TALES OF
A VANISHING RIVER
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
SKETCHES IN DUNELAND
THE DUNE COUNTRY
THE VOICES OF THE DUNES
ETCHING: A PRACTICAL TREATISE
[Illustration:
(_See Page 15_)
A KANKAKEE BAYOU
]
_Tales of A Vanishing River_
_by_
EARL H. REED
_Author of_
“The Dune Country”
“Sketches in Duneland”
etc.
_Illustrated by the Author_
NEW YORK ~ JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON ~ JOHN LANE. THE BODLEY HEAD
MCMXX
COPYRIGHT, 1920,
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
_To_
MY FRIEND
H. W. J.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOREWORD
The background of this collection of sketches and stories is the country
through which flowed one of the most interesting of our western rivers
before its destruction as a natural waterway.
This book is not a history. It is intended as an interpretation of the
life along the river that the author has come in contact with during
many years of familiarity with the region. Names of places and
characters have been changed for the reason that, while effort has been
made to adhere to artistic truth, literary liberties have been taken
with facts when they have not seemed essential to the story.
E. H. R.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE VANISHING RIVER 15
II THE SILVER ARROW 31
III THE BRASS BOUND BOX 47
IV THE “WETHER BOOK” OF BUCK GRANGER’S GRANDFATHER 65
V TIPTON POSEY’S STORE 105
VI MUSKRAT HYATT’S REDEMPTION 135
VII THE TURKEY CLUB 165
VIII THE PREDICAMENTS OF COLONEL PEETS 207
IX HIS UNLUCKY STAR 245
ILLUSTRATIONS
A KANKAKEE BAYOU _Frontispiece_
WAUKENA _Facing Page_ 32
FAMILIAR HAUNTS 48
THE OLD LOG HOUSE 66
TIPTON POSEY 106
“PUCKERBRUSH BILL” 120
SWAN PETERSON 122
DICK SHAKES 130
“MUSKRAT” HYATT 136
THE REVEREND DANIEL BUTTERS 148
“BILL” STILES 166
COLONEL JASPER M. PEETS 208
MISS ANASTASIA SIMPSON 218
THE SHERIFF 264
I
THE VANISHING RIVER
Somewhere in a large swampland, about fifty miles east of the southern
end of Lake Michigan, the early French explorers found the beginning of
the river.
A thread-like current crept through a maze of oozy depressions,
quagmires, seeping bogs and little pools, among patches of sodden brush,
alders and rank grass. With many intricate windings, the vagrant waters,
swollen by numberless springs and rivulets, emerged from the tangled
morass, became a living stream, and began its long and tortuous journey
toward the southwest, finally to be lost in the immensity of unknown
floods beyond.
The explorers called the stream the Theakiki. In the changing
nomenclature of succeeding years it became the Kankakee. It was the main
confluent of the Illinois, and one of the first highways of the white
man to the Mississippi.
The crude topographic charts of the early voyagers on the river
naturally differ much in detail and accuracy, but, in comparing them
with our modern maps, we wonder at their keen observation and the
painstaking use of their limited facilities.
The annals of their journeys are replete with description, legend,
romance, disheartening hardship, and unremitting battle at the barriers
of nature against her would-be conquerors.
The name of LaSalle, that resplendent figure in the exploration of the
west, will be forever associated with the Kankakee. There are few pages
of historic lore more absorbing and thrilling to the admirer of
unflinching fortitude and dauntless heroism than the dramatic story of
this knight errant of France, and his intrepid followers. Among the
woods and waters, and on the desolate frozen wastes of a strange land,
they found paths that led to imperishable renown. They were
_avant-coureurs_ of a new force that was to transform a wilderness into
an empire, but an empire far different from that of their hopes and
dreams.
LaSalle’s little band had ascended the St. Joseph, and had portaged
their belongings from one of its bends about five miles away. They
launched their canoes on the narrow tide of the Theakiki and descended
the river to the Illinois. The incentives of the expedition were to
expand the dominions of Louis the XIV, to extend the pale of the cross,
and to find new fountains that would pour forth gold.
For gold and power man has scarred the earth he lives upon and
annihilated its creatures since the dawn of recorded time, and for gold
and power will he struggle to the end, whatever and wherever the end may
be, for somewhere in the scheme of creation it is so written. The
moralist may find the story on the Vanishing River, as he may find it
everywhere else in the world, in his study of the fabric of the foibles
and passions of his kind.
The old narratives mention a camp of Miami Indians, visible near the
source of the river, at the time of LaSalle’s embarkation. We may
imagine that curious beady eyes peered from the clustered wigwams in the
distance upon the newcomers, the wondering aborigines little knowing
that a serpent had entered their Eden, and thenceforth their race was to
look only upon a setting sun.
The river flowed through a mystic land. With magnificent sweeps and
bends it wound out on open fertile areas and into dense virgin forests,
doubling to and fro in its course, widening into broad lakes, and moving
on to vast labyrinths of dank grass, rushes, lily pads, trembling bogs
and impenetrable brush tangles. The main channel often lost itself in
the side currents and in mazes of rank vegetation. Here and there were
little still tarns and open pools that reflected the wandering clouds by
day and the changing moons at night.
There were great stretches of marshy wastes and flooded lowlands, where
millions upon millions of water fowl found welcome retreats and never
failing food. During the migrating seasons in the spring and fall, vast
flocks of ducks were patterned against the clouds. They swooped down in
endless hordes. Turbulent calls and loud trumpetings heralded the coming
of serried legions of geese, swans and brant, as they broke their ranks,
settled on to the hospitable waters and floated in gentle contentment.
The wild rice fields were inexhaustible granaries, and intrusion into
them was followed by hurried beating of hidden wings. A disturbance of a
few birds would start a slowly increasing alarm; soon the sky would be
darkened by the countless flocks swarming out of miles of grasses, and
the air would be filled with the roar of fleeing pinions. Gradually they
would return to enjoy their wonted tranquility.
The feathered myriads came and went with the transient seasons, but
great numbers remained and nested on the bogs among the rushes, and on
the little oak shaded islands in the swamps.
Coots, grebes, rails, and bitterns haunted the pools and runways among
the thick sedges. Sudden awkward flights out of concealed coverts often
startled the quiet wayfarer on the currents and ponds of the swamps. The
solitary loon’s weird calls echoed from distant open waters.
Swarms of blackbirds rose out of the reeds and rice, and, after
vicarious circlings, disappeared into other grassy retreats, enlivening
the solitudes with their busy clamor.
In the summer and autumn the flowers of the wet places bloomed in
luxuriant profusion. Limitless acres of pond lilies opened their chaste
petals in the slumberous airs. Harmonies of brilliant color bedecked the
russet robes of autumn, and far over the broad fenlands yellow and
vermillion banners waved in the soft winds of early fall.
In these wild marshlands was the kingdom of the muskrat. The little
villages and isolated domiciles—built of roots and rushes, and plastered
with mud—protruded above the surface over the wide expanses, and were
concealed in cleared spaces in the high, thick grasses. The pelts of
these prolific and industrious little animals were speedily converted
into wealth in after years.
The otter and the mink hunted their prey on the marshes and in the dank
labyrinths of brush and wood debris along the main stream. Beavers
thrived on the tributary waters, where these patient and skilful
engineers built their dams and established their towns with the sagacity
and foresight of their kind.
On still sunshiny days the tribes of the turtles emerged from their miry
retreats and basked in phlegmatic immobility on the sodden logs and
decayed fallen timber that littered the course of the current through
the deep woodlands. The muddy fraternity would often seem to cover every
low protruding object that could sustain them. At the passing of a boat
the gray masses would awake and tumble with loud splashings into the
depths.
The fish common to our western streams and lakes were prolific in the
river. Aged men sit in hickory rocking chairs and enliven the mythology
of their winter firesides with tales of mighty catfish, bass, pike and
pickerel that once swam in the clear waters and fell victims to their
lures.
The finny world has not only supplied man with invaluable food, but has
been a beneficent stimulant to his imaginative faculties.
The choruses of the bull frogs in the marshes and bayous at night are
among the joys unforgettable to those who have listened to these
concerts out on the moonlit stretches among the lily pads and bending
rushes. The corpulent gossips in the hidden places sent forth medleys of
resonant sound that resembled deep tones of bass viols. They mingled
with the rippling lighter notes of the smaller frog folk, and all
blended into lyrics of nocturnal harmonies that lulled the senses and
attuned the heart strings to the Voices of the Little Things.
Colonies of blue herons nested among the sycamores and elms in the
overflowed bottom lands bordering on the river. A well known
ornithologist has justly called this stately bird “the symbol of the
wild.” Visits to the populous heronries were events long to be
remembered by lovers of bird life. Sometimes eight or ten of the rudely
constructed nests would occupy one tree, and within an area of perhaps
twenty acres, hundreds of gawky offspring would come forth in April to
be fed and guarded by the powerful bills of the older birds.
These nesting retreats were often accessible from the river, and a canoe
floating into the placid and secluded precincts roused instant protest
from the ghostly forms perched about on the limbs. The great birds would
circle out over the trees with hoarse cries, but if the intruder became
motionless they would soon return and resume their family cares.
The perfect reflections in the clear still waters, with the inverted
tracery of the tree tops against the skies below, decorated with the
statuesque figures of the herons, pictured dreamlands that seemed of
another world, and tempted errant fancy into remote paths.
The passenger pigeons came in multitudes to the river country in the
fall and settled into the woods, where the ripe acorns afforded abundant
food. The old inhabitants tell wondrous tales of their migrations, when
the innumerable flocks obscured the clouds and the sound of the passing
of the gray hosts was that of a moaning wind. The gregariousness of
these birds was their ruin. They congregated on the dead trees in such
numbers as to often break the smaller limbs. Owls, hawks, and
four-footed night marauders feasted voraciously upon them. They were
easy victims for the nets and guns of the pot hunters and the blind
destructiveness of man wherever nature has been prodigal of her gifts.
For years these beautiful creatures have been extinct, but the lesson of
their going is only now beginning to be heeded.
The black companies of the crows kept watch and ward over the forests
and winding waters. Their noisy parliaments were in constant session,
and few vistas through the woods, or out over the open landscapes, were
without the accents of their moving forms against the sky.
Among the many feathered species there are none that appear to take
themselves more seriously. They are ubiquitous and most curious as to
everything that exists or happens within the spheres of their
activities, and are so much a part of our great out of doors that we
would miss them sadly if they were gone.
Wild turkeys and partridges were plentiful in the woods and underbrush.
Eagles soared in majestic flight over the country and dropped to the
waters and into the forests upon their furtive prey.
In the spring the woodlands were filled with melodious choirs of the
smaller birds. Their enemies were few and they thrived in their happy
homes.
Deer were once abundant. Elk horns have been found, and there are
disputed records of straggling herds of buffalo. Panther tracks were
sometimes seen, and the black bear—that interesting vagabond of the
woods—was a faithful visitor to the wild bee trees. Wolves roved through
the timber. Wild cats, foxes, woodchucks, raccoons, and hundreds of
smaller animals, dwelt in the great forests.
In this happy land lived the Miami and Pottowattomie Indians. Their
little villages of bark wigwams and tepees of dried skins were scattered
along the small streams, the borders of the river, and on the many
islands that divided its course.
They sat in spiritual darkness on the verdant banks until the white man
came to change their gods and superstitions, but the region teemed with
fish, game and wild fruits, and, with their limited wants, they enjoyed
the average contentment of humankind. Whether or not their moral well
being improved or deteriorated under the teachings and influence of the
Franciscan and Jesuit fathers and the protestant missionaries, is a
question for the casuists, but the ways of the white man withered and
swept them away. Unable to hold what they could not defend, they were
despoiled of their heritage and exiled to other climes.
Their little cemeteries are still found, where the buried skeletons
grimly await the Great Solution, amid the curious decayed trappings of a
past age that were interred for the use of the dead in mystical happy
hunting grounds. Their problem, like ours, remains as profound as their
sleep. Occasionally curious delvers into Indian history have unearthed
grisly skulls, covered with mould, and fragments of bones in these
silent places.
Many thousands of stone weapons, flint arrowheads, implements of the red
men’s simple agriculture, and utensils of their rude housekeeping, have
been found in the soil of the land where once their lodges tapered into
the green foliage.
Traces remain of the trails that connected the villages and threaded the
country in every direction.
The relations between the first settlers and the Indians seem to have
been harmonious, but friction of interests developed with the continued
influx of the whites, until the primitive law of “might makes right” was
applied to the coveted lands. Sculptured monuments have now been erected
to the red chieftains by the descendants of those who robbed them—empty
and belated recognition of their equities.
Many hunters and trappers came into the wild country, lured by the
abundant game and fur. The beavers and muskrats provided the greater
part of the spoil of the trappers.
Gradually the pioneer farmers began clearing tracts in the forests,
where they found a soil of exuberant fertility.
With improved methods and firearms the annihilation of the wild life
commenced. Many hundreds of tons of scattered leaden shot lie buried in
unknown miry depths, that streamed into the skies at the passing flocks.
The modern breech loader worked devastating havoc. The water fowl
dwindled rapidly in numbers with the onward years, for the fame of the
region as a sportsman’s paradise was nation wide.
The inroads of the trappers on the fur bearing animals practically
exterminated all but the prolific and obstinate muskrat, destined to be
one of the last survivors.
In later years the trappers lived in little shacks, “wickyups” and log
cabins on the bayous, near the edges of the marshes, and on the banks of
the tributary streams. Many of them were strange odd characters. The
almost continual solitude of their lives developed their baser
instincts, without teaching the arts of their concealment possessed by
those who have social and educational advantages.
With the increasing markets for wild game they became pot hunters and
sold great quantities of ducks and other slaughtered birds.
The rude habitations were often enlarged or rebuilt to accommodate
visiting duck shooters and fishermen, for whom they acted as guides and
hosts. They began to mingle in the life of the little towns, and
occasional isolated cross road stores, that came into being at long
distances apart, where they went to dispose of their pelts and game.
Queerly clad, long haired and much bewhiskered, they were picturesque
figures, standing in their sharp pointed canoes, which they propelled
with long handled paddles that served as push poles in shallow water.
Dogs that were trained retrievers and devoted companions, often occupied
the bows of the little boats. In the middle of the craft were piled
wooden decoys, dead birds, muskrats or steel traps, when they journeyed
to and from the marshes, where they appeared in all weathers and seasons
except midsummer. During the hot months they usually loafed in somnolent
idleness at the stores, puttered about their shacks, or did odd jobs on
the farms.
There are tales of lawlessness in the country characteristic of the raw
edges of civilization in a sparsely settled region. Horse stealing
appears to have been a favorite industry of evil doers, and timber
thieves were numerous. In the absence of convenient jails and courts the
law of the wild was administered without mercy to these and other
miscreants when they were caught.
Moonshiners, whose interests did not conflict with local public
sentiment, were seldom interfered with. The infrequent investigations of
emissaries of the government met with little sympathy except when they
were looking for counterfeiters.
The Kankakee of old has gone, for the lands over which it spread became
valuable. A mighty ditch has been excavated, extending almost its entire
course, to deepen and straighten its channel, and to drain away its
marshes. The altered line of the stream left many of the rude homes of
the old trappers far inland. Their occupations have ceased and they sit
in melancholy silence and brood upon the past. For them the book is
closed. They falter at the threshold of a new era in which nature has
not fitted them to live.
Ugly steam dredges, with ponderous iron jaws, came upon the river. Hoary
patriarchs of the forest were felled. Ancient roots and green banks,
mantled with vines, were ruthlessly blasted away. The dredge scoops
delved into mossy retreats. Secret dens and runways were opened to the
glaring light and there were many rustlings of furtive feet and wings
through the invaded grasses.
The limpid waters reflected Mammon’s sinister form. The despoiler tore
relentlessly through ferny aisles in the green embowered woods and
across the swamps and flowery fens. The glittering lakes, the meandering
loops and bends disappeared, and the fecund marshlands yielded their
life currents. The thousand night voices on their moon flooded stretches
were stilled. The wild life fled. Wondering flocks in the skies looked
down on the strange scene, changed their courses and winged on.
The passing of the river leaves its memories of musical ripplings over
pebbly shoals, murmurous runes among the fallen timber, tremulous moon
paths over darkened waters, the twinkling of wispy hosts of fireflies in
dreamy dusks, blended perfumes of still forests, heron haunted bayous,
enchanting islands, with their profusion of wild grapes and plums, and
the glories of afterglows beyond the vast marshes.
The currents that once widened in silvery magnificence to their natural
barriers, and wandered peacefully among the mysteries of the woods, now
flow madly on through a man-wrought channel. In sorrow the gloomy waters
flee with writhing swirls from the land where once they crept out over
the low areas and rested on their ways to the sea. In the moaning of the
homeless tide we may hear the requiem of the river.
Fields of corn and wheat stretch over the reclaimed acres, for the
utilitarian has triumphed over beauty and nature’s providence for her
wild creatures. The destruction of one of the most valuable bird refuges
on the continent has almost been completed, for the sake of immediate
wealth. The realization of this great economic wrong must be left to
future generations. The ugly dredges are finishing the desecration on
the lower reaches of the stream.
The Vanishing River moves on through a twilight of ignorance and error,
for the sacrifice of our bird life and our regions of natural beauty is
the sacrifice of precious material and spiritual gifts.
In the darkness of still nights pale phantom currents may creep into the
denuded winding channels, guided by the unseen Power that directs the
waters, and fade into the dim mists before the dawn.
Under the brooding care of the Great Spirit for the departed children,
ghostly war plumes may flutter softly among the leaves and tassels of
the corn that wave over the Red Man’s lost domain, when the autumn winds
whisper in the star-lit fields, for the land is peopled with shadows,
and has passed into the realm of legend, romance and fancy.
II
THE SILVER ARROW
The story of the arrow was slowly unravelled from the tangled thread of
interrupted narrative related to us by old Waukena. She sat in her
little log hut among the tall poplars and birches, beyond the farther
end of Whippoorwill Bayou, and talked of the arrow during our visits,
but never in a way that enabled us to connect the scattered fragments of
the tale into proper sequence until we had heard various parts of it
many times.
She was a remnant of the Pottowattomies. She did not know when she was
born, but, from her knowledge of events that happened in her lifetime,
the approximate dates of which we knew, she must have been over ninety.
Her solitary life and habitual silence had developed a taciturnity that
steals upon those who dwell in the stillness of the forest. There was a
far away look in the old eyes, and a tinge of bitterness in her low
voice, as she talked sadly in her broken English, of the days that were
gone.
She cherished the traditions of her people, and their sorrows lingered
in her heart. Like shriveled leaves clinging to withered boughs, her
memories seemed to rustle faintly when a new breath of interest touched
them, and from among these rustlings we culled the arrow’s story.
The little cabin was very old. Its furnishings were in keeping with its
occupant and sufficient for her simple needs. There was a rough stone
fireplace at one end of the single room. A flat projecting boulder on
one side of its interior provided a shelf for the few cooking utensils.
They were hung on a rickety iron swinging arm over the wood fire when in
use. A much worn turkey wing, with charred edges, lay near the hearth,
with which the scattered ashes were dusted back into the fireplace. A
bedstead, constructed of birch saplings, occupied the other end of the
room. Several coon and fox skins, neatly sewed together, and a couple of
gray blankets, laid over some rush mats, completed the sleeping
arrangements. With the exception of a few bunches of bright hued
feathers, stuck about in various chinks, the rough walls were bare of
ornament.
The other furniture consisted of a couple of low stools, a heavy rocking
chair and a small pine table. A kerosene lantern and some candles
illumined the squalid interior at night.
In an open space near the cabin was a small patch of cultivated ground
that produced a few vegetables. Sunflowers and hollyhocks grew along its
edge and gave a touch of color to the surroundings.
[Illustration:
WAUKENA
]
The old settlers and their families, who lived in the river country,
provided Waukena with most of her food supplies and the few other
comforts that were necessary to her lonely existence.
