The Journey of three hundred and fifty Miles to the Mohave
Valley--The Means of Subsistence during the Time--The Conduct of
the Mohaves compared with the Apaches--Arrive at the Valley--The
Village--The Chief’s Residence--Their Joy at the Return of Topeka,
their Daughter--The Greeting of the new Captives--One Year of Labor
and Suffering--The Overflowing of the Colorado--Their Dependence
upon it--Their Habits--Cultivation of the Soil--Scarcity of
Provisions--Starvation--Mary Ann--Her Decline--Olive’s Care, Grief,
and Efforts to save her life--Dies of Famine--Many of the Indian
Children die--Burial of Mary Ann--The Sympathy and Sorrow of the
Chief’s Wife.
“We were informed at the outset that we had three hundred and fifty
miles before us, and all to be made on foot. Our route we soon found
to be in no way preferable to the one by which the Apache village had
been reached. It was now about the first day of March, 1852. One year
had been spent by us in a condition the most abject, the most desolate,
with treatment the most cruel that barbarity and hate could invent, and
this all endured without the privilege of a word from ourselves to turn
the scale in this direction or that, in a rugged, rocky country, filled
with bare mountains or lesser hills with slight vegetation, and that
tame and tasteless, or irregular piles of boulders and gravel beds;
we were now being hurried on under Indian guardianship alone, we knew
not where nor for what purpose. We had not proceeded far ere it was
painfully impressed upon our feet, if not our aching hearts, that this
trail to a second captivity was no improvement on the first, whatever
might be the fate awaiting us at its termination. We had been under
tutorage for one whole year in burden bearing, and labor even beyond
our strength, but a long walk or run, as this proved, we had not been
driven to during that time.
“Mary Ann, poor girl, entered upon this trip with less strength or
fortitude to encounter its hardships than the one before. She had
not proceeded far before I saw plainly that she would not be able to
stand it long. With the many appearances of kindness that our present
overseers put on, yet they seemed to be utterly destitute of any heart
or will to enter into the feelings of those who had been brought up
more delicately than themselves, or to understand their inability to
perform the task dictated by their rough and hardy habits. Our feet
soon became sore, and we were unable, on the second day after about
noon, to keep up with their rapid pace. A small piece of meat was put
into our hands on starting, and this with the roots we were allowed to
dig, and these but few, was our sole subsistence for ten days.
“With much complaining, and some threatening from our recent captors,
we were allowed to rest on the second day a short time. After this we
were not compelled to go more than thirty-five miles any one day, and
pieces of skins were furnished for our feet, but not until they had
been needlessly bruised and mangled without them. The nights were cool,
and, contrary to our expectations, the daughter of the chief showed us
kindness throughout the journey by sharing her blankets with us at each
camp.
“Of all rough, uncouth, irregular, and unattractive countries through
which human beings trail, the one through which that ten days’ march
led us, must remain unsurpassed.
“On the eleventh day, about two hours before sunset, we made a bold
steep ascent (and of such we had been permitted to climb many) from
which we had an extensive view on either side.
“Before us, commencing a little from the foot of our declivity, lay a
narrow valley covered with a carpet of green, stretching a distance,
seemingly, of twenty miles. On either side were the high, irregularly
sloped mountains, with their foot hills robed in the same bright green
as the valley, and with their bald humpbacks and sharp peaks, treeless,
verdureless, and desolate, as if the tempests of ages had poured their
rage upon their sides and summits.
“Our guides soon halted. We immediately observed by their movements
and manifestations that some object beyond the loveliness that nature
had strewn upon that valley, was enrapturing their gaze. We had stood
gazing a few moments only, when the smoke at the distance of a few
miles, winding in gentle columns up the ridges, spoke to us of the
abodes or tarrying of human beings. Very soon there came into the field
of our steady view a large number of huts, clothing the valley in every
direction. We could plainly see a large cluster of these huts huddled
into a nook in the hills on our right and on the bank of a river, whose
glassy waters threw the sunlight in our face; its winding, zigzag
course pointed out to us by the row of beautiful cottonwood trees that
thickly studded its vicinity.
“‘Here, Olive,’ said Mary Ann, ‘is the place where they live. O isn’t
it a beautiful valley? It seems to me I should like to live here.’
“‘May be,’ said I, ‘that you will not want to go back to the whites any
more.’
“‘O yes, there is green grass and fine meadows there, besides good
people to care for us; these savages are enough to make any place look
ugly, after a little time.’
“We were soon ushered into the ‘Mohave Valley,’ and had not proceeded
far before we began to pass the low, rude huts of the Mohave settlers.
They greeted us with shouts, and dance, and song as we passed. Our
guides kept up, however, a steady unheeding march for the village,
occasionally joined by fierce, filthy-looking Mohaves, and their more
filthy-looking children, who would come up, look rudely in our faces,
fasten their deep-set, small, flashing eyes upon us, and trip along,
with merry-making, hallooing, and dancing at our side.
“We were conducted immediately to the home of the chief, and welcomed
with the staring eyes of collecting groups, and an occasional
smile from the members of the chief’s family, who gave the warmest
expressions of joy over the return of their daughter and sister so long
absent. Seldom does our civilization furnish a more hearty exhibition
of affection for kindred, than welcomed the coming in of this member
of the chief’s family, though she had been absent but a few days. The
chief’s house was on a beautiful but small elevation crowning the river
bank, from which the eye could sweep a large section of the valley, and
survey the entire village, a portion of which lined each bank of the
stream.
“As a model, and one that will give a correct idea of the form
observed, especially in their village structures, we may speak of
the chief’s residence. When we reached the outskirts of the town we
observed upon the bank of the river a row of beautiful cottonwood
trees, just putting out their new leaves and foliage, their branches
interlocking, standing in a row, about a perfect square of about one
hundred feet, and arranged in taste. They were thrifty, and seemed fed
from a rich soil, and with other plots covered with the same growths,
and abounding throughout the village, presented truly an oasis in
the general desert of country upon which we had been trailing our
painful walk for the last ten days, climbing and descending, with
unshapen rocks, and sharp gravel, and burning sands for our pavement.
Immediately behind the row of trees first spoken of, was a row of poles
or logs, each about six inches in diameter and standing close to each
other, one end firmly set in the ground and reaching up about twenty
feet, forming an inclosure of about fifty feet square.
“We entered this inclosure through a door, (never shut,) and found a
tidy yard, grass-plotted. Inside of this was still another inclosure
of about twenty feet, walled by the same kind of fence, only about
one third as high. Running from front to rear, and dividing this
dwelling-place of the Mohave magnate into equal parts, stood a row of
these logs stuck in the ground, and running up about three feet above
the level top of the outside row, and forming a ridge for the resting
of the roof. The roof was a thick mat of limbs and mud. A few blankets,
a small smoking fire near the door, with naked walls over which the
finishing hand of the upholsterer had never passed, a floor made when
all _terra firma_ was created, welcomed us to the interior.
“The daughter of the chief had been kind to us, if kindness could be
shown under their barbarous habits and those rates of travel while on
our way. She was more intelligent and seemed capable of more true
sympathy and affection, than any we had yet met in our one year’s
exile. She was of about seventeen years, sprightly, jovial, and
good-natured, and at times manifested a deep sympathy for us, and a
commiseration of our desolate condition. But though she was daughter
of the chief, their habits of barbarousness could not bend to courtesy
even toward those of rank. She had walked the whole distance to the
Apaches, carrying a roll of blankets, while two horses were rode by two
stalwart, healthy Mohaves by her side.
“On entering the house Topeka, who had accompanied us, gave an
immediate and practical evidence that her stinted stomach had not
become utterly deaf to all the demands of hunger. Seeing a cake
roasting in the ashes, she seized it, and dividing it into three parts,
she gave me the Benjamin portion and bade us eat, which was done with
greediness and pleasant surprise.
