THE ROMANCE OF A WILD INDIAN.
This happened during the early years of my grandmother’s life, and
concerns principally a family at Reck-woy village, at the mouth of the
river. On the south side of the river is a village named Wealth-quow,
and at this place the Indians gave a large entertainment, where many
guests had assembled to take part in the dance. This dance is commonly
known in the English language, as the “Brush Dance.” The Indians always
begin dancing these dances after sundown, and sometimes dance until
late at night. Large crowds had gathered at this dance, and among the
guests were three girl friends from across the river at Reck-woy, who
joined the dancers in their usual custom of holding a bunch of brush
over their faces, so no one would know who they were. All the dancers,
both men and women hold the bunch of brush over their faces, after the
fashion of a masquerade ball. While the dancers were making merry two
wild Indians came in and joined them, with the brush over their faces
and nobody knew who they were. When the dancers finished for a short
intermission, the three Reck-woy girls left the room and went down to
the foot of the hill, about thirty yards away where a spring gushed
out of the hill-side. Laughingly they had gone to get a drink of nice
cold water from the spring, and wash their faces in the cool refreshing
water. As they left the house the two wild Indians followed them down
to the spring, and upon reaching it, they sprang upon one of the girls,
named Os-slock-o-may and captured her, covering her mouth with their
hands so she could not scream for help, and the other two girls made
their escape back to the house to give the alarm. Everything being
favorable for the wild Indians, as the thickets grew high and dense,
and the forests being near, they were soon lost in the inky shadows
of the big trees, where they carried their captive. The two Indians
traveled with the girl all night, going in a southerly direction away
from the river, and as they went along through the darkness, she would
take small pieces of her buck skin apron and tie them to the bushes,
thus making a trail which aided her followers for a long distance. When
the alarm was given that Os-slock-o-may had been captured by the wild
Indians, the guests did not dance any more, and all the men who were
able, went in pursuit of the wild Indians, to rescue the girl. They
lost her among the dark shadows of the trees, as they could not find
any trail to follow that night, and the next morning they all started
out in hot pursuit, soon finding the trail she had left, The girl’s
supply of strings had become exhausted and therefore had no means of
leaving any further trace of the direction her captors were taking her.
However, they searched the hills, creeks and mountains for several
days, but never found her trail again, and she was given up to the
wilds, and the procession turned homeward, very sad and heart broken.
Somewhere in the depths of a dark canyon among the redwoods, the wild
Indians had carried Os-slock-o-may. When they reached their hiding
place, one of the Indians made her his wife, after the fashion of a
primeval wedding. The wild Indians are always very rich in all kinds
of Indian wealth, and this wild Indian dressed his bride in the most
beautiful of Indian dresses, made of buck skin and ornamented with
shells, and lavished wealth upon her. A little son came to their home
in the wilds, of which they were both very proud, and they watched
the little baby grow into a robust, handsome little fellow, who by
nature inherited the ways of his father, as soon as he was big enough
to walk and talk. He would run away from his mother and skip among the
trees, romp among the bushes and seemingly never grow tired of his wild
revelry; he would talk and whistle to himself, and this grieved his
mother very much, as she had tried every plan to subdue him from his
wild romping but of no avail. When the boy was about six years of age,
his mother became very lonesome for her people, and wished very much
to see them again, so one day she summoned up the courage to ask her
husband to allow her to return to her home on a visit, as she said her
folks were mourning for her as lost, having given up hopes of seeing
her alive. He consented to let her go home on a visit, and that she
could take her little boy with her, so they began to make ready for
the journey as it was a long distance, and the country was very rough.
