INDIAN ANNALS AND LEGENDS.
The last flame of sunset had gone out on a horizon of ashy paleness,
as the light bark of the Indian girl swept up the beach, and its
occupant, after making it secure, loitered idly home. Here, undismayed
by observation, she was as gracefully at ease as a fawn in its leafy
covert, and as quickly startled into flight at the tread of a stranger.
So lightly did her moccasined feet press the underbrush that no sound
preceded her coming, until she reached the blanketed opening of a
wigwam where sat an aged Algonquin chief, very grave, very dignified,
very far from being immaculately clean. The young girl was not
intimidated by this picturesque combination of dignity and dirt.
Perhaps it was the absence of these qualities in the young cadet that
caused her sudden flight from him. Seating herself on a bearskin, not
far from her foster-father, she interchanged with him mellow syllables
of greeting. The chief placed a finger upon her moist brow, and
inquired the cause of her haste.
"It was the young kinsman of the Wild Rose who followed me. His head
is beautiful as the sun, but he moves, alas, yes, he moves more
slowly."
"Then, why this haste?" queried the Indian, who, though he could boast
all the keen and subtle instincts of his race, was apparently in some
matters as obtuse as a white man.
The girl bowed her face upon her slim brown hands.
"I do not like the glances of his eye," she said. "They are strong and
dazzling as sunbeams on the water."
The chief smoked in meditative silence. "You go too often to the
dwelling of the Wild Rose, my daughter."
"Ah, yes; but to-night her pink face is dewy wet, I know, and she is
alone. The Moon-in-a-black-cloud has gone to the home of her people."
"Then let her seek consolation in the slow moving sun. The pale-faced
nation are not fit associates for an Algonquin maiden. Mother Earth
has no love for them; they are quick to wash away her lightest
finger-touch upon them. They are pale and lifeless as a rock over
which the stream washes continually. Their men are afraid of the rain;
their women of the sunshine."
"It is even so. The Wild Rose covers her head, and even her hands,
when she leaves the house."
At this mournful assent the chief warmed to his task of depreciation.
"They are degraded, these pale faces, they are poor-spirited, mean,
contemptible; unable to cope with the wild beasts of the forest, they
settle down in weak resignation to grow vegetables; nothing stirs them
from their state of ignoble content except the call to battle, and
that is responded to not in defence of the lives of their fathers,
their wives and children, but merely to settle some petty quarrel
between the chiefs of their nations.
"Ah, they are a strange, servile race! They work with their hands."
The Indian paused and looked down at the wrinkled yet shapely members
that lay before him. "They look upon the grand forest as their natural
enemy, burning, cutting, mutilating, until they have made that odious
thing 'a clearing,' when a house is built with the dead bodies of the
beautiful trees that have fallen by their hand."
"But surely they are not wholly bad," pleaded the girl, her kind heart
refusing to accept the belief that even the lowest of humanity could
be utterly worthless.
The chief was not to be turned from the swift current of his thoughts
by idle interruptions.
"Their religion is dead, buried in a book, and they put it from them
as easily as they put the book on the shelf. Our religion is alive,
broad as the earth, deep as the sky. They go into a _house_ to
worship; _our_ temple is fashioned by the great Spirit, and our
prayers ascend continually like the white smoke from our wigwams. Ah,
but they should be pitied not blamed. They are far from the heart of
nature--they have ceased to be her children."
"It is money they worship, and the soul of a man becomes like that
which he adores. They mourn bitterly for their dead, because they feel
how great is the distance between them and the land of spirits. I have
heard that there are white men who do not believe that this land
exists, but that cannot be true."
There were some depths of degradation that even his far-reaching
imagination failed to compass. Wanda listened wearily, though she
manifested no signs of impatience.
"The pale-faced women are sometimes very beautiful," she said.
"Yes; but they are strange, unnatural creatures. In times of anger
they attack their helpless little ones, talking in a harsh voice,
pinching, beating, slapping them, doing everything but bite them."
His listener did not shudder. The Indian, no matter how much his
feelings may be stirred, is unaccustomed to evince emotion.
"With us," continued the old man, "an angry woman frequently pulls her
husband's hair; for is he not her husband to do with what she likes?
but to fall upon her own flesh and blood--that is unnatural and
horrible. It is as if she should wilfully injure her own person,
bruise it with stones or sear it with hot irons. Perhaps it is because
the pale-faced tribes suffer so much in childhood that they are weak
and cowardly in manhood. They shrink and cry like a wounded panther at
the touch of pain."
