I. AN INDIAN STRATAGEM.
Duringthe Revolutionary War, a regiment of soldiers was stationed upon the confines of an extensive savanna in Georgia. Its particular office was to guard every avenue of approach to the main army. The sentinels, whose posts penetrated into the woods, were supplied from the ranks; but they were perpetually surprised upon their posts by the Indians and borne off their stations, without communicating any alarm or being heard of afterward.
One morning, the sentinels having been stationed as usual over night, the guard went at sunrise to relieve a post which extended a considerable distance into the wood. The sentinel was gone. The surprise was great; but the circumstance had occurred before. They left another man, and departed, wishing him better luck. "You need not be afraid," said the man, with warmth, "I shall not desert."
The sentinels were replaced every four hours, and, at the appointed time, the guard again marched to relieve the post. To their inexpressible astonishment the man was gone. They searched around the spot, but no traces of him could be found. It was now more necessary than ever that the station should not remain unoccupied; they left another man and returned to the guardhouse.
The superstition of the soldiers was awakened and terror ran through the regiment. The colonel, being apprised of the occurrence, signified his intention to accompany the guard when they relieved the sentinel they had left. At the appointed time, they all marched together; and again, to their unutterable wonder, they found the post vacant, and the man gone. Under these circumstances, the colonel hesitated whether he should station a whole company on the spot or whether he should again submit the post to a single sentinel. The cause of these repeated disappearances of men whose courage and honesty were never suspected must be discovered, and it seemed not likely that this discovery could be obtained by persisting in the old method.
Three brave men were now lost to the regiment, and to assign the fourth seemed nothing less than giving him up to destruction. The poor fellow whose turn it was to take the station, though a man in other respects of incomparable resolution, trembled from head to foot.
"I must do my duty," said he to the officer; "I know that; but I should like to lose my life with more credit." "I will leave no man," said the colonel, "against his will." A man immediately stepped from the ranks and desired to take the post. Every mouth commended his resolution.
"I will not be taken alive," said he, "and you shall hear of me at the least alarm. At all events, I will fire my piece if I hear the least noise. If a crow chatters, or a leaf falls, you shall hear my musket. You may be alarmed when nothing is the matter; but you must take the chance as the condition of the discovery."
The colonel applauded his courage, and told him he would do right to fire upon the least noise that he could not satisfactorily explain. His comrades shook hands with him, and left him with a melancholy foreboding. The company marched back and awaited the event in the guardhouse.
An hour had now elapsed and every ear was upon the rack for the discharge of the musket, when, upon a sudden, the report was heard. The guard immediately marched, accompanied, as before, by the colonel and some of the most experienced officers of the regiment.
As they approached the post they saw the man advancing toward them, dragging another man on the ground by the hair of his head. When they came up to him, it appeared to be an Indian whom he had shot. An explanation was immediately required.
Needle Parker
"I told you, colonel," said the man, "that I should fire if I heard the least noise. That resolution I took has saved my life. I had not been long at my post when I heard a rustling at some short distance; I looked and saw a wild hog, such as are common in the woods, crawling along the ground, and seemingly looking for nuts under the trees, among the leaves.
"As these animals are so very common, I ceased to consider it seriously, but kept my eyes fixed upon it, and marked its progress among the trees; still there was no need to give the alarm. It struck me, however, as somewhat singular to see this animal making, by a circuitous passage, for a thick grove immediately behind my post. I therefore kept my eye more constantly fixed upon it, and, as it was now within a few yards of the coppice, I hesitated whether I should fire.
"My comrades, thought I, will laugh at me for alarming them by shooting a pig. I had almost resolved to let it alone, when, just as it approached the thicket, I thought I observed it give an unusual spring. I no longer hesitated; I took my aim, discharged my piece, and the animal was immediately stretched before me, with a groan which I thought to be that of a human creature.
"I went up to it, and judge of my astonishment when I found that I had killed an Indian. He had enveloped himself with the skin of one of these wild hogs so artfully and completely, his hands and his feet were so entirely concealed in it, and his gait and appearance were so exactly correspondent to that of the animals, that, imperfectly as they were always seen through the trees and bushes the disguise could not be detected at a distance, and scarcely discovered upon the nearest inspection. He was armed with a dagger and a tomahawk."
The cause of the disappearance of the other sentinels was now apparent. The Indians, sheltered in this disguise, secreted themselves in the coppice, watched for the moment to throw off the hog skin, burst upon the sentinels without previous alarm, and, too quick to give them an opportunity to discharge their pieces, either stabbed or tomahawked them. They then bore their bodies away and concealed them at some distance in the leaves, which were thick on the ground.
II. THE MOHAWK'S LAST ARROW.
When the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV., ruled France, he appointed one of his favorite courtiers, the Chevalier de Frontenac, Governor-General of New France, or Konnedieya. {FN} Some years after Count de Frontenac became viceregent, the war-like Five Nations (afterward six), "The Romans of America," proved themselves soldiers of the highest order. This they did not only by carrying their arms among the native tribes a thousand miles away, and striking their enemies alike upon the lakes of Maine, the mountains of Carolina and the prairies of Missouri; but they had already bearded one European army beneath the walls of Quebec, and shut up another for weeks within the defenses of Montreal, with the same courage that, half a century later, vanquished the battalions of Dieskau, upon the banks of Lake George.
{FN} Since corrupted into Canada, "Beautiful Water," probably so called from the amber-like color of many of its streams.
To punish the savages for their "insolence," and bring them under subjection, the commander-in-chief, the veteran Governor Frontenac, organized an expedition to invade the country of the Five Nations, and marshaled his forces at La Chine on July 4, 1696. The aged chevalier was said to have other objects in view besides the political motives for the expedition.
It seems that many years previous, when the Five Nations had invested the capital of New France and threatened the extermination of that thriving colony, a beautiful half-blood girl, whose education had been commenced under the immediate auspices of the Governor-General, and in whom, indeed, M. de Frontenac was said to have a parental interest, was carried off, with other prisoners, by the retiring foe. Every effort had been made in vain during the occasional cessations of hostilities between the French and the Iroquois, to recover this girl; and though, in the years that intervened, some wandering Jesuit from time to time averred that he had seen the Christian captive living as the contented wife of a young Mohawk warrior, yet the old nobleman seems never to have despaired of reclaiming his "nut-brown daughter." Indeed the chevalier must have been impelled by some such hope when, at the age of seventy, and so feeble that he was half the time carried in a litter, he ventured to encounter the perils of an American wilderness and place himself at the head of the heterogeneous bands which now invaded the country of the Five Nations, under his command.
Among the half-breed spies, border scouts and mongrel adventurers that followed in the train of the invading army was a renegade Fleming of the name of Hanyost. This man in early youth had been made a sergeant-major, when he deserted to the French ranks in Flanders. He had subsequently taken up a military grant in Canada, sold it after emigrating, and then, making his way down to the Dutch settlements on the Hudson, had become a sojourner among their old allies, the Mohawks, and adopted the life of a hunter. Hanyost, hearing that his old friends, the French, were making such a formidable descent, did not hesitate to desert his more recent acquaintances and offer his services as a guide to Count Frontenac the moment he entered the hostile country. It was not, however, mere cupidity or the habitual love of treachery which actuated the base Fleming in this instance. Hanyost, in a difficulty with an Indian trapper, which had been referred for arbitrament to a young Mohawk chief, Kiodago (a settler of disputes), whose cool courage and firmness fully entitled him to so distinguished a name, conceived himself aggrieved by the award which had been given against him. The scorn with which the arbitrator met his charge of unfairness stung him to the soul, and fearing the arm of the powerful savage, he had nursed the revenge in secret, whose accomplishment seemed now at hand. Kiodago, ignorant of the hostile force which had entered his country, was off with his band at a fishing station, or summer camp, among the wild hills, and when Hanyost informed the commander of the French forces that by surprising this party his long-lost daughter, the wife of Kiodago, might be once more given to his arms, a small but efficient force was instantly detached from the main body of the army to strike the blow. A dozen musketeers, with twenty-five pikemen, led severally by the Baron de Bekancourt and the Chevalier de Grais, the former having the chief command of the expedition, were sent upon this duty, with Hanyost to guide them to the village of Kiodago. Many hours were consumed upon the march, as the soldiers were not yet habituated to the wilderness; but just before dawn on the second day the party found themselves in the neighborhood of the Indian village.
The place was wrapped in repose, and the two cavaliers trusted that the surprise would be so complete that their commander's daughter must certainly be taken. The baron, after a careful examination of the hilly passes, determined to head the onslaught, while his companion in arms, with Hanyost to mark out his prey, should pounce upon the chieftain's wife. This being arranged, their followers were warned not to injure the female captives while cutting their defenders to pieces, and then, a moment being allowed for each man to take a last look at the condition of his arms, they were led to the attack.
The inhabitants of the fated village, secure in their isolated situation, aloof from the war-parties of that wild district, had neglected all precaution against surprise, and were buried in sleep when the whizzing of a grenade, that terrible but superseded engine of destruction, roused them from their slumbers. The missile, to which a direction had been given that carried it in a direct line through the main row of wigwams which formed the little street, went crashing among their frail frames of basket-work, and kindled the dry mats stretched over them into instant flames. And then, as the startled warriors leaped, all naked and unarmed, from their blazing lodges, the French pikemen, waiting only for a volley from the musketeers, followed it up with a charge still more fatal. The wretched savages were slaughtered like sheep in the shambles. Some, overwhelmed with dismay, sank unresisting upon the ground, and covering up their heads, after the Indian fashion when resigned to death, awaited the fatal stroke without a murmur; others, seized with a less benumbing panic, sought safety in flight, and rushed upon the pikes that lined the forest paths around them.
Many there were, however, who, schooled to scenes as dreadful, acquitted themselves like warriors. Snatching their weapons from the greedy flames, they sprang with irresistible fury upon the bristling files of pikemen. Their heavy war-clubs beat down and splintered the fragile spears of the Europeans, whose corslets, ruddy with the reflected fires amid which they fought, glinted back still brighter sparks from the hatchets of flint which crashed against them. The fierce veterans pealed the charging cry of many a well-fought field in other climes; but wild and high, the Indian war-whoop rose shrill above the din of conflict, until the hovering raven in mid air caught up and answered that discordant shriek.
