The Shadow of the North: A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign

by Joseph A. Altsheler

Before dawn Daganoweda and the Mohawks came back also, and Robert in behalf of them all thanked the young chief in the purest Mohawk, and with the fine phrasing and apt allegory so dear to the Indian heart. Daganoweda made a fitting reply, saying that the merit did not belong to him but to Manitou, and then, leaving a half dozen of his warriors to join in the watch, he and the others slept before the fire.

"It was well that you played so strongly upon the feelings of the Mohawks at that test in the vale of Onondaga, Robert," said Willet. "If you had not said over and over again that the Quebec of the French was once the Stadacona of the Mohawks they would not have been here tonight to save us. They say that deeds speak louder than words, but when the same man speaks with both words and deeds people have got to hear."

"You give me too much credit, Dave. The time was ripe for a Mohawk attack upon the French."

"Aye, lad, but one had to see a chance and use it. Now, join all those fellows in sleep. We won't move before noon."

But Robert's brain was too active for sleep just yet. While his imaginative power made him see things before other people saw them, he also continued to see them after they were gone. The wilderness battle passed once more before him, and when he brushed his eyes to thrust it away, he looked at the sleeping Mohawks and thought what splendid savages they were. The other tribes of the Hodenosaunee were still holding to their neutrality—all that was asked of them—but the Mohawks, with the memories of their ancient wrongs burning in their hearts, had openly taken the side of the English, and tonight their valor and skill had undoubtedly saved the American force. Daganoweda was a hero! And so was Tayoga, the Onondaga, always the first of red men to Robert.

His heated brain began to grow cool at last. The vivid pictures that had been passing so fast before his eyes faded. He saw only reality, the blazing fire, the dusky figures lying motionless before it, and the circling wall of dark woods. Then he slept.

Willet was the only white man who remained awake. He saw the great fire die, and the dawn come in its place. He felt then for the first time in all that long encounter the strangeness of his own position. The wilderness, savages and forest battle had become natural to him, and yet his life had once been far different. There was a taste of a distant past in that fierce duel at Quebec when he slew the bravo, Boucher, a deed for which he had never felt a moment's regret, and yet when he balanced the old times against the present, he could not say which had the advantage. He had found true friends in the woods, men who would and did risk their own lives to save his.

The dawn came swiftly, flooding the earth with light. Daganoweda and many of the Mohawk warriors awoke, but the young Philadelphia captain and his men slept on, plunged in the utter stupor of exhaustion. Tayoga, who had made a supreme effort, both physical and mental, also continued to sleep, and Robert, lying with his feet to the coals, never stirred.

Daganoweda shook himself, and, so shaking, shook the last shred of sleep from his eyes. Then he looked with pride at his warriors, those who yet lay upon the ground and those who had arisen. He was a young chief, not yet thirty years of age, and he was the bloom and flower of Mohawk courage and daring. His name, Daganoweda, the Inexhaustible, was fully deserved, as his bravery and resource were unlimited. But unlike Tayoga, he had in him none of the priestly quality. He had not drunk or even sipped at the white man's civilization. The spirituality so often to be found in the Onondagas was unknown to him. He was a warrior first, last and all the time. He was Daganoweda of the Clan of the Turtle, of the Nation Ganeagaono, the Keepers of the Eastern Gate, of the great League of the Hodenosaunee, and he craved no glory save that to be won in battle, which he craved all the time.

Daganoweda, as he looked at his men, felt intense satisfaction, because the achievement of his Mohawks the night before had been brilliant and successful, but he concealed it from all save himself. It was not for a chief who wished to win not one victory, but a hundred to show undue elation. But he turned and for a few moments gazed directly into the sun with unwinking eyes, and when he shifted his gaze away, a great tide of life leaped in his veins.