THE FATHER OF WATERS
So far I have written at some length of our voyage, for it was these
first days that set the stamp upon the relations of our little party.
From the hills of Cincinnati, which we sighted as I ended the story of
my boyhood, on down the long descent to Natchez, I was as one of Don
Pedro's own kinsmen. The name spoken by Alisanda, seemingly in jest,
became the name by which all addressed me, only that before we entered
the Mississippi both the senor and she had begun to drop the "Don" in
favor of the familiar "Juan."
So "Juan" and "Alisanda" it became between my lady and me, and Don Pedro
looked on and smiled. Yet with and beneath it all, both held to a subtle
reserve which told me plainer than words that the barriers were down
only for a truce, and not for a treaty,--that our freedom of conduct as
fellow-travellers would at the journey's end be barred by a return to
customs not of the country.
At times when alone on watch at night, I thought with misgiving of the
approaching days when my lady would resume her fine Castilian hauteur
and Don Pedro his punctilious politeness. But on the whole I was
content to make the most of my opportunities,--to drift with the current
of our companionship as the boat drifted with the stream.
Milder days came to us as we floated down into the Southwest,--days of
grateful sunshine and lessening rains,--heavenly hours beneath the blue
sky, when, inspired by the blossoming springtime upon the verdant
shores, we sat together in the open stern and sang solos and duets and
trios to the accompaniment of the guitar.
With the coming of nightfall I learned to look longingly for fog or wet,
for a clear moon meant a night on watch, that we might lose nothing of
the drift. But a dark sky gave me excuse to tie up to the bank for the
night and join in an evening of music and genteel talk about our
crackling beechwood fire.
Then there were lessons for me in Spanish from the don, and in the
playing of the guitar by Alisanda. It was strange how clumsy were my
fingers and how repeatedly I had to ask my fair teacher to place them
correctly.
And so we swept on down the beautiful river, the swirling depth of the
Spring fresh bearing us clear over the rocks of the Ohio Falls at
Louisville, as over the hundreds of miles of inundated flats and shoals
above and below.
At Lusk's Ferry Don Pedro had planned to leave the river and cut across
country horseback, over the forty-league road to Kaskaskia, which would
have saved nearly half the keelboat journey up the Mississippi from the
mouth of the Ohio to St. Louis. For this we should have taken aboard our
horses at Louisville or at the little settlement of Shawnee Town below
the Wabash, since at Lusk's Ferry suitable mounts for our party were not
to be had at any price. In the outcome, however, the miscarriage of
plans proved truly fortunate.
Having no other choice, we dropped on downstream past the Cumberland and
Tennessee Rivers, to Fort Massac, our lonesome American stockade, built
near the site of the old French post of the same name. We tied up to the
steep bank of clay and gravel, and I made a landing. Upon inquiry at the
post, Captain Bissell, the commandant, whom I had met the previous Fall
on my eastward journey, informed me at some length as to the movements
of General Wilkinson. Report having been received that General Herrera,
the Spanish commander in Texas, was gathering a force to march upon
Natchitoches, the Commander-in-Chief had descended the Mississippi for
the double purpose of strengthening the forts at New Orleans and of
assembling a force to repel the expected invasion.
I intimated to the captain that Senor Vallois was not averse to a war
which might give his country opportunity to throw off the Spanish yoke.
At this he confided to me as his opinion that the long-impending
hostilities seemed now inevitable, and that he would welcome a change
which would not only relieve him of his _ennui_ in this solitary post,
but would tend to break up the general stagnation of the service.
His urgent invitation brought Don Pedro and Alisanda ashore for a much
needed change. Neither had set foot on shore for days, and I persuaded
Don Pedro that the recreation was well worth the delay. But my pleasure
over the enjoyment of the exercise was not added to by the sight of the
gallant captain and his no less gallant lieutenant receiving the smiles
of Alisanda for their attentions. As a good excuse for avoiding the
painful spectacle, I secured some spare jars of sweetmeats from Chita,
and bartered them in the little settlement near the fort stockade for
chickens, eggs, and butter,--all of which would be still higher in price
and harder to obtain after we entered the Mississippi.
