Not long had Oowikapun to wait, for soon emerged from among the young
balsam trees a fair Indian maiden with a number of snow-white ptarmigan
and a few rabbits, which had rewarded her skill and enterprise as a
successful huntress in coming so far from the village to set her snares.
She was taller than most Indian maidens, and her eyes were bright and
fearless. She stepped into the trail and turned her face homeward, but
gave a sudden start, as, lifting up her eyes, she found herself almost
face to face with Oowikapun. Quickly regaining her composure, she threw
her game over her back, in the Indian woman's style of carrying loads;
and with the natural Indian womanly modesty seemed anxious to at once go
on. In all probability not a word would have passed between them. As
it happened, however, just at the moment when the maiden swung her load
of game over her pack, the shawl she was wearing fell back for an
instant from her arm, and on it Oowikapun's quick eye detected the
beautiful bracelet that he had seen that morning on the arm that had
closed the door of his little lodge.
This discovery filled him with curiosity, and he resolved to find out
who she was, and why she had shown him, a stranger, so much kindness.
But the difficulty was how to begin. His Indian training told him it
would be a breach of decorum to speak to her; but so great was his
anxiety to find the solution of what was a mystery even to the villagers
themselves, that he felt he must not let the opportunity pass by. Man's
bluntness is his own poor substitute for woman's superior tact, and so
as she was about to pass he said: "Have I not seen that beautiful
bracelet before?"
He tried to speak kindly, but he was excited and fearful that she would
be gone, and so his voice sounded harsh and stern, and it startled her,
and her face flushed a little; yet she quickly regained her composure,
and then quietly said: "It was made years ago, so you have seen it
before."
"Was it not on the arm of the friend who made the fire and prepared the
food and brought the clothing for the poor, foolish stranger?" he asked.
She raised her piercing black eyes to his, as though she would look into
his soul, and said, without hesitancy: "Yes, it was; and Oowikapun was
indeed foolish, if not worse."
Startled and confounded at this reply, given in such decided tones by
this maiden, Oowikapun, in spite of all his efforts to appear unmoved,
felt abashed before her, and his eyes fell under her searching gaze.
Recovering himself as well as he could, he said: "Will the fair maiden
please tell me what she means?"
"Yes," she answered. "What she means is that she is very much surprised
that a man who for days has been a guest in the wigwam of Memotas and
Meyooachimoowin, and who has heard their songs and prayers to the Good
Spirit, should again be found in the circle of the devil dance."
"How do you know I was with Memotas?" he replied.
"From your own lips," she answered. "I was with the maidens, with only
a deerskin partition dividing us from the place where you told the men
of your battle with the wolf, and of Memotas's love and words about the
book of heaven and the Good Spirit to you. And yet," she added, and
there was a tinge of sorrow in her voice, "after having heard all that,
you went to the old bad way again."
Stung by her words so full of reproof, he retorted with some bitterness:
"And you and the other maidens goaded me on to the dance."
With flashing eyes she drew herself up proudly, and said: "Never! I
would have died first. It was a lie of the conjurers, if they said
anything of the kind."
A feeling of admiration, followed by one of almost envy, came over him
as he listened to the decided words, uttered with such spirit, and he
heartily wished some of it had been his when tempted to join in the
dance of sin. With the consciousness of weakness and with his proud
spirit quelled, he said: "Why are you of this mind? How is it that you
know so much about the white man's way? Did I not see you in the wigwam
of Kistayimoowin, the chief, whose brother is the great medicine man of
the tribe? How is it that you, the chief's daughter and the conjurer's
niece, should have such different thoughts about these things?"
Her answer, which was a little bit of her family history, was as
follows:
"While I am the niece of Koosapatum, the conjurer and medicine man, whom
I hate, I am not the daughter, but the niece of Kistayimoowin, the
chief. My father was another brother of theirs. He was a great hunter,
and years ago, when I was a little child, he left the home of his tribe
and, taking my mother and me, he went far away to Lake Athabasca, where
he was told there was abundance of game and fish. In a great storm they
were both drowned. I was left a poor orphan child about six years of
age among the pagan Indians, who cared but little for me. They said
they had enough to do in looking after their own children, so often I
was half starved. Fortunately for me the great missionary, with his
wonderful canoe of tin, which the people called the `Island of Light,'
came along that way on one of his journeys. He had those skillful canoe
men--Henry Budd and Hasselton. While stopping among the people and
teaching them the true way, the missionary heard of me and of the danger
I was in of perishing, and so he took me in the canoe and carried me all
the way to Norway House. It was long ago, but well do I remember how
they carried me across the rough portages when I got tired out, and gave
me to eat the best pieces of ducks and geese or other game which they
shot for food. At night they gathered old hay from the beavers'
meadows, or cut down a young balsam tree, and with its branches made me
a little bed for the night.
