p154-216 SCENES OF THE PRAIRIE.

[figure description] Page 013.[end figure description]

“Neshin Wikiewun,” exclaimed White-plume,
after kindling our fire in the deserted shantee of
some roving hunter which we found in one of these
deep ravines, through which the brooks of the north-west
discharge themselves into the Wiskonsan. “A
good house,” said he, rubbing his hands, and looking
around with an air of satisfaction.

“Aneendee,” growled Che-che-gwa, (the Rattlesnake,)
with Indian sententiousness, while his less
dignified friend sliced off a couple of steaks from the
moose he had just killed, and left the Canadian to
prepare the supper, which was soon despatched by
all four of us.

It was still early in the evening; and, though somewhat
fatigued, as I was not at all sleepy, I should
have had a pretty tedious time of it, after the Rattlesnake
had coiled himself to rest, if left alone with so
laconic a companion.

But the White-plume, who had been a great
traveller in his day, and was noted for his talkativeness
and story-telling, seemed seized with a more

[figure description] Page 014.[end figure description]

than usual fit of loquacity. The other Indian appeared
at first much inclined to repose; but his disposition
to sleep was gradually dispelled by the
vivacity of his comrade. He soon raised himself on
his elbow, and yielded attention to the waggish sallies
of the other. Finally, sitting erect, he carefully
filled his pipe with kinnekinic, and, placing his back
against the rough timbers of the lodge, seemed prepared
for a long siege, as his friend entered upon one
of those rambling legends of which the Indians are
so fond. The story-teller also, clearing his throat,
asked for “some milk from the `Mokomuan's' black
cow!” and, emptying the whiskey-bottle which the
Canadian handed him, at a draught, he pursued his
tale without farther interruption, except from the
guttural expression of satisfaction which now and
then escaped from the deep chest of his companion,
or the loud snoring of my guide, whose slumbers
were as noisy as if he were sleeping against time.

My knowledge of the language used by the story-teller
was so slight, that the meaning of his words
often escaped me altogether; and it was only from
his frequent repetition of the same ideas, enforced
by the most animated and expressive gestures, and,
perhaps, from my having before heard of the wild
tradition upon which it was founded, that I was at
all able to follow him in the narration. It would be
affectation in me to attempt to give the style and
mode of expression in which the tale I am about to
relate was conveyed to me; but the main tissue of it
was as follows:

p154-218

[figure description] Page 015.[end figure description]

[A Legend of the Great American Desert.]

The hunters of the far-west, who trap for beaver
among the defiles of the Oregon Mountains, regard
no part of their long journey, from the borders to their
savage hunting grounds, where the fur-bearing animals
are still found in the greatest profusion, with more
aversion than that which leads over the great desert,
where the tributaries of the Padouca, the Konzas,
and the Arkansaw Rivers are half absorbed by the
arid sand. Lewis and Clarke, Major Long, and
other scientific explorers of this desolate region, suffered
much from the want of water while passing
through it on their way to the Rocky Mountains;
and they often mention the disheartening effect it
had upon their followers, when, after traversing the
scorching plain for weeks, it still lay stretched in
unbroken and monotonous vastness before them.
This portion of country, which extends along the
base of the Rocky Mountains as far as we have any
acquaintance with their range, is said to have an
average width of six hundred miles. In the north

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

the surface is occasionally characterized by water-worn
pebbles and hard gravel; but the predominant
characteristic is sand, which, in many instances,
prevails to the entire exclusion of vegetable mould.
At the south the arid plains are profusely covered
with loose fragments of volcanic rocks, amid whose
barren bosom no genial plant has birth; and, indeed,
throughout the whole region, large tracts are often to
be met with which exhibit scarcely a trace of vegetation.
In some few instances sandy hillocks and
ridges make their appearance, thickly covered with
red cedar of a dwarfish growth; but in general nothing
of vegetation appears upon the uplands, but
rigid grass of spare and stunted growth, prickly pears
profusely covering extensive tracts, and weeds of a
few varieties, which, like the prickly pears, seem to
thrive the best in the most arid and steril soils.

The Indians who inhabit this extensive region,
are composed of several roving tribes, who, unlike
the nations to the east and west of them, have no
permanent villages nor hunting-grounds which they
claim as peculiarly their own. They hunt the buffalo
and antelope, and, dwelling only in tents of
leather, migrate from place to place in pursuit of the
herds of those animals; and so extensive is their
range, that, while they exchange their skins for blankets
and strouding, with the British traders on the
Cheyenne River of the north, they also trade their
mules and horses for vermilion and silver ornaments,
with the Spaniards of Mexico on the Colorado of the
south. The Arapahoes, Kaskaias, Kiaways, and
Ietans, which are the chief of the desert hordes, are

[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]

ferocious and predatory in their habits, and con-
tinually at war with various tribes of the M
Indians, who inhabit the fertile countries which
between them and our western frontier. The grizzly
bear, the king of the American wilds, shares
these dreary domains with the savages, hardly less
ferocious than himself, and roams the west in quest
of living prey. Here, too, the illusive mirage of the
desert cheats the parched traveller with its refreshing
promise; and the wanderers in these solitudes often
tell of those monstrous shapes and unnatural forms
which, like the spectre of the Brocken, reflected on
the heated and tremulous vapour, are magnified and
distorted to the eye of the appalled and awe-stricken
traveller.[1] Strange fires, too, are said to shoot along
the baked and cracking earth; and the herds of wild
horses that can be seen trooping along the horizon,
seem at times to be goaded on by gigantic and unearthly
riders, whose paths are enveloped in wreaths
of flame.†

[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]

The scientific explorer readily calls philosophy to
in examining these strange appearances:
explains the phenomena of which he is
himself a witness, and reason rejects the preternatural
images, which he only knows from the representations
of others. But the nomadic tribes, who
make their dwelling upon the desert, or the uneducated
adventurer, who wanders thither from some
more smiling region, are differently affected. The
monstrous shapes and unearthly appearances that
present themselves to his excited vision, are regarded
through the medium of superstitious awe. The
wild imagination of the Indian and the credulous
fancy of the Creole and Canadian hunter people
these mysterious solitudes with actual beings; while
the grotesque figures, drawn upon the mocking mirage,
after presenting themselves frequently to the
eye, assume at length an individuality and a name;

[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]

and it is said that the Indian and Canadian wanderers
become at last so familiar with the images represented,
as even to pretend to recognise the features
and swear to the identity of shapes which are continually
changing, and which probably never present
themselves more than once to the same person.
Among those most often mentioned, there are none
whose identity has been more completely established,
and whose names are whispered with deeper
awe, than those of the Ghost-riders. The Canadian
Engagé always crosses himself when he utters
the name, and the Otto, or Omaw-whaw warrior, who
may have skirted the desert in a war party against the
Cheyennes, or the Pawnee-Loup, who has crossed
it in his battles with the Crow and Kiawa Indians,
invariably places his hand upon his Metawaüann, or
repository of his personal manitto, when he speaks
of these fearful apparitions.

Those who affect to have seen these strange
dwellers of the desert, describe them as two gigantic
figures, representing a man and woman locked in
each other's arms, and both mounted on one horse,
which is of the same unearthly make as themselves.
Some pretend to have been near enough to discover
their features; and these assert that the countenance
of the man, though emaciated and ghastly, and
writhed with the most fearful contortions, by an expression
of shrinking horror, can plainly be identified
as the face of a white man; while the features of the
woman, though collapsed and corpse-like, are evidently
those of an Indian female. Others insist that
no one can ever have been near enough to the

[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]

phantoms to remark these peculiarities; for the Ghost-riders,
say they, are for ever in motion, and they
scour the desert with such preternatural velocity as
to mock the scrutiny of human eyes. They appear
to be goaded on for ever by some invisible hand,
while the phantom charger that bears them, over-leaps
every obstacle as he flies on his mysterious
and apparently aimless career.

There is a tradition among the Indians accounting
for the origin of these fearful apparitions, to which
universal credence is given. It is a story of love
and vengeance; of gentle affections won by gallant
deeds, and Eden-like happiness blasted by unholy
passion; of black-hearted treachery and ruthless
violence, that met with a punishment more horrible
even than itself.

And thus the story runs:

Upon the western borders of the great desert already
described, and somewhere about the head-waters
of the Padouca and Arkansaw Rivers—where
they approach each other among those broken sandstone
ledges which lift their gray parapets and isolated
columnar rocks of snowy whiteness from
copses of hazel and shrubby oaks—there stood,
many years since, the lodge of Ta-in-ga-ro, “The-first-thunder-that-falls.”
The hunter, though no
one knew whence he came, appeared to be upon
friendly terms with all the allied tribes of the desert;
and he was said to have recommended himself to
them on his appearance in those wilds, by bringing
a dozen scalps of different tribes of the Missouri
Indians at his saddle-bow, when he first presented

[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]

himself in the skin tents of the roving Kaskaias.
So rich an offering would have placed the chief at
the head of an independent band of his own, had he
wished to become a “partisan,” or leader of warriors;
but the habits of Ta-in-ga-ro were unsocial
and secluded; and the only object that claimed the
solicitude, or shared the sympathies of the bold
stranger, was a beautiful female—the sole companion
of his exile.

The name of the hunter was evidently of Omaw-whaw
origin, but there was nothing about his person
to mark him as belonging to that distant nation;
and it was equally difficult to identify the partner of
his wandering with any neighbouring tribe. Some,
from the fairness of her complexion, insisted that
she must belong to the Rice-eaters, (Menomonés,)
or White Indians of the north, who dwell near the
country of the Long-knives; others, that she must
be a Boisbrulé, or daughter of a Sioux mother by
some Sakindasha (British) trader; but no one, after
a while, troubled themselves about the origin of
Zecana, or The Bird, as she was called in the
Yanckton language. Indeed the lonely couple lived
so completely by themselves, in a spot but seldom
visited, that they were soon forgotten among a people
so scattered as the dwellers of the desert. The
only object of Ta-in-ga-ro appeared to have been
to find a home where he could place his wife in
safety; and the broken mounds, and hillocks, and
angular tables of sandstone now heaped upon the
soil, like the plates of ice often piled upon each other
in the eddies and along the banks of rivers, and now

[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]

raising themselves in solitary pyramids and obelisks,
along the grassy vales in which he sought an asylum,
made this the country, of all others, wherein
the outlaw might find a secure fastness—especially
when the whole breadth of the desert lay between
him and his people. Secure amid these wild and
picturesque retreats, the sole care of the exile was
to keep a few wild horses in training near his lodge,
and to hunt the game that was necessary for the
subsistence of his small household. The soul of
Ta-in-ga-ro appeared to be completely wrapped up
in the being who had united her fate with his. He
seldom allowed her to go out of his sight; and when
the disappearance of the buffalo and antelope from
his immediate neighbourhood extended the range of
the chase, Zecana always accompanied him on his
more distant expeditions. Indeed, the love which
the hunter bore to his wife was not like the ordinary
affection of an Indian to his squaw: it resembled
more the devotion which distinguishes those who, in
some tribes, are coupled out as friends, to be nearer
to each other than children of the same father, in all
the concerns that mark the pathway of life. It was
like the mystic tie which unites together the fated
brothers of “The Band of the Brave.”[2]

The genial months of summer had passed away,
and the first moon of autumn still found the exile and

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

his bride dwelling in their sequestered valley. His
success in the chase had enabled Ta-in-ga-ro to exchange
a pack of skins for a few simple comforts,
with a Spanish trader on the Mexican border; and,
by merely shifting his lodge to the mountain recesses
near, when the winter called for a more sheltered
situation, he was easily enabled to strike the
wild goats of the Oregon highlands, and, by trapping
for beaver among the adjacent glens, supply all the
wants of himself and Zecana. It was necessary,
however, in disposing of the latter, to be frequently
brought in contact with the Spaniard; and his unwillingness
to leave his wife unprotected, induced
Ta-in-ga-ro often to take her with him on his visits
to the trading-post. The consequences were such
as are continually occurring on our own frontier, in
the intercourse between the licentious whites, who
are bound by no ties except those of interest and
passion, and the confiding and simple-hearted In-dians.

The Spaniard, whose cabin was already shared
with two wives, taken from the adjacent tribes with
whom he traded, soon conceived a partiality for the
fairer features of the northern girl; and, with that
disregard of moral obligations which is but too characteristic
of his order when the welfare of one of
the aborigines is concerned, he determined that she
should become the victim of his unbridled passions.
His advances were received by Zecana with indignation
and scorn; but, notwithstanding the disgust
which his persevering in them awakened, she feared
to tell her husband of the insults she received, lest

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

his impetuous disposition should embroil him with
all the renegado whites, villanous half-bloods, and
degraded Indians that usually hang round a trading-post,
and become the pliant creatures of its master.
The return of spring, too, was near, and Zecana
thought that its earliest blossoms would find her once
more alone with her lover, enjoying the sequestered
privacy of their summer retreat together; and, confident
in her own purity and strength, she contented
herself with repelling the advances of the trader in
silence. But the wily and profligate Spaniard was
not to be cheated so easily of his victim; and, after
meditating a variety of designs, he at last brought
both cunning and force to the accomplishment of his
purpose. He succeeded in luring the unsuspecting
Indian into an agreement, by which a pack of skins
was to be delivered within a certain period. In
order that Ta-in-ga-ro might be completely unshackled
in his efforts to procure them, and rove as
far as possible in his dangerous quest, the trader
prevailed upon him to leave his wife in his guardianship,
while her husband went upon an expedition
into the inmost recesses of the Rocky Mountains.
The hunter, according to the custom of the Indians,
departed upon his errand without giving Zecana
the slighest intimation of his distant mission, or of
the arrangements which he had made for her care
during his absence.

In one of the most romantic valleys on the eastern
side of the mountains, at the foot of that snow-capped
peak which is called after the first white man
that ever planted his foot on the summit,[3] there is a

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

large and beautiful fountain, whose transparent water,
highly aerated with exhilarating gas, has procured it
the name of “The Boiling Spring,” from the white
hunters, who trap for beaver in this lonely region.
This fountain is one of the first you meet with after
crossing the Great Desert; and its grateful beverage,
not less than its singular situation, causes it to be
regarded with deep veneration by the roving natives
of the mountain and the plain. The Indian hunter,
when he drinks from the rocky basin, invariably
leaves an offering in the refreshing bowl; and the
clean bottom is paved with the beads and other ornaments
which the aborigines have left there as
sacrifices or presents to the spring.

By the side of this fountain, one sultry April
noontide, reposed an Indian hunter. His mantle of
blue and scarlet cloth, beaded with white wampum,
was evidently of Spanish manufacture, and indicated,
perhaps, the gay and predatory rover of the south-west;
but the long-plaited and riband-twined locks
of the Ietan, or Kaskaia, were wanting: and the
knotted tuft on his crown, with the war-eagle's feather
as its only ornament, characterized more truly
the stern and less volatile native of the north; while
the towering form and prominent aquiline nose were
combined with those features and proportions which
more particularly distinguish the Pawnees from
other tribes of the Missouri Indians. It was, in fact,
impossible to say to what nation the hunter belonged.
The best blood of the noblest band might channel,
unmingled with any baser current, in his veins;
but, whatever might be the totem of his tribe, it was

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

evident that he now held himself identified with no
particular clan—and was, perhaps, indeed, an outlaw
from his people. The expression of dauntless resolution
that dwelt around his firmly-cut mouth, and
the air of high command discoverable in his piercing
eye, revealed, however, that the hunter was no common
man; that, in fact, whatever might now be his
pursuits, he was once a warrior and a chieftain.

Weary with the chase, and exhausted by the noontide
heat, Ta-in-ga-ro was reposing upon the rich
greensward which carpeted the spot. He had
thrown off the gay Mexican blanket, or cloth mantle,
as it might rather be called, and was occupied in
stripping the beads from the woven garters of his
metasses, for an offering to the divinity of the place.
One after another the bits of wampum were dropped
by him into the bubbling well over which he leaned.
But each as it struck the bottom was thrown again
to the surface by some boiling eddy, and, after
dancing for a moment on the brim, it toppled over the
lips of the fountain, and disappeared in the stream
which swept down the valley. The heart of an Indian
is the abode of a thousand superstitions; and
Ta-in-ga-ro, though more enlightened than most of
his race, was still, so far as fancy was concerned, a
genuine child of the wilderness. The sudden onset
of a score of Blackfeet he had met without dismay,
and their charging yell would have been flung back
with his own whoop of defiance; but the soul of the
intrepid savage sank within him as he beheld the
strange reception of his reverential rite. Danger
and death he feared not for himself; but there was

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

another whose existence was bound up in his own,
and misgiving thoughts of her condition floated wildly
through his brain at this moment. A strange mist
swam before his dizzied sight, and he saw, or deemed
that he saw, the reproachful countenance of Zecana
reflected in the mysterious pool. The appalled lover
sprang like lightning to his feet, and riveted his
piercing gaze intently upon the fountain. But the
apparition was gone. The wampum-strewed bottom
was all that met his eye within the sacred bowl, and
he knew not whether the mocking semblance just
presented on its surface was distorted by pain, or
whether the motion of the unstable mirror changed
those lineaments from their wonted sweetness. A
startling train had been given to his ideas, however,
which fancy rudely followed up without the aid of
new images to quicken her power. A sudden resolve
and instant execution was the result. The
call of the chief brought his horse in a moment to
his side; another served to readjust his few equipments,
and, leaping into his seat, he at once bade
adieu to the scenes where he had hardly yet commenced
his new employment, leaving his fur-traps,
and all they might contain, to the first fortunate
hunter that should chance to light upon them.

Ta-in-ga-ro had a journey of some length before
him along the base of the mountains; but at last the
“Spanish Peaks” hove near, and the impatient
voyager soon after appeared before the trading-post
of the Spaniard. He found it occupied by a small
force of provincial soldiers, who had been ordered
thither on account of some hostile movements of the

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

neighbouring Cumanches; and a good-natured Mexican,
who was one of the sentinels on duty, apprized
him that Zecana was there no longer, and warned
him that imprisonment and death would be the
certain consequence, should he present himself before
the commandant. The anxious husband waited not
to learn whether the trader was still at the station;
but, thinking that Zecana might have sought a refuge
in his own home during the existing difficulties upon
the border, he struck the spurs into his jaded horse,
and, wheeling from the inhospitable gate, his lessening
form soon disappeared over the rolling prairie.

Never had the road seemed so long to the retreat
where he had known so many happy hours, and
where, in spite of some misgivings at his heart, he
still hoped to realize many more. After winding his
way for some time among the singular pieces of
table-land which rise in such formal mounds from
those plains, he descended at last into the little vale
where his lodge was situated. All looked as still
and sheltered as when last he left it; and his heart
rose to his lips when, reclining beneath the dwarf
willows which bent over the stream near his door,
he saw the loved form of Zecana. There was
something unpleasant to him, however, in the singular
listlessness of her appearance. The tramp of his
horse appeared not to startle her; and when at last
his figure met her eye, she looked at him as carelessly
as if wholly unconscious of his presence. She
appeared to be busied in watching the ingenious
labours of a group of prairie dogs, one of whose neat
villages was clustered around a small mound near the

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

spot where she sat; and as the little animals would
move in and out of their burrows, and sport in the
warm sunshine, she sung to them snatches of strange
airs, such as had either originated among her own
people, or been caught in other days from some wandering
Mexican or Canadian trader. The chieftain
threw himself from his horse, and stood over the
insane female in agonized horror. The wild words
that she murmured appeared to have no allusion to
him; and, though in her fallen and emaciated features
he could still recognise the face of her whom
he had loved, yet the being before him could hardly
be identified with his own Zecana. But the strange
superstition of his race in relation to those afflicted
with the loss of reason, began soon to influence his
mind, and, dropping on one knee before the maniac,
he listened as solemnly to her ravings as if he had
the art of a ouabineau, or wizard, to interpret them.
They were incoherent and wandering, but they
seemed ever and anon to hover near some revelation
too horrible even to pass the lips of insanity. The
Indian sprang from the ground as if a bullet had
pierced his heart when the conviction of their import
first flashed upon his brain, while the soul-piercing
cry he uttered summoned back for a moment the
reason of the desolated woman before him. But the
gleam of mind was instantly lost in a darker eclipse
than that from which the voice of her lover had
evoked it. She gave him a look of anguish, more
piteous even than the ravings of her previous distraction;
and then—while her lips seemed convulsed
with the effort—she shrieked forth the name of the

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

Spaniard in the same instant that a knife, which she
clutched from her husband's belt, laid her a gory
corpse at his feet.

It would be impossible to describe the emotions
of Ta-in-ga-ro at the spectacle which had just passed,
like some dreadful vision, before his eyes. The very
soul within him seemed blasted with horror and dismay
at the frightful desolation that had overtaken his
happy home. The casket in which he had garnered
up his hopes—the being in whom he had merged his
existence—lay an irretrievable ruin, a desecrated
corpse, before him! And he that had wrought this
stupendous injury—he, the author of this fiendish
destruction—was the trusted friend of his bosom, the
appointed guardian and protector of all it prized on
earth or in heaven!

The lapse of hours found the wretched husband
still standing in mute stupefaction where the knowledge
of his calamity had first burst upon his agonized
senses. But some new feeling seemed now to
be at work within him; a wild and sudden impulse
gleamed fearfully over his fixed and haggard countenance.
He became an altered being—changed on
the instant—changed in heart, soul, and character, as
if the spell of an enchanter had passed through his
brain. Till now he had been either more or less
than an Indian. The plastic hand of love had
moulded him into a different creature from the stern
and immoveable children of his race. The outlawed
warrior had loved Zecana; he had loved her, not as
the sons of pleasure, the slaves of sordid toil—not as
men enervated by the luxuries, and fettered by the

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

interests, the prejudices, the soul-shackling bonds of
civilization—not as the artificial creature of society
can only love. He loved with a soul that knew no
dividing cares—that was filled with no hollow dreams
of pomp and power. He loved with a heart that was
tenanted by one only passion. He worshipped her
with a mind that bowed to no image beneath the sun,
save that which was graven on his own bosom. Nor
was Zecana unworthy such a passion. Gentle as
the antelope that skimmed the green savannas near,
she was still a being, fond, warm, and doting; and
the deepest passions of her woman's nature had been
called into action by the wild devotion of her lover.
The flower of her young affections had budded and
matured to life, like the quickly-blowing blossoms of
an arctic spring, while the fruits it bore were rich,
and full, and glowing, as those which a tropic summer
warms into existence. And, though no conflicting
feeling had ever come athwart the fulness of their
love, think not that the ties of association were
wanting to knit the memory of every look and word
of hers to the heart-strings of Ta-in-ga-ro. The
radiant face of Nature speaks ever to the Indian of
the being that on earth he most adores. Her sigh
will whisper from the leafy forest; her smile will
brighten on the blossom-tufted prairie; the voice
that murmurs in the running stream syllables her
name in tuneful eloquence for ever. And they were
happy. The brook that sang beneath the willows
near their lodge—the flowers that kissed its current—
the bird that warbled on the spray above them, were
all the world to them—those lonely lovers. And

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

now this bower of bliss was blasted—this home of
peace and simple joys was desolated—ruined and
desecrated, as if the malice-breathing fiat of some
unhallowed and fabled monster had gone forth against
the happiness of its owner.

The pulse of no living being beat with sympathy
for the master of that lonely wreck—but the soul of
Ta-in-ga-ro was sufficient to itself. The indomitable
pride of an Indian chief filled its inmost recesses
with new resources for battling with his fate. Love
and sorrow—like the snow-drift which smooths the
rocky casing of a volcano—melted in a moment
before the fires that glowed within his flinty bosom,
and his original nature asserted itself in every fibre
of his frame. His mien and his heart alike were
altered. His features petrified into the immobility
of a savage, while his brain burned with a thirst for
vengeance, which only gave no outward token because
its fiendish cravings were unutterable through
any human organ.

Calmly now, as if nothing had occurred to ruffle
the wonted placidity of his disposition, Ta-in-ga-ro
proceeded to occupy himself, for the rest of the day,
in the few concerns that required his attention. The
still warm body of Zecana, after being carefully
wrapped in a buffalo-skin, was disposed of for the
time in the sunjiwun, or caché, wherein his few
valuables were usually kept: then, carefully adjusting
everything to ensure its concealment, he
occupied himself in taking care of his favourite
horse, which, after the late arduous journey, required
both attention and refreshment. When these

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

necessary duties were fulfilled, the solitary, at the approach
of evening, tranquilly lighted his pipe, and, passing
several hours under its soothing influence with as
much equanimity as if nothing had occurred to interrupt
his customary enjoyment, he at last wrapped
himself in his wolf-skin robe, and was soon sleeping
as soundly as if a dream of human ill had never
thrown a shadow over his slumbers.

It was two nights after this that the Spanish trader
lay securely asleep within the guarded walls of his
station. His repose was apparently as unmolested
as that which has just been ascribed to Ta-in-ga-ro;
and at the foot of his bed sat the dusky form of the
Indian warrior, watching the sleep of his enemy with
as mild an eye as if he were hanging upon the downy
slumbers of an infant. All was as quiet as the
tenantless lodge of the lonely watcher. The chamber,
or cabin, stood on the ground-floor, in an angle
of the blockhouse. It was guarded by sentries, both
within and without the station; and how this strange
visitant had penetrated within the walls, no human
being has ever known; but there, by the flickering
light of a low fire, could be seen the wily and daring
savage, sitting as calm, cool, and collected as if
patience were all that was required to effect the
purpose that had brought him thither.

The tramp of armed men was now audible near
the gate of the fort, while the customary relief of
sentinels was taking place. The slight commotion
incident to the occasion soon ceased, and all around
the post became again perfectly silent.

A considerable space of time now elapsed, and the

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

Indian still maintained his statue-like position. At
last he sank noiselessly from the couch to the floor,
and, placing his ear to the ground, listened for a
while—as if assuring himself that all was as he
wished. His measures were then instantly taken:
he first loosed the wampum-belt from his person,
and possessed himself of a long cord, or lariat, which
he had either brought with him or found in the chamber
of the Spaniard; placing now his scalping-knife
in his teeth, he glided like a shadow to the head of
the bed, and at the same moment that the noose of
the lariat was adroitly thrown over the neck of the
sleeping trader with one hand, the belt of beaded
woollen was forced into his mouth with the other, and
his waking cries effectually stifled. The ill-starred
Spaniard made but a short struggle for release; for
the arms of the sinewy savage pinioned him so
closely, that the saw in a moment his efforts were in
vain; and the threatening motion of his determined
foe, in tightening the noose when his struggles were
more vigorous, intimidated him into deferring the
attempt to escape to some more promising opportunity.
He submitted to be bound in silence; and the
Indian swathed his limbs together till he lay utterly
helpless, an inanimate log upon the couch whereon
he had been reposing.

Having thus secured his prize, Ta-in-ga-ro went
to work with the same imperturbability to place it
beyond the danger of recapture. He first displaced
a portion of the bark roof of the rude chamber, and,
lifting his unresisting captive through the aperture,
carefully placed his burden beside the wooden

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

chimney of the primitive structure, where it projected
above the timber-built walls of the station, and threw
its shadows far over the area of the fort. Returning
then to the room from which he had just emerged,
he took an arrow thickly feathered from the combustible
pods of the wild cotton tree, which grows
profusely along the river-bottoms of this region, and,
lighting it by the dying embers before him, he
swung himself once more above the rafters, and,
standing in the shadow of the chimney, launched
the flaming shaft far within the window of a cabin
which opened upon the central square of the station,
immediately opposite to the shantee of the trader.
The fiery missile performed its errand with speed and
fidelity—the sleeping apartment of the commandant
was instantly in a blaze, and the ill-disciplined sentinels,
eager to make up for their want of vigilence
by present officiousness, rushed from their posts to
shield their officer from the danger which had so
suddenly beset him. The exulting savage availed
himself of the commotion, and the fettered trader
was lowered instantaneously on the outside of the
fort. One dozing sentry only, who had hitherto
been unobserved in the deep shadow of the wall,
witnessed the daring act, and he started aghast at the
inanimate form which was placed so abruptly at his
feet; but the Indian dropped like a falcon on his
prey beside it, and a half-uttered cry of astonishment
died away in a death-groan as the knife of the descending
savage buried itself in the chest of the
unfortunate soldier. The disappearance of the trader
was not observed amid the pressing concern of the

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

moment. The fire spread rapidly among the inflammable
buildings, and the incendiary, who had a
couple of horses waiting for him in a slight ravine
which traversed the prairie, mounted by the light
of the blazing cabins, and was far on his journey
before the flames which had been kindled from his
captive's chamber were extinguished.

Arriving at his own lodge by several short turns
through the broken country, known only to himself,
Ta-in-ga-ro unbound the trader from his horse, and,
keeping his hands still tied behind him, attentively
ministered to his wants, while refusing to reply to a
single question, or to heed the pleadings of the anxious
Spaniard for liberty. At length, being fully refreshed,
the Indian left him for a few moments to his
reflections, while he went to select a large and powerful
charger from a herd of half-domesticated horses
that were grazing near. The animal was soon caught
and tethered by the door of the cabin. Ta-in-ga-ro
then proceeded to strip his captive, and, compelling
him to mount the horse, he secured him to the wooden
saddle by thongs of elf-skin, attached to the surcingle,
which girt it in its place. The wretched man trembled
with apprehension, and, with a choking voice,
offered all he was worth in the world to be redeemed
from the fate to which he now believed he was to be
devoted. But the doomed profligate had not yet
begun to conceive the nature of the punishment to
which he was destined, or his pleadings for immediate
death would have been as earnest as his prayers
for life were now energetic.

“Slave of a Pale-face!” thundered the Indian—

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

while the only words that had yet passed his lips
betrayed a momentary impatience to the craven cries
of the other—“think not that I am about to commit
thee alone to the desert!” A murmur of thanks
escaped the faltering tongue of the Spaniard, but
died away in a cry of horror as the Indian placed a
gory and disfigured corpse astride the horse before him.

When he recovered from the swoon into which
the recognition of Zecana's features had thrown him,
the unhappy trader found himself bound to the stark
and grim effigy of her that was once so soft and
beautiful. So closely, too, was he bound, that the
very effort to free himself only rendered nearer
the hideous compact. Trunk for trunk, and limb
for limb was he lashed to his horrible companion.
His inveterate foeman stood ready mounted beside
him, and waited only to feast his eyes with the first
expression of shrinking horror evinced by the trader
when he should regain his consciousness. A blow
from his tomahawk then severed the halter by which
the horse of the Spaniard was tethered; and the
enfranchised animal, tossing his mane in fury as he
snuffed the tainted burden, bounded off in full career,
followed by the fleet courser of the vindictive savage.

Instinct taught him to make at once for the Great
Desert, on whose borders lay the little prairie from
which he started; and on he went with the speed
of an antelope. The dreary waste of sand was soon
gained, and the limbs of the steed seemed to gather
new vigour as they touched once more his native
plains. But not so with his hapless rider. The
fierce sunbeams, unmitigated by shade or vapour,

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

beat down upon the naked person of the Spaniard,
while the moisture that rolled from his naked body
seemed to mould him more intimately into the embraces
of the corpse to which he was bound. Night,
with its blistering dews, brought no relief, and
seemed only to hasten the corruption to which he
was linked in such frightful compact. The cessation
of motion at this time, when the horse, now accustomed
to his burden, was recruiting upon the rough
grasses which form the subsistence of his hardy
breed, seemed even more horrible than the flight by
day. The gore that oozed from the limbs of the
trader stiffened around the cords which bound him,
while his struggles to release himself, when the
Indian was no longer by his side, served only, by
farther excoriating his skin, to pollute the surface
beneath it with the festering limbs which were
twining around him. Sleep was allowed to bring
no intermission to his sufferings. His head would
indeed droop with languor and exhaustion, and his
eyes would close for a moment in grateful forgetfulness
of his situation. But the next moment his
untiring and ever-vigilant enemy was before him.
A cry, like the curses of a damned spirit, pealed in
his dreaming ears; the startled charger bounded off
in affright: and the break of dawn still found the
remorseless pursuer howling on his track.

And day succeeded to day, and still those illmatched
riders speeded on their goadless journey.
At length the pangs of hunger, which were soon added
to the other tortures of the fated Spaniard, became
too excruciating for endurance. His thirst being

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

always, with ingenious cruelty, quenched by the proffered
cup of the savage when their horses stopped
to drink, the vitality of his system was still as exacting
as ever. The gnawing torments to which his
body was now subjected, surpassed even those with
which its more delicate senses were agonized. In
vain did he try to stifle the cruel longing that consumed
him—in vain did he he turn with loathing and
abhorrence from the only subsistence within his reach.
An impulse stronger than that of mere preservation
wrought within his phrensied bosom. An agony more
unendurable than that which affected his revolting
senses, consumed his vitals. A horrid appetite corroded
every feeling and perception, that might have
stayed the vulture-like eagerness, with which he
came at last to gloat upon the hideous banquet before
him. A demoniac craving, like that of the fabled
ghouls of eastern story, impelled him to—

But why protract these harrowing details of super-human
suffering? The awful vengeance exacted
from the foul-hearted and treacherous trader, like
all things mortal, had its end. But the implacable
Indian still hovered near, and feasted his eyes with
the maddening anguish of his victim, until his last
idiotic cry told that reason and nature were alike
subdued, that brain and body were alike consumed
by the fearful, ceaseless, and lingering tortures which
ate them away by inches.

The subsequent fate of Ta-in-ga-ro has never been
known. Some say that he still dwells, a harmless
old man, in the wandering tents of the Cheyennes;
others that he leads a predatory band of the

p154-243 [figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

ferocious and untameable Blackfeet: but there are those
who insist that he has long since gone to the land of
spirits; and these aver that, when the Ghost-RIDERS
are abroad, the grim phantom of the savage warrior
may be seen chasing them over the interminable
waste of the Great American Desert.

eaf154v2.n1

[1] As the day advanced, and the heat of the sun began to be felt,
such quantities of vapour were seen to ascend from every part of
the plain, that all objects at a little distance appeared magnified
and variously distorted. Three elks, which were the first that we had
seen, crossed our path at some distance before us. The effect of
the mirage, with our indefinite idea of the distance, magnified those
animals to the most prodigious size. For a moment we thought
we saw the mastodon of America moving in those vast plains which
seem to have been created for his dwelling-place.—Major Long's
Expedition to the Rocky Mountains.

A February thaw had set in, and, as the rising of
the brooks compelled us to move our camp from the
ravine in which we had slept for the last week, the
chase was abandoned earlier than usual, in order
that, after choosing a new location, we might have
time to make ourselves comfortable for the night. A
clump of trees on the upland offered the most suitable
spot, as a few evergreens were scattered among them,
and the loose heaps of stone which lay upon the edge
of the prairie, might be made useful in more ways
than one, should we determine to remain long in the
same place, and be at any pains in constructing our
lodge. An accidental pile of these, against which
the Canadian at once commenced building the fire,
furnished the leeward side of our new cabin; and a
couple of upright crotches being planted in the
ground opposite, two saplings were laid transversely
from them to this rude wall; the other sides were
then enclosed with dried brush; and, when a few
cedar boughs had been laid across the top, we found

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

ourselves in possession of very comfortable quarters.
The Crapeau then commenced picking a wild turkey
and some prairie chickens, which were the only
spoils of our day's hunt, while one of the Indians
went off to bring some parched corn from the caché
near our old camp.