Many times I studied the rugged old face in the fire light. Among the
melancholy lines there lurked a certain grimness and lofty reserve.
There was no humility in the modelling of the determined mouth and chin.
The features were those of a mother of warriors. The blood of heroes,
unknown and forgotten, was in her veins, and the savage fatalism of
centuries slumbered in the placid dark eyes. It was the calmed face of
one who had defied vicissitude, and who, with head unbowed, would meet
finality.
My friend the historian had known her many years, and had made copious
notes of her childhood recollections of the enforced departure of her
tribe from the river country. She and several others had taken refuge in
a swamp until the soldiers had gone. They then made their way north and
dwelt for a few years near the St. Joseph, where a favored portion of
the tribe was allowed to retain land, but finally returned to their old
haunts.
When she was quite young her mother gave her the headless arrow, which
she took from one of the recesses in the log wall and showed to us. It
was a slender shaft of hickory, perfectly straight, and fragments of the
dyed feathers that once ornamented it still adhered to its delicately
notched base. At the other end were frayed remnants of animal fiber that
had once held the point in place. There were dark stains along the shaft
that had survived the years. The old squaw held it tenderly in her hands
as she talked of it, and always replaced it carefully in the narrow
niche when the subject was changed.
Nearly a hundred years ago the shaft was fashioned by an old arrowmaker
up the river for Little Turtle, a young hunter, who hoped to kill a
particular bald eagle with it. For a long time the bird had soared with
unconquered wings over the river country, and seemed to bear a charmed
life. It had successfully eluded him for nearly a year, but finally fell
when the twang of Little Turtle’s bow sent the new weapon into his
breast, as he sat unsuspectingly on a limb of a dead tree that bent over
the river.
The victor proudly bore his trophy to his bark canoe and paddled down
the stream to Whippoorwill Bayou. He pulled the little craft up into the
underbrush at twilight, and sat quietly on the bank until the full moon
came out from among the trees.
On the other side of the bayou were heavy masses of wild grape vines
that had climbed over some dead trees and undergrowth. Through a strange
freak of nature the convoluted piles had resolved themselves into
grotesque shapes that, in the magic sheen of the moonlight, suggested
the head and shoulders of a gigantic human figure, with long locks and
overhanging brows, standing at the edge of the forest. The lusty growth
had crept over the lower trees in such a way that the distribution of
the shadows completed the illusion. An unkempt old man seemed to stand
wearily, with masses of the tangled verdure heaped over his extended
hands. It was only when the moon was near the horizon that the lights
and shadows produced the strange apparition. The weird figure,
sculptured by the sorcery of the pale beams, was called “The Father of
the Vines” by the red men, and he was believed to have an occult
influence over the living things that dwelt in the forests along the
river.
Under one of the burdened hands was a dark grotto that led back into the
mysteries of the woods, and from it came the low cry of a whippoorwill.
Little Turtle instantly rose, dragged out the concealed canoe, paddled
silently over the moonlit water, and entered the grotto. A shadowy
figure had glided out to meet him, for the whippoorwill call was
Nebowie’s signal to her lover.
For months the grotto had been their trysting place. Rose winged hours
were spent there, and the great hands seemed to be held in benediction,
as the world old story was told within the hidden recesses.
Nebowie’s father, Moose Jaw, a scarred old warrior and hunter, had told
White Wolf that his dark-eyed willowy daughter should go to his wigwam
when the wild geese again crossed the sky, and White Wolf was anxiously
counting the days that lay between him and the fruition of his hopes.
He was a tall, low browed, villainous looking savage. He had once saved
Moose Jaw from an untimely death. The old Indian was crossing a frozen
marsh one winter morning, with a deer on his shoulders, and broke
through the ice. White Wolf happened to see him and effected his rescue.
He had long gazed from afar on the light in Moose Jaw’s wigwam, but
Nebowie’s eyes were downcast when he came. He lived down the river, and
the people of his village seldom came up as far as Whippoorwill Bayou.
His persistent visits, encouraged by the grateful old Indian, and
frowned upon by the flower he sought, gradually became less frequent,
and finally ceased, when he learned the secret of Nebowie and Little
Turtle, after stealthily haunting the neighborhood of the bayou for
several weeks.
An evil light came into White Wolf’s sinister eyes, and the fires of
blood lust kindled in his breast. He went on the path of vengeance. The
savage and the esthete are alike when the coveted male or female of
their kind is taken by another. He was too crafty to wage open warfare
and resolved to eliminate his rival in some way that would not arouse
suspicion and resentment when he again sought Nebowie’s smiles.
Old Moose Jaw smoked many pipes, and meditated philosophically over his
daughter’s obstinate disregard of the compact with White Wolf. Nebowie’s
mother had been dead several years, and the old Indian was easily
reconciled to what appeared to be his daughter’s resolution to remain
with him, for the little bark wigwam would be lonely without her. She
went cheerfully about her various tasks, and never mentioned Little
Turtle, until one day they came together and told him their story. As
nothing had been seen of White Wolf for a long time, the old man assumed
that his ardor had cooled, and finally consented to the building of the
new Wigwam on the bayou bank near the Father of the Vines, where Nebowie
would still be near him. He had no objections to Little Turtle and hoped
that the obligation to White Wolf could be discharged in some other way.