Soon after the landing of my companions, so strong a head wind set in
that we were forced to lie moored over night. Toward morning it fell to
a pleasant breeze, and I put off at dawn, without waiting to rouse the
others.
Midday found us afloat on the broad bosom of the Father of Waters, whose
noble flood, swollen above St. Louis by the silty downpourings of the
Missouri, and here by the Spring torrent of the Ohio, rolled on
gulfwards in full-banked majesty. It was a grand sight, but one to which
Don Pedro and Alisanda gave more thought than myself. Captain Bissell
had dropped me a word of warning as to possible trouble from canoe
parties of Chickasaw and other Indians, which, in view of Alisanda's
presence, gave me no little uneasiness.
That night and the next I called upon Don Pedro to watch, turn about,
with myself. I even went so far as to land at New Madrid; but the
villagers knew nothing of the Indians. At last, late in the afternoon of
the third day, we sighted a canoe full of warriors putting out from the
left bank, with the evident intention of intercepting us. At my command
Alisanda and her woman sought shelter in their room, while I left the
steering to the don, and stood ready with my rifle and his pistols.
When I signed the party to hold off at hailing distance, the foremost
warrior signed back that they were friends. But they were now near
enough for me to see their black war paint. Again I signed the leader to
keep off, and he in turn hailed me in Shawnee, demanding lead and
gunpowder. Before I realized what I was saying, I had answered him in
his own tongue, telling him to bring his party around under our stern.
At this unexpected address, the chief raised the hand which I knew had
been grasping his rifle. I responded with three or four quick signs that
drew a guttural exclamation from the least stolid of the warriors. They
were not used to meeting white men who could claim fellowship in their
tribe. But as they paddled nearer, I stared back at their chief, hardly
less astonished. There could be no mistaking his noble, powerful
features. He was my adopted brother Tecumseh!
The instant I recognized him with certainty, I laid down my rifle, and
called to him in Shawanese: "Tecumseh, many years have come and gone
since we parted at the British fort on the Maumee, yet do you not know
again your white brother Scalp Boy?"
At the word he rose from his knees and stood grandly erect in the bow of
the canoe, staring at me from beneath his levelled palm. The craft was
now within twenty yards of us, and Don Pedro could not withhold a
muttered exclamation of apprehension and warning. Almost at the same
moment Tecumseh stooped, and catching up a corner of his blanket, wiped
the grim war paint from his face. The paddlers at once paused to follow
his example.
"_Santisima!_" muttered Don Pedro. "Why do they rub their faces?"
"They remove the war paint in proof of friendship. Their chief is one of
my Indian brothers, who saved me from torture."
"But they come close! You will not permit them to enter the boat, with
Alisanda--"
"Fear nothing," I hastened to assure him. "We are safer now than when we
were alone. My brother and his people can be trusted with our lives and
our property."
"It is true, senor," remarked Tecumseh in clear though guttural English.
"Scalp Boy and his friends are sacred in the eyes of all Shawnees. He
is a member of our tribe and my brother."
I reached out and grasped the hand of the chief as the canoe came
alongside.
"Come aboard and feast with us," I said.
He shook his head. "No, Scalp Boy; that may not be. It warms my heart to
again grasp your hand; but you are an American white man; you have long
ago forgotten your Shawnee kindred--"
"No, no, Tecumseh! I have always remembered you and Elskwatawa, my
true-hearted brothers--"
"Tecumseh does not blame his white brother for returning to his white
kindred. There is no enmity between us. But Elskwatawa our brother has
become a communer with the Great Spirit, and he has told the redman how
evil are the customs and food and firewater of the white man. It is evil
for the redman to mingle with the white people."
"Have you then taken the warpath, my brother? Is that why you came out
against us in war paint?" I asked.
"We came out to attack you because we had need of powder, and I would
not beg. But we are not on the warpath."
"You are far from home," I remarked.
He swept his hand around in a grand gesture. "Elskwatawa the Prophet and
I make a great journey to our red cousins. We visit all the tribes from
the Great Lakes to that greater water in the South which the white
people call the Gulf."
"To form a great conspiracy against my people!" I exclaimed.