He had not been gone more than ten minutes before
I heard the crack of a rifle, and the Plume, who
was already engaged before the fire mending his
moccasins, sprang to his feet, and, seizing his tomahawk,
rushed out of the cabin, exclaiming, “Ah-wessie
hi-ah-wah-nah bah-twa-we-tahng-gah? Mukwaw
ewah bah-twa-we-tahng-gah.”[4] And true
enough, I had not followed him a hundred rods before
we saw needji Mukwaw desperately wounded
beneath a tree, while Che-che-gwa was coolly loading
his rifle within thirty paces of his sable enemy.
The moon was shining as bright as day, and, there
being still a little snow upon the ground where the
bear was lying, his huge black limbs were drawn in
full relief upon its white surface. The poor animal
seemed unable to move; but, though the groans he
sent forth were really piteous, yet he ground his
teeth with such rage, that it seemed undesirable to
venture too near him; especially as, though his
hinderparts were paralyzed from the shot having
taken effect in his spine, his forepaws were still
almost as dangerous as ever. The claws of these
were now continually thrust in and out with a convulsive
motion as he writhed about and tore the

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

ground with wrath and agony. Formidable as he
appeared, however, the Plume did not wait for his
tribesman to throw away another shot upon him,
but, rushing up with his uplifted tomahawk, he
paused within a few paces of his mark, and, poising
the weapon for a moment, hurled it with unerring
aim at the head of the ferocious brute. The whize
zing hatchet cleft his skull as if it had been a ripe
melon, and buried itself in the bark of the tree behind
him.

“Ah c'est bon, Needje-naubi; vere good, sauvage,”
shouted the Canadian, coming up with a half-picked
grouse in his hands, and his mouth full of
feathers; “the bourgeois will tell his people what
a great hunter is La Plume Blanche.” But the Indian
only answered by running up to his dead enemy,
and, taking him by the paw and shaking it with a
ludicrous and reverential gravity, he asked his pardon
for having killed his uncle. Che-che-gwa at
the same time unsheathed his scalping-knife, and,
drawing it across the throat of the animal, he filled
his hand with blood, exclaiming, as he poured it upon
the ground toward the four cardinal points:

“Ma-mo-yah-na miskwee, mamoyahna. Hi-a-gwo
ne-ma-na-ho-gahn-nah-we-he-a! Whe-a-ya?”
[5]

The fat steaks that were soon broiling before our
fire made no mean addition to our supper; the birds,
indeed, were not touched by my companions, who,
I thought, would never tire of cutting piece after
piece from the huge carcass that hung in the door-

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

way. At last they seemed filled to repletion, and
in capital humour from the brilliant winding up of
the day's sport. Even Che-che-gwa became quite
talkative and facetious, and broke out into a half
dozen songs, all laudatory of himself as a great
hunter. As for White-plume, he dubbed his tomahawk,
incontinently, “A Medicine;” while together
they made up a sort of duet, which, if hammered
into English verse, might rhyme to this effect:


They fly on—you know the clouds
That fling their frowns o'er rock and river:
They fly on—you know the clouds
That flee before the wind for ever!
But I—though swift as them he rushes;
Or though like them he scowls in wrath,
Am one whose charmed weapon crushes
Whoever dares to cross his path.[6]

“Yes,” continued Che-che-gwa, still maintaining

p154-247 [figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

a kind of chant when the song was ended, “though
it were a bear concealed under the ground, I could
find him.”

“Yes,” pursued his comrade, in the same sort of
recitative, “aided by the Manitoag, and armed with
the weapons of Nannabozho, what animal shall be
able to escape from the hunter?”

Nannabozho, as the reader must know, is the chief
of the Manitoag or genii of fairy lore, among the
Indians of the lakes. The more learned in these
matters pretend to identify him (under the name of
“The Nannabush of the Algonkins”) with the Iswara
of India and the Saturn of ancient Italy.
Mr. Schoolcraft considers him as “a sort of terrene
Jove,” who could perform all things, but lived on
earth, and excelled particularly in feats of strength
and manual dexterity.

The introduction of his name induced me now to
ask some account of this worthy personage from my
companions; and, among a number of desultory
anecdotes, I elicited the following nursery tale from
Che-che-gwa, which is given as nearly in his own
words as possible, a literal translation from the Chippewa
or Ojibbeway dialect.

eaf154v2.n4

[4] “A beast comes calling—what beast comes calling?—a beast
comes calling.”

[An Ojibbeway Legend.]

Once upon a time, a great many years ago, when
Nannabozho was at war with the Mibanaba, or

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

Manitoag of the water, it happened, on one very warm
day, that several of these spirits came out of a lake
to bask upon the beach. They were followed by
a train of animals of various kinds, each the largest
of its species, waiting upon them. When they had
all lifted themselves from the water, and gained the
shore, the two chiefs of the band appointed sentinels
to keep watch while the rest should sleep.

“Nannabozho, their great enemy,” said they,
“was always vigilant, and this would be a good time
for him to steal upon them and injure them.”

The otters were, therefore, ordered to act as watchers,
while the others gave themselves up to repose;
and soon the whole company, both spirits and animals,
were sleeping on that shore.

Now, the weather, which was at first excessively
warm, became gradually hotter and hotter, and the
otters, after keeping awake for a while, were at last
overcome with languor; and when they saw all
around them basking so comfortably on the sand, these
sentinels, too, nodded on their posts, and were soon
dreaming with the rest.

The chiefs, finding the otters could not be depended
upon, next commanded the loons to keep watch;
they were permitted to swim about in order to keep
themselves awake, but they were ordered not to go
far from the group of sleepers.

Now, it chanced that at this time Nannabozho was
travelling about in search of these very Manitoag;
nor was it long before he found out where they were.
He knew at once what precautions they had adopted
for their safety, but he was determined to destroy

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

some of them before they could leave the place
where he found them. Having carefully examined
the position in which they were lying, he caught up
his puggamaugun, or war-club, and sprang toward
them. But the loons were on the watch, and the
moment Nannabozho came in sight, they gave a
scream that awakened the whole band of sleepers.
The chiefs were, of course, first upon their feet, while
the rest of the Manitoag, and all the animals, rose
in equal alarm. But when they looked around, there
was no enemy to be seen, for Nannabozho had fled
instantly, and hid himself in the long grass through
which he had stolen toward the shore.

The chiefs said it was a false alarm, and after a
while all again betook themselves to repose.

When Nannabozho saw that all around was quiet
once more, he raised himself slowly from the ground,
and was again about to rush upon them, when again
did the loons give warning of his approach the moment
he appeared in sight.

It seems that the loon, who, some say, is a
manitou, has the power of sleeping with but one eye
at a time, and, when most overcome by slumber, he
can always keep one eye open, to watch for an
enemy, while the other takes its necessary repose.
But now, when they awakened a second time, and
saw no enemy near, the chiefs were angry with the
loons for giving a false alarm; and the otters, who
were jealous of them for pretending to be more sharp-sighted
than themselves, said that it was not Nannabozho
who hovered around, for if it had been, they
would have seen him as well as the loons.

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

After much disputing, at last the otters were believed,
and all, excepting the loons, once more closed
their eyes in sleep.

Nannabozho was pleased with this.

The weather was very warm, and he wished it
might become yet warmer. It was so.

Then Nannabozho crept forward, and took his
station close by the group of sleepers; and the very
moment the loons gave their warning cry, he wished
he might be turned into an old stump, and straightway
the wish was granted.

A rough bark raised itself in a moment all round his
body, which stiffened into the hard fibres of a tree;
his toes separated, and, twisting among the loose soil,
spread into roots on every side, while his hair became
matted into ancient moss, that clung to the
brown stump as if, moist and green as now, it had
always mantled its decayed top.

The enemies of Nannabozho were completely at
a loss when, having again shaken off their drowsiness
at the signal of the loons, they cast their eyes about
the place. They looked in every direction, but there
was nothing to be seen near, save the stump of a
shattered tree, which apparently had once flourished
upon the edge of the water.

The loons told the chiefs that there was no stump
there when they first came to the shore, but that it
was Nannabozho himself who had taken this semblance.
Some believed them and others did not;
and, to settle the question, the chiefs ordered the
great water serpents to go and entwine themselves
around him, and try and crush him to death, if, indeed,
it were Nannabozho.

