THE RED ARROW
While merciless masters have driven the red man from the dune country,
indelible impressions of his race remain. His nomenclature is on the
maps, and the lakes, rivers, and streams carry names that were precious
to his people. His mythology still envelops the region with a halo of
romance and fable.
The dust of his forefathers has mingled with the hills, and time has
obliterated nearly every material trace of him, except those among the
imperishable stones. The débris of the little quarries is still visible
on small promontories, and in the depressions along the ridges, where
the pines have held the soil against the action of the wind and rain.
Here we find innumerable chips and fragments of broken stones, left by
the workers, who fashioned the implements of war and peace on these
sequestered spots.
Occasionally an imperfect or unfinished arrow or spear-head appears
among the refuse, which the patient artificer discarded. Many perfect
specimens are found, but these are seldom discovered near the sites of
the rude workshops. They are uncovered by the shifting sands in the
“blow outs,” where the winds eddy on the sides of hills that may have
held their secrets for centuries, and turned up out of the fertile soil
in the back country, by the plowshares of a race that carried the bitter
cup of affliction to the aborigine.
The little flakes of flint may be scattered over a space forty or fifty
feet across, and many thousands of perfect points may have gone forth
from it, as messages of death to the hearts of enemies, or to pierce the
quivering flesh of the innocent.
The refined ingenuity of man has ever been applied to things that kill.
The art of annihilation has attracted some of the dominant intellects of
mankind, and the extinction of life has been the industry of millions
since human history began.
The feathered shaft of the savage, and the steel shell of the white
man, go upon the same errand, and they both leave the same dark stain
upon the green earth. The children of men, in all ages, have been taught
that war is the only path to glory.
Under His quiet skies the living things must die, because they live. The
Great Riddle awaits solution beyond the confines of our philosophy, and
in the midst of our speculative wanderings, we become dust. Theology is
as helpless before a burial mound in the wilderness, as beside the
gilded tomb of a prince of the church.
The spiritual needs of the primitive savage were administered by his
tribal gods, and the spirits of his mythology. In his child-like faith
he believed the favor of a Great Spirit to be in the sunshine, and that
omnipotent wrath was thundered in the storms. His good manitous presided
over his fortunes in life, and gently led him into fabled hunting
grounds beyond the grave.
He was a fatalist, and not being civilized, his theology was imperfect.
Civilization approached him with a Bible in one hand and a bottle in the
other, and the decay of his race began. The finger of fate had touched
him, and the last heart-broken remnants of once happy and powerful
tribes were tied and led away by benign and Christian soldiers. They
carried crushed spirits and shattered lives to an alien soil, which an
all-wise conqueror had selected for them, leaving their burned homes,
and the bones of those they loved, in the land of their birth.
The moralist finds abundant food for reflection in the sufferings of the
weak, at the hands of the strong, and the triumph of might over
helplessness, but the Indian interfered with enlightened selfishness and
he perished.
The record of the expatriation and the practical extinction of the
Pottawatomies, who lived in this region, is written upon dark pages of
our history, but perhaps they had no rights as living creatures that an
enlightened government was bound to respect.
When the fog rolls in from the distant waters, and steals through the
pines, wraith-like forms of a forgotten race seem to haunt the scenes of
by-gone years. We may imagine the march of phantom throngs through the
trees, to meet silent battalions beyond the hills. The sands seem to
yield to the folds of a gray mantle that is laid upon them, and retreat
into obscurity.
When the night shadows come into the dune country, the spell of mystery
and poetry comes with them. The sorcery of the dark places leads us into
a land of dreams and unreality.
Out on the tremulous surface of the lake, we may fancy the lifting of
silvery paddles in the path of the moon’s reflections, and the furtive
movement across the bar of light, of mystic shapes in phantom canoes.
Mingled with the lispings of the little waves, we may hear ghostly prows
touch the sand, and see spectral figures file into the hills. The faint
echoes of strokes upon flint come out of the shadows.
The spirits of an ancient race have gone to their quarries, for
arrowheads and spears, for the unseen battles with evil gods.
Voices in the night wind recall them, and they go out into the purple
mists, that come upon the face of the waters before the dawn.
