RED-EYE, THE INDIAN CHIEF--A TERRIBLE ADVENTURE
WITH A BEAR--BAD NEWS!--STOLEN OR KILLED BY
INDIANS.
The war in Upper Canada may be said to have ended before the winter
of 1814-15. Ended indeed in General Drummond's terrible but abortive
attack or assault on Fort Erie, in which he lost about five hundred
in killed and wounded.
The general, although reinforced, dared not attack again, "but," as
Alison says, "contented himself with drawing closer the investment,
and cooping the large American army up in a corner of British
territory, where they were rendered perfectly useless during the
remainder of the campaign."
Meanwhile, however, ships were being built, and gunboats too, both
for the British and Americans to float and fight on the great inland
seas and lakes, and this with the intention on the American side to
make one more effort to conquer Canada in the ensuing spring.
If, however, I were to tell you of the battles, by land and sea,
which took place this year between Britain and America, further south
than Canada, although I might succeed in interesting some of my
readers on this side of the Atlantic, I might irritate my good
friends on the other.
While the good weather lasted, and the bright and beautiful Indian
summer, life in camp, in log huts, or in houses was delightful enough
to my grandfather and his wife, with my little mother, Mary
Robertson, to say nothing of Tonal's Spanish wife herself.
The woods and forests, the lakes and streams, and the rugged hills
were clad in all the glory and colour of a late autumn.
My mother was a true _fille du regiment_, and continued to be as much
a favourite and as much beloved by officers and men on shore as she
had been at sea.
The Indians in those times were far more numerous in the forests and
hills, in the great lake districts, than they are now. Neither
British nor Americans have ever meted out to them any very great
measure of justice. In fact it has been very much the reverse. We
have driven them back, back, back, before us; we have taken their
territories over and over again; we have cheated and robbed them, and
when they have retaliated and taken the revenge that red men always
will, we have declared against them a war of extermination, or
almost; we seemed to forget that they were human beings, and shot
them down like wolves.
These poor, brave creatures assisted us greatly in the war against
America. But they fought in a savage way, and mutilated even the
wounded in a shocking and fearful manner. For the braves must have
scalps to hang on poles, far away where their wigwams stood in forest
glade, or by the peaceful streams that meandered through their
territory.
These Indians, now that comparative peace had come, still lingered
around our camps. They were, alas! too often led into excesses by
the fire-water of the pale-faces.
Strangely enough, the child Mary exhibited not the slightest trace of
fear in the company of these dusky warriors. She would even toddle
off at times to their camp, and not be seen again for hours, when
some of the Royal Scots, being sent in search of her, were sure to
find her chatting gaily to squaws or braves, in their tents or by the
log-fires.
But there were Indians also who hated the British, and hated also
those tribes who had fought for the pale-faces, such as the
Chippawas, the Wyandottes, and Minsees. With these, I believe, we
were friendly on the whole, but far away in the west and north, was a
tribe or branch of the Micmacs, whose hand appeared to be turned
against everyone, and who were constantly on the war-path. They
lived chiefly by their bows and arrows or spears, but of late years
had made use of guns also, so that they were now considered still
more dangerous and deadly.
Their wigwams stood on the shores of a beautiful, lonesome sheet of
water, embosomed by woods, and to which they had given the euphonic
name Eeowreeva, or Yewreeva, the Great Pike Lake. Here these red men
had lived for many generations, more than Red-Eye, a friendly Micmac,
who often visited the camp, could count on his fingers. They loved
their home in the wild west, Red-Eye said, because no pale-face had
ever yet come to see and seek their land.
This land, and all the hills and forests around it, was no
reservation. It was simply a country into which the pale-face had
not as yet penetrated.
But Red-Eye, or Led-Eye, as Mary called him, was no beauty to gaze
upon. On the contrary, it was believed that, although he prided
himself on the distance he could throw a spear, or his skill with a
tomahawk, his chief pride lay in his stern and dreadful face, and in
the number of scars he had on his body, many of which, he assured my
grandmother, whom he often visited, had been received in fights and
encounters with wild beasts, with bears and panthers, that he had
followed, even to their very dens, and killed. In his own country he
had been a chief.