De Grais, in the meantime, surveyed the scene of action with eager intentness, expecting each moment to see the paler features of the Christian captive among the dusky females, who ever and anon sprang shrieking from the blazing lodges, and were instantly hurled backward into the flames by fathers and brothers, who even thus would save them from the hands that vainly essayed to grasp their distracted forms. The Mohawks began now to wage a more successful resistance, and just when the fight was raging hottest, and the high-spirited Frenchman, beginning to despair of his prey, was about launching into the midst of it, he saw a tall warrior who had hitherto been forward in the conflict, disengage himself from the melee, and wheeling suddenly upon a soldier, who had likewise separated from his party, brain him with a tomahawk before he could make a movement in his defense. The quick eye of the young chevalier, too, caught a glance of another figure, in pursuit of whom, as she emerged with an infant in her arms, from a lodge on the further side of the village, the luckless Frenchman had met his doom. It was the Christian captive, the wife of Kiodago, beneath whose hand he had fallen. The chief now stood over the body of his victim, brandishing a war-club which he had snatched from a dying Indian near. Quick as thought, De Grais leveled a pistol at his head, when the track of the flying girl brought her directly in his line of sight, and he withheld his fire. Kiodago, in the meantime, had been cut off from the rest of his people by the soldiers, who closed in upon the space which his terrible arm had a moment before kept open. A cry of agony escaped the high-souled savage, as he saw how thus the last hope was lost. He made a gesture as if about to again rush into the fray, and sacrifice his life with his tribesmen; and then perceiving how futile must be the act, he turned on his heel, and bounded after his retreating wife, with arms outstretched to shield her from the dropping shots of the enemy.
The rising sun had now lighted up the scene, but all this passed so instantaneously that it was impossible for De Grais to keep his eye upon the fugitives amid the shifting forms that glanced continually before him; and when, accompanied by Hanyost and seven others, he had got fairly in pursuit, Kiodago, who still kept behind his wife, was far in advance of the chevalier and his party. Her forest training had made the Christian captive as fleet of foot as an Indian maiden. She heard, too, the cheering voice of her loved warrior behind her, and pressing her infant to her heart, she urged her flight over crag and fell and soon reached the head of a rocky pass, which it would take some moments for any but an American forester to scale. But the indefatigable Frenchmen are urging their way up the steep; the cry of pursuit grows nearer as they catch a sight of her husband through the thickets, and the agonized wife finds her onward progress prevented by a ledge of rock that impends above her. But now again Kiodago is by her side; he has lifted his wife to the cliff above, and placed her infant in her arms and already the Indian mother is speeding on to a cavern among the hills, well known as a fastness of safety.
Kiodago looked a moment after her retreating figure, and then coolly swung himself to the ledge which commanded the pass. He might now easily escape his pursuers; but as he stepped back from the edge of the cliff and looked down the narrow ravine, the vengeful spirit of the red man was too strong within him to allow such an opportunity of striking a blow to escape. His tomahawk and war-club had both been lost in the strife, but he still carried at his back a more efficient weapon in the hands of so keen a hunter. There were but three arrows in his quiver, and the Mohawk was determined to have the life of an enemy in exchange for each of them. His bow was strung quickly, but with as much coolness as if there was no exigency to require haste. Yet he had scarcely time to throw himself upon his breast, a few yards from the brink of the declivity, before one of his pursuers, more active than the rest, exposed himself to the unerring archer. He came leaping from rock to rock, and had nearly reached the head of the glen, when, pierced through and through by one of Kiodago's arrows, he toppled from the crags, and rolled, clutching the leaves in his death agony, among the tangled furze below. A second met a similar fate, and a third victim would probably have been added, if a shot from the fusil of Hanyost, who sprang forward and caught sight of the Indian just as the first man fell, had not disabled the thumb joint of the bold archer, even as he fixed his last arrow in the string. Resistance seemed now at an end, and Kiodago again betook himself to flight. Yet anxious to divert the pursuit from his wife, the young chieftain pealed a yell of defiance, as he retreated in a different direction from that which she had taken. The whoop was answered by a simultaneous shout and rush on the part of the whites; but the Indian had not advanced far before he perceived that the pursuing party, now reduced to six, had divided, and that three only followed him. He had recognized the scout, Hanyost, among his enemies, and it was now apparent that that wily traitor, instead of being misled by hisruse,had guided the other three upon the direct trail to the cavern which the Christian captive had taken. Quick as thought, the Mohawk acted upon the impression. Making a few steps within a thicket, still to mislead his present pursuers, he bounded across a mountain torrent, and then leaving his foot-marks dashed in the yielding bank, he turned shortly on a rock beyond, recrossed the stream, and concealed himself behind a falling tree; while his pursuers passed within a few paces of his covert.
A broken hillock now only divided the chief from the point to which he had directed his wife by another route, and to which the remaining party, consisting of De Grais, Hanyost and a French musketeer, were hotly urging their way. The hunted warrior ground his teeth with rage when he heard the voice of the treacherous Fleming in the glen below him; and springing from crag to crag, he circled the rocky knoll, and planted his foot by the roots of a blasted oak, that shot its limbs above the cavern, just as his wife had reached the spot, and pressing her babe to her bosom, sank exhausted among the flowers that waved in the moist breath of the cave. It chanced that at that very instant, De Grais and his followers had paused beneath the opposite side of the knoll, from whose broken surface the foot of the flying Indian had disengaged a stone, which crackling among the branches, found its way through a slight ravine into the glen below. The two Frenchmen stood in doubt for a moment. The musketeer, pointing in the direction whence the stone had rolled, turned to receive the order of his officer. The chevalier, who had made one step in advance of a broad rock between them, leaned upon it, pistol in hand, half turning toward his follower while the scout, who stood furthest out from the steep bank, bending forward to discover the mouth of the cave, must have caught a glimpse of the sinking female, just as the shadowy form of her husband was displayed above her. God help thee now, bold archer! thy quiver is empty; thy game of life is nearly up; the sleuth-hound is upon thee; and thy scalp-lock, whose plumes now flutter in the breeze, will soon be twined in the fingers of the vengeful renegade. Thy wife—But hold! the noble savage has still one arrow left!
