“I see you all,” said she, “chiefs, warriors and women. I know ye now; every one has his form, and ye are returning from the hunting-field of spirits. Ye return mournful, though borne down with game; sad, for ye cross the fields which the whites have torn from your descendants; angry, for a child of a warrior is to be of those who are your enemies—and yonder group of little ones, they are my brothers and sisters, airy ones now, but happy in the mimic hunt, happy till they turn their faces on me, the last of all the household. And, father—oh, my father, the death-wound is yet upon thy breast, as thou movest onward in the air. Mother! mother! look not thus on thy child! Oh, turn not to me that breast whence I drew my life-nurture; that breast on which I rested when the life-drops were oozing forth from the wound which the enemy inflicted. But they are happy—happy in their union, happy in the smiles of the Great Spirit whom they adored in their homes and their hunting-grounds, whom they propitiated by terrible vengeance upon those who desecrated those homes and destroyed those hunting-grounds. They are happy, for the mist that gathers round my mother’s brow is resplendent with rainbow beams, and as she passes upward to the mountain’s summit, she waves her hand to me in peace. Thy pardon and thy blessing, oh, my mother—prostrate, I invoke them both.”
William, who had witnessed the last agonizing scene, then stepped forward and raised the girl from the deep earth. She scarcely noticed his presence, the wildness of her eye denoted thoughts differently placed; and it was several minutes before she recovered her usual self-possession.
“It is passed, William, and we will now return to the house.”
“But, Rebecca, why should you thus have exposed yourself and your health by such a yielding to the influence of your feelings and your imagination?”
“William, I am, or I would be, a Christian; and when I have given myself to you and to God, I would have no reserve in my heart from either, and therefore, before the sacrifice was made, as the daughter of the Judge of Israel went forth upon the high-places of her land to mourn, so I came hither to weep for what I was to leave, and to leave that for which I wept. The last sacrifice upon the altar of my fathers and my fathers’ deities has been made. I have torn from my heart the flowers which grew upon the Indian’s belief, and have prayed that the tree of life may over-shadow the wild plants, that they blossom not again. I have taken down from the recesses of my soul, the gods which my mother enshrined there, and have taken leave of the living and the dead of my father’s race. And now, William, now my beloved one, I am thine—thine in all seasons and all changes—thine, loving and loved; but, oh, do not forget that my mind, though dedicated to Christianity now, has been the home of the red man’s creed, and may yet while it is sanctified by the new altar, reflect something of itself, its other self upon the purer worship, as the temples dedicated to the pagan god seem to cast some air of their origin upon the new and sanctified rites which they now enclose; and in moments of feeling, or when some additional wrong to my fathers’ race is done in the name of our new creed, bear with me, if for a moment, I forget the blessed teaching of the gospel, and yield to the earlier influences of blood, of education and patriotism. It shall not be often, not for the world. Henceforth, my beloved one, I am thine; all of childhood’s home—all of a people’s wrongs—all of a nation’s faith and a nation’s gods, are given up—and all of thine adopted. Thy breast shall be my pillow in trouble, and thy smile my token of joy; thy welfare shall be my happiness, thy dwelling shall be my home, ‘thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.’ ”
William pressed to his heart the confiding, beautiful girl; and they turned to leave the eminence upon which they stood, and to join the family below.
The exceeding beauty of the morning induced them to look once more and admire the scene. The whole broad river below them seemed one floating mass of light; and as the current passed on, its surface was disturbed by the boughs of the overhanging trees that dipped into the water, and created ripples that reflected all the hues of the moving light. The mountains in the west seemed clothed in gorgeous sunbeams, and nature appeared to have assumed her richest garb, to bless the nuptials that were about to take place.
“I love this scene,” said Rebecca, “it tranquilizes me—it soothes my spirit, it elevates without agitating my mind—such a morning is a teacher of religion.”
“The Spirit of God is teaching every where,” said William.
“True, true,” said Rebecca, “but I seem to lack some visible object, something upon which my eye may rest, something like the ladder of Jacob, by which I may ascend; the visible is necessary to me, to fix my thought upon and draw it up to the invisible. Is not your creed deficient in that?”