“The father’s boat was seen upon the river,” began Annahotaha. “I have sent for the father to tell him the thoughts which come up in my breast and give me no peace. I am a tree of rough bark, but I bear a flower branch. I go to the burning and my branch of flowers will not be cut off from me. I am an old bear, but how shall I make the Iroquois feel my claws if my cub be beside me? The lodge of her mother’s people is not fit to hold her. Continually her mother comes to me in dreams saying, ‘What have you done with the child?’ Shall I hang my branch of flowers in the lodges of my people? Behold the remnant of the Hurons!” He leaped to his feet with energetic passion, and flung his pointed finger at the steaming braves by the fire. They gave an instant’s attention to his voice, and went on toasting themselves as before. “We are trodden underfoot like leaves. The French, our white brothers, promise us protection, and our feeble ones are dragged to the stake and scalped before their eyes. We perish from the earth. Soon not a Huron will make the smoke of his lodge go up beside the great river. But before these Iroquois utterly tread our bones under the turf they shall feel the rage of Annahotaha. The last Hurons shall heap them up in destruction!”
He sat down and rested his savage face on his fists.
Massawippa resumed her attitude of satisfied tenderness; and shade by shade his wrath lifted until the father and not the chief again looked through the red of his mask-like face.
“If Annahotaha is leading a war party against the Iroquois,” began Dollier de Casson—
“Speak not of that. The old bear knows his own track; but no way for the tender feet of his cub.”
—“he will pass through Montreal,” continued the priest. “Now, if Annahotaha wishes to keep his gift of Heaven from contaminations of the world, why should he not lay her on the sacred altar? Place her with the sisters of St. Joseph, those good nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu.”
The chief, expectant and acquiescent, kept yet a wily side-glance on his cassocked guide. Honest Dollier de Casson brought his fist with a gentle spat upon his palm as he proceeded.
“No Indian woman ever hath joined the pious labors of our good nuns. You Hurons clamor without ceasing for protection to white brothers who can scarcely keep their own scalps on their heads, but the burdens and self-denials of our holy religion ye shirk. I speak truth to the chief of the Hurons. You even leave your farms and civilized life on the island of Orleans, and take to the woods.”
“We are dragged scalped from our farms,” interjected Annahotaha’s guttural voice.