The Mohawk's Last Arrow
Disabled, as he thought himself, the Mohawk had not dropped his bow in his flight. His last arrow was still gripped in his bleeding fingers; and though his stiffening thumb forbore the use of it to the best advantage, the hand of Kiodago had not lost its power. {FN} The crisis which it takes so long to describe had been realized by him in an instant. He saw how the French-men, inexperienced in woodcraft, were at fault; he saw, too, that the keen eye of Hanyost had caught sight of the object of their pursuit, and that further flight was hopeless, while the scene of his burning village in the distance inflamed him with hate and fury toward the instrument of his misfortunes. Bracing one knee upon the flinty rock, while the muscles of the other swelled as if the whole energies of his body were collected in that single effort, Kiodago aims at the treacherous scout, and the twanging bowstring dismisses his last arrow upon its errand. The hand of the Spirit could alone have guided that shaft! But Waneyo smiles upon the brave warrior, and the arrow, while it rattles harmless against the cuirass of the French officer, glances toward the victim for whom it was intended, and quivers in the heart of Hanyost! The dying wretch grasped the sword-chain of the chevalier, whose corslet clanged among the rocks, as the two went rolling down the glen together; and De Grais was not unwilling to abandon the pursuit when the musketeer, coming to his assistance, had disengaged him, bruised and bloody, from the embrace of the stiffening corpse.
{FN} The English mode of holding the arrow, as represented in the plate, is not common among our aborigines, who use the thumb for a purchase.
What more is there to add. The bewildered Europeans rejoined their comrades, who were soon after on their march from the scene they had desolated; while Kiodago descended from his eyrie to collect the fugitive survivors of his band, and, after burying the slain, to wreak a terrible vengeance upon their murderers; the most of whom were cut off by him before they joined the main body of the French army. The Count de Frontenac, returning to Canada, died soon afterward, and the existence of his half-blood daughter was soon forgotten. And—though among the dozen old families in the State of New York who have Indian blood in their veins, many trace their descent from the off spring of the noble Kiodago and his Christian wife—yet the hand of genius, as displayed in the admirable picture of Chapman, which we reproduce, has alone rescued from oblivion the thrilling scene of the Mohawk's LAST ARROW!
III. AUDUBON'S NIGHT OF PERIL.
"On my return from the upper Mississippi," said John J. Audubon, the celebrated ornithologist, "I found myself obliged to cross one of the wide prairies which, in that portion of the United States, vary the appearance of the country. The weather was fine; all around me was as fresh and blooming as if it had just issued from the bosom of Nature. My knapsack, my gun and my dog were all I had for baggage and company. The track that I followed was an old Indian trail, and as darkness overshadowed the prairie, I felt some desire to reach at least a copse in which I might lie down to rest. The night-hawks were skimming over and around me, attracted by the buzzing wings of the beetles, which form their food, and the distant howlings of wolves gave me some hope that I should soon arrive at the skirts of some woodland.
"I did so; and almost at the same instant a fire-light attracted my attention. I moved toward it, full of confidence that it proceeded from the camp of some wandering Indians. I was mistaken. I discovered by its glare that it was from the open door of a small log cabin, and that a tall figure passed and repassed between it and me, as if busily engaged in house-hold affairs.
"I reached the place, and presenting myself at the door, asked the tall figure, which proved to be a woman, if I might take shelter under her roof for the night. Her voice was gruff and her attire negligently thrown about her. She answered in the affirmative. I walked in, took a stool and quietly seated myself by the fire.
"The next object that attracted my attention was a finely formed young Indian resting his head between his hands, with his elbows on his knees. A long bow rested against a log wall near him, while a quantity of arrows and two or three raccoon skins lay at his feet. He moved not—he apparently breathed not.
"Accustomed to the habits of the Indians, and knowing that they pay little attention to the approach of civilized strangers (a circumstance which in some countries is considered to evince the apathy of their character), I addressed him in French, a language not unfrequently partially known to the people in that neighborhood.
"He raised his head, pointed to one of his eyes with his finger, and gave me a significant look with the other. His face was covered with blood. The fact was that about an hour or so before this, as he was in the act of discharging an arrow at a raccoon in the top of a tree, the arrow had split upon the cord and sprung back with such violence into his right eye as to destroy it forever.
"Feeling hungry, I inquired what sort of fare I might expect. Such a thing as a bed was not to be seen, but many large untanned bear and buffalo hides lay piled up in a corner. I drew a fine timepiece from my breast and told the woman that it was late and that I was fatigued. She had espied my watch, the richness and beauty of which seemed to operate upon her feelings with electrical quickness. She told me that there was plenty of venison and jerked buffalo meat, and that on removing the ashes I should find a cake. But my watch had struck her fancy, and her curiosity had to be gratified by an immediate sight of it. I took off the gold chain that secured it from around my neck and handed it to her. She was all ecstasy, spoke of its beauty, asked me its value and put my chain around her brawny neck, saying how happy the possession of such a watch would make her.