"When we reached Norway House Mission, I was adopted into the family of
the missionary. They and Miss Adams, the teacher, were very kind to me.
I joined the Indian children in the school, and went regularly to the
little church. I well remember Memotas and Big Tom and Murtagon and
Papanekis and many others. I learned some of the hymns, and can
distinctly remember seeing the missionary and Mr Steinhav printing the
hymns in the characters on the bark and on paper. It was the happiest
year of my life.
"O that I had been wise, and tried to gather up and fix in my memory all
that was said to me of the Great Spirit, and his son Jesus, and about
the good way! But I was a happy, thoughtless girl, and more fond of
play with the little Indian girls and the fun-loving, happy boys than of
listening to the lessons and learning them.
"A year after my Uncle Kistayimoowin came down to the fort with his
furs, and took me away home with him; and here, so far away, I have
lived ever since. In his way he is not unkind to me, but my Uncle
Koosapatum hates me because I know these things; and as all are in dread
of his poisons, even Kistayimoowin does not wish me to speak about what
I heard that year, or sing what I remember except when I am far out in
the forest. Because I do not want to have my uncle, the chief,
poisoned, I kept quiet sometimes; but most of the women have heard all I
know, and they are longing to hear more. So our hearts got full of
hoping when, as we waited on the chief with his dinner a few days ago,
we heard him talking with some others who were eating with him that you
had come, and had been cured of your wounds by a Christian Indian, by
the name of Memotas, and were going to give a talk about what had
happened to you, and what you had heard. When I heard him mention the
name of Memotas, I thought I would have dropped the birch roggin of
roasted bears' paws which I was holding, for I could still remember that
good man so well. Gladly I gathered some of the women together behind
the partition to listen and learn more of the good way, if we could,
from you.
"We drank in every word you said, and when they mocked we were very
angry at them; but we dare not say a word for fear of a beating. While
you stood firm and refused to join in that wicked dance we rejoiced.
When you yielded our hearts became sad, and we silently got away. I
went out into the woods and wept. When I returned the women had shut
themselves up in their tents, and the men were all off to the big dance
house. I found your clothes and fire bag just where you had thrown them
off, in danger of being dragged away or torn to pieces by the foolish
young dogs. So, unseen by anybody, I gathered them up and put them
away.
"During the days and nights you danced I was angry and miserable, and at
times could not keep from weeping that a man who had known Memotas, and
for days had been with him, and had heard so much about the good way,
should then go back to the old dark way which gives no comfort to
anyone.
"When you fell senseless in the circle, I watched where they carried
you. I visited the tent in the night, and I heard your sad moans, and I
knew you were unhappy. At daybreak, as you had fallen into a deep
sleep, I built the fire and prepared the food, and carried you your
clothing; and if it had not been for the breeze which swept through the
door, when I last opened it, you would never have known anything about
me."
Her story greatly interested Oowikapun; and as he listened to her thus
talking as he had never heard an Indian woman speak before, he saw the
benefit which had come as the result of a year spent among Christians,
even though it were only a year in childhood. When she finished he
said: "I am glad I have met you and heard your story."
"Why should you be glad?" she replied. "I am sure you must be offended
that a woman should have dared to speak so plainly to you."
"I deserve all that you have said, and more too," he added after a
pause.
"In which trail are you in the future going to walk?" she asked. This
straight, searching question brought vividly before his vision the
dream, and the two ways which there he saw, and he felt that a crisis in
his life had come; and he said, after a pause: "I should like to walk in
the way marked out by the book of heaven."
"And so would I," she replied, with intense earnestness; "but it seems
hard to do so, placed as I am. You think me brave here thus reproving
you, but I am a coward in the village. I have called it love for my
uncle's life that has kept me back from defying the conjurers, and
telling everybody I want to go in the way the Good Spirit has given us;
but it is cowardice, and I am ashamed of myself, and then I know so
little. O, that we had a missionary among us with the book of heaven,
as they have at Norway House and elsewhere, that we might learn more
about the way, and be brave and courageous all the time!"
This despairing cry is the voice of millions dissatisfied with the devil
dances and worship of idols. The call is for those who can tell them
where soul comfort can be found, and a sweet assurance brought into
their hearts that they are in the right way.
Hardly knowing what answer to make, but now interested in the woman as
never in one before, he asked: "What name does your uncle call you?"
Wishing to find out her name he put it this way, as it is considered the
height of rudeness to ask a person her name. When several persons are
together, and the name of one is desired by one of the company, the plan
is always to ask some third person for the desired information.
"Astumastao," she replied. And then feeling with her keen womanly
instincts that the time had come when the long interview should end, she
quickly threw her game, which had been dropped on the ground, over her
shoulder again, and gliding by him, soon disappeared in the forest
trail.