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

These serpents then straightway glided out of a
slimy pool in which they had coiled themselves
to rest, and, twisting their folds around the stump,
they knotted their bodies together so as to press
with all their might against every part of it. But it
was all to no purpose. Nannabozho kept a strong
heart, and did not betray the pain he suffered by the
least sign or sound.

The fire serpents were next ordered to try if they
could not destroy him. They had been basking
upon the hottest part of the beach until each scale
had become like a coal of fire; and as their scorching
folds, coil after coil, were twisting around him,
Nannabozho suffered the greatest tortures. The
stump became black from the heat that was applied
to it; but, though the wood smoked as if about to
burst into a blaze, yet the slime which the water
serpents left upon it prevented it from actually taking
fire. No one but Nannabozho could have kept quiet
under the pain which these serpents inflicted. The
stump had a little the shape of a man, and the
serpents had a good place to twist around the part
which represented the neck. Several times Nannabozho,
finding himself choking, was upon the point
of crying out, when the snakes would loosen themselves
to apply their efforts in some other place.
After repeated attempts in this way, the serpents at
last desisted from their endeavours, and told the
chiefs that it was not Nannabozho, for it was impossible
that he could endure so much pain.

The hostile spirits, however, were not yet satisfied,
and the chiefs commanded the great red-nailed

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

bears[7] to go and scratch the stump with their long
claws. Nannabozho was all but torn to pieces by
these ferocious creatures, but was still able to support
the agony he endured.

The bears at last gave up, as the serpents had
done, and went back and told that it was not Nannabozho;
for he, they said, was a coward, and could
not quietly endure so much pain. It was then decided
that it was not Nannabozho, and all went
quietly to sleep as before.

Nannabozho wished they might sleep very sound,
and it was so: then he assumed his natural shape,
and began cautiously to approach the sleepers. He
stepped lightly over the bodies of the animals, and,
passing by all the lesser Manitoag, he placed himself
near the heads of the two chiefs. Planting his foot
then upon the throat of the one nearest to him, he
dealt a blow with his war-club, which crushed the
head of the other. Another blow, and his companion
was likewise dead.

But now that the deed was done, Nannabozho
found himself surrounded by dangers, and nothing
but his swiftness of foot gave him any chance of
escape from his revengeful foes, who were immediately
in full cry after him. But soon the spirits,
finding they could not overtake him by running,
adopted a new device for getting Nannabozho in
their power. They commanded the water to rise

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

and flow after him; and straightway the lake began
to swell until its waves rushed along his path so
rapidly that it seemed impossible to escape them.
Nannabozho did not know what to do in this emergency;
but at last, just as the water was about
overwhelming him, he saw a crane, and determined
to claim his assistance.

“My brother,” said Nannabozho, “will you not
drink up this water for me?”

The crane replied, “What will you give me in
return?”

“I will give you the skin of one of the chiefs that
I have killed,” answered Nannabozho.

The crane was satisfied with the promise, and he
commenced drinking up the water. He drank, and
he drank until he had nearly drank it all, when he
was unable longer to stand up. His body had
swollen to an immense size, and as he went toddling
along on his thin shanks, with his long neck bobbing
about, he presented such a ludicrous appearance that
Nannabozho burst out a laughing to see brother
crane make such a figure. Nannabozho, indeed,
must have been mad with merriment; for when he
saw the crane's body become bigger and bigger,
while his skin was stretched so that he could not
bend his legs as it tightened around his joints—he
could not withstand the temptation of pricking the
bloated mass. He drew his bow, and the arrow
went through the crane's body. But quickly was
he punished for his wanton sport. At once the
waters began to rise again, and so fast did the big
waves increase, that Nannabozho was compelled to

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

ascend the highest mountain he could find, and still
the waters followed him there. He then climbed
the highest tree on the mountain. But the flood
kept rising and rising: the branches on which he
stood were soon dipping in the waves, which at last
rolled completely over his head.

Just as they swept finally over him, Nannabozho
chanced to look up, and saw the shadow of an object
floating near him; he stretched out his arm and
seized it. It proved to be a piece of wood buoyant
enough to sustain him, and he placed himself upon it.

Nannabozho now floated about for some time.
The water encompassed him on every side. It had
covered up everything. The rocks, hills, and trees
had all disappeared. The flood seemed to ripple
against the sides of the sky all around, and whichever
way he looked, there was nothing to be seen
but a never-ending succession of waves, that had
nothing but the wind to play against.

At last he saw a musquash swimming about alone,
and he asked him to go down to the earth and bring
him a little of it. The animal obeyed, and plunged
toward the bottom, but it was soon seen on the
surface of the water perfectly dead. Nannabozho,
however, did not yet despair. He immediately after
saw a beaver paddling toward him, and as soon as
the beaver got near enough to hear, he said to him—

“My brother, will you not dive and get me some
earth?”

The beaver dived, but did not appear for a long
time. The beaver, it seems, when he dives, can
carry down so much air entangled in his coat, that,

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

when compelled to stay long under water, he can
thrust his nose into his fur and breathe for some
time. At last he appeared again upon the surface,
nearly dead with exhaustion; he brought up a very
little piece of mud on the flat end of his tail, which
he gave to Nannabozho. Nannabozho scraped every
particle of it carefully together, and placed it in the
palm of his hand to dry. When it had become
perfectly dried, he blew it out into the water, and
straightway a portion of the earth upon which we
now live was created. The dust, too, in the hand
of Nannabozho kept increasing the longer he blew,
until more and more of the earth was made; and at
last the whole world was finished just as large as it
now is.

When Che-che-gwa had finished his legend, I
could not help asking him whence came the plants
and animals which had sprung into existence since
the days of this Chippewa Deucalion. These, he
answered, had been subsequently created in various
ways. Many of the larger trees had been produced
from the piece of wood upon which Nannabozho had
floated in the deluge; and several shrubs, brought
up by the loons in diving, had taken root again upon
the shores to which they drifted. A shell lying upon
the strand was transformed into the racoon, and many
of the other animals had come into existence in a
similarly miraculous manner; while different kinds
of birds had their origin in some metamorphosis like
that of the pious, but faint-hearted, youth who, when

p154-256 [figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

his ambitious father wished him to go on the war-path,
pined away and was changed into a robin;[8]
his guardian spirit permitting him to cheer his parent
with songs to console him for the glory that had thus
departed from his family. The habits of the whippoor-will,
who, like the robin, delights to linger near
the lodge of the hunter, were accounted for in the
following simple manner:

eaf154v2.n7

[7] Ma-mis-ko-gah-zhe Mukwaw.—The great red-nailed bear lives
in woods and rocky places, and, according to Dr. James, is more
dreaded by the Indians than even the Manitou-mukwaw, or great
grizzly bear of the prairies.

The father of Ranche-wai-me, the Flying Pigeon
of the Wiskonsan, would not hear of her wedding
Waw-o-naisa, the young chief who had long sought
her in marriage; yet, true to her plighted faith, she
still continued to meet him every evening upon one
of the tufted islets which stud the river in great profusion.
Nightly through the long months of summer
did the lovers keep their tryste, parting only after
each meeting more and more endeared to each other.
At length Waw-o-naisa was ordered off upon a
secret expedition against the Sioux: he departed so
suddenly that there was no opportunity of bidding
farewell to his betrothed; and his tribesmen, the
better to give effect to his errand, gave out that the
youth was no more, having perished in a fray with
the Menomones, at the Winnebago portage. Ranche-wai-me
was inconsolable, but she dared not show

p154-257 [figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

her grief before her family; and the only relief she
knew for her sorrow was, to swim over to the island
by starlight, and, calling upon the name of her lover,
bewail the features she could behold no more. One
night the sound of her voice attracted some of her
father's people to the spot; and, startled at their
approach, she tried to climb a sapling in order to hide
herself among its branches; but her frame was
bowed with sorrow, and her weak limbs refused to
aid her. “Waw-o-naisa,” she cried, “Waw-o-naisa!”
and at each repetition of his name her voice
became shriller; while in the endeavour to screen
herself in the underwood a soft plumage began to
clothe her delicate limbs, which were wounded by
the briers, and lifting pinions shot from under her
arms, which she tossed upward in distress; until her
pursuers, when just about to seize the maid, saw
nothing but the bird, which has ever since borne the
name of her lover, flitting from bush to bush before
them, and still repeating, “Waw-o-naisa”—“Waw--o-naisa.”

Returning from an unsuccessful hunt about dusk
on the succeeding day, we found, upon entering the
lodge, that the wolves had paid it a visit during our
absence on the previous night. The pukwi, or mats,
which had formed quite a comfortable carpeting for

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

the humble chamber, were torn to pieces; and the
voracious animals had devoured whatever articles of
skin or leather they could lay their teeth upon. A
pair of moccasins belonging to the Rattlesnake, the
carrying-straps of the Canadian, and a shot-pouch
of my own, had all been spirited off in this audacious
burglary.

“Wah!” ejaculated Che-che-gwa, with a ludicrous
intonation of dismay, as he followed me into
the shantee.