“Night came on and with it the gathering of a large concourse of
Indians, their brown, stout wives and daughters, and swarms of little
ones whose faces and bare limbs would have suggested anything else
sooner than the near vicinity of clear water, or their knowledge of its
use for purifying purposes.
“The Indians were mostly tall, stout, with large heads, broad faces,
and of a much more intelligent appearance than the Apaches. Bark-clad,
where clad at all, the scarcity of their covering indicating either
a warm climate or a great destitution of the clothing material, or
something else.
“Their conduct during that night of wild excitement, was very different
from that by which our coming among the Apaches was celebrated. That
was one of selfish iron-hearted fiends, glutting over a murderous,
barbarous deed of death and plunder; this was that of a company of
indolent, superstitious, and lazy heathen, adopting the only method
which their darkness and ignorance would allow to signify their joy
over the return of kindred and the delighted purchase of two foreign
captives. They placed us out upon the green, and in the light of a
large, brisk fire, and kept up their dancing, singing, jumping, and
shouting, until near the break of day.
“After they had dispersed, and that night of tears, and the bitterest
emotions, and most torturing remembrances of the past, and reflections
of our present had nearly worn away, with bleeding feet, worn in places
almost to the bone, with aching limbs, beneath a thin covering, side
by side, little Mary Ann and myself lay us down upon a sand bed to
meditate upon sleep. A few hours were spent in conversation, conducted
in a low whisper, with occasional moments of partial drowsiness,
haunted with wild, frantic dreams.”
Though five years separate that time and the present, where is the
heart but throbs sensitive to the dark, prison-like condition of
these two girls. Look at their situation, the scenes around; having
reached a strange tribe by a toilsome, painful ten days’ journey, the
sufferings of which were almost insupportable and life consuming,
having been for nearly the whole night of their introduction to a new
captivity made the subjects of shouting and confusion, heathenish,
indelicate, and indecent, and toward morning hiding themselves under
a scanty covering, surrounded by unknown savages; whispering into
each other’s ears the hopes, fears, and impressions of their new
condition. Coveting sleep, but every touch of its soft hand upon their
moistened eyelids turned to torture and hideousness by scary visions
and dreams; harassed in mind over the uncertainty and doubt haunting
their imaginations, as to the probable purposes of their new possessors
in all their painstaking to secure a transfer of the captives to them.
It is true that less of barbarity had marked the few days of their
dependence upon their new owners, than their Apache hardships; but they
had sadly learned already that under friendly guises their possible
treachery might be wrapping and nursing some foul and murderous design.
Plunged now into the depths of a wild country, where the traces of a
white foot would be sought in vain for hundreds of miles, and at such
a distance from the nearest route of the hurrying emigrant, as to
preclude almost the traveling of hope to their exile and gloom; it is
no marvel that these few hours allotted to sleep at the latter part
of the night, were disturbed by such questions as these: Why have they
purchased us? What labor or service do they intend subjecting us to?
Have they connived with our former masters to remove us still further
from the habitations of our countrymen, and sought to plunge us so
deep in these mountain defiles, that they may solace themselves with
that insatiate revenge upon our race which will encounter any hardship
rather than allow us the happiness of a return to our native land? No
marvel that they could not drive away such thoughts, though a lacerated
body was praying for balmy sleep, “nature’s sweet restorer.”
Mary Ann, the youngest, a little girl of eight years, had been
declining in health and strength for some time. She had almost starved
on that long road, kept up principally by a small piece of meat. For
over three hundred miles had she come, climbing rocks, traversing
sun-burned gravel and sand, marking the way by bleeding feet, sighs,
and piteous moanings; well-nigh breaking the heart of her older sister,
whose deepest anguish was the witnessing of these sufferings that she
could not relieve. She was not inclined to complain; nay, she was
given to a patient reserve that would bear her grief alone, sooner
than trouble her loved sister with it. She had from infancy been the
favorite child of the family; the only one of a frail constitution,
quickest to learn, and best to remember; and often, when at home,
and the subject of disease and pain, exhibiting a meekness, judgment,
and fortitude beyond her years. She was tenderly loved by the whole
family; nursed by her fond mother with a delicacy and concern bestowed
on none of the rest; and now bound to the heart of her only sister by
a tie strengthened by mutual sufferings, and that made her every woe
and sigh a dagger to the heart of Olive. No marvel that the latter
should say: “Poor girl, I love her tenderly, ardently; and now to see
her driven forth whole days, with declining health, at a pace kept up
by these able-bodied Indians; to see her climb rugged cliffs, at times
upon her hands and knees, struggling up where others could walk, the
sweat coursing down freely from her pearly-white forehead; to hear her
heave those half-suppressed sighs; to see the steps of those little
bleeding feet totter and falter; to see the big tears standing out of
her eyes, glistening as if in the borrowed light of a purer home; to
see her turn at times and bury her head in some of the tattered furs
wrapped about a part of her person, and weeping alone, and then come to
me, saying: ‘How far, dear Olive, must we yet go?’ To hear her ask, and
ask in vain, for bread, for meat, for water, for something to eat, when
nothing but their laziness denied her request; these were sights and
scenes I pray God to deliver me from in future! O that I could blot out
the impression they have indelibly written upon my mind!
“‘But we are now here, and must make the best of it,’ was the
interruption made the next morning to memories and thoughts like the
above. We were narrowly watched, and with an eye and jealousy that
seemed to indicate some design beyond and unlike the one that was
avowed to move them to purchase us, and to shut out all knowledge of
the way back to our race. We found the location and scenery of our new
home much pleasanter than the one last occupied. The valley extended
about thirty or forty miles, northeast by southwest, and varying
from two to five miles in width. Through its whole length flowed the
beautiful Colorado, in places a rapid, leaping stream, in others
making its way quietly, noiselessly over a deeper bed. It varied, like
all streams whose sources are in immediate mountains, in depth, at
different seasons of the year. During the melting of the snows that
clothed the mountain-tops to the north, when we came among the Mohaves,
it came roaring and thundering along its rock-bound banks, threatening
the whole valley, and doing some damage.
“We found the Mohaves accustomed to the tillage of the soil to a
limited extent, and in a peculiar way. And it was a season of great
rejoicing when the Colorado overflowed, as it was only after overflows
that they could rely upon their soil for a crop. In the autumn they
planted the wheat carefully in hills with their fingers, and in the
spring they planted corn, melons, and a few garden vegetables.
They had, however, but a few notions, and these were crude, about
agriculture. They were utterly without skill or art in any useful
calling. When we first arrived among them the wheat sown the previous
fall had come up, and looked green and thrifty, though it did not
appear, nor was it, sufficient to maintain one-fifth of their
population. They spent more time in raising twenty spears of wheat
from one hill, than was necessary to have cultivated one acre, with
the improvements they might and should have learned in the method of
doing it. It was to us, however, an enlivening sight to see even these
scattered parcels of grain growing, clothing sections of their valley.
It was a remembrancer, and reminded us of home, (now no more ours,) and
placed us in a nearness to the customs of a civilized mode of life that
we had not realized before.
“For a time after coming among them but little was said to us; none
seemed desirous to enter into any intercourse, or inquire even, if it
had been possible for us to understand them, as to our welfare, past
or present. Topeka gave us to know that we were to remain in their
house. Indeed we were merely regarded as strange intruders, with whom
they had no sympathy, and their bearing for a while toward us seemed
to say: ‘You may live here if you can eke out an existence, by bowing
yourselves unmurmuringly to our barbarism and privations.’
“In a few days they began to direct us to work in various ways,
such as bringing wood and water, and to perform various errands of
convenience to them. Why they took the course they did I have never
been able to imagine; but it was only by degrees that their exactions
were enforced. We soon learned, however, that our condition was that of
unmitigated slavery, not to the adults merely, but to the children. In
this respect it was very much as among the Apaches. Their whimpering,
idiotic children, of not half a dozen years, very soon learned to drive
us about with all the authority of an Eastern lord. And these filthy
creatures would go in quest of occasions, seemingly to gratify their
love of command; and any want of hurried attention to them was visited
upon us by punishment, either by whipping or the withholding of our
food. Besides, the adults of the tribe enjoyed the sport of seeing us
thus forced into submission to their children.
