Tom, I guess there ain’t much difference between the white man’s God and the Indian’s Great Spirit. Neither of them have been seen, but both of them have done all these wonderous works. It looks to me that they are the same certain something that we don’t know—can’t know much about until we arrive at the Great Hunting Grounds.
Thus, these untutored youths speculated upon what has racked the brains of philosophers of all ages, and with about the same results.
I say, Tom, do you think that the Great God, or Great Spirit, (I don’t think it makes much difference which you call them,) works as we do? That he has hands, feet, eyes and ears? That he smooths these rocks as we do the stones that we grind corn with? That it was in this way he made the Bottle Rocks that stick up in the Neversink river?
I don’t know, replied Tom, scratching his head as if in search of an idea. I only know what the missionary says about it. He says the Bottle Rocks were once large, ragged rocks that broke loose from the mountain and fell into a pool of water, and for ages were whirled about until they were made into the shape of a bottle. But on the Steneykill there are two other funny made stones—large white ones—as large as the rock we lie under—in the shape of a heart. They are just alike, yet they are hundreds of feet apart. The missionary says they were once in one stone and were frozen in the ice. That when the warm weather came, the ice brought them down here. That the ice struck a mountain of stone and split the rock into two parts and dropped one half and carried the other half a little further and then dropped that.
Who and what is this missionary that knows so much? asked Drake.
Oh, said Tom, he is a man; only a man, and looks just as we do.
Oh! I am glad of that, replied Drake; I thought he might be the God your mother’s book tells about.
Drake, you often speak about your squaw mother. Where is your real mother?
That I don’t know, replied Drake. I have no recollections of any mother, except the old Indian woman that I lived with, until your father captured me on the Mongaup. From my earliest recollection, I remained in the Indian camp until the time I came to your house, and since that time, your mother has been my mother. From what I could learn whilst I was among the Indians, my father and mother lived on a big boat that had big guns that made a noise as loud as thunder, and would carry a thousand Indian canoes on deck. And it was whilst father and mother were on shore that the Indians stole me and carried me off, for the purpose of getting big money. And this was about all they would tell me. The first that I can remember, we lived in a big rock house (cave.) It is not a great way from the place the Indians call Stockbridge. It was with the Stockbridge Indians I lived. My old Indian mother used me as well as other Indian children were used. When they went on their war or hunting expeditions, the women and children were generally left at home. Our living was wild game and Indian corn. Every year, a party was formed to go on a hunt for beaver and otter, for the purpose of getting their furs to sell to the traders, for which they got in return beads, knives, tomahawks and fire-water. It was on one of these hunting expeditions after otter, at the head-waters of the Mongaup, that your father captured me.
I have said that usually, my Indian mother used me well. But there were times when she was cruel. When she got mad she was furious, and would come at me with all vengeance, with knife, club, or anything she could get hold of. Then I would run in the woods to get away from her, and sometimes stay three or four days.