He rejoiced when the small black eyes of a papoose blinked at him when
he visited the new wigwam one afternoon during the following summer. He
spent much time with the little wild thing on his knee when she was old
enough to be handled by anybody but her mother. He would sit for hours,
gently swinging the birch bark cradle that hung from a low bough near
the bank, for he was no longer able to hunt or fish, and took no part in
the activities of the men of the village. Little Turtle’s prowess amply
supplied both wigwams with food and raiment, and there was no need for
further exertion.
White Wolf had apparently recovered from his infatuation. He
occasionally came up the river, but his connection with the affairs of
the community, whose little habitations were widely scattered through
the woods beyond the bayou, was considered a thing of the past.
Little Turtle was highly esteemed by the men of his village, and two
years after his marriage he was made its chief.
The following spring delegations from the various villages along the
river departed for a general powwow of the tribe, near the mouth of the
St. Joseph, in the country of the dunes, about eighty miles away. Little
Turtle and White Wolf went with them. Time had nurtured the demon in the
heart of the baffled suitor, but there were no indications of enmity
during the trip. The party broke up on its way home and took different
trails. Little Turtle never returned.
Nebowie pined in anguish for the home coming, and White Wolf waited for
her sorrow to pass. She spent months of misery, and finally carried her
aching heart to the “Black Robe,” who ministered to the spiritual needs
of her people, after the formula of his sect, in the little mission
house up the river. He was a kindly counselor and listened with sympathy
to her story.
He belonged to that hardy and zealous band of ecclesiastics who had come
into the land of another race to build new altars, and to teach what
they believed to be the ways to redemption. He told Nebowie to take her
sorrow to the white man’s deity and gave her a small silver crucifix as
a token that would bring divine consolation and peace. Forms of penance
and supplication were prescribed, and she was sent away with the
blessing of the devout priest.
Nebowie carried her cross and, during the still hours in the little
wigwam, she held it to her anguished breast. The months brought no
surcease. In the quiet ministry of the woods there crept into her heart
a belief that the magic of the Black Robe’s God was futile.
The inevitable atavism came and she departed into the silences. For a
long time her whereabouts were unknown. During the bitter months her
intuitive mind worked out the problem. Something that she found in the
wilderness had solved the mystery of her loved one’s disappearance, and,
when she returned, she hammered her silver crucifix into an arrow head,
bound it with deer sinew to the hickory shaft of the arrow with which
Little Turtle had killed the bald eagle, and meditated upon the hour of
her revenge. White Wolf was doomed, and his executioner patiently bided
the time for action.
He renewed his visits and condoled with the sad old man, but made no
progress with Nebowie, although she sometimes seemed to encourage his
advances.
One evening in the early fall he returned from a hunting trip over the
marshes. He followed one of the small trails that skirted the woods near
his village. A shadowy form moved silently among the trees. There was a
low whir, and something sped through the dusk.
When they found White Wolf in the morning the hair on one side of his
head was matted with blood, and a small hole led into his stilled brain,
but there was no clue to the motive or to the author of the tragedy. He
was duly mourned and buried after the manner of his fathers. His taking
off was numbered among the enigmas of the past, and was soon forgotten.
Nebowie continued her home life with her father and her little one, but
tranquility was in her face. She felt within her the glow that
retribution brings to the savage heart—whether it be red or white. A
recompense had come to her tortured soul that softened the after years.
The silver of the arrow point had achieved a mission that had failed
when it bore the form of a cross.
During our exploration of the sites of the old Indian villages in the
river country, we discovered a large pasture that had never been
ploughed. Traces of two well worn trails led through it, and, on a
little knoll near the center of the field, we found what appeared to be
burial mounds.
We were reluctant to desecrate the hallowed spot, but finally yielded to
the temptation to open one of them. We unearthed two skeletons. They
were both in a sitting position. I picked up one of the skulls and
curiously examined it. Something rattled within the uncanny relic and
dropped to the grass. The small object proved to be a silver arrowhead,
and Waukena’s story came home to us with startling reality. We replaced
the bones and reshaped the mound as best we could, but carried with us
the mouldy skull and its carefully wrought messenger of death.
Nearly all of the Indians in the river country were buried in a sitting
position. The grim skeletons of the vanished race belong to the world
that is under ground. In countless huddled hordes, they sit in the gloom
of the fragrant earth, with hands outstretched, as if in mute appeal,
and wait through the years for whatever gods may come.
In the darkness that may be eternal, the disputations of theologians do
not disturb the gathering mould. The multitudinous forms of reward and
punishment, that play in empty pageantry upon the hopes and fears of
those who walk the green earth, touch not the myriads in its bosom.
The self appointed, who bear the lights of man born dogma, and the
blessings and curses of imaginary deities, into the paths of the
unknowable, grope as blindly among pagan bones as through cathedral
aisles.
That evening we rowed up the river to carry our story to Waukena. She
held the mouldy skull in her lap for a long time and regarded it with
deep interest. Sealed fountains within her aged heart seemed to well
anew, for there were tears in her eyes when she raised them toward us.
