth chapter and forty-sixth verse of St. Matthew, where we are told that the wicked “shall go away into ever-lasting punishment; but the righteous into Vis eternal”; by drawing a distinction between the adjectives, and this so much the more, because the Old Testament speaks of “everlasting hills,” and “everlasting valleys “; thus proving, from the Bible, a substantial difference between “everlasting” and “eternal.” Now, every Sophomore knows that the word used in Matthew is the same in both cases, being “aionion,” or “existing forever.”] Even among the blacks, there are no tribes. There is a very remarkable passage in the sixty-eighth Psalm, that has greatly struck me, since my mind has turned to this subject; 'God shall wound the head his enemies.' saith the Psalmist, 'and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in his wickedness.' Here is a very obvious allusion to a well-known, and what we think, a barbarous practice of the red men; but, rely on it, friends, nothing that is permitted on earth is permitted in vain. The attentive reader of the inspired book, by gleaning here and there, can collect much authority for this new opinion about the lost tribes; and the day will come, I do not doubt, when men will marvel that the truth hath been so long hidden from them. I can scarcely open a chapter, in the Old Testament, that some passage does not strike me as going to prove this identity, between the red men and the Hebrews; and, were they all collected together, and published in a book, mankind would be astonished at their lucidity and weight. As for scalping, it is a horrid thing in our eyes, but it is honorable with the red men; and I have quoted to you the words of the Psalmist, in order to show the manner in which divine wisdom inflicts penalties on sin. Here is plain justification of the practice, provided always that the sufferer be in the bondage of transgression, and obnoxious to divine censure. Let no man, therefore, in the pride of his learning, and, perhaps, of his prosperity, disdain to believe things that are so manifestly taught and foretold; but let us all bow in humble submission to the will of a Being who, to our finite understanding, is so perfectly incomprehensible.”

We trust that no one of our readers will be disposed to deride Parson Amen's speculations on this interesting subject, although this may happen to be the first occasion on which he has ever heard the practice of taking scalps justified by Scripture. Viewed in a proper spirit, they ought merely to convey a lesson of humility, by rendering apparent the wisdom, nay the necessity, of men's keeping them-selves within the limits of the sphere of knowledge they were designed to fill, and convey, when rightly considered, as much of a lesson to the Puseyite, with abstractions that are quite as unintelligible to himself as they are to others; to the high-wrought and dogmatical Calvinist, who in the midst of his fiery zeal, forgets that love is the very essence of the relation between God and man; to the Quaker, who seems to think the cut of a coat essential to salvation; to the descendant of the Puritan, who whether he be Socinian, Calvinist, Universalist, or any other “1st,” appears to believe that the “rock” on which Christ declared he would found his church was the “Rock of Plymouth”; and to the unbeliever, who, in deriding all creeds, does not know where to turn to find one to substitute in their stead. Humility, in matters of this sort, is the great lesson that all should teach and learn; for it opens the way to charity, and eventually to faith, and through both of these to hope; finally, through all of these, to heaven.

The journey up the Kalamazoo lasted many days, the ascent being often so painful, and no one seeming in a hurry. Peter waited for the time set for his council to approach, and was as well content to remain in his canoe, as to “camp out” in the openings. Gershom never was in haste, while the bee-hunter would have been satisfied to pass the summer in so pleasant a manner, Margery being seated most of the time in his canoe. In his ordinary excursions, le Bourdon carried the mastiff as a companion; but, now that his place was so much better filled, Hive was suffered to roam the woods that lined most of the river-banks, joining his master from time to time at the portages or landings. As for the missionary and the corporal, impatience formed no part of their present disposition. The first had been led, by the artful Peter, to expect great results to his theory from the assembly of chiefs which was to meet in the “openings”; and the credulous parson was, in one sense, going as blindly on the path of destruction, as any sinner it had ever been his duty to warn of his fate, was proceeding in the same direction in another. The corporal, too, was the dupe of Peter's artifices. This man had heard so many stories to the Indian's prejudice, at the different posts where he had been stationed, as at first to render him exceedingly averse to making the present journey in his company. The necessity of the case, as connected with the preservation of his own life after the massacre of Fort Dearborn, and the influence of the missionary, had induced him to overlook his ancient prejudices, and to forget opinions that, it now occurred to him, had been founded in error. Once fairly within the influence of Peter's wiles, a simple-minded soldier like the corporal, was soon completely made the Indian's dupe. By the time the canoe reached the mouth of the Kalamazoo, as has been related, each of these men placed the most implicit reliance on the good faith and friendly feelings of the very being whose entire life, both sleeping and waking thoughts, were devoted, not only to his destruction, but to that of the whole white race on the American continent. So bland was the manner of this terrible savage, when it comported with his views to conceal his ruthless designs, that persons more practised and observant than either of his two companions might have been its dupes, not to say its victims. While the missionary was completely mystified by his own headlong desire to establish a theory, and to announce to the religious world where the lost tribes were to be found, the corporal had aided in deceiving himself, also, by another process. With him, Peter had privately conversed of war, and had insinuated that he was secretly laboring in behalf of his great father at Washington, and against the other great father down at Montreal. As between the two, Peter professed to lean to the interests of the first; though, had he laid bare his in-most soul, a fiery hatred of each would have been found to be its predominant feeling. But Corporal Flint fondly fancied he was making a concealed march with an ally, while he thus accompanied one of the fiercest enemies of his race.