Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846

by Various

For sole reply, the young girl took her friend's hand, and raising the stranger from the ground, they carried him to the hollow tree, and laid him down upon his mossy couch.

"When the earth is covered with darkness," said Canondah, bending over him, "Canondah will visit her brother, and pour balsam into his wounds."

But her words were unmarked by the person addressed, who, with the exception of a faint breathing, gave no sign of life. The two maidens struck into the path by which they had first approached the river, and along which we will now precede them in order to introduce the reader into an entirely new world.

At a short distance from the scene of the adventure above narrated, was a wide clearing, extending for about three miles along the shore. It had originally been part of a palmetto field covering the bank of the river for the breadth of half a mile, at which distance a limit was put to it by the colossal stems of the aboriginal forest. The clearing had been made by the burning of the palmettos, in whose place a carpet of luxuriant grass had sprung up, dotted with groups of magnificent trees, and intersected by natural hedges of myrtle, mangrove, palm, and tulip trees, giving to the whole tract of land the appearance of a beautiful artificial park. Here and there, through the branches of the sycamore and cotton trees, small swirls of smoke were seen curling upwards, telling of the presence of man, and on nearer inspection there became visible, under various of the groups of trees, one or more huts, surrounded by little plantations of Indian corn and tobacco, and forming collectively a scattered hamlet of some fifty habitations.

No particular rule had been observed in the architecture of these modest dwellings, whose builders had been more remarkable for indolence than for refinement of taste, and had carefully avoided overworking themselves during their construction. The simplest materials had sufficed, and had been used in the same rough state in which nature afforded them. The walls were constructed of the smaller boughs of the cotton-tree, with Spanish moss stuffed into the interstices. Instead of the clapboards, wherewith, to the west of the Alleghany range, the dwellings of the poorer class of country people are usually roofed, the palmetto reed had been made use of, a selection that gave the hamlet a peculiar air of rustic simplicity. The houses were for the most part without windows, and their interior received light through the chimney or door, which latter, instead of being of wood, consisted of a buffalo hide suspended in front of the doorway, and thrown back during the day upon the low roof. The principal charm of the village, however, lay not in its style of building, but in the manner in which the humble dwellings seemed to nestle under the numerous clusters of trees. The universal cleanliness and absence of all offal formed another remarkable feature, and went far to increase the favourable impression made by the delightful situation of the hamlet. It was truly a lovely spot, as its ruins still show. The broad Natchez flowing majestically by, on its way to the sea; the dark framework of cypresses and mangroves fringing its shores, their tall shadows reflected in the clear waters; the innumerable groups of trees, with huts peeping out of their shade like so many hermitages; and finally, the spacious clearing itself, enclosed at either end by the waving palmettos, and bounded on the third side by a wall of gigantic and venerable trees, gave to the whole scene an air of enchanting repose and seclusion.

The inhabitants of this retired spot, although offering fewer charms than did their residence, were in many respects scarcely less interesting. In front of the foremost hut was assembled a group of creatures with dark shining skins, which, at a first glance, and owing to their comical movements, might well have been taken for a herd of apes. Now, like those animals, they leaped the hedges and bushes, and then, like snakes, wound along the ground, or rolled down the river bank with a rapidity of motion that the eye could scarcely follow. Further on in the village were seen lads of a maturer age, practising warlike games and exercises. They were performing the spy-dance. Whilst one party crept stealthily over the grass, others lay upon the ground in a listening posture, and with their ears pressed to the earth, strove to distinguish the movements of their antagonists. At last, when the two parties had approached each other, they sprang suddenly up, and forming themselves in Indian file, commenced a combat in which they dealt furious blows with their blunt wooden tomahawks, exhibiting in every movement an extraordinary degree of activity and natural grace. Little interest was shown in these evolutions by the adult inhabitants of the village, whose extreme apathy and indifference contrasted curiously with the display of violent exertion on the part of the young Indians. Before the open doors of the huts sat the squaws and their daughters, stripping the maize from the ear, beating hemp, or picking tobacco; the children, who, according to Indian custom, are from their very birth kept in an upright posture, hanging against the outer walls on long concave boards or pieces of bark, to which their hands and feet were fastened by thongs of buffalo hide, their only garment a strip of calico round the hips.