Waukena was the little girl that played around the stricken wigwam on
the bayou, and she had treasured the stained shaft as a heritage from
those she had loved. To her it was a sacred thing. The life currents it
had changed had passed on, but they seemed to meet again as the gray
haired woman sat before her flickering fire, with the mute toys of the
fateful drama about her. We left her alone with her musings.
When we came one evening, a week later, the door was open, but the ashes
on the hearth were cold. On the rough table lay the mouldy skull, that
was once the home of relentless passion, and near it, before its eyeless
caverns, was the blood stained shaft, with the silver point neatly
fitted back into its place.
Waukena may have stolen away through the solitudes of the dim forest,
and yielded her tired heart unto the gods of her people, for she was
never again seen in the river country. Her chastened soul may still
wander in the shadowy vistas of the winter woods, when the sun sinks in
aureoles of crimson beyond the lacery of the tall trees—that stand still
and ghostly—their slender boles tinged with hues of red, like the lost
arrow shafts of those who are gone.
Sadly and thoughtfully we walked down the old trail that bordered the
bayou. We sat for a long time on the moss covered bank and talked of the
arrow and the destinies it had touched. The pearly disk of the full moon
hung in the eastern sky. A faint mist veiled the surface of the softly
lisping water. An owl swept low over the bayou into the gloom of the
forest. The pond lilies had closed their chalices and sealed their
fragrance for another day. Hosts of tiny wings were moving among the
sedges. Fireflies gemmed the dark places and vanished, as human lives
come out of the void, waver with transient glow, and are gone.
There was a tender eloquence and witchery in the gentle murmurings of
the night. Mystic voices were in the woods. Beyond the other shore the
hoary form of the Father of the Vines seemed transfigured with a holy
light. From somewhere in the gloom of the grotto came the plaintive
notes of a whippoorwill.
As one crying in the wilderness, Nebowie’s spirit was calling for her
lost lover from among the embowered labyrinths.
In the twilights of drowsy summers, the wild cadence still enchants the
bayou. The moon still rides through the highways of the star strewn
skies, and, with pensive luster, pictures the guardian of the trysting
place of long ago. The shadows below the lofty forehead have deepened,
and the great silent figure bends with the weight of the onward years.
Out yonder, in the moonlit woods,
With humble mien he stands,
With the burden of the fruitage
In his vine entangled hands;
Where the hiding purpling clusters
Are caught by silver beams,
That revel in the meshes
Of his leafy net of dreams.
With the weariness of fulfillment,
His tendril woven brow
Is bowed before the mystery
Of the eternal Why and How.
III
THE BRASS BOUND BOX
Jerry Island was formed by one of the side currents of the river that
wandered off through the woods and lowland and rejoined the main stream
above the Big Marsh.
The herons, bitterns and wild ducks swept low over the brush entangled
water course and dropped into the quiet open places. Innumerable
clusters of small mud turtles fringed the drift wood and fallen timbers
that retarded the sluggish current. The patriarchs of the hard shelled
brotherhood—moss covered and intolerant—spent their days on the
half-submerged gray logs in somnolent isolation.
Kingfishers, crows and hawks found a fecund hunting ground along the
winding byway. Squirrels and chipmunks raced over the recumbent trunks,
and whisked their bushy tails in the patches of sunlight that filtered
through the interlacing boughs above them.
At night the owls, coons, minks and muskrats explored the wet
labyrinths, aged bull frogs trumpeted dolefully, and stealthy nocturnal
prowlers came there to drink. Sometimes the splash of a fish broke the
stillness, and little rings crept away over the surface and lost
themselves among the weeds and floating moss.
Long ago the trails of wolves, deer, and other large animals appeared in
the snow on the island during the winter; bear tracks were often found,
and there is a legend among the latter day prosaics that a couple of
panthers once had a den in the neighborhood. In later years most of the
winter pathways were made by foxes and rabbits and their human and
canine pursuers.
Near the bank of the main stream stood a decayed but well constructed
old house. It was built of faced logs with mortar between them. There
were three rooms on the ground floor, and some steep narrow stairs led
into an attic next to the roof that sloped to the floor along its sides.
My friend “Buck” Granger, a gray haired old trapper and hunter, whose
grandfather built the house about a hundred years ago, ushered me up the
creaky stairs late one night.
The alert eyes of a red squirrel peered at us from the end of a tattered
mink muff that lay on an oak chest close to the roof, and vanished.
Apparently the small visitor was not greatly disturbed, for, after two
or three gentle undulations, the muff was motionless.
After conventional but cordial injunctions to make myself at home, Buck
departed to his quarters below.
[Illustration:
FAMILIAR HAUNTS
]
The quaint and picturesque attic was full of interest. An old fashioned
bedstead stood in the room, a cumbrous, home made “four poster.” Over
its cord lacings was a thick feather bed, several comforters, and a
multicolored patchwork quilt. The sheets and pillow slips were of
coarsely woven linen.