"Your people!" he repeated. "No, we seek to convince the tribes of my
people that they are all brothers, and should join in one nation."
"That they may seek to destroy the white people!"
"That they may hold back the white man from stealing any more of their
land."
He had me there. I could only look my regret; for I knew that, whatever
his intent, the result must be war.
He returned to the object of his averted attack. "Give us powder and
lead, Scalp Boy. We cannot eat the white man's food. We need powder and
lead to shoot game."
"Not to make war?" I asked.
"I speak with a straight tongue," he said.
At this I went into the cabin and fetched out a small keg of powder and
a quarter-hundredweight of lead. He motioned me to hand the gifts to the
warrior in the stern of the canoe, and when I turned again to him, he
held out a beautifully wrought belt of wampum.
"It is little I can give to my brother," he said.
"I take the gift because my brother offers it," I replied. "What I have
given is nothing. All that I could give would not repay what Tecumseh
did for me in my boyhood!"
He looked me up and down with an approving glance. "Scalp Boy has grown
to be a great warrior. I will ask the Great Spirit that we may never
meet on the battlefield."
Before I could respond, he signed his warriors to push off, and the
canoe shot away at arrowy speed. At once Alisanda slipped out of the
cabin, to peer after the darting craft and the grim savages, whose
naked, bronzed forebodies, fantastically streaked with the war paint,
swayed to the paddle strokes so vigorously as to bob their plumed war
locks about in a most comical manner. It was a sight she was not apt to
see again even on the Mississippi, if only because of the redman's
dislike to exert himself except when hunting or on the warpath.
Though we had come so well through this adventure, the accident of our
escape from attack did not lessen my fear of visits from Indians
belonging to other tribes. To my vast relief, the following day brought
us safely in the approach of a great flotilla of flour-laden flats,
whose draught of water gave them better headway than our boat. The drift
of our craft, which sat so much higher in the water, was at times more
retarded by the head winds. The difference was so slight that we were
able to keep the others in sight until another flotilla overtook us. In
fact, so vast was the extent of the river traffic that from this point
until our landing at Natchez, we were never beyond view of one or more
descending vessels, while even keelboats, ascending under sail or poles,
were not uncommon.
Though far from as swift as the flooded Ohio, the Mississippi bore us
rapidly on our way. Divided by island after island and contorted this
way and that by out-jutting points, its mighty current, swollen to vast
width, yet swept on in majestic grandeur past towering bluffs and
inundated lowlands and wildernesses as virgin as in the remote days of
De Soto the Spaniard, and La Salle the Frenchman, other than for an
occasional plantation and, at longer intervals, the log cabins of the
little settlements.
I will not speak of our difficulties from snags and sawyers and delaying
eddies, or of the extreme difficulty of shooting the waterfowl, which,
though abundant, had long since been taught wariness by the guns aboard
the swarming river craft. I shot a swan and now and then a duck, but for
the most part was held too close to the navigation of our awkward flat
to hunt such shy game.
On the other hand, our well-stocked larder supplied us with all else
than fresh meat and milk, and to obtain fish we had only to trail a line
over the stern. The season was favorable to the avoidance of fevers and
agues; the high water obviated in a measure the danger of shoals and
sawyers, and I had had the forethought to provide nettings, which saved
us when within the cabin the torments which at night we would otherwise
have suffered from mosquitoes and gnats, even out in midchannel.
So, on the whole, our days would have passed pleasantly, even without
those joys of companionship of which I have written. Aside from an
occasional fierce thunder storm, our May days on the lower river were
ideal to southern-born persons like my companions, though the fervid
sunrays on the water darkened Don Pedro's aristocratic face to a coffee
brown, and burned my ruddy complexion until it presented one unvaried
expanse of brick red.
When not at work, Chita was accustomed to doze, uncovered, in the full
blaze, mumbling in answer to my repeated warnings, that it would take a
lifetime of basking to draw the fog and wet of England and my country
from her bones. But she took great care that her mistress should never
venture out into the sun-glare unmasked. Though the senorita could
endure the heat as well as herself, there was always the senorita's
complexion to be considered.