"Thoughtless, and, as I fancied myself in so retired a spot secure, I paid little attention to her talk or her movements. I helped my dog to a good supper of venison, and was not long in satisfying the demands of my own appetite.
"The Indian rose from his seat as if in extreme suffering. He passed and repassed me several times, and once pinched me on the arm so violently that the pain nearly brought forth an exclamation of anger. I looked at him; his eye met mine, but his look was so forbidding that it struck a chill into the more nervous part of my system. He again seated himself, drew his butcher's knife from its greasy scabbard, examined its edge as I would do that of a razor suspected dull, replaced it, and again taking his tomahawk from his belt, filled the pipe of it with tobacco, and sent me expressive glances whenever our hostess chanced to have her back toward us.
"Never until that moment had my senses been awakened to the danger which I now suspected to be about me. I returned glance for glance to my companion, and rested well assured that whatever enemies I might have, he was not one of their number. I asked the woman for my watch, wound it up, and under pretense of wishing to see how the weather might probably be on the morrow, took up my gun and walked out of the cabin. I slipped a ball into each barrel, scraped the edges of my flints, renewed the primings, and returning to the hut, gave a favorable account of my observations. I now took a few bearskins, made a pallet of them, and calling my faithful dog to my side, lay down, with my gun close to my body, and in a few minutes was to all appearances fast asleep.
"A short time had elapsed when some voices were heard, and from the corner of my eyes I saw two athletic youths making their entrance, bearing a dead stag on a pole. They disposed of their burden, and asking for whisky, helped themselves freely to it. Observing me and the wounded Indian, they asked who I was, and why that rascal (meaning the Indian, who, they knew, understood not a word of English) was in the house. The mother—for so she proved to be—bade them speak less loudly, made mention of my watch, and took them to a corner, where a conversation took place in a low tone, the purport of which it required little shrewdness in me to guess. I tapped my dog gently; he moved his tail, and with indescribable pleasure I saw his fine eyes alternately fixed on me, and raised toward the trio in the corner. I felt that he perceived danger in my situation. The Indian exchanged a last glance with me.
"The lads had eaten and drunk themselves into such condition that I already looked upon them ashors de combat,and the frequent visits of the whisky bottle to the ugly mouth of their dam I hoped would soon reduce her to a like state. Judge of my astonishment, reader, when I saw this incarnate fiend take a large butcher's knife and go to the grindstone to whet its edge. I saw her pour the water on the turning stone, and watched her working away with the dangerous instrument until the cold sweat covered every part of my body, despite my determination to defend myself to the last. Her task finished, she walked to her reeling sons and said, 'There, that'll soon settle him. Boys, you kill the Indian and then for the watch!'
"I turned, cocked my gunlocks silently, touched my faithful companion, and lay ready to startup and shoot the first that might attempt my life. The moment was fast approaching, and that night might have been my last in this world, had not Providence made preparations for my rescue. All was ready; the infernal hag was advancing slowly, probably contemplating the best way of despatching me whilst her sons should be engaged with the Indian. I was several times on the eve of rising and shooting her on the spot; but she was not to be punished thus. The door was suddenly opened, and there entered two stout travelers, each with a long rifle on his shoulder. I bounced upon my feet, and making them most heartily welcome, told them how well it was for me that they should have arrived at that moment. The tale was told in a minute. The drunken young men were secured, and the woman, in spite of her defense and vociferations, shared the same fate. The Indian fairly danced with joy, and gave us to understand that as he could not sleep for pain, he would watch over us. You may suppose we slept much less than we talked.
"The two strangers gave me an account of their once having been themselves in a somewhat similar situation. Day came, fair and rosy, and with it the punishment of our captives. They were quite sobered. Their feet were unbound, but their arms were still securely tied. We marched them into the woods off the road, and having disposed of them as regulators were wont to treat such wretches, we set fire to the cabin, gave all their skins and implements to the young Indian warrior and proceeded, well pleased, toward the settlements.
"During upward of twenty-five years, when my wanderings extended to all parts of our country, this was the only time at which my life was in danger from my fellow-creatures. Indeed, so little risk do travelers run in the United States that no one born there ever dreams of any to be encountered on the road; and I can only account for the occurrence by supposing that the inhabitants of the cabin were not Americans."
IV. AN HOUR OF TERROR, AND MIDNIGHT FEAST.
The following story, though somewhat similar to the foregoing, had a very different termination:
The year 1812 was one of anxiety and alarm to the frontier settlers of our country, for the Indians, incited by British emissaries, were sullen, and in many portions of the Ohio Valley and on the Canadian border openly hostile to the Americans.
Three families dwelling in a little settlement on the banks of a small stream which emptied into Lake Erie had refrained in every way possible from giving offense to their Indian neighbors, the Miamis of the Lake, whose nearest village was thirty miles distant. However, to be safe, they built a block-house surrounded by a tall stockade, and always had their guns and other weapons ready for use.
One dark night, Minor Spicer, who lived in one of these isolated cabins, heard some one call in front of his house. It was late, and Spicer's family, with the exception of himself and wife, had retired. Seizing his rifle, Minor, in spite of his wife's entreaty that he should pay no attention to the hail, opened the door and stepped outside.
A large Indian, mounted on a big raw-boned gray horse, with a deer across the withers, and a rifle in each hand, confronted the settler.
"What do you want?" the white man asked. The Indian replied in the Wyandotte tongue, a language perfectly unintelligible to Spicer.
"Speak English! Speak English!" shouted Spicer, "or as sure as a gun is iron I will draw a bead on you."