The girl who had not dwelt upon it except in her thoughts was
nevertheless filled with a gently uplifting sense of race superiority.
Her admiration of Rose was tinged with pity. Poor garden flower,
confined for life to the dull walks and prim parterres of a fixed
enclosure, when she might roam the wild paths of the forest; condemned
to sleep in a close room, on stifling feathers, and bathe in an
elongated tub, when she might feel the elasticity of hemlock boughs
beneath her, inhale the perfumed breath of myriad trees, and plunge at
sunrise into the gleaming waters of the lake. It was indeed a pitiable
life.
They entered the wigwam, and seated themselves on the rush mats that
lay upon the ground. About them were carelessly disposed some dressed
skins of the beaver and otter, a brace of wild duck, fishing tackle,
and the accoutrements of the chase, a rifle, powder-horn and shot
pouch. The chief himself, in his buckskin garment, tightened by a
wampum belt, his deer-skin moccasins, scarlet cloth leggings and
blanket, was not the least picturesque object of the interior. Usually
reticent, he found great difficulty to-night in withdrawing his mind
from the subject that had taken such violent possession of it.
"The influence of the white race is spreading," he said. "Like the
poison vines of the forest it touches all who come near it with fatal
effect. The tribe of the Hurons is infected with it, and they are
becoming mere tillers of the soil--miserable earth-worms! Men were
made to be free as the bounding deer or the flowing stream, but they
have paled and weakened, they have become wretched grovellers on the
ground."
Wanda's large eyes held a smouldering fire of repressed indignation.
Her mother had been a Huron.
The story of that dark time, far back in the annals of Canada, when
the Huron hunting-grounds in this region were laid waste by the
destroyer, had been told her so often that her childish imagination
had been filled with horror, and a passionate sense of outraged
justice and impossible revenge stirred within her at the bare mention
of her mother's martyred tribe. She did not vent her feelings in
bitter or retaliatory speech--that is the weakness of fairer-faced
women--but through her brain rushed like a swift stream a vivid
recollection of the tragic tale as it fell from the lips of her Huron
mother upon her young horror-stricken heart.
Less than two hundred years before, the poetry of Indian life among
the peaceful shades of this virgin wilderness was turned into a tale
too ghastly for human imagination, too terrible for human endurance.
At that time the Huron settlements on the borders of Lakes Simcoe and
Couchiching, and between Nottawasaga and Matchedash bays, numbered
from twenty to thirty thousand souls. The picturesque country, thickly
dotted with Indian towns, was for many years the scene of Champlain's
zealous efforts to erect in these western wilds the standard of the
Cross. While he won, among the Hurons, converts to his faith and a
colony to his country, they found in him a leader in a fateful attack
upon their ancient and most obdurate enemies, the Iroquois. The result
of the expedition was failure and discomfiture, but years afterwards,
when Champlain was dead, and the "great-souled and giant-statured Jean
de Brebeuf" became known as the apostle of the tribe, this foray
brought most disastrous consequences upon the unsuspecting Hurons.
Not far from the present site of Barrie was the frontier town of St.
Joseph, where the Jesuit Fathers, in view of the perils surrounding
them, had concentrated their forces in a central stronghold, with a
further inland defence at Ste. Marie, near the site of the present
town of Penetanguishene. Here, at St. Joseph, after years of incessant
labour, of discomforts and discouragements without parallel in the
annals of our country, the ardent souls whose enthusiasm for faith and
duty had become the dominant principle of their life, were swept away
in the red tide of blood that was opened by the Iroquois. One still
fair morning in the summer of 1648, while most of the warriors were
absent at the chase, and a company of devout worshippers were
celebrating Mass in the Mission Chapel, their brutish enemies
descended upon their peaceful domains, and by means of every torture
conceivable to the savage imagination practically exterminated the
tribe. Before the century had half-ended the mission post of St.
Ignace was similarly invaded by the Iroquois, who, after they wearied
of the pastime of hacking the flesh off their prisoners with tomahawks
and hatchets, and scorching them with red-hot irons, bound them at
last to the stake and mercifully allowed the swift-mounting flames to
end their sufferings. Whole families were bound in their houses before
the town was set on fire, and their wild cries mingled with the wilder
laughter of their inhuman captors. The few who escaped were so wounded
and mutilated that before they could reach a place of safety numbers
of them died frozen in the woods.
