Chamberlain was accordingly treated as a prisoner and was taken to the Indian village of St. Francis, on the St. Lawrence River. While he was permitted to roam freely about the village, the Indians kept a watchful eye on him, and he knew he was a captive. He learned, however, to like the Indian life and remained three years. Then in a fit of homesickness he decided to go home, but the captor refused to let him depart. Chamberlain had won the hearts of many of the squaws by lending them a helping hand in their drudgery, and some of the maidens of the tribe aided him in escaping under cover of darkness, he afterward became a man of consequence in Boston, and the university professor of to-day is one of his descendants.
The Penobscot Indians in time returned to Maine and settled on the island in the Penobscot River, which is still their home. Montague Chamberlain in the course of his investigations discovered that Wah-ta-waso was descended from the Indian who had taken his ancestor captive at Ticonderoga, and took it upon himself to give her an opportunity to gain an excellent education. She has had the advantage of common and high schools, and is now preparing to enter the Harvard annex next spring. Mr. Chamberlain has helped a number of the Penobscots to go to Carlisle, and he has built them a library on their island.
AN INDIAN GIRL'S TASTE OF CIVILIZATION.
On his way back from the recent snake dance at Oribi, Dr. Beecher, of Yale University, felt a sense of thirst. Turning in his saddle he looked back. A cloud of white rising above the point of red sandstone mesa told him that the "chuck wagon" and the main outfit with water were fully two miles behind.
Glancing about over the sage-covered sand dunes and across the sun-curled crust of an adobe flat to his right, his eye fell upon a little Moqui dwelling hugged up in a niche of the cliff at the edge of the mesa. A wolfish dog, barking angrily, flew out at him as he galloped up. A young Moqui woman in moccasins, leggings and blankets, came to the door. When she saw the visitor she called to the dog and nodded "How."
"Qui bamus ahwah?" asked Dr. Beecher after the dog ceased barking. The young woman smiled, and then replied pleasantly:
"I beg your pardon, sir, but if it is water you wish it may be found just a little way down the draw."
The doctor grabbed the pommel of his saddle in his surprise. He managed to say "Thank you," and then turned his horse toward the spring, as he was directed. For some time after he had satisfied his thirst he sat in the shade of a bowlder and watched his horse carefully and cautiously nibble off little bunches of gramma grass that grew closeup under the big thorny melon-cacti, and all the while he was wondering how it was that the Indian woman spoke such perfect English.
Suddenly his horse threw up its head, jumped a few feet to one side, then dropped quietly back to browsing. Looking over his shoulder, the doctor saw the Moqui woman coming down the trail with a huge water jar hung on her back in a large fold of her blanket. She smiled when she came up and made a remark about the sandstorm of the day before. The doctor gallantly caught up the gourd dipper and insisted on filling the jar for her. All the while he kept up a running conversation, and when he poured the last dipper full of water into the jar he had reached the point where he could ask her with propriety to tell him all about herself, and he did.
She was reluctant at first, but finally she began her story by saying she had been left an orphan at four years of age. Then she continued her story: