A WHITE BOY ADOPTED BY THE INDIANS
It already has appeared that Conrad's wish that he might be adopted by
the Indians, a thought which comforted him as he lay bound on the
first night of his captivity, had been realized; also that he had been
adopted by the old chief, Ahneota, who now wished to adopt Rodney.
As Conrad's experiences were such as the other lad might expect,
should he finally yield to the old Indian's desire, a brief account of
them may be found interesting.
Following the night of Conrad's capture the party travelled for two
days in a westerly direction. Just at dusk on the second day they came
to a small river. Here canoes were brought from hiding and all, save
one Indian who swam across with the horse, paddled to the other side
in the canoes.
Arriving on the other bank several guns were discharged, followed by
lusty yells that soon were responded to with like yells from over a
wooded ridge near the river. Within a few minutes squaws and papooses
came running to meet them.
Though Conrad was a stolid lad his pulse quickened, for he had heard
many tales of tortures inflicted by the savages. The Indian dogs
snapped at his heels; the children and some of the squaws tormented
him by pinching, slapping and threatening, to all of which the men
paid no heed and the boy tried to appear indifferent.
As they came near the village all the spectators formed in two lines,
between which he was ordered to run.
He was to run the gauntlet! For an instant his heart stopped beating,
the next, a sharp blow from a stick set the blood inherited from a
brave ancestry tingling through his veins.
Lowering his head he charged, as a mad bull charges, warding off what
blows he might with his sturdy arms. He was thwacked with clubs,
jabbed with sharpened sticks, tripped and pommelled till it seemed
that not an inch of his body escaped. One old hag threw a handful of
sand in his eyes and he stumbled, but crawled the few feet remaining
between where he fell and the wigwam toward which he had run. Once
inside, his tormentors left him. He was so sore that he almost wished
he could die. After a time he slept and thought his mother came to
comfort him, but it was only a young squaw who brought him food. Then
one of the men came and the boy complained of the rough treatment. The
Indian said that running the gauntlet was the custom, that he had been
brave and the Indians would adopt him into the tribe, and Conrad
could have cried for joy, only that he was a boy who did not cry.
Conrad never forgot the day he was formally adopted into the tribe.
First in the ceremony was washing away his white blood and, it seemed
to the boy, at least a part of his skin as well.
In full view of the assembled tribe, whose ideas of modesty differed
much from those of civilized people, he was stripped and led into a
pool in the river and there thrust under the water and then stood upon
his feet and scoured with sand. This was the most thorough scrubbing
Conrad ever was to have. Life with the Vuysens had not been conducive
to cleanliness and Indians in those days were not noted for bathing.
Following the bath came the process of greasing him from head to foot
and decorating his face with pigments, after which he was clad in
breech-clout and moccasins. This done, he was seated upon the bank for
a no less severe ordeal.
This consisted in plucking out the hair of his head, all but a tuft,
or scalp lock, to which coloured feathers were tied. An Indian did the
work, dipping his fingers in ashes that he might get better hold.
Conrad never winced or made outcry throughout the various ordeals.
A blanket was given to the boy, who was then led into a wigwam, where
an old Indian conducted ceremonies, on which Conrad looked with awe,
though understanding but little of them. Their solemnity, however,
impressed him deeply and it is very doubtful whether, after they were
over, he would have dared run away had he been so inclined.
The boy's eyes were light blue and his hair was yellow; but his
cheekbones were high, his face stolid, so that now, when paint and
grease had been added to sunburn, and he stood clothed in full Indian
garb, no one would think him other than an Indian but for those
tell-tale blue eyes.
The Wyandottes, of which people he now considered himself one,
occupied territory in what is now the north-central portion of Ohio.
The year was 1772, not long ago in history, but measured by change,
very long ago. Then, the country was little different from what it had
been for thousands of years. Now, it seems another world and the map
of it shows great cities where were forests and connecting these are
what at first resemble spiders' webs, but which are highways. Few
white men then came to that region, where now few red men are seen,
indeed none living the life they then lived. Such whites as came were
a few French voyageurs and Jesuit missionaries and hunters and traders
from the English colonies. The traders did not scruple to exchange,
for valuable furs, guns, tomahawks and ammunition, which they knew
would be turned against the whites of the frontier in time of war; and
many of them sold the savages liquor, knowing an Indian would sell his
soul for it and having drank it would become a fiend incarnate.
On the south flowed the Ohio River, along which white men were
pushing their way, and settling on land in what is now Kentucky and
Tennessee, and looking with covetous eyes on the land between that
river and the lakes, but which the Indians claimed had been reserved
to them by treaty. The shrewder among the Indian leaders foresaw the
time when they would have to fight and overwhelm the intruders or
submit to their hunting grounds being spoiled by the white man. This
feeling of uneasiness was spreading among the tribes, and the younger
warriors were eager to fight and not infrequently were guilty of
marauding expeditions.
One day a party of young braves had returned from a hunting expedition
down in what was called "the dark and bloody ground," Kentucky, which
the Indians of the North and the Cherokees and Chickasaws of the South
made common use of for a hunting place. Frequent were the bloody
skirmishes fought by these hostile tribes in this territory, though
none of the Indians made permanent homes there. This party had brought
back several scalps and among them Conrad noted two torn from the
heads of white men. Ahneota had looked grave and the boy shuddered,
and for the first time his dreams about his future were not as bright
as they had been.
One day there had come to the village a Frenchman, clad in the
picturesque garb of a voyageur, wearing a gaudy handkerchief about his
head and a gay capote, or blanket coat which the savages much admired.
With him was a half-breed woman and Louis, then not quite ten years
old. Conrad thought this boy the most attractive person he had ever
met and the little fellow, clad in the softest of deerskin tastefully
ornamented and wearing a jaunty cap of the same material, was indeed a
handsome lad. Conrad had attached himself to the boy as does a dog to
his master. When Rodney arrived, and the little fellow preferred him
to his former companion, then Conrad, who in one year of the wild life
had become an Indian in looks, became one at heart.