Joe La Mousse
Joe La Mousse
But Charlot the royal-blooded, son of a long line of fighting chiefs, was not to be moved by the master-hand like a pawn in a game of chess. He haughtily refused to leave the Bitter Root Valley, telling hispeople that those of them who wished to go should follow Arlee, but he with a few of the faithful, would lie down to his repose in the land of his fathers beneath peaks that mingle with the sky. With impassive dignity he and a party of his loyal band went to Washington at the bidding of the Great Father to listen to the justice of the white man's claim. Charlot proudly declined to accept pension and authority bought at the price of his exile. He wished only the "poor privilege" of dwelling in the valley where his fathers had dwelt; of resting at last, where they had lain so long. He wanted neither money nor land,—simply permission to live in the home of his childhood, his manhood and old age. He added that he would never be taken alive to the Jocko Reservation. The Powers saw no merit in the sentiment of the old Chief. He had dared to oppose their will and they determined to break his spirit. He might remain in the Bitter Root the All-Wisedecreed, but in remaining he relinquished every right. More crushing to him than poverty and exile was the final blow to his pride. In a sense he was King of his tribe. The title of Great Chief descended from father to son, even as the crowns of empires are handed down. The War Chiefs, on the other hand, were elected to command the warriors for a year and at the end of their service they became simple braves again. The government, ignoring the canons of the Selish, put Charlot aside, and Arlee, the Red Night, last of the War Chiefs, took precedence over him and became Head Chief of his nation. Charlot was stripped of his title, his honours, his privileges of land grant and pension; in other words, he was reduced from Great Chief to pauper.
Thus Charlot, who with his braves had defied his kinsfolk, the Nez Percés, to protect the weak colony of settlers in their Bitter Root home was driven forth by these same strangers within his gates,and he, the bravest and best of his kind, shorn of the dignities his forebears and he, himself, had won;—robbed, cast out, was held up to contumely as an unruly savage and spurned by the people his mercy had spared.
From the Bitter Root, the poor wanderers took their way into the Jocko, a region also fair, where some of their tribe already dwelt, and made for themselves new homes. They accepted the change uncomplainingly and set to work to sow and reap in this adopted land.
Charlot and his band of nearly two hundred lingered in the Bitter Root until 1891, when driven by hunger and suffering they followed their tribesmen into the Jocko. He had said he would never betaken aliveto the new reservation, nor was he. Clad in his war dress, mounted on his best horse, surrounded by his young men in full war regalia, he rode into exile, proud, unbending as a triumphant Chief entering dominions won by conquest. Noexpression of pain crossed his bronze-stern face; no hint of humility or subjection softened the majesty of his mien. He and his braves were met by the Selish who had gone before, with great ostentation and ceremony. Charlot never forgot nor forgave. He had been cast out, betrayed, but not conquered.
The Selish have learned to love the soft, yellow-green of the Jocko hills, the free sweep of its prairies, where sun flowers flow in a sea of gold beneath the rushing tide of the summer wind, and the prettily boisterous little Jocko River laughs and plays over its rocky bed between a veritable jungle of trees and vines and flowers. In these woods bordering the stream, the most luscious wild gooseberries, strawberries and bright scarlet brew berries grow—this last, dear to the Indian, is picked by the squaws and made into a sparkling draught. There the trees are hung with dense tapestries of blossoming vines, thick moss deadens the footstepand birds call shrilly from the twilight of the trees. But the Jocko and Sin-yal-min are beautiful and fertile, and wherever there is beauty and fertility there comes the Master saying:
"This is mine by right of might! Go forth again O Indian! There are lean hills and deserts left for thee!"
And the Indian, grown used to such things, folds his tipi and takes his way into the charity of the lessening wilderness.
Not long ago a strange thing came to pass. One evening the sun set in a passion of red and gold. The tide of light pulsed through the skies, the air throbbed and shimmered with it, and every lake and pool reflected its ruddy splendour until they seemed to be filled with blood. The Indians gazed at the spectacle in silent awe. Groups of them on horseback, dark figures silhouetted against the bright sky, stared curiously at the awful glory of the heavens and earth, whispered in low tonestogether and were afraid. Was the Great Spirit revealing something to his children? Some there were who thought that the crimson banners in the West foretold a disaster and verily it was true. The end was near. The sun was setting forever upon their freedom. Once more the children of the old time would be driven to another camping ground where they might halt for a little space and rest their weary heads before they take up the march upon their endless retreat.
During the Summer at the time when the sun reached his greatest strength, according to the ancient custom, the Selish gathered together to dance. In this celebration is embodied the spirit of the people, their pride, their hates and loves. But this dance had a peculiar significance. It was, perhaps, the last that the tribe will celebrate. Anotheryear the white man will occupy the land, and the free, roving life and its habits will be gone. It was a scene never to be forgotten. Overhead a sky deeply azure at its zenith which mellowed toward the West into a tide of ruddy gold flowing between the blue heavens and the green earth; far, far away, dim, amethyst mountains dreaming in the haze; and through that rose-gold flood of light, sharply outlined against the intense blue above and the tender green below, silent figures on horseback, gay with blankets, beads and buckskins, rode out of the filmy distance into the splendour of the setting sun, and noiselessly took their places around the musicians on the grass.
There were among them the most distinguished men of the tribe. Joe La Mousse, once a warrior of fame, grown to an honored old age, watched the younger generation with the simple dignity which becomes one of his years and rank. He possessed the richest war dress of all,strung with elks' teeth and resplendent with the feathers of the war-eagle. It was he, who with Charlot, met the Nez Percés and repudiated their bloody campaign; he, whose valiant ancestor, Ignace La Mousse, the Iroquois, helped to make glorious the name of his adopted people.FrançoisandKai-Kai-She, the judge, both honoured patriarchs, and Chief Antoine Moise,Callup-Squal-She, "Crane with a ring around his neck," who followed Charlot to Washington on his mission of protest, moved and mingled in the bright patchwork of groups upon the green. There was none more imbued with the spirit of festivity than old François with white hair falling to his bowed shoulders. These and many more there were whose prime had known happier days. Chief Moise's wife, a handsome squaw, rode in with her lord, and conspicuous among the women was a slim wisp of a girl with an oval face, buckskin-colored complexion, and great, dusky,twilight eyes. A pale gray-green blanket was wrapped about her head and body, hanging to her moccasined feet. She was the wife of Michel Kaiser, the young leader of the braves. But towering above the rest of the assembly, regal to the point of austerity, was a man aged but still erect, as though his strength of pride would never let his shoulders stoop beneath the conquering years. He wore his blanket folded closely around him and fanned himself with an eagle's wing, the emblem of the warrior. One eye was hidden beneath a white film which had shut out its sight forever, but the other, coal-black and piercing, met the stranger gaze for gaze, never flinching, never turning aside. It was Charlot. Though an exile, his head was still unbent, his spirit unbroken.
Sometimes we see in the aged, the placid melancholy which comes with the foreknowledge of death, so in the serenely sad faces of the aged Indians, we recognizethat greater melancholy which is born of the foreshadowing of racial death. They cherish, too, a more personal grief in that they shall live to see the passing of the old life. Patiently they submitted to the expulsion from the Bitter Root, but now in the darkness of gathering years once more they must strike their tipis to make room for the invading hosts. The setting sun streamed through the leaves and touched the venerable faces with false youth. Wagon and pony discharged their human loads who sat passively, listening to the admonition of the tom-tom and the chant:
"Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!"
After this preliminary measure had lasted hours, not an Indian professed to know whether the people would be moved to dance or not. A race characteristic is that impulse must quicken them to action. It was strange how the tidings had spread. The tipis and lodges are scattered over many miles, but the Indianskept coming as though called up by magic from their hiding places in the hills.
Beneath a clump of cottonwood trees around the tom-tom, a drum made of deer hide stretched over a hollowed section of green tree, sat the four musicians beating the time of the chant with sticks bound in strips of cloth. Of these players one was blind, another aged, and the remaining two, in holiday attire, with painted lips and cheeks, were braves. One of these, seated a trifle higher than his companions, leaned indolently over the tom-tom plying his sticks with careless grace. He possessed a peculiar magnetism which marked him a leader. Occasionally his whole body thrilled with sudden animation, his voice rose into a strident cry, then he relapsed into the languid posture and the bee-like drone. Of all that gathering he was the one perfect, full-blood specimen of a brave in the height of his prime. The dandy, Victor Vanderberg,was handsomer perhaps, and little Jerome had the beauty of a head of Raphael, but this Michel Kaiser was a type apart. His face and slim, nimble hands were the colour of bronze. His nose curved sharply as a hawk's beak, his mouth was compressed in a hard, cold line over his white teeth, his cheek bones were high and prominent, his brows straight, sable strokes above small, bright-black eyes that gleamed keen as arrow darts. His hair was made into two thick braids wrapped around with brown fur, his arms were decorated with bracelets and from his neck hung string upon string of beads falling to his waist. It was he who with suppressed energy flung back his head as he gave the shrill cry and quickened the beat of the tom-tom until louder and louder, faster and faster swelled the chant:
"Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!"
Then out into the open on the green stepped a girl-child scarcely three yearsof age, who threw herself into rhythmic motion, swaying her small body to the time of the music and bearing in her quavering treble the burden of the chant. The impressive faces of the spectators melted into smiles. She was the pet of the tribe, the orphan granddaughter of Joe La Mousse and his venerable wife. Loving hands had made for her a war dress which she wore with the grave complaisance of one favoured above her peers. She scorned the sedate dances of the squaws and chose the quicker action of the war dance, and she would not yield her possession of the field without a struggle which showed that the spirit of her fighting fathers still lived in her.
Suddenly a brave painted grotesquely, dressed in splendid colours with a curious contrivance fastened about his waist and standing out behind like a tail, bounded into the ring, his hurrying feet beating to the tintinnabulation of sleigh bells attached to his legs. Michel Kaiser and theyoung man who sat beside him at the tom-tom gave up their places to others, and after disappearing for a moment came forth freed from encumbering blankets, transformed with paint and ornament. A fourth dancer joined them and the awe-begetting war dance began. The movement was one of restrained force. With bent heads and bodies inclined forward, one arm hanging limp and the other resting easily at the back, they tripped along until a war-whoop like an electric shock, sent them springing into the air with faces turned upward and clenched fists uplifted toward the sky.
It was now that Michel stood revealed in all his physical beauty. In colour and form he was like a perfectly wrought bronze statue. He was tall and slender. His arms and legs, metal-hard, were fleet and strong and his every motion expressed agility and grace. He was clad in the full war-dress of the Selish, somewhat the same as that which his ancestors had wornbefore the coming of the white man. Upon his head was a bonnet of skunk tails that quivered with the slightest motion of his sinewy body. He wore, besides, a shirt, long, fringed buckskin leggins and beaded moccasins. He was decorated with broad anklets and little bells that tinkled as he moved. Of the four dancers Michel sprang highest, swung in most perfect rhythm, spent in that wild carnival most energy and force. Supple and lean as a panther he curvetted and darted; light as the wind his moccasined feet skimmed over the green, scarcely seeming to crush a spear of grass. As he went through that terrible pantomime practiced by his fathers before they set out to kill or die, the fire flashing in his lynx-eyes, his slim arm poised over his head, his whole willow-lithe body swaying to the impulse of the war-lust, it was easy to fancy how that play might become a reality and he who danced to perpetuate an ancient form might turn relentlessdemon if the intoxication of the war-path once kindled in his veins.
Abraham Isaac and Michel Kaiser
Abraham Isaac and Michel Kaiser
This war dance explained many things. It was a portrayal of the glorious deeds of the warriors, a recitation of victorious achievement, a picture of battle, of striking the body of the fallen enemy—one of the great tests of valor. The act of striking was considered a far more gallant feat than the taking of a scalp. After a foe was shot and had fallen, a brave seeking distinction, dashed forth from his own band into the open field and under the deadly rain of the enemy's arrows, struck with his hand the body of the dead or wounded warrior. In doing this he not only courted the desperate danger of that present moment, but brought upon his head the relentless vengeance of the family, the followers and the tribe of the fallen foe,—vengeance of a kind that can wait for years without growing cold. By such inspiring examples the young men were stirred to emulation. The danceshowed, too, how in the past the storm-clouds of war gathered slowly until, with lightning flash and thunder-blast, the warriors lashed themselves to the white-heat of frenzy at which they mocked death. The whole thing seemed to be a marshalling of the passions, a blood-fire as irresistible and sweeping as those floods of flame which lay the forests low.
The warriors ceased their mad career. The sweat streamed from their brows and down their cheeks as they sat beneath the shade trees in repose. Still the tom-tom beat and the chant continued:
"Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!"
They needed no urging now. What did they care for vespers and sermons when the ghostly voices of warrior-ancestors, of forest dwellers and huntsmen came echoing from the lips of the past? Their spirit was aroused and the festival would last until the passion was quenched and their veins were cooled.
The next dance was started by a squaw.It was called the "choosing dance," from the fact that either a man or a woman chose a partner for the figure. The ceremony of invitation was simple. The one who desired to invite another, grasped the individual's arm and said briefly:
"Dance!"
The couples formed two circles around the tom-tom, one within the other, then slowly the two rings moved 'round and 'round, with a kind of short, springing step, droning the never-varying chant. At the end of the dance the one who had chosen his partner presented him with a gift. In some cases a horse or a cow was bestowed and not infrequently blankets and the most cherished bead-work belts and hat-bands. Custom makes the acceptance of these favours compulsory. Even the alien visitors were asked to take part and the Indians laughed like pleased children to welcome them to the dance. One very old squaw, Mrs. "Nine Pipes," took her blanket from her body and her'kerchief from her head to give to her white partner, and a brave, having chosen a pale-faced lady for the figure, and being depleted in fortune by his generosity at a former festival, borrowed fifty cents from a richer companion to bestow upon her. It was all done in the best of faith and friendliness, with child-like good will and pleasure in the doing.
When the next number was called, those who had been honoured with invitations and gifts returned the compliment. After this was done, the Master of the Dance, Michel Kaiser, stepped into the center of the circle, saying in the deep gutturals of the Selish tongue, with all the pomp of one who makes a proclamation, something which may be broadly rendered into these English words:
"This brave, Jerome, chose for his partner, Mary, and gave to her a belt of beads, and Mary chose for her partner, Jerome, and gave to him a silken scarf."
Around the circumference of the greatring he moved, crying aloud the names of the braves and maids who had joined together in the dance, and holding up to view the presents they had exchanged.
The next in order was a dance of the chase by the four young men who had performed the war dance. In this the hunter and the beast he pursued were impersonated and the pantomime carried out every detail of the fleeing prey and the crafty huntsmen who relentlessly drove him to earth.
The fourth measure was the scalp dance given by the squaws, a rite anciently practiced by the female members of families whose lords had returned victorious from battle, bearing as trophies the scalps of enemies they had slain. It was considered an indignity and a matter of just reproach to her husband or brother, if a squaw were unable to take part in this dance. The scalps captured in war were first displayed outside the lodges of the warriors whose spoil they were, andafter a time, when they began to mortify or "break down," as the Indians say, the triumphant squaws gathered them together, threw them into the dust and stamped on them, heaping upon them every insult and in the weird ceremony of that ghoulish dance, consigning them to eternal darkness, for no brave without his scalp could enter the Happy Hunting Ground. The chant changed in this figure. The voices of the women rose in a piercing falsetto, broken by a rapid utterance of the single syllable "la, la" repeated an incredible length of time. The effect was singularly savage and strange, emphasizing the barbarous joy of the vengeful women. As the war dance was the call to battle, this was the aftermath.
In pleasing contrast to this cruel rite was the marriage dance, celebrated by both belles and braves. The young squaws, in their gayest attire, ornamented with the best samples of their bead work and painted bright vermillion about thelips and cheeks, formed a chain around the tom-tom, singing shrilly. Then a brave with a party of his friends stepped within the circle, bearing in his hand a stick, generally a small branch of pine or other native tree. He approached the object of his love and laid the branch on her shoulder. If she rejected his suit she pushed the branch aside and he, with his followers, retired in humiliation and chagrin. It often happened that more than one youth desired the hand of the same maiden, and the place of the rejected lover was taken immediately by a rival who made his prayer. If the maid looked with favor upon him she inclined her head, laying her cheek upon the branch. This was at once the betrothal and the marriage. At the close of the festivities the lover bore her to his lodge and they were considered man and wife.
*****
The sun set mellow rose behind the hills which swam in seas of deepeningblue. Twilight unfolded shadows that climbed from the valleys to the peaks and touched them with deadening gray chill, until the warm glow died in the bosom of the night. Still the tom-tom beat, the chant rose and fell, the dancers wheeled on madly, singing as they danced. The darkness thickened. The stars wrote midnight in the sky. Papooses had fallen asleep and women sat mute and tired with watching. By the flare of a camp fire, running in uneven lights over the hurrying figures, one might see four braves leaping and swaying in the war dance. The night wore on. A heavy silence was upon the hills which echoed back the war cry, the tom-tom's throb and the chant. One, then another, then a third dropped out. Still the quivering, sweat-burnished bronze body of Michel writhed and twisted, bent and sprang. The lines of his face had hardened, the vermillion ran down his cheeks in rivulets, as of blood, and the corners of hismouth were drawn like the curves of a bow. The camp fire glowed low. The gray of the dawn came up out of the East with a little shuddering wind and the faint stars burned out. The tom-tom pulsed slower, the chant was broken. Suddenly a wild cry thrilled through the pallid morn. The figure of Michel darted upward like a rocket in a final brilliant gush of life, then fell senseless upon the ground.
The embers grayed to ashes. The last spark was dead. The dance was done. The mists of morning rolled up from the valleys and unfurled their pale shrouds along the peaks, and the Indians, mere shadow-shapes, like phantoms in a dream, stole silently away and vanished with the night.
THEREis a lake in the cloistered fastnesses of Sin-yal-min, named by the Jesuit priests St. Mary's, but called by the Indians the Waters of the Forgiven. It is a small body of water overshadowed by abrupt mountains, fed by a beautiful fall and for some reason, impossible to explain, it is haunted by an atmosphere at once ghostly and sad. So potent is this intangible dread, this fear of something unseen, this melancholy begotten of a cause unknown, that every visitor is conscious of it. Most of all, the Indians, impressionable and fanciful as children, feel the weird spell and cherish a legend of it as nebulous as themists that flutter in pale wraith-shapes across its enchanted depths.
The story goes that once, long ago, someone was killed upon the lake and the troubled spirit returns to haunt the scene of its mortal passing, but the murderer, smitten with remorse and repenting of his crime was finally forgiven by the Great Spirit, and the lake became known as the Waters of the Forgiven. The shadow of that crime has never lifted and it broods forever over the lake's dark face and upon the mountains that hold it in their cup of stone. There the echo is multiplied. If one calls aloud, a chorus of fantastic, mocking voices takes up the sound and it goes crying through the solitude like lost souls in Purgatory. The Waters of the Forgiven exhale their eternal sigh, their pensive gloom, even when the sun rides high in the blue, but to feel the fullness of its spectral melancholy, one must seek it out in the secrecy of night. Then, as the mellow moon rises over themountain tops laying the pale fingers of its rays suggestively on rock and tree, touching them with magical illusion and transforming them to goblin shapes, one palpitates with strange fear, is impressed with impending disaster. As the moonlight flows in misty streams, sealing ravine and lake-deep in shadow the more intense for the contrast of white, discriminating light that runs quicksilver-like upon the ripples of the water and the quivering needles of the pine, the silence is broken by dismal howls. It is the lean, gray timber wolves. Their mournful cry is flung back again by the ghostly pack that no eye sees and no foot can track. Mountain lions yell shrilly and are answered by distant ones of their kind and inevitably that other lesser cry comes back again and again as though the phantom chorus could never forget nor leave off the burden of that lament. Out of the pregnant darkness into the spectral moonlight shadowy creatures come to the shoreto drink. The deer, the bear, sometimes the mountain lion and the elk stalk forth and quench their thirst. These things are strange enough, savage enough to inspire fear, but it is not they, nor the grisly mountains that create the terror which is a phantasm, the dread which is not of flesh nor earth.
No Indian, however brave, pitches his tipi by this lake nor crosses its waters, for among the tangle of weeds in its black, mysterious bosom, water sirens are believed to dwell. Ever watchful of human prey they gaze upward from their mossy couches and if a boatman venture out in his frail canoe, they rise, entwining their strangling, white arms about him, pressing him with kisses poisonous as the serpent's sting, breathing upon him their blighting, deadly-sweet breath that dulls his senses into the oblivion of eternal sleep.
The Jocko or Spotted Lakes are enchanted waters also. They lie high up in the crown of the continent—the main range of the Rocky Mountains. To reach them the traveller needs patience and strength of body and soul, for the trail is long and tortuous, winding along the rim of sickening-steep ravines, across treacherous swamps, amid mighty forests to great altitudes. There are three lakes in this group, one above the other, the last being sometimes called the Clearwater Lake because it is within the borders of that terrible wilderness whose savage fastnesses have claimed their prey of lost wanderers.
The first lake is inexpressibly ghostly. The flanks of the mountains rise sheer and frown down on murky waters, leaving scarcely any shore, and around their margin, gray-white drift-wood lies scattered like unburied bones. It is a spectral spot,unearthly, colourless as a moth, preyed upon by a lamentable sadness which broods unbroken in the solitude. There the fox-fire kindles in the darkness, the owl wheels in his midnight flight and pale shades of mist unwind their shroud-like scarfs. It is a pool of the dead, a region of lost hopes and throttling despair.
From this lake the trail bears upward through dense jungles and morasses, venomously beautiful with huge, brilliantly coloured flowers growing to the height of a man. Their scarlet and yellow disks exhale an overpowering fragrance, insidious, almost narcotic in its strength. Beneath rank stalk and leaf, rearing blossom and entangling vine, creeping things with mortal sting dwell in the dank, sultry-sweet shadow. One is dazzled with the colour and the scent; charmed and repelled; tempted on into treacherous sinkholes by a wild extravagance of beauty too wanton to be good.
At length the second lake unfolds itselffrom the living screen of tree and wooded steep. A point of land, stained blood-red, juts out into the water and over it tumbles and cascades a foam-whitened fall. This stain of crimson is a thick-spun carpet of Indian Paint Brush interwoven with lush grass. The mountains show traces of orange and green, apparently a mineral wash hinting of undiscovered treasure.
Looking into the depths of the lake one is impressed with its freckled appearance. A blotch of milky white, then one of dull yellow mottles the water and even as one watches, a shadow darkens the surface, concentrating, scattering in kaleidoscopic variety, then disappearing as mysteriously as it came. There is no cloud in the sky, nor overhanging tree, nor passing bird to cause that shade without substance. At first it seems inexplicable and the Indians, finding no natural reason for its being, believe it to be the forms of water sirens gliding to and fro. On this account, hereas at the Waters of the Forgiven no Indian dares to come alone and even with human company he fears the sirens' spell. For as the victim sleeps they come, drawing closer and breathing his breath until he dies. If one watches patiently he may see that the dark shadows are made by shoals of fish, gathering and dispersing, and in so doing, accentuating and lessening the sable spots. The lake is as uneven in temperature as it is in colour. It has hot pools and icy shallows, so it is probably fed by springs as well as by the torrent which falls from the peaks. A strong, sulphurous odour taints the air; the water is unpleasant to the taste and the sedgy weeds which grow about the shores are stained. And as the waters recede during the summer heat, along the banks, in uneven streaks a mineral deposit traces their retreat. Towards the end of July or August a curious thing may be seen in this Lake of the Jocko. A current eddies around and around in agigantic whirlpool, transforming it into a mighty funnel with an underground vent. At a considerable distance below a stream bursts forth from the mountain side with terrific energy of pressure and plunges downward in a foaming torrent. It is the Jocko River,—the gentle, merry-voiced Jocko of the prairie which winds its course among lines of friendly trees and blossoms. Who would guess that it drew its nurture from the Lake of the Jocko, siren-haunted, poison-breathed, which careful Indians avoid as a region of the accursed? Still it is so and the menace of that mysterious lake becomes the blessing of the plains.
*****
Such are the Waters of the Forgiven and the Jocko, secure in their solitude, guarded more potently by their spell of evil than by wall of stone or armed hosts, holding within their deep, dark bosoms the charm of the water sirens whose sad, sweet song quavers in the music offall and stream, whose pallid, white faces flash lily-like from the depths, whose entangling tresses spread in flowing masses of sedgy green.
And of the strange things which have happened on those shores, of the braves lured to the death-sleep on couches of moss and pillows of lily pad, scarcely an echo shrills down from the white-shrouded peaks to give warning to the adventurers who would seek out the awful beauty of those Enchanted Waters.
WITHINthe range of Sin-yal-min, which rises abruptly from the valley of the Flathead to altitudes of perpetual snow, in a ravine sunk deep into the heart of the mountains, is Lake Angus McDonald. Though but a few miles distant the bells of Saint Ignatius Mission gather the children of the soil to prayer, no hand has marred the untamed beauty of this lake and its surrounding mountain steeps where the eagle builds his nest in security and the mountain goat and bighorn sheep play unmolested and unafraid.
The prospect is a magnificent one as the roadway uncoils its irregular, tawny length from rolling hills into the level sea of green where only a year or two agothe buffalo grazed in peace. Beyond, the jagged summits of Sin-yal-min toss their crests against the sky, their own impalpable blue a shade more intense than the summer heavens, their silvered pinnacles one with the drifting cloud. A delicate, shimmering thread like the gossamer tissue of a spider's web spins its length from the ethereal brow of the mountains to the lifted arms of the foothills below. The yellow road runs through the valley, passes the emerald patch around the Mission and thence onward to blue shadows of peaks where gorges flow like purple seas and distant trees are points of azure. The swelling foothills bear one up, the valley melts away far beneath and sweet-breathed woods sigh their balsam on the breeze. The pass becomes more difficult, the growth thickens. Among the trees broad-leafed thimble berry, brew berry and goose berry blossom and bear; wild clematis builds pyramids of green and white over the bushes; syringa bursts intopale-starred flower, and a shrub, feathery, delicate, sends forth long, tender stems which break into an intangible mist of bloom.
Suddenly out of the tangled forests, a sheet of water, smooth and clear, appears, spreading its quicksilver depths among peaks that still bear their burden of the glacial age. And in the polished mirror of those waters is reflected the perfect image of its mountain crown. First, the purplish green of timbered slopes, then the naked, beetling crags and deep crevasse with its heart of ice. A heavy silence broods here, broken only by the wildly lonesome cry of the raven quavering in lessening undulations of tone through the recesses of the crags. Two Indians near the shore flit away among the leaves, timid as deer in their native haunts. Such is Lake Angus McDonald, and yonder, presiding over all, shouldering its perpetual burden of ice, is McDonald's Peak. Strangely beautiful are these livingmonuments to the name and fame of a man, and one naturally asks who was this Angus McDonald that his memory should endure in the eternal mountains within the crystal cup of this snow-fed lake?
The question is worth the answering. Angus McDonald was a Highland Scotchman, sent out into the western wilderness by the Hudson Bay Company. There must have lurked in his robust blood the mastering love of freedom and adventure which led the scions of the House of McDonald to such strange and varied destinies; which made such characters in the Scottish hills as Rob Roy and clothed the kilted clans with a romantic colour totally wanting in their stolid brethren of the Lowlands. In any event, it is certain that Angus McDonald, once within the magic of the wild, flung aside the ties that bound him to the outer world and became in dress, in manner of life and in heart, an Indian. Hetook unto himself an Indian wife, begot sons who were Indians in colour and form and like his adopted people, he hunted upon the heights, moved his tipi from valley to mountain as capricious notion prompted, and finally made for himself and his family a home in the valley of Sin-yal-min not far below that lake and peak which do honor to his memory. Physically he was a man of towering stature, standing over six feet in his moccasins; his shoulders were broad and he was very erect. His leonine head was clad with a heavy shock of hair, and his beard, during his later years, snow white, hung to his waist. His complexion was ruddy, his eyes, clear, blue and penetrating. A picturesque figure he must have been, clad in full buckskin leggins and shirt with a blanket wrapped around him. He was known among the Indians and whites through the length and breadth of the country about, and no more strange or striking character quickened the adventure-bearingepoch which we call the Early Days.
As he was free to the point of lightness in his nature, trampling down and discarding every shackle of conventionality, he was likewise bound but nominally by the Christian creed. He believed in reincarnation and his one desire was that in the hereafter, when his soul should be sent to tenant the new body, he might be re-born in the form of a wild, white horse, with proud, arched neck and earth-scorning hoofs, dashing wind-swift over the broad prairies into the sheltering hills.
So it seems fitting that McDonald's Peak and Lake should remain untamed even as their namesake; that the eddying whirlpool of life should pass them by and that in their embrace the native creatures should live and range as of yore. And may it be that within those shadowy gorges, remote from the sight and hearing of man, a wild, white horse goes bounding through the night?
MOREthan a century after the Spanish Francescans planted the Cross upon the Pacific shores, the French, Belgian and Italian Jesuits orrobes noires, took their way into the Northwestern wilderness in response to a cry from the people who lived within its solitudes. Civilization follows the highways of intercourse with the outer world, so the Western coast had passed through the struggle of its beginnings and entered into a period of prosperity and peace, while that territory with the Rocky Mountains as its general center, was still as primeval as when the galleons of Juan de Fuca sailed into Puget Sound.
The mellowness of old romance, thewarmth of Latin colour, hang over the Missions of California. The pilgrim lingers reverently in their cloistered recesses, breathing the scent of orange blossoms, reposing in the shade of palm and pepper trees. With the song of the sea in his ears and its sapphire glint in his eye he re-lives the olden days, weaves for himself out of imagination's threads, a picture as harmonious in its tones of faded rose and gray as an ancient tapestry. How much the architectural beauty of these Missions has brought them within the affectionate regard of the people it is hard to say, but undoubtedly it has had an influence. The graceful lines of arch and pillar, the low, broad sweep of roof and corridor, the delicate, yellowish-white of the adobe outlined against a sky of royal blue, stir the sleeping sense of beauty in our hearts and make us pause to worship at such favoured shrines.
It is for precisely the opposite reason that we are drawn to the Missions of theNorthwest. Austere, ascetic in form, they make their appeal because of their unadorned simplicity. They were originally the plainest structures of logs, added to as occasion demanded and always constructed of such homely materials as the surrounding country could yield. Hands unaccustomed to other labours than telling the rosary or making the sign of the Cross, hewed forest trees and wrought in wood the symbol of their teaching. No wonder, then, that the buildings were small and crude, but their lack of grandeur was the best testimony to the sacrifice and noble purpose of which they were the emblems. Overlooked, isolated they stand, passed by and all but unknown. Yet they are monuments of heroic achievement and devotion; brave men risked their lives willingly to lay these foundation stones of the faith; bitter struggles were fought and won in their consecrated shadows and upon them is the glamour of thrilling episode.
During the seventeenth century a little band of French missionaries of the order of St. Ignatius journeyed from their native France to Canadian territory with the purpose of spreading the word of God amongst the savages of that benighted land. One of them, Father Ignace Jogues, became the apostle of the Iroquois and died at their hands, a martyr. Strangely enough, his teachings lived after him and were preserved in a measure, at least, by those who had murdered him because of the message he brought.
Years afterwards, about 1815, a small party of Iroquois took their way from the Mission of Caughnawaga, in the neighbourhood of Sault St. Louis, on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, and proceeded, probably in quest of furs, into the little known and perilous ascents of the Rocky Mountains. This party was headed by one Ignace La Mousse, his given name being by a curious coincidence, the same as that of the martyreddisciple of the Gospel. He was a man of lordly stature and puissance indomitable. Upon their wanderings they came toSpetlemen, "the place of the Bitter Root," a mild, fair valley where dwelt a folk kindly in their natures, who called themselves the Selish. These people welcomed the Iroquois, made them at home in their lodges and shared with them the sports of the chase until the visiting Indians were visitors no more and claimed no other land than this.
From the lips of Old Ignace, as he was known, the Selish heard of a mysterious faith symbolized by a Cross, a greater medicine than that of any of the tribes, and of pale-faced, sable-robed priests, who, in the olden time, taught that faith and died happily in the teaching.
The Selish practiced a simple, spontaneous kind of paganism. They believed in a Good and Evil Spirit who were constantly at war. These two powers were symbolized by light and darknessand their heroic battle was pictured in the alternate triumph of day and night. If buffalo came in plenty, if elk and moose were slain and the season's yield were rich, then, according to their notion, the Good Spirit was in the ascendency; but if, on the other hand, Winter rode down from the mountains while their larder was low, if fish would not bite and game could not be caught, the influence of the Evil Spirit prevailed. They believed also, in a future existence, happy or miserable according to the merit or demerit of the soul during its mortal life. The worthy shade passed into eternal Summer time, to a land watered by fair streams and green with meadows; in these streams were countless fishes and in the meadows bands of wild horses and endless herds of the beloved buffalo. There the spirit, united with its family, would ride through all eternity, hunting amongst the ghostly flocks in the Summer sun of happy souls. But those who hadviolated the tenets of the tribe, who had been liars, cowards or otherwise dishonourable, and those negative offenders who had been lacking in love for their wives, husbands and children, had sealed for themselves a bitter fate. These outcasts went to an arctic region of everlasting snow where false fires were kindled to torment their frozen limbs with the mocking promise of warmth. Phantom streams offered their parched lips drink, but as they hastened to the banks to quench their thirst, the elusive waters were ever farther and farther away. So ever and anon, through the years that never seemed to die, the shades were doomed to hurry onward through the night and cold of Winter that knows no Spring, in misery as dark as the shadow engulfing them. The Lands of Good and Evil were separated by savage woods, inhabited by hungry wolves, lithe wild cats and serpents coiled to strike. The wretched sinner in his prison of ice, might after a period of penance,short or long, according to the measure of his offense, expiate his sins and join his brethren in the Happy Hunting Ground.
Besides this general belief held in common by the tribe, they cherished countless myths such as those of the creation and many lesser fanciful legends which formed a part of their religion.
Although these Indians were sincere in this simple, half-poetical mythology, they listened very willingly, like eager children, to Old Ignace, and from him learned to make the sacred sign and repeat the white man's prayer. After knowing something of their mysticism it is not surprising that the greater mysticism of the Catholic Church should appeal to them; that once having heard the story of a faith much in accord with many of their elementary, pre-conceived ideas, they should pursue it tirelessly until they gained that which they most desired.
Time upon time at the councils, thechiefs discussed a means of getting a Black Robe to come to them. At last, in a mighty assembly, Old Ignace arose and proposed that a delegation be sent to St. Louis to pray that an apostle of the church might come to shed the light of the new faith upon the darkness of the Western Woods. A stir of approval ran through the attentive people, for it was a great and daring thing to think of. But who would go? The journey of about two thousand miles lay over barriers of mountains, rushing torrents, virgin forests where the sun never shone, and worst of all, penetrated the country of their hereditary enemies, the Sioux. In spite of these perils, in the breathless quiet of expectation that had hushed the tribe, four braves came forward and volunteered to undertake the quest.
The knights of the olden days, who went forth sheathed in armour, in goodly cavalcades, to the land of the Saracen in search of the Holy Grail, have gatheredabout their memory the white light of heroism, but if their daring and that of these four were weighed impartially, the Indians would rise higher in the scale of glory. Alone, afoot, armed only with such weapons as their skill could contrive, they started out in the Spring of 1831, and in spite of the death that lurked around them, reached their journey's end with the Autumn. The tragical aftermath of that heroic adventure followed quickly. The dangers overcome, the goal won, they failed. Not one among them could speak a word of French or English. They sought out General Clark who had penetrated into their lands, but what brought them from across the Rocky Mountains, through the teeth of perdition to St. Louis, not even he could guess. Picture the tragedy of being within reach of the treasure and unable to point it out! Through General Clark the four emissaries were conducted to the Catholic Church. Monseigneur, the Bishop, wasabsent—he whom they had travelled six moons to see. Very soon thereafter, two of the number fell ill as a result of exposure. In their sickness, doomed to die in a strange land far, far from the pleasant glades of their native valley, they made the sign of the Cross and other feeble gestures which some priests who visited them interpreted rightly to be an appeal for baptism and the last rites of the church. The priests accordingly gave them the consolation they prayed for and placed in the hands of each a little crucifix. So rigidly did they press these symbols to their breasts, that they retained them even in death. Still in their final agonies not one word could they tell of that mission for which they were even then yielding up their lives. They died christened Narcisse and Paul and were buried in a Catholic cemetery in the City of St. Louis.
The two survivors, nameless shadows, flitted back into the wild and were lostforever in the darkness. No tidings of them ever reached the waiting tribe, so they, too, sacrificed themselves to a fruitless cause.
After these things had happened a Canadian, familiar with the Indians, informed the good fathers who these children of the forest were and of their devotion to a Faith, the merest glimmering of which had penetrated to their remote and isolated valley. Then a priest of the Cathedral offered to go with one companion to these zealous Indians when the Spring should make possible the desperate trip.
