QUEEN ESTHER
“The Shawnee Indians had long been governed by a woman, whose name was
both feared and respected through all the Six Nations. I need not dwell
either upon her cruelty or her greatness. Had Elizabeth, of blessed
memory, as sarcastic history names her, been thrown among savages, she
would have been scarcely a rival to this remarkable chieftainess. The
same indomitable love of power—the same ferocious affections, caressing
the neck one day, which she gave to the axe on the next—the same haughty
assumption of authority marked Queen Esther, the forest sovereign, and
Elizabeth, the monarch of England. Both were arrogant, crafty, selfish
and ruthless, proving their power to govern, only as they became harsh
and unwomanly.
“Queen Esther was the widow of a great chief, whose authority she had
taken up at his grave, and never laid down during twenty-five years,
when Gi-engwa-tah, her eldest son, had earned a right to wear the eagle
plume and fill his father’s place on the warpath and at the council
table. The great secret of this woman’s power over her tribe lay in her
superior intelligence and the remnants of an early education; for she
was a white woman, brought in the bloom of girlhood from Canada, where
she had been taken prisoner in the wars between the French and the Six
Nations. Her father was a governor of Canada, and she had been destined
to fill a high station in civilized life, but she soon learned to prefer
savage rule to all the remembrances of a delicately nurtured childhood,
and, wedded to a native chief, flung off the refinements of life, save
where they added to her influence among the savages.
“Her name, like her history, was thrown back upon the past—the very
blood in her veins seemed to have received a ferocious tint. She was,
doubtless, from the first, a savage at heart. Because this woman was,
like myself, cast out by her own free will from civilized life, I sought
her in her wild home, and, under an escort from Sir William Johnson,
claimed a place in her tribe. The lands around Seneca Lake were then in
possession of the Shawnees. Queen Esther occupied a spacious lodge at
the head of this lake and had put large tracts of land under cultivation
around it.
“Around this dwelling she had gathered all the refinements of her
previous life that could be wrested from rude nature or animal strength.
Her lodge possessed many comforts that the frontier settlers might have
envied. The lands were rich with corn and fruit. Her apple orchards
blossomed and cast their fruit on the edge of the wilderness. The huts
of her people were embowered with peach-trees, and purple plums dropped
upon the forest sward at their doors. In times of peace Queen Esther was
a provident and wise sovereign. In war—but I need not say how terrible
she was in war. Beautiful as I have described it, was the country of the
Shawnees when my escort drew up in front of Queen Esther’s lodge. She
came forth to meet me, arrayed in her wild, queenly garb and treading
the green turf like an empress. She was then more than sixty years of
age, but her stately form bore no marks of time; there was not a thread
of silver in her black hair, and her eyes were like those of an
eagle—clear and piercing.
“She read Sir William’s letter, casting glances from that to my face, as
if perusing the two with one thought; then, advancing to my horse, she
lifted me to the ground and gave me her hand to kiss, as if I had been a
child and she an emperor who had vouchsafed an act of gallantry. ‘It is
well,’ she said. ‘You shall have a mat in my lodge. Gi-en-gwa-tah shall
spread it with his own hands, for we of the white blood bring wise
thoughts and sweet words to the tribe, and must not work like squaws.
When women sit in council the braves spread their mats and spear salmon
for them. This is my law.’
“I answered promptly that I had brought gold, knowledge and a true heart
into the wilderness; that all I asked was a corner in her lodge, and
permission to rest among her people; to learn their ways and be one of
them till death called me away.
“‘It is well,’ she answered. ‘This letter says that you have fled from
many tears, and brought wisdom and gold from over the big waters. Come,
I have a robe embroidered with my own hand, and plumage from
flame-colored birds, with which my women shall crown you before my son
comes from the war-council of the Six Nations. My eyes are getting dim,
and I can no longer string the wampum or work garlands on the robes my
women have prepared for my needle. You shall be eyes to me; when my
voice grows weak you shall talk sweet words to the warriors, and they
will obey me still. When I am dead, struck down with the white frost of
age, then you shall be queen in my place; I will teach the chiefs to
obey you. Have I spoken well?’
