Mailah was very young. Scarcely sixteen summers had passed over her head; and yet—such is Indian life—she had already been a wife and a mother; and now, alas! she was a widow. Her grief had been passionate at the last, and had burst forth in that one wild cry that had startled Orianas ear in the forest. But that was over now, and she seemed resigned to her hard fate, and willing to endure it. Perhaps this was for her infant's sake; and, perhaps, her sensibilities were blunted by the life she had led, in common with the rest of her race and sex—a life in which the best feelings and sympathies of our nature are almost unknown. It was not until Oriana led her to speak of her past life, and the home of her youth—now desolate and in ruins—that tears of natural grief flowed from her eyes. Then she seemed roused to a full sense of all she had lost, end broke out into mournful lamentations for her murdered Lincoya, whose noble qualities and high lineage she eloquently extolled; while she sadly contrasted her present lonely and desolate position with her happiness as the squaw of so distinguished a warrior, and so successful a hunter.
Oriana said all she could to console her; and assured her of her protection and friendship, and of a home in her lodge when they returned to their own country, where she should live as her sister, and bring up her little Lincoya to emulate his father's courage and virtues: and, ere long, the simple young savage again grew calm, said lifted up her soft black eyes, and smiled gratefully at her new friend and benefactor. She said she bad no wish to return to her own tribe, for all her family and friends had been destroyed in the recent massacre; and the village where she had spent such happy days was reduced to ashes. She, therefore, was well content to remain with the youthful Squaw-Sachem, to whose intercession she knew she owed her own life and that of her child, and in whose service she professed her willingness to live and die.
Her manner and appearance greatly interested Henrich, for they were marked by much greater refinement than he had seen in any of the Indian females, except Oriana. This was to be accounted for by her noble birth; for in those days the Indian chieftains prided themselves on the purity and nobility of their lineage; and no member of a Sachem's family was allowed to marry one of an inferior race. A certain air of dignity generally distinguished the privileged class, even among the females; although their lives were not exempt from much of hardship and servitude, and they were regarded as altogether the inferiors of their lords and masters.
To Oriana the arrival of the young mother and her playful child was a source of much pleasure and comfort; for she had begun to feel the want of female society, and the women who accompanied Tisquantum's party, and assisted her in the domestic duties of the family, were no companions to her. In Mailah she saw that she could find a friend; and her kindness and sympathy soon attached the lonely young squaw to her, and even restored her to cheerfulness and activity. It was only when she visited the grave in which Henrich and Jyanough had laid the murdered Lincoya, and decked it with flowers and green boughs, that the widow seemed to feel the greatness of her affliction. Then she would weep bitterly, and, with passionate gestures, lament her brave warrior. But, at other times, she was fully occupied with the care of her little Lincoya, or in assisting Oriana in the light household duties that devolved upon her. And her sweet voice was often heard singing to the child, which generally hung at her back, nestled in its soft bed of moss.
CHAPTER X.
The noble courser broke away.
And bounded o'er the plain?
The desert echoed to his tread,
As high he toss'd his graceful head,
And shook his flowing name.
King of the Western deserts! Thou
Art still untam'd and free!
Ne'er shall that crest he forced to bow
Beneath the yoke of drudgery low:
But still in freedom shalt thou roam
The boundless fields that form thy home
Thy native Prairie!' ANON.
The camp of the Indian hunters looked cheerful and picturesque, as Oriana and Mailah approached it one evening on their return from a ramble in the forest, where they had been to seek the wild fruits that now abounded there, and paused at the skirt of the wood, to admire the scene before them. The proposed hunting-ground had been reached the preceding day, and already the temporary huts were completed, and the tents of the Sachem pitched beneath a grove of lofty oaks and walnuts, free from underwood, and on the border of a clear and rippling stream. The Nausett and Pequodee hunters had purchased a considerable number of horses from their Cree friends; and, therefore, the journey from Chingook's village to the prairie, in which the encampment now stood, had been performed with much ease and expedition; and the hardy animals were so little fatigued by their march through the forest, that several of the younger Indians had mounted again the morning after their arrival, and gone off on a reconnoitering expedition, to discover what prospect there was of finding much game in that neighborhood.
Henrich—proud and happy in the possession of a spirited horse, with which Tisquantum had presented him—insisted on being one of the party; end he was accompanied, also, by Jyanough, who had left his native village, now rendered sad and gloomy in his eyes, to follow his white friend, and share his society at least for a time. This arrangement gave Henrich the greatest satisfaction for the young Cree was the only Indian of his own sex in whom he had been able to find a companion, or who had peculiarly attached himself to the stranger: and the more he saw of Jyanough the more he found in him to win his esteem and friendship.
Oriana and Mailah seated themselves on the luxuriant grass to rest; and the young Indian mother removed her child from the strange cradle in which she always carried it, and laid it on her knees; and then, after gazing at it for a few moments, she began to sing a wild, sweet song, to hush it to sleep. In a soft, monotonous cadence, she sang the sad story of its little life—its birth—its captivity—and the death of its murdered father, whom she exhorted it to imitate, and live to equal in courage and in skill. And thus she sang: