Finding every effort to shake this resolution unavailing, the father was compelled to take his sorrowful departure with the loved ones he had had the good fortune to recover.
We will not attempt to depict the grief of parents thus compelled to give up a darling child, leaving her in the hands of savages whom until now they had had too much reason to regard as merciless. But there was no alternative; so commending her to the care of their heavenly Father, and cheered by the manifest tenderness with which she had thus far been treated, they set out on their melancholy journey homeward, trusting that some future effort for her recovery would be more effectual.
Having placed his family in safety in Pittsburgh, Mr. Lytle, still assisted by the commandant and the Indian Agent, undertook an expedition to the frontier to the residence of the British Agent, Colonel Johnson. His account of the case warmly interested that benevolent officer, who promised to spare no exertion in his behalf. This promise was religiously fulfilled. As soon as the opening of spring permitted, Colonel Johnson went in person to the village of the Big White Man, and offered the chief many splendid presents of guns and horses; but he was inexorable.
Time rolled on, and every year the hope of recovering the little captive became more faint. She, in the meantime, continued to wind herself more and more closely around the heart of her Indian brother. Nothing could exceed the consideration and affection with which she was treated, not only by him, but by his mother, the Old Queen. All their brooches and wampum were employed in the decoration of her person. The chief seat and the most delicate viands were invariably reserved for her, and no efforts were spared to promote her happiness and banish from her mind memories of her former home and kindred.
Thus, though she had beheld the departure of her parents and her dear little brother with a feeling amounting almost to despair, and had for a long while resisted every attempt at consolation, time at length, as it ever does, brought its soothing balm, and she grew contented and happy.
From her activity and forcefulness, characteristics for which she was remarkable to the end of her life, she was given the name, "The Ship under Full Sail."
The only drawback to the happiness of the little prisoner, aside from her longing for her own dear home, was the enmity of the wife of the Big White Man. This woman, from the day of Eleanor's arrival at the village and her adoption as a sister into the family, had conceived for the child the greatest animosity, which she at first had the prudence to conceal from her husband.
It was perhaps natural that a wife should give way to some feeling of jealousy at seeing her place in the heart of her husband usurped by the child of their enemy, the American. But these feelings were aggravated by a bad and vindictive temper, as well as by the indifference with which her husband listened to her complaints and murmurings.
As the woman had no children of her own to engage her attention, her mind was the more easily engrossed and inflamed by her fancied wrongs, and the devising of means for their redress. An apparent opportunity for revenge was not long wanting.