The Indian was not alarmed by this threat, since he understood not one word of it. But he knew three English, words, and now used them to good purpose. Pointing to the cabin, he exclaimed, "Injun tired, cold, sleepy," and Minor understood at once that he desired a night's lodging.
Now, among the frontiersmen, hospitality was universal. The latch string literally hung on the outside. No matter how humble the guest, and whether friend or foe, shelter was never denied, and even the last crust would be divided with the stranger. In the present instance the request was promptly granted, Spicer showing the Indian where to put his horse, and then, it must be confessed with inward misgivings, leading the way into the house, the Indian bringing in his venison.
The good woman fairly trembled with terror as she looked upon the towering form and forbidding face of their savage guest, as he hung up his venison with an air of proprietorship after which he placed his guns and tomahawk in a corner of the backroom which served as kitchen.
With his scalping-knife the Indian now cut a large piece from the venison and intimated by signs that he was hungry and desired Mrs. Spicer to cook it for him. Mrs. Spicer complied with the request, her husband standing near, his rifle always within reach, watching every movement of the sullen-faced guest, regretting more and more that he had permitted him to enter. He consoled himself with the thought that had he refused he would have incurred his undying hatred, and resolved, while seemingly at ease, to be on the alert for treachery, and repay it with death.
The wife broiled the meat upon the coals, seasoned it well with pepper and salt, and motioned the Indian toward the table. He ate only a few mouthfuls, and when he thought he was unobserved, slyly slipped the greater portion of it in his pouch, clearly refuting, according to the watchful white man's mind, his claim that he was hungry, and convincing Spicer that mischief was intended.
The host and hostess signified their intention of retiring, and the Indian lay down before the fire. Mr. and Mrs. Spicer retired to the front room, which opened through a door from the kitchen, which was occupied by the Indian. Of course, sleep was impossible, for their own lives and that of their children, and indeed the fate of the whole settlement, might depend upon their vigilance.
The door of the room they occupied was left wide open, so that the Indian was in full view. Would the tall warrior, who had gained entrance to their home under pretense of being weary and hungry, attempt to murder them himself, or would he, when he thought the family sound asleep, unbar the door to admit his confederates to assist him in his bloody work? The husband and wife said nothing to each other regarding their fears, but the necessity of remaining awake was fully understood and agreed upon between them.
The bed upon which Spicer and his wife lay was without the circle of the firelight, and in heavy shadow; and their faces were not discernible in the gloom. They breathed deeply to deceive the Indian, whom they believed to be as wakeful as they themselves, although he lay perfectly still for an hour. At the end of that time he raised himself upon his elbow and listened. All was silent, and he sat upright, and again listened as before. No sound disturbed the silence but the deep breathing of the sleeping children in the loft above him and the regular respiration of Spicer and his wife, who were watching the Indian with mingled feelings of anger and alarm, for now his evil intention seemed about to be made known. Rising to his feet, the Indian stepped as swiftly and softly as a panther to the corner where his weapons were piled.
Lone Wolf
"Shall I shoot him in his tracks?" thought Spicer, whose hand was now upon his gun. "No, I can't shoot a man in my own house whose back is toward me, but if he draws the bolt of the outside door, or makes a motion to attack us, he will find me ready."
By this time the savage had reached the corner, and stood silently listening to see if he had awakened any one. Satisfied that he had not, he took up his glittering scalping-knife. Mrs. Spicer shuddered as he passed his fingers across the edge of the blade to assure himself of its keenness. Already she seemed to feel the cold steel upon her naked flesh. She touched her husband's hand as if to urge him to shoot. He gave her hand a reassuring pressure, and grasped his gun, awaiting the Indian's onslaught.
The savage, however, seemed in no haste, and instead of turning toward the door of the cabin, or the room in which Spicer and his wife lay, he quietly stole toward the opposite corner of the room. Surprised and puzzled, Spicer and his wife watched the Indian's mysterious movements, which in another minute explained themselves.
Reaching the corner where the venison hung, he took it down, and laying it upon the floor, deftly cut off a piece weighing a pound or two, and then made his way back to the fire and placed it on the embers. Carefully wiping his scalping-knife and placing it again with his weapons, he sat down before the fire, watching his meat cook, and, when it was done to his satisfaction, he devoured it with much apparent relish, and lay down again and was soon sleeping the sleep of the weary.
Indians as a rule (especially those around the great fresh-water lakes) dislike salt and pepper, and Mrs. Spicer had so seasoned the venison she cooked for her guest that it was unpalatable, and with innate delicacy he attempted to conceal the fact that it was not done to his liking by slipping it into his pouch. Both Spicer and his wife knew in an instant that this was the case, when the Indian, unconscious how near his dislike for pepper and salt had brought him to death sat down to watch his venison broil. Their minds at ease, they too, were soon peacefully sleeping.
Afterward, when the Indian, who came season after season to visit Spicer and his family, learned enough English to speak quite well, he told them that upon the occasion of his first visit to their cabin he had lost his trail, and had been guided to their door by the light from the window. He had left his father, who was too tired to travel farther, in an abandoned hunting-hut they found in the woods, and had given him his blanket. The other rifle was his father's, and the next morning he went back to him, and the two found their trail and went onward to their village.