Bunches of seed corn and dried herbs were suspended from pegs along the
roof timbers; near the oak chest was a spinning wheel, and a broken
cradle—all veiled with mantles of fine dust and cobwebs. The cradle, in
which incipient genius may once have slumbered, was filled with bags of
beans, ears of pop corn, and hickory nuts. Squirrels and white footed
mice from the surrounding woods had held high revel in the tempting
hoard.
The cradle had guarded the infancy of many little furred families after
its first usefulness had ceased, for there were cosy tangled nests of
shredded cotton and woolen material among its mixed contents.
Moths had worked sad havoc in the row of worn out garments that
festooned the cross beams. Some rusty muskrat traps and obsolete fire
arms were heaped in one corner, with discarded hats and boots.
Close to the roof, near the edge of the unprotected stairway, was a tall
silent clock. It was very old. Most of the veneering had chipped away
from its woodwork, parts of the enameled and grotesquely ornamented dial
had scaled off, and across the scarred face its one crippled hand
pointed to the figure seven. The worn mechanism had not pulsated for
many years.
Innumerable tiny fibers connected the top and sides of the old clock
with the sloping roof timbers, and a sinister watcher, hairy and
misshapen—crouched within the mouth of a tubular web above the dial.
Tenuous highways spanned the spaces between the rafters. Gauzy filaments
led away into obscurities, and gossamer shreds hung motionless from the
upper gloom. There were mazes of webs, woven by generations of spiders,
laden with impalpable dust, and tenantless. The patient spinners had
lived their little day and left their airy tissues to the mercy of the
years. Like flimsy relics of human endeavor, the frail structures
awaited the inevitable.
There was an impression of mistiness and haziness in the wandering and
broken fibers, and the filmy labyrinths—as of a brain filled with
fancies that were inchoate and confused—an abode of idle dreams.
The web spanned attic pictured a mind, inert and fettered by dogma and
tradition, in which existence is passive, and where vital currents are
stilled—where light is instinctively excluded and intrusion of
extraneous ideas is resented. Occupants of endowed chairs in old
universities, pedantic art classicists, smug dignitaries of established
churches, and other guardians of embalmed and encrusted conclusions, are
apt to have such attics. Like the misshapen watcher within the tubular
web above the dial, they crouch in musty seclusion.
I opened the queer looking bed, that had evidently been made up a long
time, and lay for half an hour or so, trying to read by the light of the
sputtering candle. The subtle spell of the old attic at length overcame
the charm of my author, and I gave myself over to a troop of thronging
fancies.
Although the invisible inmate of the muff gave a life accent to the
room, the quiet was oppressive. A sense of seclusion from realities
pervaded the human belongings. Intimate personal things, that only
vanished hands have touched, seem to possess an indefinable
remoteness—as if they pertained to something detached and far away—and
lingered in an atmosphere of spiritual loneliness.
When the moon beams came through the cobwebbed window frame, and crept
along the floor to the ghostly old clock, it haunted the room with a
vague impression of weariness and futility. It seemed to stand in mute
and solemn mockery of the eternal hours that had passed on and left it
in hopeless vigil by the wayside.
The watcher in the web—grim and silent, like a waiting sexton—awakened
uncanny thought. There was gruesome suggestion in the dark stairway hole
at the foot of the clock—as if it had been newly dug in the earth.
Like evil phantoms into an idle mind, a pair of bats glided swiftly in
through the open window, circled noiselessly about, and departed.
The moon rays touched something in the rubbish at the further end of the
room that reflected a dull light. After restraining my curiosity for
some time, I arose, crossed the floor, and picked up a strange looking
box. It was about fourteen inches long, nine inches high, and a foot
wide. Its hasp and small handle on the cover appeared to be of wrought
iron, but the embossed facing that covered the sides and ends, and the
strips that protected the edges, were of brass, studded with nails of
the same metal. It seemed in the dim light to be much corroded by time.
Hoping that something might be learned of its history in the morning, I
placed the box on the floor near the bed, and was finally lulled to
belated slumber by the crickets in the crevices of the logs, and the
rustlings of tiny feet among the contents of the cradle. Speculations
regarding the brass bound box softly blended into dreams.
During breakfast the next morning my host told me that the box had once
belonged to a Jesuit priest; some Indians who formerly lived on the
island had given it to his grandfather, and it had been in the attic
ever since the house was built. He had often looked at its contents but
could make nothing of them, and considered that “they were not of much
account.” He said he would be glad to have me go through them and see if
they were of any value. He also said that there was a bundle of old
papers in the oak chest that he hoped I would look over, as his
grandfather had written much concerning the river and the Indians that
might interest me.
Filled with anticipation of congenial occupation during the rainy day, I
went with Buck to the attic after breakfast. We dragged a decrepit
walnut table to the window and dusted it carefully. Buck brought from
the chest a small bundle that was tied up in brown paper and left it
with me. The tenant of the muff had decamped, probably resenting the
intrusion into his domain. I brought the brass bound box, found a
comfortable hickory chair, lighted a tranquilizing pipe, and was soon
absorbed in the stack of closely written manuscript that I found in the
bundle.
Some parts of it were illegible and the spelling was unique. The old man
probably considered correct spelling to be an accomplishment of mere
literary hacks, and that it was not necessary for an author who had
anything else to think of to pay much attention to it.