I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are.
But I have that honourable
Grief lodged here, which burns worse than
Tears drown
—Shakespeare.
When within twenty feet of the prisoners, the Tetons stopped, and their
leader made a sign to the old man to draw nigh. The trapper obeyed,
quitting the young Pawnee with a significant look, which was received,
as it was meant, for an additional pledge that he would never forget
his promise. So soon as Mahtoree found that the other had stopped
within reach of him, he stretched forth his arm, and laying a hand upon
the shoulder of the attentive old man, he stood regarding him, a
minute, with eyes that seemed willing to penetrate the recesses of his
most secret thoughts.
“Is a Pale-face always made with two tongues?” he demanded, when he
found that, as usual, with the subject of this examination, he was as
little intimidated by his present frown, as moved by any apprehensions
of the future.
“Honesty lies deeper than the skin.”
“It is so. Now let my father hear me. Mahtoree has but one tongue, the
grey-head has many. They may be all straight, and none of them forked.
A Sioux is no more than a Sioux, but a Pale-face is every thing! He can
talk to the Pawnee, and the Konza, and the Omawhaw, and he can talk to
his own people.”
“Ay, there are linguists in the settlements that can do still more. But
what profits it all? The Master of Life has an ear for every language!”
“The grey-head has done wrong. He has said one thing when he meant
another. He has looked before him with his eyes, and behind him with
his mind. He has ridden the horse of a Sioux too hard; he has been the
friend of a Pawnee, and the enemy of my people.”
“Teton, I am your prisoner. Though my words are white, they will not
complain. Act your will.”
“No. Mahtoree will not make a white hair red. My father is free. The
prairie is open on every side of him. But before the grey-head turns
his back on the Siouxes, let him look well at them, that he may tell
his own chief, how great is a Dahcotah!”
“I am not in a hurry to go on my path. You see a man with a white head,
and no woman, Teton; therefore shall I not run myself out of breath, to
tell the nations of the prairies what the Siouxes are doing.”
“It is good. My father has smoked with the chiefs at many councils,”
returned Mahtoree, who now thought himself sufficiently sure of the
other’s favour to go more directly to his object. “Mahtoree will speak
with the tongue of his very dear friend and father. A young Pale-face
will listen when an old man of that nation opens his mouth. Go; my
father will make what a poor Indian says fit for a white ear.”
“Speak aloud!” said the trapper, who readily understood the
metaphorical manner, in which the Teton expressed a desire that he
should become an interpreter of his words into the English language;
“speak, my young men listen. Now, captain, and you too, friend
bee-hunter, prepare yourselves to meet the deviltries of this savage,
with the stout hearts of white warriors. If you find yourselves giving
way under his threats, just turn your eyes on that noble-looking
Pawnee, whose time is measured with a hand as niggardly, as that with
which a trader in the towns gives forth the fruits of the Lord, inch by
inch, in order to satisfy his covetousness. A single look at the boy
will set you both up in resolution.”
“My brother has turned his eyes on the wrong path,” interrupted
Mahtoree, with a complacency that betrayed how unwilling he was to
offend his intended interpreter.
“The Dahcotah will speak to my young men?”
“After he has sung in the ear of the flower of the Pale-faces.”
“The Lord forgive the desperate villain!” exclaimed the old man in
English. “There are none so tender, or so young, or so innocent, as to
escape his ravenous wishes. But hard words and cold looks will profit
nothing; therefore it will be wise to speak him fair. Let Mahtoree open
his mouth.”
“Would my father cry out, that the women and children should hear the
wisdom of chiefs! We will go into the lodge and whisper.”
As the Teton ended, he pointed significantly towards a tent, vividly
emblazoned with the history of one of his own boldest and most
commended exploits, and which stood a little apart from the rest, as if
to denote it was the residence of some privileged individual of the
band. The shield and quiver at its entrance were richer than common,
and the high distinction of a fusee, attested the importance of its
proprietor. In every other particular it was rather distinguished by
signs of poverty than of wealth. The domestic utensils were fewer in
number and simpler in their forms, than those to be seen about the
openings of the meanest lodges, nor was there a single one of those
high-prized articles of civilised life, which were occasionally bought
of the traders, in bargains that bore so hard on the ignorant natives.
All these had been bestowed, as they had been acquired, by the generous
chief, on his subordinates, to purchase an influence that might render
him the master of their lives and persons; a species of wealth that was
certainly more noble in itself, and far dearer to his ambition.
The old man well knew this to be the lodge of Mahtoree, and, in
obedience to the sign of the chief, he held his way towards it with
slow and reluctant steps. But there were others present, who were
equally interested in the approaching conference, whose apprehensions
were not to be so easily suppressed. The watchful eye and jealous ears
of Middleton had taught him enough to fill his soul with horrible
forebodings. With an incredible effort he succeeded in gaining his
feet, and called aloud to the retiring trapper—
“I conjure you, old man, if the love you bore my parents was more than
words, or if the love you bear your God is that of a Christian man,
utter not a syllable that may wound the ear of that innocent—”
Exhausted in spirit and fettered in limbs, he then fell, like an
inanimate log, to the earth, where he lay like one dead.
Paul had however caught the clue and completed the exhortation, in his
peculiar manner.
“Harkee, old trapper,” he shouted, vainly endeavouring at the same time
to make a gesture of defiance with his hand; “if you ar’ about to play
the interpreter, speak such words to the ears of that damnable savage,
as becomes a white man to use, and a heathen to hear. Tell him, from
me, that if he does or says the thing that is uncivil to the girl,
called Nelly Wade, that I’ll curse him with my dying breath; that I’ll
pray for all good Christians in Kentucky to curse him; sitting and
standing; eating and drinking, fighting, praying, or at horse-races;
in-doors and outdoors; in summer or winter, or in the month of March in
short I’ll—ay, it ar’ a fact, morally true—I’ll haunt him, if the ghost
of a Pale-face can contrive to lift itself from a grave made by the
hands of a Red-skin!”
Having thus ventured the most terrible denunciation he could devise,
and the one which, in the eyes of the honest bee-hunter, there seemed
the greatest likelihood of his being able to put in execution, he was
obliged to await the fruits of his threat, with that resignation which
would be apt to govern a western border-man who, in addition to the
prospects just named, had the advantage of contemplating them in
fetters and bondage. We shall not detain the narrative, to relate the
quaint morals with which he next endeavoured to cheer the drooping
spirits of his more sensitive companion, or the occasional pithy and
peculiar benedictions that he pronounced, on all the bands of the
Dahcotahs, commencing with those whom he accused of stealing or
murdering, on the banks of the distant Mississippi, and concluding, in
terms of suitable energy, with the Teton tribe. The latter more than
once received from his lips curses as sententious and as complicated as
that celebrated anathema of the church, for a knowledge of which most
unlettered Protestants are indebted to the pious researches of the
worthy Tristram Shandy. But as Middleton recovered from his exhaustion
he was fain to appease the boisterous temper of his associate, by
admonishing him of the uselessness of such denunciations, and of the
possibility of their hastening the very evil he deprecated, by
irritating the resentments of a race, who were sufficiently fierce and
lawless, even in their most pacific moods.
In the mean time the trapper and the Sioux chief pursued their way to
the lodge. The former had watched with painful interest the expression
of Mahtoree’s eye, while the words of Middleton and Paul were pursuing
their footsteps, but the mien of the Indian was far too much restrained
and self-guarded, to permit the smallest of his emotions to escape
through any of those ordinary outlets, by which the condition of the
human volcano is commonly betrayed. His look was fastened on the little
habitation they approached; and, for the moment, his thoughts appeared
to brood alone on the purposes of this extraordinary visit.
The appearance of the interior of the lodge corresponded with its
exterior. It was larger than most of the others, more finished in its
form, and finer in its materials; but there its superiority ceased.
Nothing could be more simple and republican than the form of living
that the ambitious and powerful Teton chose to exhibit to the eyes of
his people. A choice collection of weapons for the chase, some three or
four medals, bestowed by the traders and political agents of the
Canadas as a homage to, or rather as an acknowledgment of, his rank,
with a few of the most indispensable articles of personal
accommodation, composed its furniture. It abounded in neither venison,
nor the wild-beef of the prairies; its crafty owner having well
understood that the liberality of a single individual would be
abundantly rewarded by the daily contributions of a band. Although as
pre-eminent in the chase as in war, a deer or a buffaloe was never seen
to enter whole into his lodge. In return, an animal was rarely brought
into the encampment, that did not contribute to support the family of
Mahtoree. But the policy of the chief seldom permitted more to remain
than sufficed for the wants of the day, perfectly assured that all must
suffer before hunger, the bane of savage life, could lay its fell fangs
on so important a victim.
Immediately beneath the favourite bow of the chief, and encircled in a
sort of magical ring of spears, shields, lances and arrows, all of
which had in their time done good service, was suspended the mysterious
and sacred medicine-bag. It was highly-wrought in wampum, and profusely
ornamented with beads and porcupine’s quills, after the most cunning
devices of Indian ingenuity. The peculiar freedom of Mahtoree’s
religious creed has been more than once intimated, and by a singular
species of contradiction, he appeared to have lavished his attentions
on this emblem of a supernatural agency, in a degree that was precisely
inverse to his faith. It was merely the manner in which the Sioux
imitated the well-known expedient of the Pharisees, “in order that they
might be seen of men.”
The tent had not, however, been entered by its owner since his return
from the recent expedition. As the reader has already anticipated, it
had been made the prison of Inez and Ellen. The bride of Middleton was
seated on a simple couch of sweet-scented herbs covered with skins. She
had already suffered so much, and witnessed so many wild and
unlooked-for events, within the short space of her captivity, that
every additional misfortune fell with a diminished force on her
seemingly devoted head. Her cheeks were bloodless, her dark and usually
animated eye was contracted in an expression of settled concern, and
her form appeared shrinking and sensitive, nearly to extinction. But in
the midst of these evidences of natural weakness, there were at times
such an air of pious resignation, such gleams of meek but holy hope
lighting her countenance, as might well have rendered it a question
whether the hapless captive was most a subject of pity, or of
admiration. All the precepts of father Ignatius were riveted in her
faithful memory, and not a few of his pious visions were floating
before her imagination. Sustained by so sacred resolutions, the mild,
the patient and the confiding girl was bowing her head to this new
stroke of Providence, with the same sort of meekness as she would have
submitted to any other prescribed penitence for her sins, though
nature, at moments, warred powerfully, with so compelled a humility.
On the other hand, Ellen had exhibited far more of the woman, and
consequently of the passions of the world. She had wept until her eyes
were swollen and red. Her cheeks were flushed and angry, and her whole
mien was distinguished by an air of spirit and resentment, that was not
a little, however, qualified by apprehensions for the future. In short,
there was that about the eye and step of the betrothed of Paul, which
gave a warranty that should happier times arrive, and the constancy of
the bee-hunter finally meet with its reward, he would possess a partner
every way worthy to cope with his own thoughtless and buoyant
temperament.
There was still another and a third figure in that little knot of
females. It was the youngest, the most highly gifted, and, until now,
the most favoured of the wives of the Teton. Her charms had not been
without the most powerful attraction in the eyes of her husband, until
they had so unexpectedly opened on the surpassing loveliness of a woman
of the Pale-faces. From that hapless moment the graces, the attachment,
the fidelity of the young Indian, had lost their power to please. Still
the complexion of Tachechana, though less dazzling than that of her
rival, was, for her race, clear and healthy. Her hazel eye had the
sweetness and playfulness of the antelope’s; her voice was soft and
joyous as the song of the wren, and her happy laugh was the very melody
of the forest. Of all the Sioux girls, Tachechana (or the Fawn) was the
lightest-hearted and the most envied. Her father had been a
distinguished brave, and her brothers had already left their bones on a
distant and dreary war-path. Numberless were the warriors, who had sent
presents to the lodge of her parents, but none of them were listened to
until a messenger from the great Mahtoree had come. She was his third
wife, it is true, but she was confessedly the most favoured of them
all. Their union had existed but two short seasons, and its fruits now
lay sleeping at her feet, wrapped in the customary ligatures of skin
and bark, which form the swaddlings of an Indian infant.
At the moment, when Mahtoree and the trapper arrived at the opening of
the lodge, the young Sioux wife was seated on a simple stool, turning
her soft eyes, with looks that varied, like her emotions, with love and
wonder, from the unconscious child to those rare beings, who had filled
her youthful and uninstructed mind with so much admiration and
astonishment. Though Inez and Ellen had passed an entire day in her
sight, it seemed as if the longings of her curiosity were increasing
with each new gaze. She regarded them as beings of an entirely
different nature and condition from the females of the prairie. Even
the mystery of their complicated attire had its secret influence on her
simple mind, though it was the grace and charms of sex, to which nature
has made every people so sensible, that most attracted her admiration.
But while her ingenuous disposition freely admitted the superiority of
the strangers over the less brilliant attractions of the Dahcotah
maidens, she had seen no reason to deprecate their advantages. The
visit that she was now about to receive, was the first which her
husband had made to the tent since his return from the recent inroad,
and he was ever present to her thoughts, as a successful warrior, who
was not ashamed, in the moments of inaction, to admit the softer
feelings of a father and a husband.
We have every where endeavoured to show that while Mahtoree was in all
essentials a warrior of the prairies, he was much in advance of his
people in those acquirements which announce the dawnings of
civilisation. He had held frequent communion with the traders and
troops of the Canadas, and the intercourse had unsettled many of those
wild opinions which were his birthright, without perhaps substituting
any others of a nature sufficiently definite to be profitable. His
reasoning was rather subtle than true, and his philosophy far more
audacious than profound. Like thousands of more enlightened beings, who
fancy they are able to go through the trials of human existence without
any other support than their own resolutions, his morals were
accommodating and his motive selfish. These several characteristics
will be understood always with reference to the situation of the
Indian, though little apology is needed for finding resemblances
between men, who essentially possess the same nature, however it may be
modified by circumstances.
Notwithstanding the presence of Inez and Ellen, the entrance of the
Teton warrior into the lodge of his favourite wife, was made with the
tread and mien of a master. The step of his moccasin was noiseless, but
the rattling of his bracelets, and of the silver ornaments of his
leggings, sufficed to announce his approach, as he pushed aside the
skin covering of the opening of the tent, and stood in the presence of
its inmates. A faint cry of pleasure burst from the lips of Tachechana
in the suddenness of her surprise, but the emotion was instantly
suppressed in that subdued demeanour which should characterise a matron
of her tribe. Instead of returning the stolen glance of his youthful
and secretly rejoicing wife, Mahtoree moved to the couch, occupied by
his prisoners, and placed himself in the haughty, upright attitude of
an Indian chief, before their eyes. The old man had glided past him,
and already taken a position suited to the office he had been commanded
to fill.
Surprise kept the females silent and nearly breathless. Though
accustomed to the sight of savage warriors, in the horrid panoply of
their terrible profession, there was something so startling in the
entrance, and so audacious in the inexplicable look of their conqueror,
that the eyes of both sunk to the earth, under a feeling of terror and
embarrassment. Then Inez recovered herself, and addressing the trapper,
she demanded, with the dignity of an offended gentlewoman, though with
her accustomed grace, to what circumstance they owed this extraordinary
and unexpected visit. The old man hesitated; but clearing his throat,
like one who was about to make an effort to which he was little used,
he ventured on the following reply—
“Lady,” he said, “a savage is a savage, and you are not to look for the
uses and formalities of the settlements on a bleak and windy prairie.