“The Colorado had overflown during the winter, and there had been
considerable rain. The Mohaves were in high hopes for a bountiful crop
during this season. What was to them a rich harvest would be considered
in Yankee land, or in the Western states, a poor compensation for so
much time and plodding labor. For two years before they had raised
but little. Had the industry and skill of the least informed of our
agriculturists been applied to this Mohave valley, it might have been
made as productive and fruitful a spot as any I ever saw. But they
were indolent and lazy, so that it would seem impossible for ingenuity
to invent modes by which they might work to a greater disadvantage, or
waste the little of strength they did use. While their lot had cast
them into the midst of superior natural advantages, which ought to have
awakened their pride and ambition to do something for themselves, yet
they were indisposed to every fatiguing toil, unless in the chase or
war.”
Nothing during the summer of 1852 occurred to throw any light upon that
one question, to these captive girls the all-absorbing one, one which,
like an everywhere present spirit, haunted them day and night, as to
the probabilities of their ever escaping from Indian captivity. It was
not long before their language, of few words, was so far understood
as to make it easy to understand the Mohaves in conversation. Every
day brought to their ears expressions, casually dropped, showing their
spite and hate to the white race. They would question their captives
closely, seeking to draw from them any discontent they might feel in
their present condition. They taunted them, in a less ferocious manner
than the Apaches, but with every evidence of an equal hate, about the
good-for-nothing whites.
“At times, when some of their friends were visiting in the neighborhood
of our valley, they would call for the captives that they might
see them. One day, while one of the sub-chiefs and his family were
visiting at Espaniola’s house, Mary and I were out a little from the
house singing, and were overheard. This aroused their curiosity, and
we were called, and many questions were put to us as to what we were
singing, where we learned to sing, and if the whites were good singers.
Mary and I, at their request, sang them some of our Sabbath-school
hymns, and some of the short children’s songs we had learned. After
this we were teased very much to sing to them. Several times a small
string of beads was made up among them and presented to us for singing
to them for two or three hours; also pieces of red flannel, (an article
that to them was the most valuable of any they could possess,) of which
after some time we had several pieces. These we managed to attach
together with ravelings, and wore them upon our persons. The beads we
wore about our necks, squaw fashion.”
Many of them were anxious to learn the language of the whites; among
these one Ccearekae, a young man of some self-conceit and pride.
He asked the elder of the girls, “How do you like living with the
Mohaves?” To which she replied, “I do not like it so well as among the
whites, for we do not have enough to eat.”
Ccearekae. “We have enough to satisfy us; you Americanos (a term also
by them learned of the Mexicans) work hard, and it does you no good; we
enjoy ourselves.”
Olive. “Well, we enjoy ourselves well at home, and all our white people
seem happier than any Indian I have seen since.”
Ccearekae. “Our great fathers worked just as you whites do, and they
had many nice things to wear; but the flood came and swept the old
folks away, and a white son of the family stole all the arts, with the
clothing, etc., and the Mohaves have had none since.”
Olive. “But if our people had this beautiful valley they would till it,
and raise much grain. You Mohaves don’t like to work, and you say you
do not have enough to eat; then it is because you are lazy.”
“At this his wrath was aroused, and with angry words and countenance
he left. I frequently told them how grain, and cattle, and fowls would
abound, if such good land was under the control of the whites. This
would sometimes kindle their wrath, and flirts, and taunts, and again
at other times their curiosity. One day several of them were gathered,
and questioning about our former homes, and the white nation, and the
way by which a living was made, etc. I told them of plowing the soil.
They then wanted to see the figure of a plow. I accordingly, with
sticks and marks in the sand, made as good a plow as a girl of fifteen
would be expected, perhaps, to make out of such material; drew the oxen
and hitched them to my plow, and told them how it would break the soil.
This feasted their curiosity a while, but ended in a volley of scorn
and mockery to me and the race of whites, and a general outburst of
indignant taunts about their meanness.
“They were very anxious to know how breaking up of the soil would make
grain grow; of what use it was; whether women labored in raising grain.
We told them of milking the cows, and how our white people mowed the
grass and fattened cattle, and many other things, to which they gave
the ear of a curiosity plainly beyond what they wanted us to understand
they cared about it.
“I told them of the abundance that rewards white labor, while they
had so little. They said: ‘Your ancestors were dishonest, and their
children are weak, and that by and by the pride and good living of the
present whites would ruin them. You whites,’ continued they, ‘have
forsaken nature and want to possess the earth, but you will not be
able.’ In thus conversing with them I learned of a superstition they
hold as to the origin of the distinction existing among the red and
white races.
“It was as follows: They said, pointing to a high mountain at the
northern end of the valley, (the highest in the vicinity,) there was
once a flood in ancient time that covered all the world but that
mountain, and all the present races then were merged in one family,
and this family was saved from the general deluge by getting upon that
mountain. They said that this antediluvian family was very large, and
had great riches, clothing, cattle, horses, and much to eat. They
said that after the water subsided one of the family took all the
cattle and our kind of clothing, and went north, was turned from red to
white, and so there settled. That another part of this family took deer
skins and bark, and from these the Indians came. They held that this
ancient family were all of red complexion until the progenitor of the
whites stole, then he was turned white. They said the Hiccos (dishonest
whites) would lose their cattle yet; that this thieving would turn upon
themselves. They said remains of the old ‘big house,’ in which this
ancient family lived, were up there yet; also pieces of bottles, broken
dishes, and remnants of all the various kinds of articles used by them.
“We were told by them that this venerated spot had, ever since the
flood, been the abode of spirits; (Hippoweka, the name for spirit;) and
that these spirits were perfectly acquainted with all the doings, and
even the secret motives and character, of each individual of the tribe.
And also that it was a place consecrated to these spirits, and if the
feet of mortals should presume to tread this enchanted spirit-land,
a fire would burst from the mountain and instantly consume them,
except it be those who are selected and appointed by these spirits
to communicate some special message to the tribe. This favored class
were generally the physicians of the tribe. And when a war project
was designed by these master spirits, they signified the bloody
intention by causing the mountains to shoot forth lurid tongues of
fire, visible only to the revelators. All their war plans and the time
of their execution, their superstition taught them, were communicated
by the flame-lit pinnacle to those depositories of the will of the
spirits, and by them, under professed superhuman dictation, the time,
place, object, and method of the war were communicated to the chief.
Yet the power of the chief was absolute, and when his _practical_
wisdom suggested, these wizards always found a license by a second
consultation to modify the conflict, or change the time and method of
its operation.
“It was their belief that in the region of this mountain there was
held in perpetual chains the spirit of every ‘Hicco’ that they had
been successful in slaying; and that the souls of all such were there
eternally doomed to torment of the fiercest quenchless fires, and the
Mohave by whose hand the slaughter was perpetrated, would be exalted to
eternal honors and superior privileges therefor.
“It was with strange emotions, after listening to this superstitious
tale, that our eyes rested upon that old bald peak, and saw within the
embrace of its internal fires, the spirits of many of our own race,
and thought of their being bound by this Mohave legend to miseries so
extreme, and woes so unmitigated, and a revenge so insatiate.
“But according to their belief we could only expect a like fate by
attempting their rescue, and we did not care enough for the professed
validness of their faith to risk companionship with them, even for the
purpose of attempting to unbind the chains of their tormenting bondage;
and we turned away, most heartily pitying them for their subjection to
so gross a superstition, without any particular concern for those who
had been appointed by its authority to its vengeance. We felt that if
the Hiccos could manage to escape all other hells, they could manage
this one without our sympathy or help.