Every spring and autumn the Indian, who called himself "Heno," which is the Wyandot for "Thunder," used to call at the cabin of the Spicer's with gifts of game and skins, and when the settler, upon one of these visits, told him of the hour of terror he spent watching his movements the first night of their acquaintance, Heno, who was a merry fellow in spite of his looks, chuckled softly to himself, the humor of the situation evidently striking him forcibly.
Heno became very fond of the Spicer children, and upon his visits to their home they would importune their father to tell again the tale of Heno's midnight raid upon his venison, the Indian accompanying the narrator with expressive pantomime, which much delighted himself and his auditors.
V. STORY OF AN HONEST INDIAN.
The inhabitants along the north shore of Lake Superior are nearly all Indians, who are largely dependent upon the fisheries for their living; when these fail or are good, so is their general condition. It has been my good fortune, writes Stanley Du Bois, to spend many summers there.
My custom is to get a large Mackinac boat, the white man's improvement on the birch bark canoe, to put into it my tent, stores, camping and other equipment, and, together with a couple of Indians, to sail along the north shore of the great lake, usually making a new camp every night, not bound by any hard and fast rule to do so; staying longer if it is agreeable or too stormy to make sailing safe or pleasant. Sometimes I have to anchor and ride out a heavy swell, for there are hundreds of miles of shore line where the rocky cliffs come down to the water's edge, and if there is any surf there is no such thing as landing from a boat. One evening, having made a landing, pitched the tent, and had a good supper, while sitting alone, the Indians busy about the boat hauled up on the narrow beach, a huge dog came stalking up to me. He was in a pitiable condition. Evidently he had been in a fight with a bear or lynx, or some other fierce, powerful creature, for nearly half his scalp had been torn loose from his skull and hung down over his face, completely blinding one eye. At first I was uncertain how to act, but I soon saw that he meant no harm, really in dog language he very plainly gave me to understand that he looked to me for relief. Going into the tent I got a needle and thread, and together we went down to the water's edge, where I washed the dirt and vermin out of the great wound, and then placing the skin back where it belonged sewed it up. The Indians pricked a quantity of balsam blisters, and after smearing that plentifully over the edges of the wound, we gave the dog his supper. During the night he disappeared.
The Indians and myself finished the season according to our pleasure, and the incident of the dog was fast becoming a fading memory. Two years later, with these same two Indians, I was again sailing along the north shore of Lake Superior. Seeing a little wooden pier put out into the water we headed for it. As soon as we came near, some twenty-five or thirty half-wild, savage dogs stormed out on the pier and threatened to eat us alive! An elderly Indian came down from the shore, and with a stout club beat them mercilessly and drove them to the shore; all except one, who, changing his bark of anger and defiance to yelps of delight, fawned and whined on me most unaccountably, and despite blows and commands refused to leave.
"Now I know who fix my dog; come to my house. I too wish to thank you as well as my dog." That was the greeting I received, and the first I had heard of the mutilated dog of two years previous.
The house was a log hut of one room only on the ground floor, with a low, dark loft above; no luxuries and few comforts anywhere. His wife busied herself to get us something to eat; it didn't take long, and when dinner was called we sat down to the table. Reverently bowing their heads he asked God's blessing on what was before us, a broiled whitefish and a bucket of water, that was all, for the season's fishing so far had been a failure. The man and children could speak fairly good English, his wife could not speak it at all. After our meal I gave him a little bag of smoking tobacco. It was the first he had used for several months, and you can hardly know how happy he was. Moved by its influence and of gratitude for my care to his dog, he told me a strange experience that had come into his life. I have taken the liberty of altering his broken English and idioms into plain talk, but the facts are just as he told me that beautiful summer day, with the hum of the wind through the great pine trees over and back of his home, and the wash of the waves on the rocky shore in front. But for the little group around that home it was a grand solitude for hundreds of miles in every direction. This is his story:
"Some thirty years ago there came to my cabin a young Englishman, not a hunter or a fisherman, but one who would sit for hours at a time on that old bent tree yonder, and make the strangest and sweetest music I ever heard. I never saw an instrument like his. He made me forget myself, and sometimes when he would play I would cry just like a dog. Then he would put that aside and go off into the woods alone, taking with him a stranger and even more curious instrument. What he was trying to do I do not know, but he looked into it, and then made marks in a book. I said he went alone, but that is hardly true; no white man went with him, only one of my little boys. They are men grown now, and have families of their own. One day a sailboat came to my little pier, and a gentleman called out, 'Hello Baker! you must go back with me right away,' and after a few minutes' talk he called out to me, 'I am going away, but will be back again. Keep what is mine till I return,' and they sailed away.
"That was more than thirty years ago, and he has not returned yet. If you care to see what he left with me I will show it to you."
We went back into the cabin, and his wife climbed into the loft overhead and passed down a violin case, a theodolite, and a small, silver-trimmed leather grip. Opening the case he took out as fine a violin as it has ever been my pleasure to handle. There was no name of maker or owner on it. The strings were loose, but after tuning it up as best I could after so long a time out of use, I found it had a marvelously pure, sweet, strong tone. The theodolite was of London make, and had seen much hard usage, but was in good condition. Opening the grip, which was not locked, we took out and laid on the table a surveyor's memorandum book, a few pencils, a silver telescopic pen holder with a gold pen in its end, and an intaglio seal cut in a red stone in the other end, the letter B, some postage stamps, some sheets of paper and envelopes, and a small copy of Shakespeare's plays. Turning to the fly leaf of the book I read the name in pencil, "S. Baker."