As these Indians would say, fashions and courtesies are things so
light, that they would blow away. As for myself, though a man of the
forest, I have seen the ways of the great, in my time, and I am not to
learn that they differ from the ways of the lowly. I was long a
serving-man in my youth, not one of your beck-and-nod runners about a
household, but a man that went through the servitude of the forest with
his officer, and well do I know in what manner to approach the wife of
a captain. Now, had I the ordering of this visit, I would first have
hemmed aloud at the door, in order that you might hear that strangers
were coming, and then I—”
“The manner is indifferent,” interrupted Inez, too anxious to await the
prolix explanations of the old man; “why is the visit made?”
“Therein shall the savage speak for himself. The daughters of the
Pale-faces wish to know why the Great Teton has come into his lodge?”
Mahtoree regarded his interrogator with a surprise, which showed how
extraordinary he deemed the question. Then placing himself in a posture
of condescension, after a moment’s delay, he answered—
“Sing in the ears of the dark-eye. Tell her the lodge of Mahtoree is
very large, and that it is not full. She shall find room in it, and
none shall be greater than she. Tell the light-hair, that she too may
stay in the lodge of a brave, and eat of his venison. Mahtoree is a
great chief. His hand is never shut.”
“Teton,” returned the trapper, shaking his head in evidence of the
strong disapprobation with which he heard this language, “the tongue of
a Red-skin must be coloured white, before it can make music in the ears
of a Pale-face. Should your words be spoken, my daughters would shut
their ears, and Mahtoree would seem a trader to their eyes. Now listen
to what comes from a grey-head, and then speak accordingly. My people
is a mighty people. The sun rises on their eastern and sets on their
western border. The land is filled with bright-eyed and laughing girls,
like these you see—ay, Teton, I tell no lie,” observing his auditor to
start with an air of distrust—“bright-eyed and pleasant to behold, as
these before you.”
“Has my father a hundred wives!” interrupted the savage, laying his
finger on the shoulder of the trapper, with a look of curious interest
in the reply.
“No, Dahcotah. The Master of Life has said to me, Live alone; your
lodge shall be the forest; the roof of your wigwam, the clouds. But,
though never bound in the secret faith which, in my nation, ties one
man to one woman, often have I seen the workings of that kindness which
brings the two together. Go into the regions of my people; you will see
the daughters of the land, fluttering through the towns like
many-coloured and joyful birds in the season of blossoms. You will meet
them, singing and rejoicing, along the great paths of the country, and
you will hear the woods ringing with their laughter. They are very
excellent to behold, and the young men find pleasure in looking at
them.”
“Hugh,” ejaculated the attentive Mahtoree.
“Ay, well may you put faith in what you hear, for it is no lie. But
when a youth has found a maiden to please him, he speaks to her in a
voice so soft, that none else can hear. He does not say, My lodge is
empty and there is room for another; but shall I build, and will the
virgin show me near what spring she would dwell? His voice is sweeter
than honey from the locust, and goes into the ear thrilling like the
song of a wren. Therefore, if my brother wishes his words to be heard,
he must speak with a white tongue.”
Mahtoree pondered deeply, and in a wonder that he did not attempt to
conceal. It was reversing all the order of society, and, according to
his established opinions, endangering the dignity of a chief, for a
warrior thus to humble himself before a woman. But as Inez sat before
him, reserved and imposing in air, utterly unconscious of his object,
and least of all suspecting the true purport of so extraordinary a
visit, the savage felt the influence of a manner to which he was
unaccustomed. Bowing his head, in acknowledgment of his error, he
stepped a little back, and placing himself in an attitude of easy
dignity, he began to speak with the confidence of one who had been no
less distinguished for eloquence, than for deeds in arms. Keeping his
eyes riveted on the unconscious bride of Middleton, he proceeded in the
following words—
“I am a man with a red skin, but my eyes are dark. They have been open
since many snows. They have seen many things—they know a brave from a
coward. When a boy, I saw nothing but the bison and the deer. I went to
the hunts, and I saw the cougar and the bear. This made Mahtoree a man.
He talked with his mother no more. His ears were open to the wisdom of
the old men. They told him every thing—they told him of the Big-knives.