“There was little game in the Mohave Valley, and of necessity little
meat was used by this tribe. At some seasons of the year, winter and
spring, they procure fish from a small lake in the vicinity. This was
a beautiful little body of water at freshet seasons, but in the dry
seasons became a loathsome mudhole. In their producing season, the
Mohaves scarcely raised a four months’ supply, yet they might have
raised for the whole year as well. Often I thought, as I saw garden
vegetables and grain plucked ere they were grown, to be devoured by
these lazy ‘live to-day’ savages, I should delight to see the hand of
the skillful agriculturist upon that beautiful valley, with the Mohaves
standing by to witness its capabilities for producing.
“We spent most of this summer in hard work. We were, for a long time,
roused at the break of day, baskets were swung upon our shoulders, and
we were obliged to go from six to eight miles for the ‘Musquite,’ a
seed or berry growing upon a bush about the size of our Manzanita. In
the first part of the season, this tree bloomed a beautiful flower,
and after a few weeks a large seed-bud could be gathered from it, and
this furnished what is truly to be called their staple article of
subsistence. We spent from twilight to twilight again, for a long time,
in gathering this. And often we found it impossible, from its scarcity
that year, to fill our basket in a day, as we were required; and for
failing to do this we seldom escaped a chastisement. This seed, when
gathered, was hung up in their huts to be thoroughly dried, and to
be used when their vegetables and grain should be exhausted. I could
endure myself, the task daily assigned me, but to see the demands and
exactions made upon little Mary Ann, day after day, by these unfeeling
wretches, as many of them were, when her constitution was already
broken down, and she daily suffering the most excruciating pains from
the effects of barbarity she had already received; this was a more
severe trial than all I had to perform of physical labor. And I often
felt as though it would be a sad relief to see her sink into the grave,
beyond the touch and oppression of the ills and cruel treatment she was
subjected to. But there were times when she would enliven after rest,
which from her utter inability they were obliged to grant.
“We were accused by our captors several times during this season, of
designing and having plotted already to make our escape. Some of them
would frequently question and annoy us much to discover, if possible,
our feelings and our intentions in reference to our captivity. Though
we persisted in denying any purpose to attempt our escape, many of
them seemed to disbelieve us, and would warn us against any such
undertaking, by assuring us they would follow us, if it were necessary,
quite to the white settlements, and would torment us in the most
painful manner, if we were ever to be recaptured.
“One day, while we were sitting in the hut of the chief, having just
returned from a root-digging excursion, there came two of their
physicians attended by the chief and several others, to the door of
the hut. The chief’s wife then bade us go out upon the yard, and told
us that the physicians were going to put marks on our faces. It was
with much difficulty that we could understand, however, at first, what
was their design. We soon, however, by the motions accompanying the
commands of the wife of the chief, came to understand that they were
going to tattoo our faces.
“We had seen them do this to some of their female children, and we
had often conversed with each other about expressing the hope that we
should be spared from receiving their marks upon us. I ventured to
plead with them for a few moments that they would not put those ugly
marks upon our faces. But it was in vain. To all our expostulations
they only replied in substance that they knew why we objected to it;
that we expected to return to the whites, and we would be ashamed of
it then; but that it was their resolution we should never return, and
that as we belonged to them we should wear their ‘Ki-e-chook.’ They
said further, that if we should get away, and they should find us among
other tribes, or if some other tribes should steal us, they would by
this means know us.
“They then pricked the skin in small regular rows on our chins with a
very sharp stick, until they bled freely. They then dipped these same
sticks in the juice of a certain weed that grew on the banks of the
river, and then in the powder of a blue stone that was to be found in
low water, in some places along the bed of the stream, (the stone they
first burned until it would pulverize easy, and in burning it turned
nearly black,) and pricked this fine powder into these lacerated parts
of the face.
“The process was somewhat painful, though it pained us more for two
or three days after than at the time of its being done. They told us
this could never be taken from the face, and that they had given us a
different mark from the one worn by their own females, as we saw, but
the same with which they marked all their own captives, and that they
could claim us in whatever tribe they might find us.
“The autumn was by far the easiest portion of the year for us. To
multiply words would not give any clearer idea to the reader of our
condition. It was one continual routine of drudgery. Toward spring
their grains were exhausted. There was but little rain, not enough
to raise the Colorado near the top of its banks. The Mohaves became
very uneasy about their wheat in the ground. It came up much later
than usual, and looked sickly and grew tardily after it was out of
the ground. It gave a poor, wretched promise at the best for the next
year. Ere it was fairly up there were not provisions or articles of any
kind to eat in the village any one night to keep its population two
days. We found that the people numbered really over fifteen hundred.
We were now driven forth every morning by the first break of day, cold
and sometimes damp, with rough, bleak winds, to glean the old, dry
musquite seed that chanced to have escaped the fatiguing search of the
summer and autumn months. From this on to the time of gathering the
scanty harvest of that year, we were barely able to keep soul and body
together. And the return for all our vigorous labor was a little dry
seed in small quantities. And all this was put forth under the most
sickening apprehensions of a worse privation awaiting us the next year.
This harvest was next to nothing. No rain had fallen during the spring
to do much good.
“Above what was necessary for seeding again, there was not one month’s
supply when harvest was over. We had gathered less during the summer of
‘musquite,’ and nothing but starvation could be expected. This seemed
to throw the sadness of despair upon our condition, and to blot all our
faint but fond hopes of reaching our native land. We knew, or thought
we knew, that in case of an extremity our portion must be meted out
after these voracious, unfeeling idlers had supplied themselves. We
had already seen that a calamity or adversity had the effect to make
these savages more savage and implacable. I felt more keenly for Mary
Ann than myself. She often said (for we were already denied the larger
half necessary to satisfy our appetites) that she ‘could not live long
without something more to eat.’ She would speak of the plenty that she
had at home, and that might now be there, and sometimes would rather
chide me for making no attempts to escape. ‘O, if I could only get one
dish of bread and milk,’ she would frequently say, ‘I could enjoy it
so well!’ They ground their seed between stones, and with water made a
mush, and we spent many mournful hours of conversation over our gloomy
state as we saw the supply of this tasteless, nauseating ‘_musquite
mush_’ failing, and that the season of our almost sole dependence upon
it was yet but begun.
“It was not unfrequent that a death occurred among them by the neglect
and laziness so characteristic of the Indian. One day I was out
gathering chottatoe, when I was suddenly surprised and frightened by
running upon one of the victims of this stupid, barbarous inhumanity.
He was a tall, bony Indian of about thirty years. His eye was rather
sunken, his visage marred, as if he had passed through extreme
hardships. He was lying upon the ground, moaning and rolling from side
to side in agony the most acute and intense. I looked upon him, and my
heart was moved with pity. Little Mary said, ‘I will go up and find out
what ails him.’ On inquiry we soon found that he had been for some time
ill, but not so as to become utterly helpless. And not until one of
their number is entirely disabled, do they seem to manifest any feeling
or concern for him. The physician was called, and soon decided that he
was not in the least diseased. He told Mary that nothing ailed him save
the want of food; said that he had been unable for some time to procure
his food; that his friends devoured any that was brought into camp
without dividing it with him; that he had been gradually running down,
and now he wanted to die. O there was such dejection, such a forlorn,
despairing look written upon his countenance as made an impression upon
my mind which is yet vivid and mournful.
“He soon died, and then his father and all his relatives commenced
a hideous, barbarous howling and jumping, indicative of the most
poignant grief. Whether their sorrowing was a matter of conscience or
bereavement, none could tell, but it would improve my opinion of them
to believe it originated with the former.
“Such scenes were not far between, and yet these results of their
laziness and want of enterprise and humanity, when thickening upon
them, had no effect to beget a different policy or elevate them to that
life of happiness, thrift, and love which would have prolonged their
years, and removed the dismal, gloomy aspect of every-day life among
them.
