THE TRAGEDY OF THE MOUNDS
Notwithstanding the strenuous work of the summer, the boys got together
frequently to talk over their plans for the future. Dauphin and Rob
would begin together their studies in the preparatory department of
Carlton College, while Ed would look forward to the time when he would
be older and could join them.
Professor Hodge had written Dauphin that the college would accept his
Natural History collection at a price which would enable him to finish
his preparatory course and enter college, by working a part of his
time, and the care of Science Hall was offered him to supply that need.
Rob had no friends or acquaintances in the college town, but that fact
did not dismay him. Mr. Allen had taught his boys that difficulties
were but stepping stones up the heights of achievement, to the one who
had a clean life and steady will. Rob had both, and, whatever the price
demanded of effort and grit, he determined to have an education.
Dauphin would be a naturalist. He would need the training of the
college to give him quick perception, ability to classify his
knowledge, and arrive at correct conclusions. He would need to study
the languages in order that what had been revealed in the research of
men of other lands might be his.
Rob had not yet chosen the line of his life work, but he was equally
sure with Dauph that success and fame awaited boys who would apply
themselves as they intended to do. Many were the happy, earnest hours
spent by the boys in talking over the years they had spent together,
as well as the years that were to come. How marvelously their lives
had been spared, many times, since they had made their home in the
forest wilderness. Through dangers of fire and drowning and freezing,
one or another of them had been snatched back from the grave. The work
of these pioneer boys had been hard, but it had developed them into
lads of tough fiber, both of body and brain. They had had no idle
hours; whether at work out of doors, or during the long evenings of the
winters, they had their purpose in view--to prepare for life through
college. If their few dollars earned were jealously put away for this
purpose, no less were their minds trained by study for the necessary
preparation.
The days of August were drawing rapidly to a close; soon farewells must
be said, and the delights of forest and stream, as well as the duties
of the farm, be laid aside by the older boys for years, if not forever.
“Boys,” said Dauphin, “Professor Hodge, in one of his letters,
suggested that he would like the measurements of the hill and river
forts, and the old mound city, for a paper he is preparing on ‘The
Moundbuilders in Wisconsin.’ Let’s take a couple of days, and do a
little more exploring, and sketch the mounds, and take the measurements
for the professor.”
The boys readily agreed to the plan, and Ed suggested that they go by
the Indian camp at the mouth of Little Yellow, opposite Jim Dacora’s,
and persuade their friend Kalichigoogah to accompany them over to the
mound village.
The young Indian welcomed the boys to the camp, and his mother,
Menominee Mary, invited them to rest a bit in the wigwam. The earth
floor was as neat and wholesome as the floor of a parlor. Around the
sides were the couches, platforms raised about a foot from the floor
and heavily covered with the soft-dressed and ornamented skins of
bear, lynx, raccoon, and deer. The Indian mother offered the boys
sweet, ripe blackberries in white, birchbark dishes, but when they
mentioned the object of their expedition there came over her a quick
stiffening of body, and a startled look, almost of fear in her eyes.
“Butte-des-morts” said she using the French description, “much bad.
White boys stay here--not go.” But the boys, of course, were determined
to go on, notwithstanding the warning of the Indian woman, which they
were wholly at loss to understand. After the return of the Winnebagoes
from the South, Mary had placed her son in a mission school where
he had learned to read, and had acquired much of the way, and some
of the habits of thought of the white race; but there are things of
one’s early life that no subsequent training or polish will be able to
remove. Thus it was with the Indian lad’s veneration or superstitious
fear of the mysterious relics of the moundbuilders--places of “big
medicine.”
He was willing to explain to the boys the cause of his mother’s
warning, but was as loth as she that these sacred places should be
disturbed. “They mounds of dead,” said Kalichigoogah. “Big men, tall
like trees, make camp there. One day come snake, long like Minnenecedah
[the Yellow river]--big men make medicine; snake turn into long mound.
One day come great beast--two spears like logs in mouth [elephant]--big
men make medicine, great beast turn into big mound. Not good white boys
go near mounds. Angry spirit wake up; kill boy.”
The white boys agreeing that they would not dig into the mounds at
this time, but only take measurements, and make a plan of the old
encampment, the Indian mother consented, though with great reluctance,
for her son to accompany the party. But first she would put into his
keeping a little buckskin sack containing “strong medicine”--potent
charms--which might be able to protect them from the vengeance of the
spirits, should they be aroused.
As there was no need for them to hunt game, and the danger from bears,
or wild cats, panthers or lynx small indeed, at that time of year, the
boys had not burdened themselves with their guns, but Kalichigoogah
wrapped his blanket about his new 16-shot winchester, which the boys
accused him of taking along to shoot the ghosts. The Indian lad made no
reply to their chaffing, but strode off in silence.
The Yellow river was waded on a sandbar, and the river flat, a mile or
more in width, crossed. Here, the annual overflows had cut the soft
alluvial soil into deep, wide ditches, so that the land looked like a
succession of long breastworks. The flat was heavily timbered with oak
and hickory and linden, with an occasional gigantic pine rearing its
head high above the deciduous trees, like a sentinel of the forest.
Here the woods-folk still dwelt in comparative safety from their most
ferocious brother animal--man. It was going to be hard for Dauph and
Rob to part from this paradise of the nature-lover.
Up, out of the river flats, they came upon the sandy plain which
stretched eastward to the Wisconsin river, and then on to the shore
of the old sea bed. Gnarled, stunted pines covered the ground, in
some places growing in such profusion as to form almost impenetrable
thickets, but generally in more open growths, so that walking was even
less difficult than in the river “bottoms.”
Several times as they, boy-like, threshed through one of the thickets
they would start up a doe and her half-grown fawn, and once they
aroused a splendid buck, with the season’s antlers now full grown.
“Boys,” said Ed, “aren’t we somewhere in the neighborhood of the
mounds?”
“I am not sure,” replied Dauph, who was taking the lead, “I have never
come upon them from this direction, but unless I am mistaken, they lie
just beyond that thicket of scrub pine. How about it, Kali?”
But the Indian boy would make no reply. Evidently the expedition was
not at all to his liking.
In “Indian file” the boys entered the thicket of dwarfed pines, the
deerskin cap of Dauphin, the leader, who was the tallest, just showing
above the foliage. They had gone perhaps twenty rods into the thicket,
when a rifle shot rang out sharp and clear, and Dauphin sprang high
into the air with a loud cry, and fell in a crumpled heap at the feet
of Kalichigoogah. Like a flash out came the winchester from beneath the
blanket of the Indian boy, as he placed himself over the prostrate body
of his white friend, ready to give his own life in defense, if need be.
For a moment Ed and Rob were paralyzed with fear. Who had fired the
shot? Were they all about to be murdered? Then, as there was no second
shot, their courage returned, and they crashed through the thicket to
the opening on the side from which the report seemed to come, but there
was not a soul in sight: neither was it possible, because of the bed of
pine needles strewing the ground, to discover any track.
Thoroughly mystified, they hastened back to their wounded comrade.
There they found Dauphin with his head raised upon the lap of the
Indian lad, conscious, but rapidly weakening from loss of blood from an
ugly wound in his side. Rob tore off his cotton shirt and as best he
could applied a bandage to stop the flow of blood.
“We’ve got to get a doctor right away, and we’ve got to get Dauph
home,” announced Ed. “We might do more harm than good if we tried to
carry him ourselves, so, Kali, you had better hurry over to your camp
and have the men come on their ponies, and rig up a litter.” The Indian
lad looked up in a mute appeal to not be sent away from his stricken
friend, but as it became clear that this was perhaps the only chance to
save Dauphin’s life, he hastened away on his errand.
“Rob, you are the best runner; you had better get down to Necedah as
soon as you can, and get Doctor Cook up. We can’t tell how badly Dauph
is hurt.”
Who can describe the thoughts of that young lad, left alone with his
dying comrade? for the wound proved, indeed to be unto death. Ed was
not naturally superstitious, but the unexplained shot following the
Indian’s warning could not help but have a terrifying effect, deepening
as the hours brought darkness upon him.
Some of the time the wounded boy was delirious, and imagined that the
Indians were attacking them, and in his endeavors to spring up it was
all Ed could do to restrain him. At length the Indians arrived on their
ponies, and a rude but serviceable litter was made, upon which the red
men, two at a time, carried Dauphin to his home.
Mr. and Mrs. Thompson had been no strangers to sorrow and death; their
lives had known many bereavements and years of suffering, but Ed never
forgot the agony of the hour in which he bore to them the knowledge of
the accident to their young son.
Before morning Rob arrived with Doctor Cook, from Necedah, but it
was too late. The spirit of the lad they had all so fondly loved, had
passed out, and Dauph was dead.
Mr. Allen at once notified the authorities and a thorough search was
made for some clue to the one who had fired the fatal shot, but without
success; and it was not until years afterward that a man in a distant
state confessed to the facts. He said that with a companion he had been
on a hunting trip to the northern part of the state, and shortly after
having passed the old mounds they saw a patch of gray deerskin moving
along in the top of a thicket, and supposed it to be a part of the
head of a deer and had fired. The cry of a human being that followed
had shown their horrible mistake, and in a cowardly fear of possible
consequences they had hidden in the thicket until after dark and then
slipped away.
A new experience had entered the life of the Allen boys--Death. For the
first time they had looked in the still face of one who had been near
and dear, and heard it said “He is dead.”
What is death! Where was the boy who, just a few hours before, had been
with them so full of hope and joy and vigor? Had he ceased to exist?
Was that dead body, so soon to turn to dust, all that was left of their
friend? Or, was the real Dauphin somewhere, yet alive, and entering
upon an existence in which all his powers and aspirations would have
full scope, unhindered by earthly limitations?
Was it not really true that somewhere there was a God, who had made
all this marvelous universe, and man with the ability to discover
and enjoy its secrets? Did He make man like Himself? Would not man
of necessity have to be like Him in order to enjoy all that He had
created? What did it mean to be like God? Were they like God? If not,
how could they become so?
Not the words of these questions, but that which stood for them, filled
the hearts of the boys, as they looked upon the silent face of their
lost comrade. A new realm, a spiritual, was even then being opened to
them, and their angel was bidding their feet to enter.
The plan for happy college years together for Dauph and Rob was at an
end. Alone the lad would leave home and start forth upon his journey
into the strange, untried world. Yet not alone, for, although the
dear face of flesh was hidden from sight, he felt that the bright,
pure spirit of his comrade was still with him to beckon him on to the
heights.