"The Great Spirit makes men differently," commenced Eaglesflight. "Some are like willows, that bend with the breeze, and are broken in the storm. Some are pines, with slender trunks, few branches, and a soft wood. Now and then there is an oak among them, which grows on the prairie, stretching its branches a great way, and making a pleasant shade. This wood is hard; it lasts a long time. Why has the Great Spirit made this difference in trees?—why does the Great Spirit make this difference in men? There is a reason for it. He knows it, though we may not. What he does is always right!
"I have heard orators at our council-fires complain that things should be as they are. They say that the land, and the lakes, and the rivers, and the hunting-grounds, belong to the red-man only, and that no other color ought ever to be seen there. The Great Spirit has thought otherwise, and what he thinks happens. Men are of many colors. Some are red, which is the color of my father. Some are pale, which is the color of my friends. Some are black, which is the color of my father's friend. He is black, though old age is changing his skin. All this is right; it comes from the Great Spirit, and we must not complain.
"My father says he is very old—that the pine in the woods is scarce older. We know it. That is one reason why we have come so far to see him, though there is another reason. My father knows what that other reason is; so do we. For a hundred winters and summers, that reason has not gone out of our minds. The old men have told it to the young men; and the young men, when they have grown older, have told it to their sons. In this way it has reached our ears. How may bad Indians have lived in that time, have died, and are forgotten! It is the good Indian that lives longest in our memories. We wish to forget that the wicked ever were in our tribes. We never forget the good.
"I have seen many changes. I am but a child, compared with my father; but I feel the cold of sixty winters in my bones. During all that time, the red-men have been travelling toward the setting sun. I sometimes think I shall live to reach it! It must be a great way off, but the man who never stops goes far. Let us go there, pale-faces will follow. Why all this is, I do not know. My father is wiser than his son, and he may be able to tell us. I sit down to hear his answer."
Although Eaglesflight had spoken so quietly, and concluded in a manner so different from what I had expected, there was a deep interest in what was now going on. The particular reason why these red-men had come so far out of their way to visit Susquesus had not yet been revealed, as we all hoped would be the case; but the profound reverence that these strangers, from the wilds of the far west, manifested for our aged friend, gave every assurance that when we did learn it, there would be no reason for disappointment. As usual, a pause succeeded the brief address of the last speaker; after which, Susquesus once more arose and spoke.
"My children," he said, "I am very old. Fifty autumns ago, when the leaves fell, I thought it was time for me to pass on to the happy hunting-grounds of my people, and be a redskin again. But my name was not called. I have been left alone here, in the midst of the pale-face fields, and houses, and villages, without a single being of my own color and race to speak to. My head was almost grown white. Still, as years came on my head, the spirit turned more toward my youth. I began to forget the battles, and hunts, and journeys of middle life, and to think of the things seen when a young chief among the Onondagoes. My day is now a dream, in which I dream of the past. Why is the eye of Susquesus so far-seeing, after a hundred winters and more? Can any one tell? I think not. We do not understand the Great Spirit, and we do not understand his doings. Here I am, where I have been for half my days. That big wigwam is the wigwam of my best friends. Though their faces are pale, and mine is red, our hearts have the same color. I never forget them—no, not one of them. I see them all, from the oldest to the youngest. They seem to be of my blood. This comes from friendship, and many kindnesses. These are all the pale-faces I now see. Red-men stand before my eyes in all other places. My mind is with them.
"My children, you are young. Seventy winters are a great many for one of you. It is not so with me. Why I have been left standing alone here near the hunting-grounds of our fathers, is more than I can say. So it is, and it is right. A withered hemlock is sometimes seen standing by itself in the fields of the pale-faces. I am such a tree. It is not cut down, because the wood is of no use, and even the squaws do not like it to cook by. When the winds blow, they seem to blow around it. It is tired of standing there alone, but it cannot fall. That tree wishes for the axe, but no man puts the axe to its root. Its time has not come. So it is with me—my time has not come.
"Children, my days now are dreams of my tribe. I see the wigwam of my father. It was the best in the village. He was a chief, and venison was never scarce in his lodge. I see him come off the war-path with many scalps on his pole. He had plenty of wampum, and wore many medals. The scalps on his pole were sometimes from red-men, sometimes from pale-faces. He took them all himself. I see my mother, too. She loved me as the she-bear loves her cubs. I had brothers and sisters, and I see them, too. They laugh and play, and seem happy. There is the spring where we dipped up water in our gourds, and here is the hill where we lay waiting for the warriors to come in from the war-paths and the hunt. Everything looks pleasant to me. That was a village of the Onondagoes, my own people, and I loved them a hundred and twenty winters ago. I love them now, as if the time were but one winter and one summer. The mind does not feel time. For fifty seasons I thought but little of my own people. My thoughts were on the hunt and the war-path, and on the quarrels of the pale-faces, with whom I lived. Now, I say again, I think most of the past, and of my young days. It is a great mystery why we can see things that are so far off so plainly, and cannot see things that are so near by. Still, it is so.
"Children, you ask why the red-men keep moving toward the setting sun, and why the pale-faces follow? You ask if the place where the sun sets will ever be reached, and if pale-men will go there to plough and to build, and to cut down the trees. He that has seen what has happened, ought to know what will happen again. I am very old, but I see nothing new. One day is like another. The same fruits come each summer, and the winters are alike. The bird builds in the same tree many times.
"My children, I have lived long among the pale-faces. Still, my heart is of the same color as my face. I have never forgotten that I am a red-man; never forgotten the Onondagoes. When I was young, beautiful woods covered these fields. Far and near the buck and the moose leaped among the trees. Nothing but the hunter stopped them. It is all changed! The plough has frightened away the deer. The moose will not stay near the sound of the church-bell. He does not know what it means. The deer goes first. The red-man keeps on his trail, and the pale-face is never far behind. So it has been since the big canoes of the stranger first came into our waters; so it will be until another salt lake is reached beneath the setting sun. When that other lake is seen, the red-man must stop, and die in the open fields, where rum, and tobacco, and bread are plenty, or march on into the great salt lake of the west and be drowned. Why this is so, I cannot tell. That it has been so, I know; that it will be so, I believe. There is a reason for it; none can tell what that reason is but the Great Spirit."