“We were now put upon a stinted allowance, and the restrictions upon
us were next to the taking the life of Mary Ann. During the second
autumn, and at the time spoken of above, the chief’s wife gave us some
seed-grain, corn and wheat, showed us about thirty feet square of
ground marked off upon which we might plant it and raise something for
ourselves. We planted our wheat, and carefully concealed the handful
of corn and melon-seeds to plant in the spring. This we enjoyed very
much. It brought to our minds the extended grain-fields that waved
about our cottage in Illinois, of the beautiful spring when winter’s
ice and chill had departed before the breath of a warmer season, of the
May-mornings, when we had gone forth to the plow-fields and followed
barefooted in the new-turned furrow, and of the many long days of
grain-growing and ripening in which we had watched the daily change in
the fields of wheat and oats.
“These hours of plying our fingers (not sewing) in the ground flew
quickly by, but not without their tears and forebodings that ere we
could gather the results, famine might lay our bodies in the dust.
Indeed we could see no means by which we could possibly maintain
ourselves to harvest again. Winter, a season of sterility and frozen
nights, was fast approaching, and to add to my desolateness, I plainly
saw that grief, or want of food, or both, were slowly, and inch by
inch, enfeebling and wasting away Mary Ann.
“The Indians said that about sixty miles away there was a ‘Taneta’
(tree) that bore a berry called ‘Oth-to-toa,’ upon which they had
subsisted for some time several years before, but it could be reached
only by a mountainous and wretched way of sixty miles. Soon a large
party made preparations and set out in quest of this ‘life-preserver.’
Many of those accustomed to bear burdens were not able to go. Mary Ann
started, but soon gave out and returned. A few Indians accompanied us,
but it was a disgrace for them to bear burdens; this was befitting
only to squaws and captives. I was commanded to pick up my basket and
go with them, and it was only with much pleading I could get them to
spare my sister the undertaking when she gave out. I had borne that
‘Chiechuck’ empty and full over many hundred miles, but never over so
rugged a way, nor when it seemed so heavy as now.
“We reached the place on the third day, and found the taneta to be a
bush, and very much resembling the musquite, only with a much larger
leaf. It grew to a height of from five to thirty feet. The berry was
much more pleasant to the taste than the musquite; the juice of it,
when extracted and mixed with water, was very much like the orange. The
tediousness and perils of this trip were very much enlivened with the
hope of getting something with which to nourish and prolong the life of
Mary. She was very much depressed, and appeared quite ill when I left
her.
“After wandering about for two days with but little gathered, six of
us started in quest of some place where the oth-to-toa might be more
abundant. We traveled over twenty miles away from our temporary camp.
We found tanetas in abundance, and loaded with the berry. We had
reached a field of them we judged never found before.
“Our baskets being filled, we hastened to join the camp party before
they should start for the village. We soon lost our way, the night
being dark, and wandered without water the whole night, and were
nearly all sick from eating our oth-to-toa berry. Toward day, nearly
exhausted, and three of our number very sick, we were compelled to
halt. We watched over and nursed the sick, sweating them with the
medical leaf always kept with us, and about the only medicine used by
the Mohaves. But our efforts were vain, for before noon the three had
breathed their last. A fire was kindled and their bodies were burned;
and for several hours I expected to be laid upon one of those funeral
pyres in that deep, dark, and almost trackless wilderness.
“I think I suffered more during those two or three hours in mind and
body than at any other period of my captivity in the same time. We
feared to stay only as long as was necessary, for our energies were
well-nigh exhausted. We started back, and I then saw an Indian carry a
basket. One of them took the baskets of the dead, and kept up with us.
The rest of our party went howling through the woods in the most dismal
manner. The next day we found the camp, and found we had been nearly
around it. We were soon on our way, and by traveling all one night we
were at the village.
“It would be impossible to put upon paper any true idea of my feelings
and sufferings during this trip, on account of Mary. Had it not been
for her I could have consented to have laid down and died with the
three we buried. I did not then expect to get back. I feared she would
not live, and I found on reaching the village that she had materially
failed, and had been furnished with scarcely food enough to keep her
alive. I sought by every possible care to recruit her, and for a short
time she revived. The berry we had gathered, while it would add to
one’s flesh, and give an appearance of healthiness, (if the stomach
could bear it,) had but little strengthening properties in it.
“I traveled whole days together in search of the eggs of blackbirds
for Mary Ann. These eggs at seasons were plenty, but not then. These
she relished very much. I cherished for a short time the hope that she
might, by care and nursing, be kept up until spring, when we could get
fish. The little store we had brought in was soon greedily devoured,
and with the utmost difficulty could we get a morsel. The ground was
searched for miles, and every root that could nourish human life
was gathered. The Indians became reckless and quarrelsome, and with
unpardonable selfishness each would struggle for his own life in utter
disregard of his fellows. Mary Ann failed fast. She and I were whole
days at a time without anything to eat; when by some chance, or the
kindness of the chief’s daughter, we would get a morsel to satisfy our
cravings. Often would Mary say to me, ‘I am well enough, but I want
something to eat; then I should be well.’ I could not leave her over
night. Roots there were none I could reach by day and return; and when
brought in, our lazy lords would take them for their own children.
Several children had died, and more were in a dying state. Each death
that occurred was the occasion of a night or day of frantic howling
and crocodile mourning. Mary was weak and growing weaker, and I gave
up in despair. I sat by her side for a few days, most of the time only
begging of the passers-by to give me something to keep Mary alive.
Sometimes I succeeded. Had it not been for the wife and daughter of the
chief, we could have obtained nothing. They seemed really to _feel_
for us, and I have no doubt would have done more if in their power. My
sister would not complain, but beg for something to eat.
“She would often think and speak in the most affectionate manner of
‘dear pa and ma,’ and with confidence she would say, ‘they suffered an
awful death, but they are now safe and happy in a better and brighter
land, though I am left to starve among savages.’ She seemed now to
regard life no longer as worth preserving, and she kept constantly
repeating expressions of longing to die and be removed from a gloomy
captivity to a world where no tear of sorrow dims the eye of innocence
and beauty. She called me to her side one day and said: ‘Olive, I
shall die soon; you will live and get away. Father and mother have got
through with sufferings, and are now at rest; I shall soon be with them
and those dear brothers and sisters.’ She then asked me to sing, and
she joined her sweet, clear voice, without faltering, with me, and we
tried to sing the evening hymn we had been taught at the family altar:
‘The day is past and gone,
The evening shades appear,’ etc.
“My grief was too great. The struggling emotions of my mind I tried
to keep from her, but could not. She said: ‘Don’t grieve for me; I
have been a care to you all the while. I don’t like to leave you here
all alone, but God is with you, and our heavenly Father will keep and
comfort those who trust in him. O, I am so glad that we were taught
to love and serve the Saviour.’ She then asked me to sing the hymn
commencing:
‘How tedious and tasteless the hours
When Jesus no longer I see.’
“I tried to sing, but could not get beyond the first line. But it did
appear that visions of a bright world were hers, as with a clear,
unfaltering strain she sang the entire hymn. She gradually sank away
without much pain, and all the time happy. She had not spent a day in
our captivity without asking God to pardon, to bless, and to save. I
was faint, and unable to stand upon my feet long at a time. My cravings
for food were almost uncontrollable; and at the same time, among
unfeeling savages, to watch her gradual but sure approach to the vale
of death, from want of food that their laziness alone prevented us
having in abundance, this was a time and scene upon which I can only
gaze with horror, and the very remembrance of which I would blot out if
I could.
“She lingered thus for several days. She suffered much, mostly from
hunger. Often did I hear, as I sat near her weeping, some Indian coming
near break out in a rage, because I was permitted to spend my time thus
with her; that they had better kill Mary, then I could go, as I ought
to be made to go, and dig roots and procure food for the rest of them.