"This is not all," said the Indian to his wife, and she went up to the loft again and brought down a canvas bag. It would have held about a quart. Untying the string which closed it, he turned the contents out on the table, gold and silver coins. We counted it. Sixty-two sovereigns and a few small pieces of silver, all English money.
To say that I was amazed but mildly expressed my thoughts at the time. Here was an Indian family, poor as poverty, yet with over three hundred dollars in gold for years in their cabin, and knowing its purchasing power perfectly well all the time. I asked him why he did not use it to buy necessities at such a time as this. He gave me a look of mingled sorrow and wonder that I would so much as suggest such a thing, and said that these things were left with him for safe keeping, and that he would sooner starve than betray his trust. They were starving then, and it was not the first time so either. I tried to persuade him to use it, but he said "No," and put it all back into the bag, and everything belonging to the young stranger was taken up and put away in the loft.
The next day I went away. My summer trips took me elsewhere for several years, but this past summer I was back to the north shore of Lake Superior again. Having a mind to look up my old Indian friend, I went to the place where we had parted company, but the little pier was wholly gone. We made a landing and soon came upon the ruins of the house. The roof had fallen in and the walls were partly rotted down. The little garden patch was a tangle of briers and weeds; desolation reigned everywhere.
A couple of days later, still sailing along the shore, we came in sight of a long, strong, handsome pier, with a tall flag staff on its outer end. Back of it, about a hundred yards up the shore, was a tiny Indian village of maybe two hundred souls. Landing at the dock, a handsome young man greeted me and called me by name. He was a grandson of my old Indian friend. I immediately asked him of his grandfather.
"Come and see where we have laid him," was his answer; and taking me by the hand he led me to a beautiful little grassy plot, surrounded with a neat white paling fence. There, beside the wife of his youth, who had shared with him his privations, his joys and his sorrows, there his children had reverently laid him away.
We then went to the home of the young Indian. He had a neat story-and-a-half house, nearly covered with trailing vines. It was well furnished, a cabinet organ, a sewing machine, some books and pictures, a gasoline stove, carpets, curtains and other furniture of civilization. He was a prosperous lumberman, and a full-blooded Indian.
I asked him regarding the violin, theodolite, books, money, etc. The money had been used after his grandfather's death, the other articles he has in his possession now.
Going back as well as we could we came to the conclusion that they originally belonged to the man who afterward became Sir Samuel Baker, but we could not be certain. Of this we are sure, that the keeping of the money and other valuables so many years was a rare example of fidelity. And the strangest part of it all is, that my knowledge of it, and yours, should come about through kindness to a dog in distress. I have had considerable experience with Indians, from the far North of our land to South America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Times without number have I trusted my person and valuables to them, and in not a single instance was the confidence misplaced.
VI. "GO!" A STORY OF RED CLOUD.
The new El Dorado was in sight, writes Calkins. Gordon's party of twelve tired frontiersmen had mounted the high divide which separates the sources of the Running Water from those of the Cheyenne. For five weeks the men had shoveled drifts, buffeted blizzards and kept a constant vigil among the interminable sand-hills. By means, too, of stable canvas, shovels, axes, iron picket-pins and a modicum of dry feed, they had kept in good condition the splendid eight-mule team which drew their big freighter.
In fact "Gordon's outfit" was a model one in every respect, and probably no similar body of men ever faced our snow-bound, trackless plains, better equipped for the adventure. And now the muffled marchers cheered as "Cap" Gordon halted them and pointed to a blurred and inky upheaval upon the far rim of a limitless waste of white. The famous Black Hills, a veritable wonderland, unseen hitherto by any party of whites save the men of Custer's expedition, lay before them.
Two more days and the gold-seekers would gain the shelter of those pine-covered hills, where their merry axes would "eat chips" until shelter, comfort and safety from attack were secured. Out of the bitter cold, after weeks of toil and danger, into warmth and safety—no wonder they were glad.
As yet they had seen no sign of the hostile Sioux, but their frosty cheers, thin and piping, had hardly been borne away by the cutting wind when a moving black speck appeared on the western horizon.
The speck drew nearer, and resolved itself into a solitary horseman. Could it be that a single Sioux would approach a party of their strength? They watched the rider without anxiety. They were so near the goal now that no war party of sufficient strength to become a menace was likely to be gathered. They were equipped with an arsenal of modern guns, with fifty thousand rounds of ammunition, and had boasted they were "good to stand off three hundred Sioux."
Nearer and nearer drew the horseman, his pony coming on in rabbit-like jumps to clear the drifts. Speculation ceased. It was an Indian—probably a hunter strayed far from his village, half-starved and coming to beg for food. Well, the poor wretch should have frozen bread and meat, as much as he could eat they could not stop to give him better fare.
It was as cold as Greenland. The bundled driver upon the great wagon slapped his single line, and yelled at the plodding mules. Eleven buffalo-coated, fur-encased men with feet clad in snow-packs, marched at the tail of the freighter. In such weather their cold "shooting-irons" were left in the wagon, nor did they deem it necessary now to get them out.
They were prepared for a begging Indian, but the apparition which finally rode in upon the monotony of the long march seemed to them a figure as farcical as savage. As the Sioux horseman confronted them he lowered his blanket, uncovering his solemn, barbarian face, and stretching out one long arm, pointed them back upon their trail. "Go!" he said, and he repeated the command with fierce insistence.
The freight wagon rattled on, but the footmen halted for a moment to laugh.