The remembrance of this dark tale never failed to stir the young girl
to a sort of slow self-contained fury, but the blood of the
peace-loving Hurons was in her veins, and could not long be dominated
by the vengeful propensities of her haughty Algonquin father.
Invariably with the mixture of blood comes the warring of diverse
emotions, the dissatisfaction with the present life, the secret
yearning for something better, the impulse towards something worse.
She sighed furtively, and half-impatiently went outside to tend the
evening camp-fire. The blazing branches illuminated the starless
summer night, and cast a superb glow over the beautiful half-clothed
figure crouching not far from them. Beyond, the dark blue bay ebbed
and flowed languidly.
Some days elapsed before Wanda again made her appearance in the
neighbourhood of the Commodore's mansion. This was caused partly by
shyness, partly by fear of meeting the bold-eyed youth, whose interest
in her had been so painfully apparent. At length Rose, who had noted
with wonder and a little anxiety this unusual absence, suggested to
her brother that they call upon one of her Indian friends. To this
Edward demurred, on the ground that the work in which he happened to
be engaged at the time could not possibly wait. But when he learned
that the beautiful Wanda was the friend alluded to he agreed to go
with her at once, saying that the work he was doing could wait as well
as not. Such was the manner in which brotherly affection was manifested
sixty years ago.
It was a still, almost breathless evening in June. From the meadows,
thickly starred with dew, rose the thin high chorus of the crickets,
while above, the commingling of gray cloud and crimson sunset had
subsided into dusk and golden twilight, which were giving place to the
white radiance of the moon slowly climbing the warm heights of heaven.
It was so quiet that the sound of waves and insects seemed like the
softest whispers of nature. Rose and Edward had rowed down the bay for
Helene, who usually accompanied them on their impromptu excursions by
lake and wood. Seen in the pale brilliance of sky and water her
loveliness had an almost unearthly quality, perfectly akin to the
night, but giving her a strange effect of soft remoteness from her
friends. The light from a brazier, fitted into a stanchion in the prow
of the boat, in which some pieces of birch-bark were kindled, brought
the deep dark shadow of the woods into sharp relief, and gave a more
vivid brilliance to the immediate surroundings; but along the dimly-lit
path in the forest all the magical influences of the night held sway.
Beneath the tangled underbrush they caught glimpses of the rich and
fantastic vegetation with which the earth was clothed, while above
them, intermingled with the shadows cast by the vaulted boughs, played
the vivid brightness of the moon. Some of the trees were deeply
girdled--a slow method of killing them. These lingering deaths affected
the trio with melancholy. A wounded inmate of the grove, standing in
mute and pathetic resignation to its fate, loses first the feeling of
the sap that, blood-like, circulates through every limb, then all its
leafy honours fade, and its death is slow and inevitable as the death
of a forsaken woman who carries a deep hurt at the heart.
Near where a group of lofty elms lifted their beautiful heads up to
the moonlight they found the old chief busily engaged in mending his
seine. He greeted them with entire self-possession, rising and giving
his hand to each, after which he resumed his occupation in tranquil
content, as though the duties of hospitality were now over. The young
ladies, however, without waiting for any further exhibition of
courtesy, seated themselves on a mossy log, and bestowed upon their
host and his employment the flattering attention, which, if it failed
to make an impression upon him, would certainly prove him more--or
less--than mortal man. Edward, meantime, finding a convenient bough a
few feet above his head, amused himself in swinging by his hands, with
a view to muscular development. The contrast between the sad dignity
of the aged Indian, the lone survivor of a despised race, and the
light-heartedness of the fair boy, upon whom all the hopes of his
family centred, struck both girls forcibly. After a few sympathetic
inquiries regarding the health of the chief, Rose asked after the
whereabouts of Wanda.
"She is not here," he replied. "She flies from our home as a bird
flies from its cage, returning only when she is weary, or when the
shades of night are upon the land."
"Do you know where she is?" inquired Edward, dropping to his feet, and
seating himself on a log facing the others.
"Somewhere in the forest," replied the Indian, indicating the direction
by a broad sweep of the hand, which might include a thousand acres.
This was sufficiently indefinite. "It appears to be characteristic of
this young lady that she is either a vanished joy, or just on the
point of becoming one. Have you any idea how far away she is?" he
asked.
"Something more than twice the flight of an arrow," tranquilly
answered the Indian--"yes, much more. It used to be that she went
short distances, but she now goes a papoose's journey of half a
sun--sometimes further." He viewed his impatient guest a moment with
gravity, and added, "yes, much further."