“She waited for no answer, but led me into the lodge, brought forth a
robe of embroidered skins such as clothed her own stately person, and
clothed me in it with her own hands. If she used any other ceremony of
adoption, I did not understand it, nor indeed how much this act
portended. Queen Esther was a shrewd woman, ambitious for herself and
her tribe. She knew well the value of the gold which I had deposited
with Sir William Johnson, and how rich a harvest my coming might secure
to them.
“Queen Esther kept her promise. Her influence placed me at once in a
position of power. She never asked my name, but gave me that which she
had cast aside on renouncing her own race—Catharine Montour.
“I was among the children of nature, in the broad, deep forests of a new
world. I had broken every tie which had bound me to my kind, and was
free. For the first time in my life I felt the force of liberty and the
wild, sublime pleasures of an unshackled spirit. Every new thought which
awoke my heart in that deep wilderness was full of sublimity and wild
poetic strength. There was something of stern, inborn greatness in the
savages who had adopted me—something picturesque in their raiment, and
majestic in their wild, untaught eloquence, that aroused the new and
stern properties of my nature till my very being seemed changed.
“The wish to be loved and cherished forsook me forever. New energies
started to life, and I almost scorned myself that I had ever bowed to
the weakness of affection. What was dominion over one heart compared to
the knowledge that the wild, fierce spirits of a thousand savage beings
were quelled by the sound of my footsteps?—not with a physical and
cowardly fear, but with an awe which was of the spirit—a superstitious
dread, which was to them a religion. Without any effort of my own, I
became a being of fear and wonder to the whole savage nation. They
looked upon me as a spirit from the great hunting-ground, sent to them
by Manitou, endowed with beauty and supernatural powers, which demanded
all their rude worship, and fixed me among them as a deity.
“I encouraged this belief, for a thirst for rule and ascendency was
strong upon me. I became a despot and yet a benefactress in the exercise
of my power, and the distribution of my wealth. Did one of those strong,
savage creatures dare to offend me, I had but to lift my finger, and he
was stripped of his ornaments and scourged forth from his nation, a
disgraced and abandoned alien, without home, or people, or friends. On
the other hand, did they wish for trinkets, or beads, or powder for the
rifles which I had presented to them, they had to bend low to their
‘White Prophetess’ as she passed; to weave her lodge with flowers, and
line it with rich furs; to bring her a singing-bird, or to carry her
litter through the rough passes of the mountains, and a piece of smooth
bark, covered with signs which they knew nothing of, was sent to Sir
William Johnson, and lo, their wants were supplied.
“This was power, such as my changed heart panted for. I grew stern,
selfish and despotic, among these rude savages, but never cruel. Your
people wrong me there; no drop of blood has ever been shed by me or
through my instrumentality; but my gold has brought many poor victims
from the stake, who falsely believe that my vindictive power had sent
them there; my entreaties have saved many a village from the flames, and
many hearths from desolation, where my name is spoken as a word of fear.
“The eldest son of Queen Esther was a noble. He came of his father’s
race, with something of refinement, which his mother never could
entirely cast aside, blended with it. From her early recollections Queen
Esther had given him fragments of a rude poetical education, and this,
with the domestic refinement of her lodge, had lifted him unconsciously
above the other chiefs of his tribe.
“He not only possessed that bravery which won the admiration of his
people, and was essential to their respect, but in his character were
combined all the elements of a warrior and a statesman. Independent of
this superior knowledge, his mind was naturally too majestic and
penetrating to yield me the homage which was so readily rendered by the
more ignorant of his tribe.
“It is painful to dwell on this period of my life. Suffice it, again I
heard the pleadings of love from the untutored lips of a savage chief.