“O what moments, what hours were these! Every object in all the fields
of sight seemed to wear a horrid gloom.
“One day, during her singing, quite a crowd gathered about her and
seemed much surprised. Some of them would stand for whole hours and
gaze upon her countenance as if enchained by a strange sight, and
this while some of their own kindred were dying in other parts of the
village. Among these was the wife of the chief, ‘Aespaneo.’ I ought
here to say that neither that woman nor her daughter ever gave us any
unkind treatment. She came up one day, hearing Mary sing, and bent
for some time silently over her. She looked in her face, felt of her,
and suddenly broke out in a most piteous lamentation. She wept, and
wept from the heart and aloud. I never saw a parent seem to feel more
keenly over a dying child. She sobbed, she moaned, she howled. And thus
bending over and weeping she stood the whole night. The next morning,
as I sat near my sister, shedding my tears in my hands, she called me
to her side and said: ‘I am willing to die. O, I shall be so much
better off there!’ and her strength failed. She tried to sing, but was
too weak.
[Illustration: DEATH OF MARY ANN AT THE INDIAN CAMP.]
“A number of the tribe, men, women, and children, were about her, the
chief’s wife watching her every moment. She died in a few moments after
her dying words quoted above.
“She sank to the sleep of death as quietly as sinks the innocent infant
to sleep in its mother’s arms.
“When I saw that she was dead, I could but give myself up to
loneliness, to wailing and despair. ‘The last of our family dead, and
all of them by tortures inflicted by Indian savages,’ I exclaimed to
myself. I went to her and tried to find remaining life, but no pulse,
no breath was there. I could but adore the mercy that had so wisely
thrown a vail of concealment over these three years of affliction. Had
their scenes been mapped out to be read beforehand, and to be received
step by step, as they were really meted out to us, no heart could have
sustained them.
“I wished and most earnestly desired that I might at once lie down in
the same cold, icy embrace that I saw fast stiffening the delicate
limbs of that dear sister.
“I reasoned at times, that die I must and soon, and that I had the
right to end my sufferings at once, and prevent these savages by cold,
cruel neglect, murdering me by the slow tortures of a starvation that
had already its score of victims in our village. The only heart that
shared my woes was now still, the only heart (as I then supposed)
that survived the massacre of seven of our family group was now cold
in death, and why should I remain to feel the gnawings of hunger and
pain a few days, and then, without any to care for me, unattended and
uncared for, lay down and die. At times I resolved to take a morsel of
food by stealth, (if it could be found,) and make a desperate attempt
to escape.
“There were two, however, who seemed not wholly insensible to my
condition, these were the wife and daughter of the chief. They
manifested a sympathy that had not gathered about me since the first
closing in of the night of my captivity upon me. The Indians, at the
direction of the chief, began to make preparations to burn the body
of my sister. This, it seemed, I could not endure. I sought a place
to weep and pray, and I then tasted the blessedness of realizing that
there is One upon whom the heart’s heaviest load can be placed, and He
never disappointed me. My dark, suicidal thoughts fled, and I became
resigned to my lot. Standing by the corpse, with my eyes fastened on
that angel-countenance of Mary Ann, the wife of the chief came to me
and gave me to understand that she had by much entreaty, obtained the
permission of her lord to give me the privilege of disposing of the
dead body as I should choose. This was a great consolation, and I
thanked her most earnestly. It lifted a burden from my mind that caused
me to weep tears of gratitude, and also to note the finger of that
Providence to whom I had fully committed myself, and whom I plainly saw
strewing my way with tokens of his kind regards toward me. The chief
gave me two blankets, and in these they wrapped the corpse. Orders
were then given to two Indians to follow my directions in disposing of
the body. I selected a spot in that little garden ground, where I had
planted and wept with my dear sister. In this they dug a grave about
five feet deep, and into it they gently lowered the remains of my last,
my only sister, and closed her last resting-place with the sand. The
reader may imagine my feelings, as I stood by that grave. The whole
painful past seemed to rush across my mind, as I lingered there. It was
the first and only grave in all that valley, and that inclosing my own
sister. Around me was a large company of half-dressed, fierce-looking
savages, some serious, some mourning, some laughing over this novel
method of disposing of the dead; others in breathless silence watched
the movements of that dark hour, with a look that seemed to say, ‘This
is the way white folks do,’ and exhibiting no feeling or care beyond
that. I longed to plant a rose upon her grave, but the Mohaves knew no
beauty, and read no lesson in flowers, and so this mournful pleasure
was denied me.
“When the excitement of that hour passed, with it seemed to pass my
energy and ambition. I was faint and weak, drowsy and languid. I found
but little strength from the scant rations dealt out to me. I was
rapidly drooping, and becoming more and more anxious to shut my eyes to
all about me, and sink to a sweet, untroubled sleep beneath that green
carpeted valley. This was the only time in which, without any reserve,
I really longed to die, and cease at once to breathe and suffer. That
same woman, the wife of the chief, came again to the solace and relief
of my destitution and woe. I was now able to walk but little, and
had resigned all care and anxiety, and concluded to wait until those
burning sensations caused by want of nourishment should consume the
last thread of my life, and shut my eyes and senses in the darkness
that now hid them from my sister.
“Just at this time this kind woman came to me with some corn gruel in a
hollow stone. I marveled to know how she had obtained it. The handful
of seed corn that my sister and I had hid in the ground, between two
stones, did not come to my mind. But this woman, this Indian woman, had
uncovered a part of what she had deposited against spring planting,
had ground it to a coarse meal, and of it prepared this gruel for me.
I took it, and soon she brought me more. I began to revive. I felt
a new life and strength given me by this morsel, and was cheered by
the unlooked-for exhibition of sympathy that attended it. She had the
discretion to deny the unnatural cravings that had been kindled by the
small quantity she brought first, and dealt a little at a time, until
within three days I gained a vigor and cheerfulness I had not felt for
weeks. She bestowed this kindness in a sly and unobserved manner, and
enjoined secrecy upon me, for a reason which the reader can judge. She
had done it when some of her own kin were in a starving condition.
It waked up a hope within my bosom that reached beyond the immediate
kindness. I could not account for it but by looking to that Power in
whose hands are the hearts of the savage as well as the civilized man.
I gathered a prospect from these unexpected and kindly interpositions,
of an ultimate escape from my bondage. It was the hand of God, and
I would do violence to the emotions I then felt and still feel,
violence to the strong determination I then made to acknowledge all
his benefits, if I should neglect this opportunity to give a public,
grateful record of my sense of his goodness.
“The woman had buried that corn to keep it from the lazy crowd about
her, who would have devoured it in a moment, and in utter recklessness
of next year’s reliance. She did it when deaths by starvation and
sickness were occurring every day throughout the settlement. Had it not
been for her, I must have perished. From this circumstance I learned
to chide my hasty judgment against ALL the Indian race, and also, that
kindness is not always a stranger to the untutored and untamed bosom. I
saw in this that their savageness is as much a fruit of their ignorance
as of any want of a susceptibility to feel the throbbings of true
humanity, if they could be properly appealed to.
“By my own exertions I was able now to procure a little upon which to
nourish my half-starved stomach. By using about half of my seed corn,
and getting an occasional small dose of bitter, fermented oth-to-toa
soup, I managed to drag my life along to March, 1854. During this
month and April I procured a few small roots, at a long distance from
the village; also some fish from the lake. I took particular pains to
guard the little wheat garden that we had planted the autumn before,
and I also planted a few kernels of corn and some melon seeds. Day
after day I watched this little ‘mutautea,’ lest the birds might bring
upon me another winter like that now passed. In my absence Aespaneo
would watch it for me. As the fruit of my care and vigilant watching, I
gathered about one half bushel of corn, and about the same quantity of
wheat. My melons were destroyed.