The O-ma-ha (Devil) husband who was immensely rich, dressed his wife
in one of the most beautiful of Indian dresses, and the little boy was
also richly clad, and so they started on their journey to Reck-woy. The
wild man guided and accompanied them until they neared the village of
Wealth-quow, the village from which he had stolen her on the night of
the dance, and here as they came into a small open space over-looking
the village, he parted from his wife and little son, and they crossed
the river and went into her native village. As she entered the village
she was most beautiful to behold, dressed in the most gorgeous Indian
dress, with her little son by her side, and startled friends and
relatives, who had mourned her as dead, greeted her with much surprise
as they had mourned her loss for nearly nine years. Her folks were
over-joyed to find their long lost child restored to them, and with
hearty greetings and a royal welcome, she found herself back in the
village of her birth. With breathless interest they sat listening to
her wonderful tales concerning her life in the solemn wilds, how she
had been carried over mountain and crag, and through the huge forests,
to a strange home in the cave in a cliff of rocks, where one of the
wild men had made her his wife. In this strange cave she had enjoyed
the comforts of a luxuriant home, for her husband was exceedingly rich
and was very kind to her and their child. From her description it
seemed this cave was located at the source of Redwood Creek, which we
call Cho-lu-wer-roy, in a dark canyon, which is perhaps over a distance
of sixty miles from Reck-woy, off in a southerly direction. In a cave
of this dark canyon, surrounded on every side by the giant redwoods,
she had spent nine years of her life, listening to the sigh of the wind
among the trees and strange enchantment of the babble of the brooks
down the rocky canyon. Safe in her cave and lonely, with nothing but
nature and a wild man to comfort her, she had grown more lonely as the
years crept by in her desire to see her people once more. How they
had traveled on their journey back along the creek beds for a long
distance, over high mountains and around sheer walls of great bluffs,
and through the awful calm of dense forests and overhanging thickets,
she had at last reached the home of her birth. Parting from her devoted
husband for the first and last time, she faithfully promised to meet
him again at the close of her visit, and return with him again to the
cave in the wilds. During the first days of her visit she encouraged
her boy to associate with the children of the village. But he could
not resist the calling of that wild nature he had inherited from
his father, and all of his mother’s pleadings proved of no avail in
changing his character. He would watch his opportunity and run away
from the other children and play by himself, among the dense bushes,
jumping and whistling as he would go. His mother gave up in despair in
her efforts to change his ways.
She remembered the day and place where she had promised to meet her
husband, and return with him to their home, but she refused to go
and meet him at the appointed time and place, as she said she never
intended to return, and had merely made him the promise in order to
get back to her people, and now that she was with them she would never
leave them again.
He waited in vain at the appointed place as she came not to meet him,
and after waiting a long time he came to the conclusion that she had
made him a false promise, so he crept cautiously down to the river, and
swam across to Reck-woy village, where he knew his wife was staying.
When he reached the other side, he crept up the hill-side and concealed
himself in a dense clump of bushes, where he could look down upon the
house where he knew she was staying, and watched for her. His wife
seldom ventured out of the house, as she was afraid that he would
get her again, so she kept close indoors that he might not have any
chance of getting her away again. One day he managed to attract the
attention of his little son, and he came up to his father and they
talked together, he directed the son to go and tell his mother to come
to him, as he was waiting for her. When the son delivered the message
to his mother, she replied that she did not believe this to be true,
so he returned to his father, telling him what his mother had said. He
immediately sent him back to her, imploring that she come to him, the
mother looked puzzled at the boy, and said that he must be mistaken,
but he said that he knew his father, and pleaded earnestly for her to
return to their home in the canyon. Studying the boy’s eager face a few
moments, she replied by saying that he could choose between her and
his father, he could remain with her, or go with his father, back into
the lonesome wilds. The boy at once preferred his father and bade his
mother farewell. Father and son returned to their hiding place, and
the mother, who had once cheered them in the lonesome wilds, never saw
them again, they had gone out of her life forever, like a dream that
had come and gone, and faded again, with the closing day, back into the
primeval redwoods, where you may see father and son straying together
among the mystic shadows of dream-land mountains.
When the Indians are dancing for pleasure, such as they did in the
brush dance, and any one wants them to dance faster and harder, they
shout to the dancers: “hal-o-may-yah,” which means dance harder.
In this kind of dancing the word “dance” is called “o-may-like.”
But in the sacred dances, such as the Lodge Dance, it is called,
Wah-neck-wel-la-gaw, and has a different meaning altogether.