“Wha-nain-ti-et”—“Whose dog is this?”
echoed White-plume, thrusting his head over the
shoulder of the other as his companion paused on
the threshold to observe the extent of the mischief.
“Kitchi-que-naitch”—“It is very well,” added
he, drily, upon observing that a large piece of moose
meat, suspended from the rafters, had escaped the
long-haired pilferers.

I could not but sympathize with him in the self-gratulation,
for I remembered once, while spending
a day or two with a settler in Michigan, having
gone supperless to bed when equally sharp set, after
a severe day's hunt, owing to a similar neighbourly
visit. The prairie wolf, though a much less ferocious
and powerful animal than the wood's wolf, makes
up in sagacious impudence for his want of size and
strength. On the occasion alluded to, one of these
fellows had climbed into the window of a shantee,
and actually carried off a whole saddle of venison
which had been prepared for cooking, before the
settler and myself had started, soon after dawn, on
our day's tramp.

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

White-plume now deposited his rifle in a corner
of the lodge, and, leaving the Canadian to put our
disarranged household to rights, he proceeded to the
sunjiwun, or caché, which was made in the bank of
a rivulet near the door, and soon returned with a
gourd of bear's fat and a sack of hard corn. The
latter, when pounded and duly mixed with the snowy
lard, made a crisp and inviting dressing for the moose
meat, and enabled the Frenchman, who acted as
cook, to turn out some côtelettes panées, that, for flavour
and relish, would not have discredited the cuisine
of Delmonico. I confess, however, that my
appreciation of the luxurious fare was not enhanced
by the dexterity with which White-plume would ever
and anon thrust the ramrod of his short north-west
rifle into the dish, and flirt the dripping slices into
his expectant mouth; nor was the marksman-like
precision with which Che-che-gwa launched his
scalping-knife into the kettle, that served us for both
frying-pan and platter, less refined and elegant. It
was not their fault, however, that we had no silver
forks at table; and they certainly committed no
greater breach of decorum in their eating than certain
travellers affect to have seen on board some of
our Atlantic steamers.

“Caw ke-we-ah m' woi-gui-nah-needji”—“Will
you not eat, my friend?” observed White-plume
more than once, offering me a morçeau from the
point of his chopstick. In spite of the example of
Lord Byron and Sir John Malcolm—accepting the
reeking pilau from the greasy knuckles of Turk and
Persian—I thought myself at liberty to decline the

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

proffered civility, inasmuch as I was not partaking
of the particular hospitality of the Indian, but felt
myself as much at home in the entertainment as he
was himself.

The customary pipe succeeded; and, there being
no more “fire water”—skuta-warbo—in the flask
of the Canadian, we added an additional quantity of
tobacco to the willow-scrapings from the kinnekinic
bag, in order to make the smoking mixture more
potent. The fumes of the inebriating weed very
soon began to act upon the excitable system of
White-plume, and he regaled us with a number of
songs, which were anything but musical. There
was but one of them that appeared to me to have
anything poetical, either in sentiment or imagery,
to recommend it. It was a Mezi-nee-neence, or
“Medicine Song,” of a lover, in which he is supposed
to have some magical power of knowing the
secret thoughts of his mistress, and being able to
charm her to him from any distance. In English
it might run as follows:

I.

II.

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

III.

In the fragments of rude, and often insipid, poetry
with which the singer followed up this specimen of
his art, there were occasional allusions which interested
me, and for which I attempted to get an explanation.
But it was almost impossible to obtain
a direct answer; for White-plume, though a great
talker for an Indian, had no faculty for conversation—
that is, there was no such thing as exchanging
ideas with him; and even when I asked him the
names of particular things, in order to increase my
slight vocabulary of his language, his replies were
equally rambling.

Among other objects, the Evening Star, which
glows with remarkable effulgence in the clear frosty
atmosphere of these regions, attracted my eye, as its
silver rays, pouring through an opening of our lodge,
exhibited even more than their wonted virgin purity

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

when contrasted with the red glare of our fire. He
mumbled over some unpronounceable epithet when
I asked the name of it, which was wholly lost upon
my ear. But the question gave a new and more
steady turn to his wandering ideas; and, with the
occasional assistance of my Canadian interpreter, I
was able to follow him out in a very pleasing story,
founded upon an Indian superstition connected with
the planet. The tale will, of course, lose much on
second-hand repetition, for no writer has as yet
succeeded in his attempt to infuse the true Indian
character into his narrative, when he speaks in the
person of a red man. The figurative phrascology
of the luxurious Asiatic, and the terse conciseness
of expression that survives in some relics of the
poetry of the ancient Northmen, are sometimes so
curiously reconciled and blended in the language of
our aborigines, as to defy even the most ingenious
and gifted pen to imitate it. I cannot, perhaps,
better begin the narrative than by recalling Major
Long's account of the barbarous Indian ceremony,
which gave rise to the historical incident which is
here commemorated.

eaf154v2.n9

[9] 1. O-wa-nain ba-me-ja-waunga? Manito o-ba-me-je-waunga
Me-nee-sing, a-be-gwain neen-ge-wun-naitch Che-ha-ga-toga
Me-ne-sing a-be-gwain Whe-he-yah!

2. O-wa-nain ba-me-ja-waunga? Manito o-ba-me-je-waunga
Neen-dai-yah gutche-hah hi-e-qua-waw-hah, neen-noan-dah-waw
sah-ween a-ye-ke-tote whe-i-ah-hah Whe-he-yah.

3. Waus-suh wa-keem-me-ga ora-bah-gwain, whe-a whe-hah-a
Yag-gah-ming-go na-bah-qua, neen-ge-wun-naitch Che-hah-ga-toga.

p154-263

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

The Pawnee-Loups, or Ske-re, as they call
themselves, not many years since, and within the
memory of persons now living, exhibited the singular
anomaly, among the North American aborigines,
of a people addicted to the revolting superstition of
making propitiatory offerings of human victims upon
the altars of idolatry. Mekakatungah, “The Great
Star,” was the divinity to whom the sanguinary
worship had been, from time immemorial, ascribed.
The barbarous ceremony was performed annually.
The Great Star was supposed to preside over the
fruits of the earth; and, on each return of the season
of planting, the life-blood of a human being was
poured out in libation upon the soil. A breach of
this duty, the performance of which they believed
was required by the Great Star, it was supposed
would be succeeded by the total failure of their
crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins, and the consequent
privation of the supply of vegetable food,
which formed half the subsistence of the tribe. To
obviate a calamity so formidable, any person was at
liberty to offer up a prisoner, of either sex, of whom,
by his prowess in war, he had become possessed;
and the horrid rite was accompanied by all the solemn

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

ceremonies which characterize the superstitious
idolatry of an ignorant and barbarous people. The
devoted individual was placed under the care of the
Ouabi-neaux, or magi of the tribe, who anticipated
all his wants, while they cautiously concealed from
him the real object of their sedulous attentions, which
was to preserve his mind in a state of cheerfulness,
with the view of promoting obesity, and thereby
render the sacrifice more acceptable to their Ceres.

When the victim was pronounced sufficiently
fattened for immolation, a suitable time was appointed
for the performance of the rite, that the whole
nation might attend. When the appointed day of
his fate arrived, he was clothed in the gayest and
most costly attire, and led out to the spot where he
was to suffer. Here he was bound to a cross, in
presence of the assembled multitude, and a solemn
dance was performed around him. A number of
other ceremonies followed, and then the warrior
whose prisoner he had been, stepped forth into the
open space, and assumed the inglorious task of his
execution. Generally a single blow with the tomahawk
despatched the victim; but if the first throw
failed to cleave his head, the speedy death of the
person immolated was insured by a shower of arrows
from a band of archers, who were always in attendance.
The abolition of this revolting custom was
brought about in the manner here related.[10]

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

The season of planting was at hand: the Pawnee-Loups,
in order to call down a blessing upon their
labours in the field, prepared for their wonted sacrifice
to the cruel divinity, who they believed presided
over the genial fruits of the earth. There was more
than the usual bustle in the principal village of the
tribe. The faces of some of the seniors wore a look
of anxiety; and the young people, for several days
preceding the ceremony, could be seen grouped
together before the scattered lodges, with an air of
curiosity and impatience seldom observable in their
little community. The fact was, that there chanced
to be at this moment not a single captive in the band
to offer up in sacrifice. The last that had been
taken—a pretty Ietan girl, of the name of Lataka—
had escaped the horrible fate which awaited her, by
perishing, as was thought, in a fray which had occurred
at nightfall, soon after her arrival in the village.
The young partisan, Petaleshàroo, the son of the old
Knife-chief, Latelesha, had interfered at the moment
that the maid was about to be consigned to the hands
of the magi, to be by them prepared for their annual
rite; and in the confused broil which ensued the
prisoner disappeared, and was represented by the
principal magician to have perished by falling, while
her hands were yet bound, into a stream near the
village, during the commotion which took place upon
its immediate banks. The old crones, in gossiping
from lodge to lodge, had circulated a story that the

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

officious interference of Petalashàroo was caused by
his being suddenly enamoured of the captive damsel;
and they were very much incensed at the idea that
the stripling might be the instrument, possibly, of
cheating them out of their yearly festival, in which,
unless tradition has belied them, they took no passive
part. But it was more generally believed that the
act was prompted by less exceptionable motives on
the part of the young chief; that it was, in short,
nothing more nor less than a manifestation of his
determined purpose to put an end to a custom which
he had already attempted, by argument, to do away
with, and which, it was known, that his less daring
father was but too solicitous to root out from among
his people.