"And you trust her all alone?"
"She is an Algonquin maiden. She fears nothing."
"And why is an Algonquin superior to a Huron, for instance?" The young
man, leaning idly back, and caressing the Indian dog of the chief,
pursued his questions without any definite purpose, but merely to draw
out his reserved-looking host.
"Why is the fleet deer that spurns the soil better than the dull ox
that tills it? Or why is the eagle better than the hen that picks up
corn in your doorway? But there was a time when in all the land no
Indian could be found who was tame and stupid--what you call
civilized."
"Tell us a legend of that time, will you not?" pleaded Rose, who had
been watching in silence for a fitting opportunity to make her
favourite request.
"Ah, please do," said Edward, and the three settled themselves
comfortably to listen.
"It was a great many moons ago," began the chief, "long before the
time of my grandfather. All the Indian races were then as one people,
living in peace, and speaking one tongue. Not one of them worked with
his hands. The deer, the beaver, the otter, the antelope, and the bear
flourished and fattened for all, and were caught with scarcely any
skill or effort. The men were never wearied in the chase, nor the
women with pounding corn. None of the white races had as yet come upon
the earth to molest and insult the guardian spirits of hill and stream
and stately wood, and the red men, then as now, were in the habit of
propitiating these deities by offerings of maize, bright coloured
flowers, or belts of wampum laid upon the mountains, or dropped into
caves or streams. Yes, every one lived without fear of his neighbour,
and the red ochre with which our tribes paint their faces in war was
used only to decorate the pipe of peace.
"One day it happened that a few chosen ones of all these tribes were
met together upon a plain, about the distance of four bow-shots across.
Very green and shining it looked to the eye, for it was in the
Flower-moon, and the great star of day was bright in the heaven. By
its clear light they saw, far in the distance, two strange, enormous
things moving towards them. But whether these things were writhing
wreaths of thunder clouds descended to earth, or gigantic trees
denuded of their foliage and suddenly gifted with the power of motion,
or whether they were wild beasts of a size never seen before, they
could not tell. But presently they found them to be immense creatures
in the form of rattlesnakes, poisoning the air with their vile
effluvia, and destroying every green tree and living thing in their
path. Every delicate plant and creeping thing was poisoned by their
breath, and the larger animals were devoured in the flap of a bird's
wing. With them came terrific lightnings that rent the trees and cleft
the solid rock, and thunders which caused the earth to reel like a man
who had drank many times of fire-water. Nearer and nearer they
approached, and now the chosen residents of this fair plain were
filled with alarm for their lives, and at once began to build
fortifications against the terrible intruders. The snakes, who
appeared to prefer the flesh of man to that of the other animals,
crawled up close to the defence of their enemies, and flung their long
horrible bodies against it, but in vain. It was useless to attack them
with bows and arrows, on account of the scales which enveloped them
like an armour. Those who ventured without the walls were instantly
swallowed, while those within, who had fasted many suns, were growing
weak from want of food.
"Now there was among them a chief, called the Big Bear, who was very
brave and cunning. He had been a hunter of the deer and wolf ever
since he had been pronounced a man. No danger was so great that he
could not find a trail out of it. So when he began to speak all the
people who remained gathered round him.
"'Brothers and chiefs,' he said, 'I perceive that one of our enemies
is a woman, because she is less sluggish in her movements than the
other, and her eyes are bright and deceitful. Besides she cares not to
eat all the time, but she will sometimes go to view herself in the
river, or when she thinks no one is looking will slyly turn her head
to see the graceful movements of her tail. Brothers, my plan is this:
Let me contrive to win the heart of this vain squaw-snake, and then
with her aid I shall be able to destroy her husband; afterwards we may
compass the destruction of the faithless wife. If I perish it is in a
good cause, I am a willing martyr.'
"This good man proceeded that very night to carry out his noble
purpose. The sky was full of shining lights as he mounted the
fortification, and bent toward her, murmuring: 'Ah, beautiful creature,
thy form is graceful as a winding stream, and thine eyes are two stars
reflected in it. That stupid man-snake, lying in heavy sleep, how can
he appreciate you? He is withered and worthless as a last year's leaf.
As for me I flee to you from the dull women of my tribe, who are like
so many dead trees, that stand even after life has left them. You are
alive and beautiful in every movement, like the long curving wave that
breaks upon the beach.'
"Oh, there is no doubt that Big Bear knew all about the best way to
make love, for very soon the squaw-snake began to show great
discontent with her husband, to scold him in a high voice, and to wish
that he were dead; whereas she greeted Big Bear with much affection,
warming her glittering head in his breast, and embracing him several
times by coiling round and round him. But she was careful to turn her
head away, so as not to poison him by her breath. As for Big Bear,
though he was glad to win her love, he wished her not to love him too
well as she had a wonderful dexterity in snapping off the heads of
those whom she admired. Her consent to the death of her husband was
easily gained, and she bade him dip the points of two arrows in the
poison of her sting. This he did and after retiring within the
fortification he levelled one arrow at the head of the husband, while
he deposited the other in that of the wicked wife. The horrid monsters
rolled over in agony, and rent the air with their death-shrieks, while
all the people gathering about Big Bear, called him their brother,
because by his wonderful knowledge of the arts of flirtation he had
delivered them from great peril. But the most grievous result of the
danger through which they had passed was this, that the poison ejected
by the snakes in their death-agonies affected all the tribes of the
earth to such an extent that each began to use a different language
which could not be comprehended by the others. Since that time a young
man of one race very seldom weds with the daughter of another, because
she does not understand the lies he tells."
"Is it necessary for him to tell her what is not true, in order to
marry her?" asked Edward.
"It is customary," replied the chief, gravely returning to his task,
without the suspicion of a smile.
"Oh, strange peculiarity of the red men," softly exclaimed Helene. She
begged for another legend, but the Indian had relapsed into his normal
state of imperious dignity; so, after thanking him for the extravaganza,
to which they had listened with admirable self-possession, they
returned to the beach, the dog plunging joyfully into the green depths
of the forest before them. The great woods were warm, odorous,
breathless. Rose pushed back the damp blonde locks from her brow. "I
wish you could have seen Wanda," she said. "The girl is quite a beauty.
Half wild, of course, but with a sort of barbaric splendour about her
that dazzles and bewilders one. You will understand when you see her,
why the Indians speak the word 'pale-face' with a contemptuous
inflection."
"I suppose," mused Edward, "that paleness to them means weakness, lack
of blood, vitality, courage, and all that most becomes a man. Yet as a
matter of taste I prefer white to copper colour." His blue eyes were
bent upon the lily-like face of Helene.
"Wait till you see her," was his sister's laughing response.
"And that will be many moons hence, to use the language of our
story-teller, if she continues as elusive as the wind. I have had
glimpses of her, or rather of the flutter of her vanishing raiment.
A being with a wonderfully perfect face, clothed in heterogeneous and
many-coloured garments, and educated on the amazing fictions with
which her foster-father's memory seems to be stored, would be worth
waiting to see."
But he had not long to wait. As he stood on the beach in the absence
of his companions, who were carefully retracing their steps to the
wigwam in search of a glove, presumably dropped by the way, he caught
sight of the Indian girl, her back turned towards him, lazily rocking
herself in his boat. For a moment he thrilled with the excitement of a
hunter in the presence of that desirable object, "a splendid shot."
Then he crept stealthily forward, sprang into the boat, and before the
startled girl could recover from her amazement, he was rowing her far
out on the moonlit bay. "There!" he cried, exultantly, bending an
ardent yet laughing gaze upon her, "now you may run away as fast as
you like."
The girl neither spoke nor moved. A great fire of resentment was
burning in her heart, and its flames mounted to her cheeks. "My soul!"
he murmured, "how beautiful you are!" She faced him fully and fairly,
with the magnificent disdain of an empress in exile. In some way she
gave him the impression that this brilliant little escapade was rather
a poor joke after all. "Do me the favour of moving a muscle," he
pleaded mockingly, and his request was lavishly granted. Before he
could guess her intention she was in the water, knocking an oar from
his hand in her rapid exit, and swimming at an incredible rate of
speed for the nearest point of land, from which she sped like a hunted
thing to the woods.
Left alone in this unceremonious fashion the young man paddled
ruefully after his missing oar, and then struck out boldly after the
escaped captive, with the intention of apologizing for what now seemed
to him rather a cowardly performance; but the footsteps of the flying
maiden left no trace upon the beach. His discomfited gaze rested on no
living thing save the approaching figures of his sister and her friend,
whose humane inquiries and frequent jests concerning the half wild,
wholly dripping, vision that had crossed their path, contributed in no
way to the young man's enjoyment of their homeward row.