Meantime, the Selish waited long and anxiously for word from their delegation. Michel Insula, or Red Feather, "Little Chief and Great Warrior," small of stature but mighty of spirit, always distinguished by the red feather he wore, hearing that some missionaries were travelling westward, fought his way through the hostile country and arrived at theGreen River Rendezvous where Indians, trappers and some Protestant ministers were assembled. Insula was dissatisfied with the ministers because they had wives, wore no black gowns such as Old Ignace described, and carried no crucifix. The symbolism of the Catholic Church had impressed him deeply and he would have no other faith, so he and his band returned to their people to tell them that therobes noireswere not yet come and their brave messengers had perished with their mission unfulfilled.
They were resolute men, these Indians, and never faltering, they determined to send another party upon the same sacred quest. This time Old Ignace, he who had first broached the adventure to the council, arose among the chiefs and warriors and offered to go. He took with him his two young sons. The Summer was already well spent, but he and the lads started out undaunted, and after a terrible period of ceaseless travelling,smitten with cold and hunger, they reached St. Louis, and Ignace more favoured than the preceding delegation, made known the wants of his adopted tribe to the Bishop, who listened to him kindly and promised to send a priest among his people.
Ignace and his sons returned safely to the Bitter Root Valley and brought the glad tidings to the Selish. But eighteen moons waxed and waned and though the watchful eyes of the Indians scanned the East, never a pale-faced father in robes of black came out of the land of the sunrise.
The chiefs took counsel again. A third time they determined to make their appeal. Once more Ignace La Mousse led the way and in his charge were three Selish and one Nez Percé brave. They fell in with a little party of white people near Fort Laramie, and uniting forces for greater safety, took up the march together. They journeyed onward unmolesteduntil they came to Ash Hollow in the land of the warlike Sioux. In that fateful place three hundred of the hostile tribe surrounded them. The Sioux, wishing only the scalps of the Selish and Nez Percé, ordered the white men and Old Ignace who was dressed in the garb of civilization, to stand apart. The whites obeyed, but Ignace La Mousse, scorning favour or mercy at the enemy's hands, joined his adopted tribal brethren and fought with them until they all lay dead upon the plains. So ended the third expedition.
Once more news of the bloody death of their heroes reached the Selish. A fourth and last party volunteered to undertake that which now seemed a hopeless charge. Two Iroquois, Young Ignace La Mousse, so called to distinguish him from the elder of the name, whose memory was held honourable by the tribe, and Pierre Gaucher, "Left Handed Peter," set out, joining a party of the Hudson Bay FurCompany's men and making the trip in canoes. They finished the journey in safety and obtained from Monseigneur, the Bishop, the pledge that in the Spring he would send a missionary to the Valley of the Bitter Root. Young Ignace waited at the mouth of Bear River through the Winter in order to be ready to guide the priest to the Selish with the coming of the Spring. Pierre Gaucher returned hot-footed, in triumph, conveying to the tribe the glad tidings that their prayer had been answered; that the Great Black Robe was sending them a disciple to preach the Holy Word. At last, after eight years of waiting, the Selish were to have granted them their hearts' desire. From out of the East the pale-faced, black robed father would come bearing with him the Cross illuminated by the rising sun, casting the benediction of its shadow upon the people and their land.
When the Selish learned from Pierre Gaucher that therobe noirewas in realitytravelling towards their country even then, the Great Chief assembled his braves and it was decided that the tribe should march forward to meet and welcome their missionary. Accordingly they started in good season and on their way met groups of Kalispehlms, Nez Percés and Pend d'Oreilles, who joined them, swelling their number to about sixteen hundred souls. The ever increasing cavalcade moved on over pass and valley, peak and ford, clad in rich furs, war-eagle feathers and buckskins bright with beads—a gaily coloured column filing through the woods. Finally, in the Pierre Hole Valley they came upon him who was henceforth to be their teacher and guide, Father de Smet, whose memory is held in reverence by the Indians of the present generation.
There was great rejoicing among the Selish, the Nez Percés, the Pend d'Oreilles and the Kalispehlms. They burst into wild shouts of delight, swarming aroundthe pale priest, shaking his hand and bowing down before him. They conducted him to the lodge of the Great Chief, called the "Big Face," whom Father de Smet has described as one "who had the appearance of a patriarch." The Chief made Father de Smet welcome in these words:
"'This day the Great Spirit has accomplished our wishes and our hearts are swelled with joy. Our desire to be instructed was so great that four times had we deputed our people to the Great Black Robe in St. Louis to obtain priests. Now, Father, speak and we will comply with all that you will tell us. Show us the way we have to take to go to the home of the Great Spirit.'"
Thus spake the Big Face, Chief of all the Selish, and there before the assembled peoples of the kindred tribes, he offered to the priest his hereditary honours as ruler. His renunciation was sincere, but Father de Smet replied that he hadcome merely to teach, not to govern them.
That night in the deepening shadow, the children of the forest gathered together around their new leader and chanted a song of praise. Strange music swelling from untutored lips and awakening hearts into the wild silence which had echoed only the howl of native beasts and the war cry of battle and death! Yet even in that hymn of thanksgiving there was an undertone of unconscious sadness. It was the beginning of a new epoch. The old, poetical wood-myth and paganism were gone; the free range over mountain and plain in the exhilarating chase would slowly give place to the pursuits of husbandry. And this new, shapeless compound of civilization and religion was bringing with its blessings, a burden of obligation and pain. The Indians did not know, the priest himself could not understand, that he was the channel through which these simple, happy folk shouldembark upon dangerous, devouring seas.