I, who had fled from the very name of affection as from a pestilence—who
had given up country, home, the semblance of existence that my heart
might be at rest, was forced to listen to the pleadings of love from a
savage, in the heart of an American wilderness. A savage chief, proud of
his prowess, haughty in his barbarous power, came with a lordly
confidence to woo me as his wife. My heart recoiled at the unnatural
suggestion, but I had no scorn for the brave Indian who made it. If his
mode of wooing was rough, it was also eloquent, sincere, manly; and
those were properties which my spirit had ever answered with respect.
No; I had nothing of scorn for the red warrior, but I rebuked him for
his boldness, and threatened to forsake his tribe forever should he dare
to renew the subject.
“A month or two after the kingly savage declared his bold wishes a
contest arose between the Shawnees and a neighboring tribe, and the
chief went angry to the warpath. One day his party returned to the
encampment, bringing with them three prisoners, a white man, his wife
and child. My heart ached when I heard of this, for I dared not, as
usual, entreat the chief for their release, nor even offer to purchase
their freedom with gold. His disappointment had rendered him almost
morose, and I shuddered to think of the reward he might require for the
liberation of his prisoners. I had full cause for apprehension.
“From the day that I rejected her son, Queen Esther had kept proudly
aloof from me. She did not deign to expostulate, but guarded her pride
with stern silence, while a storm of savage passions lowered on her
brow, and sounded in her fierce tread, till her presence would have been
a terror to me had I been of a nature to fear anything.
“This woman seemed to rejoice at the idea of wreaking the vengeance she
would not express in words on my helpless compatriots, and prepared
herself to join this horrid festival of death in all the pomp of her
war-plumes and most gorgeous raiment. For the first time in my life I
humbled myself before this woman, on my knees, for she was one to exact
the most abject homage. I besought her to save my countrymen from death.
“She met my entreaties with a cold sneer that froze me to the heart.
“‘It is well,’ she said, wrapping her robe around her with a violence
that made its wampum fringes rattle like a storm of shot. ‘The woman who
refuses the great chief of the Shawnees when he would build her a lodge
larger than his mother’s, should be proud, and stand up with her face to
the sun, not whine like a baby because her people do not know how to
die.’
“Her air and voice were more cruel than her words. I saw that my
intercession would only add to the tortures that I was powerless to
prevent, for if the mother was so unrelenting what had I to expect from
the son?
“Queen Esther tore her garments from my clasp, and plunged into the
forest to join her son.
“I shudder even now, when I think of the horrible sensation which crept
over me, as the warriors went forth from the camp, file after file,
painted and plumed with gorgeous leathers, each with his war-club and
tomahawk, to put three beings, of my blood and nation, to a death of
torture.
“I dared not plead for their release in person, but sent to offer
ransom, earnestly appealing to the generosity of the chief in my
message. He returned me no answer. I could do nothing more, but as the
hours crept by, my heart was very, very heavy; it seemed as if the sin
of blood were about to be heaped upon it.
“The night came on, dark and gloomy as the grave. The whole tribe, even
to the women and children, had gone into the forest, and I was alone in
the great lodge—almost alone in the village. There was something more
appalling than I can describe in the dense gloom that settled on the
wilderness, in the whoop and fierce cries of the revelling savages,
which surged up through the trees like the roar and rant of a herd of
wild beasts wrangling over their prey.
“Not a star was in the sky, not a sound stirred abroad—nothing save the
black night and the horrid din of those blood-thirsty savages met my
senses. Suddenly, a sharp yell cut through the air like the cry of a
thousand famished hyenas, then a spire of flame darted up from the murky
forest, and shot into the darkness with a clear, lurid brightness, like
the flaming tongue of a dragon, quivering and afire with its own venom.
Again that yell rang out—again and again, till the very air seemed alive
with savage tongues.