“During the growing of this crop, I subsisted principally upon a small
root,[1] about the size of a hazel-nut, which I procured by traveling
long distances, with fish. Sometimes, after a long and fatiguing
search, I would procure a handful of these roots, and, on bringing them
to camp, was compelled to divide them with some stout, lazy monsters,
who had been sunning themselves all day by the river.
“I also came near losing my corn by the blackbirds. Driven by the
same hunger, seemingly, that was preying upon the human tribe, they
would fairly darken the air, and it was difficult to keep them off,
especially as I was compelled to be absent to get food for immediate
use. But they were not the only robbers I had to contend against.
There were some who, like our white loafers, had a great horror
of honest labor, and they would shun even a little toil, with a
conscientious abhorrence, at any hazard. They watched my little
corn-patch with hungry and thieving eyes, and, but for the chief,
would have eaten the corn green and in the ear. As harvest drew near
I watched, from before daylight until dark again, to keep off these
red vultures and the blackbirds from a spot of ground as large as an
ordinary dwelling-house. I had to do my accustomed share of musquite
gathering, also, in June and July. This we gathered in abundance. The
Colorado overflowed this winter and spring, and the wheat and corn
produced well, so that in autumn the tribe was better provided with
food than it had been for several years.
“The social habits of these Indians, and the traits of character on
which they are founded, and to which they give expression, may be
illustrated by a single instance as well as a thousand. The portion
of the valley over which the population extends, is about forty miles
long. Their convivial seasons were occasions of large gatherings,
tumultuous rejoicings, and (so far as their limited productions
would allow) of excess in feasting. The year 1854 was one of unusual
bounty and thrift. They planted more than usual; and by labor and the
overflow of the river, the seed deposited brought forth an unparalleled
increase. During the autumn of that year, the residents of the north
part of the valley set apart a day for feasting and merry-making.
Notice was given about four weeks beforehand; great preparations were
made, and a large number invited. Their supply for the appetite on
that day consisted of wheat, corn, pumpkins, beans, etc. These were
boiled, and portions of them mixed with ground seed, such as serececa,
(seed of a weed,) moeroco, (of pumpkins.) On the day of the feast the
Indians masked themselves, some with bark, some with paint, some with
skins. On the day previous to the feast, the Indians of our part of the
valley, who had been favored with an invitation, were gathered at the
house of the chief, preparatory to taking the trip in company to the
place of the feast. Some daubed their faces and hair with mud, others
with paint, so as to give to each an appearance totally different from
his or her natural state. I was told that I could go along with the
rest. This to me was no privilege, as I knew too well what cruelty and
violence they were capable of when excited, as on their days of public
gathering they were liable to be. However, I was safer there than with
those whom they left behind.
“The Indians went slowly, sometimes in regular, and sometimes in
irregular march, yelling, howling, singing, and gesticulating, until
toward night they were wrought up to a perfect phrenzy. They halted
about one mile from the “north settlement,” and after building a fire,
commenced their war-dance, which they kept up until about midnight. On
this occasion I witnessed some of the most shameful indecencies, on the
part of both male and female, that came to my eye for the five years of
my stay among Indians.
“The next morning the Indians who had prepared the feast (some of
whom had joined in the dance of the previous evening) came with their
squaws, each bearing upon their heads a Coopoesech, containing a cake,
or a stone dish filled with soup, or boiled vegetables. These cakes
were made of wheat, ground, and mixed with boiled pumpkins. This dough
was rolled out sometimes to two feet in diameter; then placed in hot
sand, a leaf and a layer of sand laid over the loaf, and a fire built
over the whole, until it was baked through. After depositing these
dishes, filled with their prepared dainties, upon a slight mound near
by, the whole tribe then joined in a war-dance, which lasted nearly
twelve hours. After this the dishes and their contents were taken
by our party and borne back to our homes, when and where feasting
and dancing again commenced, and continued until their supplies were
exhausted, and they from sheer weariness were glad to fly to the
embrace of sleep. It would be a ‘shame even to speak’ of all the
violence and indecency into which they plunged on these occasions.
Suffice it to say that no modesty, no sense of shame, no delicacy, that
throw so many wholesome hedges and limitations about the respective
sexes on occasions of conviviality where civilization elevates and
refines, were there to interfere with scenes the remembrance of which
creates a doubt whether these degraded bipeds belong to the human or
brute race.
“Thus ended _one_ of the many days of such performances that I
witnessed; and I found it difficult to decide whether most of barbarity
appeared in these, or at those seasons of wild excitement occasioned by
the rousing of their revengeful and brutal passions.
“Of all seasons during my captivity, these of concourse and excitement
most disgusted me with the untamed Indian. When I remember what my eyes
have witnessed, I am led to wonder and adore at my preservation for
a single year, or that my life was not brutalized, a victim to their
inhumanity.
“I felt cheerful again, only when that loneliness and desolateness
which had haunted me since Mary’s death, would sadden and depress my
spirits. The same woman that had saved my life, and furnished me with
ground and seed to raise corn and wheat, and watched it for me for
many days, now procured from the chief a place where I might store
it, with the promise from him that every kernel should go for my own
maintenance.”
It is not to go again over the melancholy events that have been
rehearsed in the last chapter, that we ask the reader to tarry for a
moment ere his eye begins to trace the remaining scenes of Olive’s
captivity, which furnish the next chapter, and in which we see her
under the light of a flickering, unsteady hope of a termination of her
captivity either by rescue or death.
But when in haste this chapter was penned for the first edition, it was
then, and has since been felt by the writer, that there was an interest
hanging about the events of the same, especially upon the closing days
and hours of little Mary’s brief life, that properly called, according
to the intent of this narrative, for a longer stay. A penning of mere
facts does not set forth, or glance at _all_ that clusters about that
pale, dying child as she lies in the door of the tent, the object of
the enchained curious attention of the savages, by whose cold neglect
the flower of her sweet life was thus nipped in the bud. And we feel
confident of sharing, to some extent, the feelings of the sensitive
and intelligent reader, when we state that the two years’ suffering,
by the pressure of which her life was arrested, and the circumstances
surrounding those dying moments, make up a record, than which seldom
has there been one that appeals to the tender sensibilities of our
being more directly, or to our serious consideration more profitably.
Look at these two girls in the light of the first camp-fire that glowed
upon the faces of themselves and their captors, the first dreary
evening of their captivity. By one hour’s cruel deeds and murder
they had suddenly been bereft of parents, brothers, and sisters, and
consigned to the complete control of a fiendish set of men, of the
cruelty of whose tender mercies they had already received the first and
unerring chapter. Look at them toiling day and night, from this on for
several periods of twenty-four hours, up rugged ascents, bruised and
whipped by the ruggedness of their way and the mercilessness of their
lords. Their strength failing; the distance between them and the home
and way of the white man increasing; the dreariness and solitude of the
region enbosoming them thickening; and each step brooded over by the
horrors left behind, and the worse horrors that sat upon the brightest
future that at the happiest rovings of fancy could be possibly
anticipated.
In imagination we lean out our souls to listen to the sobs and
sighs that went up from those hearts--hearts bleeding from wounds
and pains tenfold more poignant than those that lacerated and wrung
their quivering flesh. We look upon them, as with their captors they
encircle the wild light of the successive camp-fires, kindled for long
distant halts, upon their way to the yet unseen and dreaded home of the
“inhabitants of rocks and tents.” We look upon them as they are ushered
into their new home, greeted with the most inhuman and terror-kindling
reception given them by this unfeeling horde of land-sharks; thus to
look, imagine, and ponder, we find enough, especially when the _age_
and _circumstances_ of these captive girls are considered, to lash our
thoughts with indignation toward their oppressors, and kindle our minds
with more than we can express with the word _sympathy_ for these their
innocent victims.
In little less than one year, and into that year is crowded all of toil
and suffering that we can credit as possible for them to survive, and
then they are sold and again _en route_ for another new and strange
home, in a wild as distant from their Apache home as that from the hill
where, but a year before, in their warm flowing blood, their moaning,
mangled kindred had been left.
