I now take my readers to Hawk’s Nest. There sets, or rather lay, two young men, not yet out of their teens, under one of the Lifting Rocks. The wind blew a gale from the northwest and the rain fell in torrents. They were dressed in hunter style. Both were strong and vigorous. One had a rifle laying by his side and the other an Indian bow and arrows. Under the rock lay a deer that they had killed just before the storm commenced. They seemed to be very much attached to each other, but it was plain to be seen that they were not brothers. Both had grown to the stature of men. The elder, whose name was Charles Drake, weighed about one hundred and fifty pounds, with light eyes and hair. The other was called Tom Quick. He was of dark features, black hair and brown eyes. And as they lay under the rock waiting for the rain to cease, they engaged in the following conversation:
I say, Tom, how do you think these large rocks got on the top of these large stones?
I don’t know! replied Drake. I have often thought about that a great many times. I suppose the Great Spirit placed them there. If the Great Spirit piled up these mountains and dug out the great rivers, He could easily lift one of these rocks.
Oh! replied Tom, that is a very easy way of building rocks, rivers and mountains, to say the Great Spirit done it; but who made the Great Spirit you are always talking about? Who has ever seen or heard him?
I can’t answer that, replied Drake; I only know what my squaw mother told me; that the Great Spirit made all these things, and the Indian thinks he sees the Great Spirit in the lofty mountain, foaming streams and rustling leaves. He thinks he hears Him in the whistling wind, the roaring cataract and the belching thunder. He thinks he feels Him here, (laying his hand on his heart.) He believes that when he dies he will meet this Great Spirit in the happy hunting grounds, never to part again. But Tom, what does your own good mother tell you about these things?
Tom seemed to awake from a dream. He had listened attentively to what his companion had said, and it seemed to have awakened new ideas in his mind.
My mother, replied Tom, talks about these things in a different way. She hates the Indian and the Indian’s Great Spirit. She says God done all these wonderful things, and she reads to us from an old leather book, held together by iron straps; that God made the mountains and rivers; the trees and flowers; the birds and the fish; the thunder and the lightning; and last of all he made man; and that if we are good, when we die we will go to God and live with him forever.
Did your mother or any of you ever see God? asked Drake.
No, replied Tom, mother says God is a Spirit and can’t be seen, but is in everything and is everywhere; that he is now looking at us and hears what we say.
It was now Drake’s turn to be astonished. The white man’s God saw all that was said and done: He even heard what he and Tom was talking about. Throwing himself on the other side, he remained silent for a few moments, and then said: