The sister of Fiery Man stood unnoticed, we have said, in the lodge
where White Moon sat with her dead child. On her back she carried a
large bundle of wood. As she threw it to the ground, the noise roused
White Moon from her dreams. She rose from her mat, clasping the child
yet more closely to her breast. Giving one look towards her sister, in
which was concentrated all the passion and all the harshness of which
she was capable, she left the lodge. The crimson flush soon died away
from her face, and she was calm and pale as before.
Assisted by several of the women, she proceeded to place her child upon
its last resting-place. It was at some distance from the lodge, yet in
sight. She returned, and carried to the place of burial the cradle and
some little trinkets belonging to the child, and hung them in reach of
the infant's hand, on the scaffolding.
All day she sat on the ground near it. She wept there, as only a mother
can weep, for her first and only child. She refused the food the women
offered her; she had not eaten since its death.
Even when night came, she was still there, through its long watches
giving vent to her violent grief. The breaking of the morn found
her sleeping for a short interval on the ground; on awakening, she
remembered there were duties that still claimed her care. Her new
buffalo-skin lodge was still unfinished, and she had promised her
husband she would be in it on her return. The one they were living in
was her sister's; it was an old one, torn, and admitting the rain, so
that it was not comfortable. Some of the women had assisted her in
making it, and she had still to finish and set it up before the evening.
On the day of the child's death she had been obliged to leave her work,
to go out at some little distance to cut wood. She did not, as usual,
take her child with her: it was asleep in its carved board cradle,
and she left it in charge of a girl, the child of one of her friends.
Fiery Man's sister had gone out, telling White Moon she should be away
all day. So great was her dread of this proud woman--so fearful was
she that she would revenge on her child the hatred she felt towards
herself--that otherwise she would not have left the infant at home.
The anticipations of White Moon at her first interview with her
husband's sister were all realized. This woman possessed all the bad
qualities of Fiery Man, without any of his redeeming ones.
She had been married, and was a widow. Both of her children were dead:
there was no avenue by which kindness could find its way to her heart.
She disliked White Moon, because she had so won her brother's love. But
there needed to assign no reason, for she disliked all who were better
off than she.
It is not only in civilized life that the dread passion of envy
has full sway: the human heart, the same by nature, varies only by
association and circumstance.
Had it not been for the unhappy disposition of Fiery Man's sister,
White Moon had been happy. She could not but be proud of her husband,
and of his affection for her: it was not in the nature of a Sioux woman
to see unmoved the many trophies of his skill and bravery. But the
curse of envy was about her; and when White Moon smiled over her boy,
and Fiery Man exulted in the pride and affection of a Sioux father for
his son, his sister could not rejoice with them--she envied and hated
them.
Fiery Man exacted the most implicit obedience from his wife, and from
all around him. He would not have brooked the slightest contradiction
from her; but she did not attempt it.
In most cases an Indian wife is little more than a serving-woman to
her husband. To this White Moon was accustomed from observation,
and from her short experience. She trembled at her husband's voice,
though against her it had never been raised in anger. But the violent
passions, the abusive language, the frequent blows--these, coming from
one who ought to have no power over her, made her often wish for death.
Yet so great was the likeness of brother and sister, that she bowed to
the tyranny of the one, from having done so to the other. Her spirit,
too, was broken. She could easily submit, but not forget. When she left
her child in the wigwam it was quietly sleeping; when she returned it
still slept. She had been a long time away, and yet the rest of the
infant appeared to have been unbroken.
She missed the girl who had promised to remain with the child. She had
brought a heavy burden of wood to her lodge, and she sat down by the
child to rest, and to watch its awakening.
Its unusual paleness alarmed her; she held her own breath that she
might distinguish the breathing of the child, but in vain. She placed
her hand before its parted lips; the warm breath of infancy did not
play upon it.
She thought it strange; but death did not present itself to her mind.
Going to the door of the lodge, she looked around, and saw her sister
gazing, with fixed attention, towards the wigwam. This alarmed her,
and she returned to her child; again she listened for its breath: she
pressed its small and clammy hand. Then did the real truth flash across
her. She took in her arms the infant and rushed with it into the open
air.
As she stood outside calling for help, the Indians collected around her.
Her sister, calm and unconcerned, approached with them and looked on.
The Indian doctors were there, and White Moon, under their direction,
carried her child back to the lodge. She placed it on a buffalo-robe,
which was folded on the floor. Red Head, the great medicine-man, seated
himself near it. He held the sacred rattle, shaking it, and chaunting
in a loud voice. He shouted to the women to stand off, for near him, on
the ground, he had laid his pipe and medicine-bag.
White Moon alternately wept and hoped; she knew Red Head was a
powerful medicine-man: but still her baby showed no signs of life.
Despairing, at last, and frantic with grief, she broke in upon his
incantations. She raised her child, and placed its little face against
her breast. She knew this test would be decisive.
There was no motion, on its part, to receive the offered sustenance.
She raised her despairing eyes, and they met the cold glances of her
sister. Then she told Red Head there was no hope. She asked to be left
alone with her dead; she wept until the power of weeping was gone: and
then, until the time was come to place it in its cradle grave, she held
it to her heart. She did not dare reflect on the passionate grief of
the father, when he should return, and ask of her his son.
She could not rouse herself to say, what she believed to be the case,
that his sister had destroyed it. There was no mark,--no apparent cause
for its sudden death.
On returning to the wigwam, after the burial of the child, she found
her sister there, more than usually bent upon an altercation. She
endeavoured to avoid it by employing herself in silence. She eat for
the first time since her child's death, and then applied herself to the
task of finishing her lodge. Her bereaved condition might have excited
the pity of her companion; but there was no sympathy in that breast.
For a time, White Moon would not reply to her taunts. This the more
enraged the other, who at length charged the heart-broken mother with
the murder of her child!
White Moon heard her in stupified horror and amazement. That a
mother could destroy her infant,--no such sentiment could reach her
understanding or her heart. Yet again and again did her sister repeat
the charge, dwelling upon the impossibility of the child's dying
without a cause. No one, she said, had been with the infant during her
absence; the young girl, who had promised to take care of it, having
gone off soon after White Moon left. She then insisted, that as White
Moon had been forced to marry her brother, she had thus resented upon
him her wrong. She had killed his child, forgetting it was her own.
The despairing woman was roused by a sense of the injustice done her.
She saw, too, her position,--the danger in which she stood. She felt,
in anticipation, the reproaches, the hot anger of her husband.
She was roused even to madness. Her many wrongs stood up in witness
against the woman who, in her deep sorrow, thus goaded her. Her slight
frame expanded; the gentle and obedient wife, the submissive woman,
had become a murderer; her knife lay in the heart of her husband's
sister,--the strong had bowed before the weak!
The act was so instantaneous, that White Moon stood alone to behold the
consequences of her passion. It was during the hottest part of the day,
and their lodge stood apart from the rest. Most of the men were on the
hunt with Fiery Man; the women, some sleeping away the sultry hours,
others off at their different employments.
The hoarse groans of the dying woman were not heard outside the
lodge, so that White Moon was not detected. On one of the mats lay
the embroidered dress of a young warrior that Fiery Man's sister had
just finished. She immediately determined upon making her escape,
and taking these clothes with her as a disguise. She made them into
a bundle before the eyes of the dying woman, and resolved upon flying
from her husband's resentment.
How often she had called for death, yet how closely she now clung
to life. The violent excitement through which she had passed had
brought again the colour to her cheek. Brightness had succeeded to the
expression of languor in her eyes. There was no tie to keep her in
her husband's home. She now only thought of him as the avenger of his
sister's blood.
She left the lodge without even a glance towards the cause of her
misery and her sin. She turned from the places which would now know her
no more.