Sometimes among the silences, comes the beautiful dream form of Naeta,
the Spirit of the Dunes, who was once an Indian maiden with laughing
eyes and raven hair. It was she who lured the soul of Taqua, a mighty
warrior, who first saw her in the silver moonlight among the pines, in a
far-off time, before the first legends of the people were told.
Love stole into their lives and brought with him a train of sorrows,
which, one by one, were laid upon aching hearts, until the burden became
too heavy to bear. A dark shadow fell upon the little wigwam, and the
world-old story of shattered faith, that sent two souls adrift, was told
by the two trails that led from the ashes before the door.
The heart of Taqua became black, and for many days and nights he sped
over sandy hills, and along rocky shores, with the deadly gleam of
revenge in his eyes, and the bitterness of hate in his breast.
Once he sat brooding by the shore of the great lake, and saw a fragment
of red flint, which the numberless waves had worn into the rude
resemblance of an arrow-head. He picked it out of the wet sand, and with
patient skill, he fashioned it to a cutting point. He fastened it into
a shaft of ironwood, which he feathered with the pinions of a hawk.
He then climbed to the top of a high promontory, and waited until he saw
his star come over the horizon, in the path of the young moon. It was at
this time that he could talk to Manabush, the hero god, who was the
intermediary between the Indian and his manitous.
When he was certain of the presence of Manabush, he held his red arrow
before him--told the story of his wrongs--and consecrated the arrow to
the heart of his enemy. When the dawn came, and Manabush was gone, he
placed the arrow in his quiver, and began his march upon the path of
vengeance.
Through weary years he followed it, finding upon it many cross trails,
and the footprints of those who had gone before, upon the same errand.
The path led him into strange places, and through numberless dark
defiles, into which the sunlight never came.
It led him through lonesome loveless years, that marked his brow with
wrinkled hate, and hardened the lines that are only curved by smiles.
Time finally bent the sinewy form, the springing strides became shorter,
and their vigor became less. The frosts and sorrows of many winters had
turned the dark locks white, when, at the end of one summer--just as the
first leaves began to fall--he once more journeyed to the high rock to
invoke the aid and counsel of the hero god.
His dimmed eyes once more sought the star, and when he saw its light, he
told Manabush the story of his fruitless quest. His tired limbs could no
longer keep the trail, and his weary arms could no longer bend the bow
to the arrow’s length.
Long he talked and meditated, and a voice seemed to come out of the
darkness. It was a voice of sweetness and mercy--a voice of love and
forgiveness--that told of the futility of hatred and revenge, which
would be lost in the gloom of the Great Beyond, when the earth should
know him no more.
A new light burst upon him. He became glorified with a new thought. He
resolved that he would no longer carry the red arrow in his quiver. He
would abandon the black and sinister trail which he had hoped to redden
with the blood of his enemy, and part with this evil thing that had
mastered him.
When the morning sun came over the hills, and bathed them in the
radiance of a new day, he straightened his bent figure, and resolutely
placed the red arrow in the bow. With a new strength, he drew the shaft
to its full length, and, with a loud twang, the red arrow sang in the
morning air.
His poor old eyes could follow it only a little way, but he saw it
strike the shining bark of a little tree. With a sad smile--the first of
many years--he saw the leaves of the little tree turn red.
He looked for the arrow in vain. It had gone on through the forest, and
at night he found that it had struck many trees, for their leaves were
also red. The next day he traveled on, and the scarlet leaves were ever
before his eyes.
At last, tired and footsore, he laid down and slept. There came to him
in his dreams the beautiful Naeta. She told him of a long journey
through the years; how she had wearily sought him, how she had patiently
followed the tangled threads of fate, hoping to find the end, where the
sun might shine, without bitterness, without hatred--with love and
repentance in her heart.
Her feet had faltered on her weary way, and many times she had grasped
the little trees to keep from falling.
He awoke and looked again into the forest. He saw that these little
trees were touched with gold.
He then closed his eyes in eternal sleep, and the Indian Summer had come
upon the land.
The red arrow and the repentant hand had transfigured the hills, and the
glory of the Divine was upon them.
THE END
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