He went on the war-path. He was then the last; now, he is the first.
What Dahcotah dare say he will go before Mahtoree into the hunting
grounds of the Pawnees? The chiefs met him at their doors, and they
said, My son is without a home. They gave him their lodges, they gave
him their riches, and they gave him their daughters. Then Mahtoree
became a chief, as his fathers had been. He struck the warriors of all
the nations, and he could have chosen wives from the Pawnees, the
Omawhaws, and the Konzas; but he looked at the hunting grounds, and not
at his village. He thought a horse was pleasanter than a Dahcotah girl.
But he found a flower on the prairies, and he plucked it, and brought
it into his lodge. He forgets that he is the master of a single horse.
He gives them all to the stranger, for Mahtoree is not a thief; he will
only keep the flower he found on the prairie. Her feet are very tender.
She cannot walk to the door of her father; she will stay, in the lodge
of a valiant warrior for ever.”
When he had finished this extraordinary address, the Teton awaited to
have it translated, with the air of a suitor who entertained no very
disheartening doubts of his success. The trapper had not lost a
syllable of the speech, and he now prepared himself to render it into
English in such a manner as should leave its principal idea even more
obscure than in the original. But as his reluctant lips were in the act
of parting, Ellen lifted a finger, and with a keen glance from her
quick eye, at the still attentive Inez, she interrupted him.
“Spare your breath,” she said, “all that a savage says is not to be
repeated before a Christian lady.”
Inez started, blushed, and bowed with an air of reserve, as she coldly
thanked the old man for his intentions, and observed that she could now
wish to be alone.
“My daughters have no need of ears to understand what a great Dahcotah
says,” returned the trapper, addressing himself to the expecting
Mahtoree. “The look he has given, and the signs he has made, are
enough. They understand him; they wish to think of his words; for the
children of great braves, such as their fathers are, do nothing with
out much thought.”
With this explanation, so flattering to the energy of his eloquence,
and so promising to his future hopes, the Teton was every way content.
He made the customary ejaculation of assent, and prepared to retire.
Saluting the females, in the cold but dignified manner of his people,
he drew his robe about him, and moved from the spot where he had stood,
with an air of ill-concealed triumph.
But there had been a stricken, though a motionless and unobserved
auditor of the foregoing scene. Not a syllable had fallen from the lips
of the long and anxiously expected husband, that had not gone directly
to the heart of his unoffending wife. In this manner had he wooed her
from the lodge of her father, and it was to listen to similar pictures
of the renown and deeds of the greatest brave in her tribe, that she
had shut her ears to the tender tales of so many of the Sioux youths.
As the Teton turned to leave his lodge, in the manner just mentioned,
he found this unexpected and half-forgotten object before him. She
stood, in the humble guise and with the shrinking air of an Indian
girl, holding the pledge of their former love in her arms, directly in
his path. Starting, the chief regained the marble-like indifference of
countenance, which distinguished in so remarkable a degree the
restrained or more artificial expression of his features, and signed to
her, with an air of authority to give place.
“Is not Tachechana the daughter of a chief?” demanded a subdued voice,
in which pride struggled with anguish: “were not her brothers braves?”
“Go; the men are calling their partisan. He has no ears for a woman.”
“No,” replied the supplicant; “it is not the voice of Tachechana that
you hear, but this boy, speaking with the tongue of his mother. He is
the son of a chief, and his words will go up to his father’s ears.
Listen to what he says. When was Mahtoree hungry and Tachechana had not
food for him? When did he go on the path of the Pawnees and find it
empty, that my mother did not weep? When did he come back with the
marks of their blows, that she did not sing? What Sioux girl has given
a brave a son like me? Look at me well, that you may know me. My eyes
are the eagle’s. I look at the sun and laugh. In a little time the
Dahcotahs will follow me to the hunts and on the war-path. Why does my
father turn his eyes from the woman that gives me milk? Why has he so
soon forgotten the daughter of a mighty Sioux?”
