“In you—in you, oh, my more than father. You are the embodiment of that spirit by which I am guided. My faith in you, then—is it not my faith in the creed which you profess, and by which you live?”
No sooner had William recovered from his wounds, than Mr. Harris called Rebecca to him and signified his consent to the union between her and William, and his determination to make their circumstances as comfortable as the state of the neighborhood would allow.
“It is late, now,” said Rebecca to William; “let us separate. The morrow will require our early attention, and Father Harris will be astir early in the morning.”
“And he not the only one,” said William; “for some of us must go down and bring the magistrate up, to perform the ceremony. We will meet early to-morrow morning.”
Before the dawn of the day fixed on for her marriage, Rebecca left her chamber, and hastened along the banks of the river to the jutting promontory that she so much loved. Leaning there upon the side of a rock, she gave vent to all those feelings which spring up in the heart of a girl who stands upon the verge of marriage. Welling up from that heart were the waters of pure, holy affection for Harris, and of deep, abiding love for William. There was no want of all true feelings—no doubt of the high deservings of her lover. But Rebecca’s education was imperfect; it had never eradicated the strong feelings for her own people; it had led her to see how rapid must be their decay, but it had not made her cling with undivided love to those whose superiority in certain points was exhibiting itself in the destruction of the natives; for she saw that the friendship of the whites was as fatal to the Indians as was their enmity. The lands passed as fast by cession as by conquest, and vices were sent with the wampum of peace as readily as with the weapon of war. And while she felt that she could apply no remedy, or become a preventive, she yet felt for those whose blood was in her veins—whose fathers’ fame had been her glory.
“Oh, children of the forest,” said she, as she bent her eyes upon mountains and table lands above, “ye are passing away like the leaves of autumn. The frosts and the sunshine are alike fatal to you, and ere long you will be known only by your decay. Men will tell of your glories—but who shall see them? Dim shadows yet linger on the forest edge, and I catch the view of half fading forms as I look along the valley of the stream. Are these the spirits of my fathers come to chide me, their daughter, for my apostacy? Alas! what an apostacy is that of their sons, who retain the customs of the tribes, and yet adopt the vices of the whites.”
“The light of another day is springing up, and a thousand shapes are visible; are these spirit-hunters of the red men—do they sanctify the night by their chase? They are not like the red men of those days. Mighty ones they are, and they pursue the mammoth for their sport. But how they depart before the coming light, as their descendants waste in the influence of the arts of the white men!”
“But ought I to wish it otherwise? Will not science make more happy, and religion repay by its influences all the evil which has been brought on its name? Has it done it? Alas! I am distressed. What is to be the effect of all? Are the white men, with their religion, to drive the red men from their possession only to have more ample scope for vice, only to waste each other by the fraud with which they, in most places, overcome the Indians? or is the establishment of both to produce the happiness to all which is promised by their leaders? And are these doubts, these apparent difficulties, the result of my inability to judge of what is to follow, as the vision is now disturbed by the uncertainty of the dawning light, whose perfection will restore all things to their proper appearance?”
“Oh, let me yet, as I shall abide with these conquerors of our people, let me at least acknowledge that it is not they but their religion that detains me. No, deeply as I reverence my Father Harris, and much as I love William, I would join the wasting, the decaying remnant of my tribe; and if I could not revenge their wrongs, I would die with them undisgraced by treachery. But that religion—ah, they hold me there; they have driven from my heart most of the creed of my childhood. Only here and there is found a belief, green, from its association with infancy, but still beautiful, still cherished. While they have erected in my heart the form of their own faith, unfinished yet, but still promising, still sheltering. They have dealt with me as with our forests, in which our tribes had their home, they cut them down, leaving here and there a tree to tell of the things that were, and placing incomplete edifices for their own shelter—edifices that they promise shall be sufficient and beautiful in time.”
The sun was rising above the horizon, and not a cloud stood in his whole pathway to the west. The tops of the mountain caught and reflected its first rays. As the warmth increased, the mists, which had fallen thick toward the base of the hills, began slowly to rise and roll in massive columns upward, or to pass off by the gap through which the river rushes. Rebecca gazed at the scene until her fancy moulded these morning mists into the forms of cherished beings. The whole energies of her tribe seemed to revive within her, and all of the wild and the unearthly that distinguished the dreams of her childhood rushed back upon her mind.