At a short distance from the upper part of the clearing stood two wooden huts, which might have passed for two of the school or meeting-houses often met with in the American backwoods. Like the other dwellings composing the hamlet, they were propped against sycamore-trees, but they were distinguished by their larger dimensions and more careful style of building, by the bowers of palm and mangrove that surrounded them, and the plots of smooth turf before their doors. In front of one of these little houses, and in the centre of the lawn, about fifty men were squatted upon the ground, enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke, proceeding from tobacco-pipes, three to five feet in length, with which all of them were provided. They were attired in hunting-shirts, open in front, and showing the naked breast down to the wampum girdle, to which a second garment, reaching to the knee, was attached. Instead of the shaved head and scalping-tuft adopted by many Indian tribes, they wore the whole of their hair. They appeared to have taken their places according to their rank, the inner half-circle being composed of the older warriors, whilst the young men formed a second and third line. In the centre of the curve sat an old warrior, on whom the eyes of the assembly were respectfully fixed, and whose remarkable exterior, combined with the deference shown him, bespoke the chief of the tribe. It would be difficult to imagine a more singular, and at the same time interesting-looking person, than this old man, whose body seemed to consist of nothing but skin and bone. All the coarse and fleshy portions of his frame were dried up, and only veins and sinews remained. His open hunting-shirt disclosed a breast far broader than that of any one of his companions, resembling a board that had been chopped and hacked, so covered was it with the scars of many wounds. The chief characteristic of his countenance was a gloomy stoical gravity, mingled with a resigned expression, telling a tale of many a fearful struggle, and of grievous mental suffering. The fall of his tribe, and seven years' exile, had brought about this change in the Miko of the Oconees.

This old man is Tokeah, who, driven by the Americans from his hunting grounds, has taken refuge, with the remnant of his tribe, upon Mexican territory. Canondah is his daughter, and the young man whom she rescued from the jaws of the alligator is an English midshipman belonging to a frigate employed in sounding the entrances of the Mississippi, preparatory to the expedition against New Orleans. Whilst away from his ship on a turtling party, he and two of his comrades have been captured by Lafitte, the famous French pirate, whose chief haunt was on the island of Barataria, in the Gulf of Mexico, whence, from amidst shoals and swamps impenetrable to those unacquainted with their intricacies, he issued forth to commit depredations on the high seas, and especially in the Mexican Gulf. During an inland excursion, about two years previously to the date of this tale, Lafitte discovered the Indian village on the Natchez, and was at first about to attack and plunder it; but the determined attitude of its defenders, and, still more, the reflection that their alliance might be useful to him against the Louisianian authorities, who had set a price upon his head, induced him to change his intention, and to hold out the right hand of good fellowship to the red men. Tokeah, whose ruling passion is hatred of the Americans, gladly concluded an alliance with the pirate, who professed an equal detestation of them. The Frenchman speedily ingratiated himself with the old chief, with whom he bartered a portion of his plunder for provisions of various kinds; and after a time, Tokeah, unsuspicious of the real character of his disreputable ally, whom he believed the chief of an independent tribe living on the sea-shore, promised him Rosa in marriage, an arrangement to which, as has already been seen, the poor girl was any thing but a consenting party.

Early upon the morrow of the arrival of the midshipman, upon whom our author has bestowed the unromantic name of James Hodges, the Oconee warriors depart on a hunting expedition, and the wounded man is removed to a hut in the village. During their absence, Canondah, at the entreaty of Rosa, between whom and the young Englishman a kindness has grown up during the convalescence of the latter, and who fears for his life should Tokeah discover him, disguises the midshipman in Indian paint and apparel, supplies him with arms, and explains to him the road to New Orleans, which he trusts to find occupied by British troops. She has guided him through the swamp and ferried him across the Sabine, when some words she lets fall apprise him of the peril she and Rosa will be in from her father's anger, when he returns from his hunting party, and is informed by the squaws of the evasion of one of the detested Americans, to which nation he will naturally feel assured that the English midshipman belongs. To avert all danger from the heads of his deliverers, the young man then wishes to go back to the village, but this the noble-minded girl refuses to allow, and pushes off her canoe from the shore, to which all his entreaties are insufficient to induce her to return. She retraces her steps to the hamlet, and shut up in her wigwam with Rosa, awaits, in alarm and deep dejection, her father's return from the chase.

Twenty-four hours had elapsed, during the whole of which time Canondah had not left her hut, nor had any of the squaws been to visit her. At last, towards morning, the voices of men were heard upon the shore. It was the Miko and his hunters. His daughter rose, her knees trembling under her, and looked out of the window. She saw the old squaws whispering to the men, and pointing to the wigwam in which the Englishman had dwelt. Presently the Miko entered his hut, followed by several warriors, and Canondah stepped forward to welcome her father. With hands folded upon her throbbing bosom, she silently awaited his commands.