The Prairie (49 page)

The old man well knew this to be the lodge of Mahtoree, and, in
obedience to the sign of the chief, he held his way towards it with slow
and reluctant steps. But there were others present, who were equally
interested in the approaching conference, whose apprehensions were
not to be so easily suppressed. The watchful eye and jealous ears
of Middleton had taught him enough to fill his soul with horrible
forebodings. With an incredible effort he succeeded in gaining his feet,
and called aloud to the retiring trapper—

"I conjure you, old man, if the love you bore my parents was more than
words, or if the love you bear your God is that of a Christian man,
utter not a syllable that may wound the ear of that innocent—"

Exhausted in spirit and fettered in limbs, he then fell, like an
inanimate log, to the earth, where he lay like one dead.

Paul had however caught the clue and completed the exhortation, in his
peculiar manner.

"Harkee, old trapper," he shouted, vainly endeavouring at the same time
to make a gesture of defiance with his hand; "if you ar' about to play
the interpreter, speak such words to the ears of that damnable savage,
as becomes a white man to use, and a heathen to hear. Tell him, from me,
that if he does or says the thing that is uncivil to the girl, called
Nelly Wade, that I'll curse him with my dying breath; that I'll pray
for all good Christians in Kentucky to curse him; sitting and standing;
eating and drinking, fighting, praying, or at horse-races; in-doors
and outdoors; in summer or winter, or in the month of March in short
I'll—ay, it ar' a fact, morally true—I'll haunt him, if the ghost of a
Pale-face can contrive to lift itself from a grave made by the hands of
a Red-skin!"

Having thus ventured the most terrible denunciation he could devise, and
the one which, in the eyes of the honest bee-hunter, there seemed
the greatest likelihood of his being able to put in execution, he was
obliged to await the fruits of his threat, with that resignation which
would be apt to govern a western border-man who, in addition to the
prospects just named, had the advantage of contemplating them in fetters
and bondage. We shall not detain the narrative, to relate the quaint
morals with which he next endeavoured to cheer the drooping spirits
of his more sensitive companion, or the occasional pithy and peculiar
benedictions that he pronounced, on all the bands of the Dahcotahs,
commencing with those whom he accused of stealing or murdering, on the
banks of the distant Mississippi, and concluding, in terms of suitable
energy, with the Teton tribe. The latter more than once received from
his lips curses as sententious and as complicated as that celebrated
anathema of the church, for a knowledge of which most unlettered
Protestants are indebted to the pious researches of the worthy Tristram
Shandy. But as Middleton recovered from his exhaustion he was fain to
appease the boisterous temper of his associate, by admonishing him of
the uselessness of such denunciations, and of the possibility of their
hastening the very evil he deprecated, by irritating the resentments
of a race, who were sufficiently fierce and lawless, even in their most
pacific moods.

In the mean time the trapper and the Sioux chief pursued their way to
the lodge. The former had watched with painful interest the expression
of Mahtoree's eye, while the words of Middleton and Paul were pursuing
their footsteps, but the mien of the Indian was far too much restrained
and self-guarded, to permit the smallest of his emotions to escape
through any of those ordinary outlets, by which the condition of the
human volcano is commonly betrayed. His look was fastened on the little
habitation they approached; and, for the moment, his thoughts appeared
to brood alone on the purposes of this extraordinary visit.

The appearance of the interior of the lodge corresponded with its
exterior. It was larger than most of the others, more finished in its
form, and finer in its materials; but there its superiority ceased.
Nothing could be more simple and republican than the form of living that
the ambitious and powerful Teton chose to exhibit to the eyes of his
people. A choice collection of weapons for the chase, some three or four
medals, bestowed by the traders and political agents of the Canadas as
a homage to, or rather as an acknowledgment of, his rank, with a few of
the most indispensable articles of personal accommodation, composed
its furniture. It abounded in neither venison, nor the wild-beef of the
prairies; its crafty owner having well understood that the liberality
of a single individual would be abundantly rewarded by the daily
contributions of a band. Although as pre-eminent in the chase as in war,
a deer or a buffaloe was never seen to enter whole into his lodge. In
return, an animal was rarely brought into the encampment, that did not
contribute to support the family of Mahtoree. But the policy of the
chief seldom permitted more to remain than sufficed for the wants of the
day, perfectly assured that all must suffer before hunger, the bane of
savage life, could lay its fell fangs on so important a victim.

Immediately beneath the favourite bow of the chief, and encircled in a
sort of magical ring of spears, shields, lances and arrows, all of which
had in their time done good service, was suspended the mysterious and
sacred medicine-bag. It was highly-wrought in wampum, and profusely
ornamented with beads and porcupine's quills, after the most cunning
devices of Indian ingenuity. The peculiar freedom of Mahtoree's
religious creed has been more than once intimated, and by a singular
species of contradiction, he appeared to have lavished his attentions
on this emblem of a supernatural agency, in a degree that was precisely
inverse to his faith. It was merely the manner in which the Sioux
imitated the well-known expedient of the Pharisees, "in order that they
might be seen of men."

The tent had not, however, been entered by its owner since his return
from the recent expedition. As the reader has already anticipated, it
had been made the prison of Inez and Ellen. The bride of Middleton was
seated on a simple couch of sweet-scented herbs covered with skins.
She had already suffered so much, and witnessed so many wild and
unlooked-for events, within the short space of her captivity, that every
additional misfortune fell with a diminished force on her seemingly
devoted head. Her cheeks were bloodless, her dark and usually animated
eye was contracted in an expression of settled concern, and her form
appeared shrinking and sensitive, nearly to extinction. But in the midst
of these evidences of natural weakness, there were at times such an air
of pious resignation, such gleams of meek but holy hope lighting her
countenance, as might well have rendered it a question whether the
hapless captive was most a subject of pity, or of admiration. All the
precepts of father Ignatius were riveted in her faithful memory, and
not a few of his pious visions were floating before her imagination.
Sustained by so sacred resolutions, the mild, the patient and the
confiding girl was bowing her head to this new stroke of Providence,
with the same sort of meekness as she would have submitted to any other
prescribed penitence for her sins, though nature, at moments, warred
powerfully, with so compelled a humility.

On the other hand, Ellen had exhibited far more of the woman, and
consequently of the passions of the world. She had wept until her eyes
were swollen and red. Her cheeks were flushed and angry, and her whole
mien was distinguished by an air of spirit and resentment, that was not
a little, however, qualified by apprehensions for the future. In short,
there was that about the eye and step of the betrothed of Paul, which
gave a warranty that should happier times arrive, and the constancy of
the bee-hunter finally meet with its reward, he would possess a
partner every way worthy to cope with his own thoughtless and buoyant
temperament.

There was still another and a third figure in that little knot of
females. It was the youngest, the most highly gifted, and, until now,
the most favoured of the wives of the Teton. Her charms had not been
without the most powerful attraction in the eyes of her husband, until
they had so unexpectedly opened on the surpassing loveliness of a woman
of the Pale-faces. From that hapless moment the graces, the attachment,
the fidelity of the young Indian, had lost their power to please. Still
the complexion of Tachechana, though less dazzling than that of her
rival, was, for her race, clear and healthy. Her hazel eye had the
sweetness and playfulness of the antelope's; her voice was soft and
joyous as the song of the wren, and her happy laugh was the very melody
of the forest. Of all the Sioux girls, Tachechana (or the Fawn) was
the lightest-hearted and the most envied. Her father had been a
distinguished brave, and her brothers had already left their bones on a
distant and dreary war-path. Numberless were the warriors, who had sent
presents to the lodge of her parents, but none of them were listened to
until a messenger from the great Mahtoree had come. She was his third
wife, it is true, but she was confessedly the most favoured of them all.
Their union had existed but two short seasons, and its fruits now lay
sleeping at her feet, wrapped in the customary ligatures of skin and
bark, which form the swaddlings of an Indian infant.

At the moment, when Mahtoree and the trapper arrived at the opening of
the lodge, the young Sioux wife was seated on a simple stool, turning
her soft eyes, with looks that varied, like her emotions, with love and
wonder, from the unconscious child to those rare beings, who had
filled her youthful and uninstructed mind with so much admiration and
astonishment. Though Inez and Ellen had passed an entire day in her
sight, it seemed as if the longings of her curiosity were increasing
with each new gaze. She regarded them as beings of an entirely different
nature and condition from the females of the prairie. Even the mystery
of their complicated attire had its secret influence on her simple mind,
though it was the grace and charms of sex, to which nature has made
every people so sensible, that most attracted her admiration. But
while her ingenuous disposition freely admitted the superiority of the
strangers over the less brilliant attractions of the Dahcotah maidens,
she had seen no reason to deprecate their advantages. The visit that she
was now about to receive, was the first which her husband had made
to the tent since his return from the recent inroad, and he was ever
present to her thoughts, as a successful warrior, who was not ashamed,
in the moments of inaction, to admit the softer feelings of a father and
a husband.

We have every where endeavoured to show that while Mahtoree was in all
essentials a warrior of the prairies, he was much in advance of
his people in those acquirements which announce the dawnings of
civilisation. He had held frequent communion with the traders and troops
of the Canadas, and the intercourse had unsettled many of those wild
opinions which were his birthright, without perhaps substituting any
others of a nature sufficiently definite to be profitable. His reasoning
was rather subtle than true, and his philosophy far more audacious than
profound. Like thousands of more enlightened beings, who fancy they
are able to go through the trials of human existence without any other
support than their own resolutions, his morals were accommodating and
his motive selfish. These several characteristics will be understood
always with reference to the situation of the Indian, though little
apology is needed for finding resemblances between men, who essentially
possess the same nature, however it may be modified by circumstances.

Notwithstanding the presence of Inez and Ellen, the entrance of the
Teton warrior into the lodge of his favourite wife, was made with the
tread and mien of a master. The step of his moccasin was noiseless,
but the rattling of his bracelets, and of the silver ornaments of his
leggings, sufficed to announce his approach, as he pushed aside the skin
covering of the opening of the tent, and stood in the presence of its
inmates. A faint cry of pleasure burst from the lips of Tachechana in
the suddenness of her surprise, but the emotion was instantly suppressed
in that subdued demeanour which should characterise a matron of her
tribe. Instead of returning the stolen glance of his youthful and
secretly rejoicing wife, Mahtoree moved to the couch, occupied by his
prisoners, and placed himself in the haughty, upright attitude of an
Indian chief, before their eyes. The old man had glided past him, and
already taken a position suited to the office he had been commanded to
fill.

Surprise kept the females silent and nearly breathless. Though
accustomed to the sight of savage warriors, in the horrid panoply of
their terrible profession, there was something so startling in the
entrance, and so audacious in the inexplicable look of their conqueror,
that the eyes of both sunk to the earth, under a feeling of terror and
embarrassment. Then Inez recovered herself, and addressing the trapper,
she demanded, with the dignity of an offended gentlewoman, though with
her accustomed grace, to what circumstance they owed this extraordinary
and unexpected visit. The old man hesitated; but clearing his throat,
like one who was about to make an effort to which he was little used, he
ventured on the following reply—

"Lady," he said, "a savage is a savage, and you are not to look for the
uses and formalities of the settlements on a bleak and windy prairie.
As these Indians would say, fashions and courtesies are things so light,
that they would blow away. As for myself, though a man of the forest, I
have seen the ways of the great, in my time, and I am not to learn that
they differ from the ways of the lowly. I was long a serving-man in my
youth, not one of your beck-and-nod runners about a household, but a man
that went through the servitude of the forest with his officer, and well
do I know in what manner to approach the wife of a captain. Now, had I
the ordering of this visit, I would first have hemmed aloud at the door,
in order that you might hear that strangers were coming, and then I—"