Little Mary, my mother, used to listen with rapt attention to this
semi-civilised savage's account of his adventures, as he squatted
near the fire, wrapped in his great striped blanket.
But she must have been too young to understand much of what was said.
A strange sort of friendship, however, sprang up between the two.
Their love-making, if so it could be called, was droll in the extreme.
"Po' Led-Eye," she said one day, as she stood beside him, nursing one
of his hands, on which were the marks left by a panther's teeth.
"Po' Led-Eye. And the nasty wild beast cut you so! Did you kill the
big cat, Led-Eye?"
"Ugh! child, yes, I kill he quick. With my spear I kill he. Hold my
spear so."
"Ah! Ah! wild cat was all toveled (covered) wi' blood, wasn't he,
Led-Eye?"
"Blood in streams!" said Red-Eye.
"O, how nice! Anazle (another) big tut (cut) on 'oo blow (your
brow), po' Led-Eye, what make that tut?"
"The spear of a chief, child of my heart."
He smoothed her long fair hair as he spoke, and glanced lovingly into
her blue eyes.
"Child of my heart! Hair like sunset clouds. Eyes and cheeks like
stars and flowers. Child of my love!"
"'Oo iss, of tourse. Child of oor love. But 'oo kill the tief
(chief) that troo the spear and cuttit oo blow. You kill him, quick,
quick?"
"I kill him, plenty quick."
"And he bleeded all over?"
"Ugh! I wash my hands in his blood."
My little mother jumped for joy.
"How nice! how nice!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Tell the chile
of oo love mo' stolies."
"Mary, Mary," cried my grandmother, "come here this instant, till I
get you ready for bed."
"I think," said Tonal to my grandfather, as they lay on their
blankets by the fire, "I think that Mary would grow up a splendid
savage. Come here, Mary, and sit on my knee. Your mother won't put
you to bed for just a little while, I'm sure."
"Not if she's good."
"I sit on oo knee bymeby, when po' Led-Eye does (goes) away to feep
(sleep)."
"You like Red-Eye best, then?"
"Of tourse. Led-Eye mo' ugly as you.
"Nevah mind," she continued, patting the savage's cheek, "when I
dlows (grows) up, I lun (run) away to the woods and be oo queen."
"It's all settled then, John," said Tonal.
"It would seem so, Tonal."
But Red-Eye's love-making did not end in mere words. Words are only
froth, acts alone are solid, and he used to bring the "child of his
love" many beautiful things from the forest--flowers, skins of
beasts, and feathers of birds.
Once he brought her a live humming-bird, or one of an allied species.
It soon died, however. Then he took much pains to cure it for her.
He opened it slightly, and stuffed it with strange spices and musk.
Then he rolled it in leaves, and laid it on a stone near the fire,
and behold! in an hour it was embalmed and cured.
That little bird, in a tiny glass case, is on my table as I write. I
would not part with it for all the world. All the world would be
nothing to me, as I should not know what to do with it, but this
little case, ah! what gladsome memories it brings me back.
Tonal and my grandfather used often to accompany Major Drake or Dr.
McLeod in long rambles into the forests.
They would be away for two or even three days sometimes, and never
return without the spoils of the chase, to the great delight of my
little mother, Mary.
Part of these excursions was by boat, the other on shore.
Their guide was invariably Red-Eye.
He was a fearless fellow, and often led them into adventures that it
would have been as well for them had they avoided.
On one of these occasions McLeod fired upon a great bear on a
hillside. The brute was but grazed, and came rushing down upon him
with a roar that seemed to rend the very rocks. Both man and bear
went rolling down the brae, and powerful though the doctor was, he
never could have come out of the adventure alive, had not Red-Eye
been there. The Indian buried his tomahawk in the monster's neck.