There was a single instant, as the exulting father suffered his cold
eye to wander to the face of the laughing boy, that the stern nature of
the Teton seemed touched. But shaking off the grateful sentiment, like
one who would gladly be rid of any painful, because reproachful,
emotion, he laid his hand calmly on the arm of his wife, and led her
directly in front of Inez. Pointing to the sweet countenance that was
beaming on her own, with a look of tenderness and commiseration, he
paused, to allow his wife to contemplate a loveliness, which was quite
as excellent to her ingenuous mind as it had proved dangerous to the
character of her faithless husband. When he thought abundant time had
passed to make the contrast sufficiently striking, he suddenly raised a
small mirror, that dangled at her breast, an ornament he had himself
bestowed, in an hour of fondness, as a compliment to her beauty, and
placed her own dark image in its place. Wrapping his robe again about
him, the Teton motioned to the trapper to follow, and stalked haughtily
from the lodge, muttering, as he went—
“Mahtoree is very wise! What nation has so great a chief as the
Dahcotahs?”
Tachechana stood frozen into a statue of humility. Her mild and usually
joyous countenance worked, as if the struggle within was about to
dissolve the connection between her soul and that more material part,
whose deformity was becoming so loathsome. Inez and Ellen were utterly
ignorant of the nature of her interview with her husband, though the
quick and sharpened wits of the latter led her to suspect a truth, to
which the entire innocence of the former furnished no clue. They were
both, however, about to tender those sympathies, which are so natural
to, and so graceful in the sex, when their necessity seemed suddenly to
cease. The convulsions in the features of the young Sioux disappeared,
and her countenance became cold and rigid, like chiselled stone. A
single expression of subdued anguish, which had made its impression on
a brow that had rarely before contracted with sorrow, alone remained.
It was never removed, in all the changes of seasons, fortunes, and
years, which, in the vicissitudes of a suffering, female, savage life,
she was subsequently doomed to endure. As in the case of a premature
blight, let the plant quicken and revive as it may, the effects of that
withering touch were always present.
Tachechana first stripped her person of every vestige of those rude but
highly prized ornaments, which the liberality of her husband had been
wont to lavish on her, and she tendered them meekly, and without a
murmur, as an offering to the superiority of Inez. The bracelets were
forced from her wrists, the complicated mazes of beads from her
leggings, and the broad silver band from her brow. Then she paused,
long and painfully. But it would seem, that the resolution, she had
once adopted, was not to be conquered by the lingering emotions of any
affection, however natural. The boy himself was next laid at the feet
of her supposed rival, and well might the self-abased wife of the Teton
believe that the burden of her sacrifice was now full.
While Inez and Ellen stood regarding these several strange movements
with eyes of wonder, a low soft musical voice was heard saying in a
language, that to them was unintelligible—
“A strange tongue will tell my boy the manner to become a man. He will
hear sounds that are new, but he will learn them, and forget the voice
of his mother. It is the will of the Wahcondah, and a Sioux girl should
not complain. Speak to him softly, for his ears are very little; when
he is big, your words may be louder. Let him not be a girl, for very
sad is the life of a woman. Teach him to keep his eyes on the men. Show
him how to strike them that do him wrong, and let him never forget to
return blow for blow. When he goes to hunt, the flower of the
Pale-faces,” she concluded, using in bitterness the metaphor which had
been supplied by the imagination of her truant husband, “will whisper
softly in his ears that the skin of his mother was red, and that she
was once the Fawn of the Dahcotahs.”
Tachechana pressed a kiss on the lips of her son, and withdrew to the
farther side of the lodge. Here she drew her light calico robe over her
head, and took her seat, in token of humility, on the naked earth. All
efforts, to attract her attention, were fruitless. She neither heard
remonstrances, nor felt the touch. Once or twice her voice rose, in a
sort of wailing song, from beneath her quivering mantle, but it never
mounted into the wildness of savage music. In this manner she remained
unseen for hours, while events were occurring without the lodge, which
not only materially changed the complexion of her own fortunes, but
left a lasting and deep impression on the future movements of the
wandering Sioux.