Scarcely had they reached the Mohave Valley ere the elder sister saw
with pain, the sad and already apparently irremovable effects of past
hardships upon the constitution of the younger. What tenderness, what
caution, what vigilant watching, what anxious, unrelieved solicitude
mark the conduct of that noble heart toward her declining and only
sister? Indeed, what interest prompted her to do all in her power to
preserve her life? Not only her only sister, but the only one (to her
then) that remained of the family from whom they had been ruthlessly
torn. And should her lamp of life cease, thereby would be extinguished
the last earthly solace and cordial for the dark prison life that
inclosed her, and that threw its walls of gloom and adamant between
her and the abodes and sunshine of civilized life. Yet death had
marked that little cherub girl for an early victim. Slowly, and yet
uncomplainingly, does her feeble frame and strength yield to the heavy
hand of woe and want that met her, in all the ghastliness and horror
of unchangeable doom, at every turn and hour of her weary days. What
mystery hangs upon events and persons! How impenetrable the permissions
of Providence! How impalpable and evasive of all our wisdom _that
secret power_, by which cherished plans and purposes are often shaped
to conclusions and terminations so wide of the bright design that
lighted them on to happy accomplishment in the mind of the mortal
proposer!
Mary Ann had been the fondly cherished, and tenderly nursed idol of
that domestic group. Early had she exhibited a precocity in intellect,
and in moral sensitiveness and attainment, that had made her the
subject of a peculiar parental affection, and the ever cheerful
radiating center of light, and love, and happiness to the remainder
of the juvenile family. But she ever possessed a strength of body and
vigor of health far inferior, and disproportioned to her mental and
moral progress. She was a correct reader at four years. She was kept
almost constantly at school, both from her choice, and the promise she
gave to delighted parents of a future appreciation and good improvement
of these advantages. With the early exhibition of an earnest thirst for
knowledge that she gave, there was also a strict regard for truth, and
a hearty, happy obedience to the law of God and the authority of her
parents. At five years and a half she had read her Bible through. She
was a constant attendant upon Sabbath school, into all the exercises of
which she entered with delight; and to her rapid improvement and profit
in the subjects with which she there became intimate and identified,
may be attributed the moral superiority she displayed during her
captivity.
She had a clear, sweet voice, and the children now live in this state
who have witnessed the earnestness and rapture with which she joined in
singing the hymns allotted to Sabbath-school hours. O how little of the
sad after-part of Mary’s life entered into the minds of those parents
as thus they directed the childish, tempted steps of their little
daughter into the paths of religious pursuits and obedience.
Who shall say that the facts in her childish experience and years
herein glanced at, had not essentially to do with the spirit and
preparedness that she brought to the encountering and enduring of the
terrible fate that closed her eyes among savages at eight years of age.
As we look at her fading, withering, and wasting at the touch of cold
cruelty, the object of anxious watchings and frequent and severe
painstaking on the part of her elder sister, who spared no labor or
fatigue to glean the saving morsel to prolong her sinking life, we can
but adore that never-sleeping Goodness that had strewn her way to this
dark scene with so many preparing influences and counsels.
Young as she was, she with her sister were first to voice those hymns
of praise to the one God, in which the grateful offerings of Christian
hearts go up to him, in the ear of an untutored and demoralized tribe
of savages. Hers was the first Christian death they ever witnessed,
perhaps the last; and upon her, as with composure and cheerfulness
(not the sullen submission of which they boast) she came down to the
vale of death, they gazed with every indication of an interest and
curiosity that showed the workings of something more than the ordinary
solemnities that had gathered them about the paling cheek and quivering
lip of members of their own tribe.
Precious girl! sweet flower! nipped in the bud by untimely and
rude blasts. Yet the fragrance of the ripe virtues that budded and
blossomed upon so tender and frail a stalk shall not die. If ever
the bright throng that flame near the throne would delight to cease
their song, descend and poise on steady wing to wait the last heaving
of a suffering mortal’s bosom, that at the parting breath they might
encircle the fluttering spirit and bear it to the bosom of God, it
was when thou didst, upon the breath of sacred song, joined in by
thy living sister, yield thy spirit to Him who kindly cut short thy
sufferings that he might begin thy bliss.
A Sabbath-school scholar, dying in an Indian camp, three hundred miles
from even the nearest trail of the white man, buoyed and gladdened by
bright visions of beatitudes that make her oblivious of present pain,
and long to enter upon the future estate to which a correct and earnest
instruction had been pointing!
Who can say but that there lives the little Mohave boy or girl, or the
youth who will yet live to rehearse in the ear of a listening American
auditory, and in a rough, uncouth jargon, the wondrous impression of
that hour upon his mind.
Already we see the arms of civilization embracing a small remnant of
that waning tribe, and among its revived records, though unwritten,
we find the death of the American captive in the door of the chief’s
“_Pasiado_.” When they gathered about her at that dying moment, many
were the curious questions with which some of them sought to ascertain
the secret of her (to them) strange appearance. The sacred hymns
learned in Sabbath school and at a domestic shrine, and upon which that
little spirit now breathed its devout emotions in the ear of God, were
inquired after. They asked her where she expected to go? She told them
that she was going to a better place than the mound to which they sent
the spirits of their dead. And many questions did they ask her and
her older sister as to the extent of the knowledge they had of such a
bright world, if one there was. And though replies to many of their
queries before had been met by mockings and ridicule, yet now not one
gazed, or listened, or questioned, to manifest any disposition to taunt
or accuse at the hour of that strange dying.
The wife of the chief plied her questions with earnestness, and with
an air of sincerity, and the exhibition of the most intense mental
agitation, showing that she was not wholly incredulous of the new and
strange replies she received.
TALE OF THE TWO CAPTIVES.
One night a large company were assembled at the hut of one of the
sub-chiefs. It was said that this Indian, Adpadarama, was the
illegitimate son of the present chief, and there was considerable
dispute between him and two of the chief’s legitimate sons as to their
respective rights to the chiefship on the death of the father.
At the gathering referred to the following anecdote was related, which
is here given to show the strength of their superstitions, and the
unmitigated cruelties which are sometimes perpetrated by them under
the sanction of these barbaric beliefs. This sub-chief said that one
day, when he, in company with several of his relatives and two Cochopa
captives, was away in the mountains on a hunting-tour, his (reputed)
father fell violently sick. He grew worse for several days. One day
he was thought to be dying. “When I was convinced that he could not
live,” said Adpadarama, or to that effect, “I resolved to kill one of
the captives, and then wait until my father should die, when I would
kill the other. So I took a stone tomahawk and went out to the little
fire near the camping-tent, where they were eating some berries they
had just picked, and I told one of them to step out, for I was a going
to kill her to see if it would not save my father. Then she cried,”
(and at this he showed by signs, and frowns, and all manner of gestures
how delighted he was at her misery,) “and begged for her life. But I
went up to her and struck her twice with this tomahawk, when she fell
dead upon the ground. I then told the other that I should kill her so
soon as my father died; that I should burn them both with his body, and
then they would go to be his slaves up in yonder eliercha,” (pointing
to their heavenly hill.) “Well, about two days after my father died,
and I was mad to think that the killing of the captive had not saved
him. So I went straight and killed the other, but I killed her by
burning, so as to be sure that the flames should take her to my father
to serve him forever.”
Such are facts that dimly hint at the vague and atrocious theories that
crowd their brain and hold iron sway over their minds. And in all the
abominations and indecencies authorized by their superstitions, they
are not only prompt and faithful, but the more degrading and barbarous
the rite, the more does their zeal and enthusiasm kindle at its
performance.
Adpadarama said he burned, as soon as he returned, his father’s house,
and all his dishes, and utensils, and bark-garments, so that his father
might have them to contribute to his happiness where he had gone.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] I have several of these ground-nuts now in my possession.