With a yell the bear now sprang at him, and had not O'Reilly, who was
near, placed the muzzle of his gun close to the bear's ear and fired,
poor Red-Eye would have told my little mother no more terrible
stories.
Though badly bruised,
"Unwounded from the dreadful close
But breathless all McLeod arose."
Red-Eye appeared none the worse. He just shook himself and said,
pointing to O'Reilly's gun:
"Ugh! Much good fire-stick."
But the spoils of the chase did not invariably consist of bears, or
any other of the _feræ_, but game and pigeons. The latter were seen
sometimes, not in flocks only, but in clouds, so that it was no
uncommon thing for our heroes to bring them down with bullets.
I do not mean to say that the very bird that was aimed at always
fell---though with a good modern rifle and a good modern marksman
this might have been the case--but so numerous were they that it was
almost impossible to fire without hitting.
Some of the streams, away in the backwoods, teemed with fish. In
fact, so numerous were these that one could scarcely call it sport to
catch them.
One day, while my grandfather and Drake were in the woods, they got
talking together about home, and the old scenes they had passed
through, and the battles in which they had fought shoulder to
shoulder.
Both had received letters only the day before.
"O, by the way, Sergeant," said Major Drake suddenly, "I have
something to tell you.
"I had a letter from H----. You know he is a friend of the Duke--our
particular Duke."
"The Duke of Kent?"
"Yes; and it seems H---- was telling his Royal Highness how your wife
shot that terrible harpy on the battle-field, and saved your life.
"The Duke," continued Drake, "was enthusiastic, and he does not take
wine to make him so, either.
"'Robertson,' he said, 'was one of the best non-commissioned officers
I ever had on my staff, and right bravely but coolly he could do his
duty in his regiment also.
"'And, H----,' he continued, 'the Highland battalion. of the Royal
Scots will soon be _au fait accompli_, and I shan't forget my promise
to Robertson.'"
"Thank Heaven," said my grandfather, "for that news! It has been my
dream for years. Could I afterwards gain a captaincy in my company,
and once lead it into action against the French, I would die happy.
And you know, sir, I am no mere romancist.
"But, sir," he added, "with the fall of Napoleon and the restoration
of the Bourbons, don't you think wars will cease all over the world,
and that there won't be anymore use for Highland battalions?"
Drake laughed.
"Listen, Sergeant John," he said. "Mind, I'm no prophet, and never
was, but--Napoleon is scotched, not killed."
"And pray, sir--who--or where----"
"Where did I get my information?"
"I fear I'm rude, sir, but that is what I was about to ask."
"Well, my good follow, a wee birdie told me."
That was a happy day all through for my grandfather.
Happy, that is, until eventide.
But as he was going singing up to his own log hut, with a bundle of
birds over his left shoulder, he was surprised to find the men
standing here and there in little groups. And he could not help
imagining that they were looking at him in a kind of pitying way.
I have said little about Tonal's Spanish wife for the simple reason
that there was little to tell; yet she had followed his fortunes all
through the war, and proved a very great boon to the pipe-major, as
he was now called.
She was here in camp.
Instead of little Mary running as usual to meet her father, it was
poor Mrs. Tonal that came.
Her large, dark eyes were swimming in tears.
"O, Sergeant Robertson," she began, but the grief seemed to choke her
utterance.
"Good heavens, girl, speak!" cried my grandfather. "Speak, I entreat
of you! Has anything happened to my dear wife?"
"No, no," gasped the girl, for girl she was to all appearance. "She
is gone to the Indian camp, but my husband has gone."
"Tonal gone?--dead?"
"Oh!" she cried, "we do not know, Mr. Robertson, but Mary, little
Mary, too, has gone."
For a moment, forest, lake, and hill seemed to spin round, and my
grandfather had almost fainted.
His daughter, whom he adored, lost, gone! It was too awful to think
about.
He threw down his gun, threw down his game, and next moment was
hurrying off to the Indian camp.
He would now, at all events, hear the very worst.