“I could bear no more; my nerves had been too madly excited. I sprang
forward with a cry that rang through the darkness almost as wildly as
theirs, and rushed into the forest.
“They were congregated there in the light of that lurid fire, dancing
and yelling like a troop of carousing demons; their tomahawks and
scalping-knives flashed before me, and their fierce eyes glared more
fiercely as I rushed through them to the presence of their chief. The
dance was stopped by a motion of his war-club, and he listened with
grave attention to my frantic offer of beads or blankets or gold to any
amount, in ransom for his prisoners. He refused all; but one ransom
could purchase the lives of those three human beings, and that I could
not pay. It was far better that blood should be shed than that I should
force my heart to consummate a union so horrible as mine with this
savage.
“I turned from the relentless chief, sorrowing and heart-stricken. The
blood of his poor victims seemed clogging my feet as I made my way
through the crowd of savage forms that only waited my disappearance to
drag them forth to death. Even while I passed the death-fire, fresh pine
was heaped upon it, and a smothered cry burst forth from the dusky crowd
as a volume of smoke rolled up and revealed the victims.
“They were bound to the trunk of a large pine, which towered within the
glare of the death-fire, its heavy limbs reddening and drooping in the
cloud of smoke and embers that surged through them to the sky, and its
slender leaves falling in scorched and burning showers to the earth,
whenever a gust of wind sent the flames directly among its foliage.
“The prisoners were almost entirely stripped of clothing, and the lurid
brightness shed over the pine revealed their pale forms with terrible
distinctness. The frightened child crouched upon the ground, clinging to
the knees of his mother, and quaking in all its tiny limbs as the flames
swept their reeking breath more and more hotly upon them. The long,
black hair of the mother fell over her bent face; her arms were extended
downward towards the boy, and she struggled weakly against the thongs
that bound her waist, at every fresh effort which the poor thing made to
find shelter in her bosom. There was one other face, pale and stern as
marble, yet full of a fixed agony, which spoke of human suffering
frightful to behold. That face was Grenville Murray’s.
“My feelings had been excited almost to the verge of renewed insanity,
but now they became calm—calm from the force of astonishment, and from
the strong resolve of self-sacrifice which settled upon them. I turned
and forced my way through the crowd of savage forms, rushing toward that
hapless group, and again stood before their chief. I pointed toward the
prisoners now concealed by the smoke and eddying flames.
“‘Call away those fiends,’ I said. ‘Give back all that has been taken
from the prisoners. Send them to Canada, with a guard of fifty warriors,
and I will become your wife.’
“A blaze of exultation swept over that savage face, and the fire kindled
it up with wild grandeur. I saw the heaving of his chest, the fierce joy
that flashed from his eyes, but in that moment of stern resolve, my
heart would not have shrunk from its purpose though the fang of an adder
had been fixed in it. The chief lifted his war-club and uttered a long
peculiar cry. Instantly the savages that were rushing like so many
demons toward their prey fell back and ranged themselves in a broad
circle around their chief.
“He spoke a few sentences in the Indian tongue. Words of energetic
eloquence they must have been to have torn that savage horde from their
destined victim’s, for like wild beasts they seemed athirst for blood.
When the chief ceased speaking, the tribe arose with a morose gravity
that concealed their disappointment, and dispersed among the trees; the
mellow tramp of their moccasins died away, and fifty warriors alone
stood around their chief, ready to escort the prisoners to a place of
safety.
“I drew back beneath the concealment of a tree, and secure in my changed
dress, saw them lead forth the prisoners. I heard the sobs of the happy
mother as the boy clung, half in joy and half in affright, to her bosom.
I saw tears stand on the pale and quivering cheek of the father, as he
strove to utter his gratitude. I heard the tramp of the horses, and the
measured tread of the fifty warriors come faintly from the distance;
then the fire which was to have been the death-flame of Grenville Murray
and his household, streamed up into the solitude, and in its red glare I
stood before the savage whose slave I had become.”