As the time now approached when the Great
Star would expect his victim, and not a single captive
was to be had, the incident of the previous
autumn was called up afresh to memory.

There was a great deal of murmuring and discontent
among the tribesmen; and nothing but the personal
popularity of the warrior who had taken so
prominent a part in the occurrence, would have
prevented some violent outbreak of popular feeling:
day after day elapsed, and no captive appeared to
supply the place of the victim that Petaleshàroo had
snatched from the sacrifice. Several warriors, who
had been out on war parties, returned one after
another to the village. They almost all claimed to
have struck the dead body of an enemy, and some
could show more than one scalp at their belt; but no
one brought in a live prisoner. There was yet one
more to come back; and, though “The Running Fox”

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

had no great repute as a brave, yet the whole hopes
of the tribe were now fixed upon his address alone.
He had not left the village until after almost all the
other warriors that were out had returned from the
war-path; but there was strong confidence in the
success of his expedition, because he had been seen
in close consultation with the magi before be departed,
and a favourable result was said to have been
propitiated, by their having a Mezi-nee-nence, or
medicine hunt, together. Indeed, the chief magician
had given out that the Fox would certainly return
with the wished-for prey. The Great Star, he said,
had promised him that a victim should be forth-coming;
and he had invited Petaleshàroo to meet
him at a lonely place, remote from the village, where
he said that the young man might witness how the
God he served would keep his promise.

Let us be present at that memorable conference!

It was a close and sultry night, and nothing but
the swarms of moschetoes, which were continually
rising from the wet prairie, could have induced one
to tolerate the fire that was blazing on an isolated
table-rock, in the midst of a lonely savanna. The
singularly exposed situation, however, of this fire,
which shone like a beacon over the waste, would
seem to imply that it could hardly have been kindled
for mere purposes of comfort or convenience, for
cooking the rude meal of a hunter, or for driving off
the insects that might molest his slumber; and the
two swarthy figures that were crouched beside it,
though evidently belonging to that wild race who
find their chief subsistence in the chase, were

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

characterized by some marks which indicated that they
were not exclusively devoted to the pursuits of
common savages.

The eldest of the two, whose attenuated features,
projecting forehead, and screwed, sinister-looking
mouth imparted a mingled expression of fanaticism
and knavery to his countenance, was perfectly naked,
with the exception of an azeeaun, or apron of congar-skin,
secured, by a curiously-ornamented belt, about
the middle of his person; but his limbs and body
were so completely covered with various devices
tattooed in strong black lines upon his copper-coloured
skin, that, to a slight observer, he would appear
to be dressed out in some elaborate and closely-fitting
apparel. The prominent device in the tattooing
was an enormous doulbe-tailed serpent whose
flat head appeared to repose upon the chest of the
Indian, while his scaly folds were made to twine
themselves around his extremities with a fidelity to
nature that was equally ingenious, grotesque, and
hideous.

The high, uncouth shoulders, long skinny arms,
and squat figure of his person as he sat stooping
over the fire, with his legs folded under him, were
strikingly contrasted with the fine proportions, the
rounded and agile limbs, and lion-like port of a young
warrior who was reclining along the rock on the
opposite side of the fire. The features of the youth
were naturally of an open and generous, almost a
careless, cast; but they now wore a troubled expression
of impatience and curiosity, occasionally wrought
up to anxiety and awe. At times, as the subsiding

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

of an ember would make the fire flash up and fling
its fitful light far over the plain, the young man would
spring eagerly to his feet, and throw a restless glance
upon the shifting gloom around him, as if he expected
some one to emerge from its shadow. His companion,
however, calmly maintained his sitting
posture, and seemed only to busy himself in occasionally
turning over a collection of roots, seeds,
pap-pous, and powders which were deposited upon
a piece of wolf-skin before him, and which he never
touched without mumbling over some of those
strange phrases which are only found in the mouths
of necromancers and magicians, and which are said to
be unpronounceable by any but a true medicine-man.

“I tell thee, Wahobeni,” said the youth at last,
flinging himself upon his bison-skin, as if his patience
was at length wholly exhausted—“I tell thee
the Fox will never more return. The Master of Life
wills not that this accursed rite should ever again
be performed by his red children.”

“The words of the young chief are less than his
years,” replied his senior. “The Great Star must
have his offering. The season of planting is at
hand; and, unless the Spirit of fruits be propitiated,
there will be no maize in the lodges of the She-re.”

“Think'st thou, Magician, that, should even the
crafty Fox produce his victim, my father will allow
the ceremony to proceed? I tell thee no! Latelesha
sheds no blood, save that which is poured out
in battle.”

“The sire of Petaleshàroo is a great chief; but
he has no power over his people, to step between
them and the god of their worship. The heart of

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

the Knife-chief is no more with his tribe, and his
son hath learned to speak with the tongue of the
Pale-face.”

The eyes of the young man flashed fire, while,
clutching his tomahawk, he made a sudden movement
as if about to brain the magician. But the
impulse was instantly checked, and he resumed his
former position, with only a slight ejaculation of
contempt at the reproach of an old man whom he
despised.

“The Spirit will keep Wahobeni from bad things,”
said the medicine-man, observing the movement.
“Wahobeni is a great magician; the Great-underground-wild-cat
[11] is his friend, and he walks with
serpents along the ground. Myself—know me, my
son, the servant of the Great Star. Believe my
words when I interpret the will of my master. Behold
the parched and cracking earth! Behold the
crowded thunders in yon blackening sky, which even
now refuse to break the clouds and let the showers
through! Behold—”

A sudden flash lit up the waste, and gave an unearthly
glare to the forbidding features of the magician
as the bolt went rattling by.

“Manito Sah-iah—There is a God!” exclaimed
the youth, as he reverently took a handful of tobacco
from his pouch and threw the offering upon the fire.
“The Master of Life himself replies to thy impious
mummery, Wahobeni. The God that answered
thee but now, is the only one that can send blossoms
and fruits to the gardens of our tribe.”

The medicine-man was silent; and the young

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

chief, folding his arms thoughtfully, contented himself
with this brief rebuke. But the stolidity of a
bigot and the cunning of a hypocrite were to subtly
and actively blended in the composition of the other,
to allow him to feel more than a moment's confusion,
or to rob him of the resources with which a life of
successful imposture had stored his mind. The
few broad drops which succeeded the single thunder-clap,
were not followed by the shower that seemed
impending; and the magician cast a malignant
glance of triumph at the youth, when, after adjusting
the machinery of his trade in some new form upon
the skin before him, and passing his hands repeatedly
over his bat-skin skull-cap, the clouds suddenly
parted, and the evening star shone forth redly above
the horizon. “The Great Star blushes for my son,”
said he, stretching forth his bony arms toward the
planet. “The God of planting scowls in wrath
upon his minister who listens to the ravings of a
boy. The Running Fox will keep his promise, and
the Ske-re will make their annual offering.”

“Not so—not so, old man,” replied the youth,
firmly; and then, while a sudden change came over
his features, “Not unless a Jebi steps from its grave,
and the shadows of men's souls (ojee-chaugomen) are
sent on earth to mock your bloody ceremony.” And
the young man placed his hand convulsively upon
his sacred metawaun, while his eyes, dilating with
horror, became fixed upon a well-known face which,
even as he spoke, peered above the ledge of the rock
opposite to where he sat.

“And what,” rejoined the medicine-man, calmly,
as if unobservant of the agitation of the speaker—

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

“what if the Great Star, in kindness to his red children,
should call back one of those who have already
passed the je-be-ku-nong, (road of the dead,) to enable
Wahobeni to fulfil the sacrifice for which, till now,
a victim has never been wanting. I tell thee, son of
Latelesha, that a shaft of maize has never yet hung
forth a tassel above the ground, that was not watered
with the blood of an enemy. But now the warriors
of the Ske-re are squaws; there are no captives in
their lodges; and the Great Star, who wills that there
must be a victim, will send one of his own choosing
from among those who have already passed the
swinging tree, and attained the gardens of the
happy.”

With these words the magician rose, and, stamping
upon the ashes, the shook some combustible
powder from the congar-skin that enveloped his
loins. A dozen forks of yellow smoke curled up
in shreds from the fire, and seemed to wreath themselves
with the coils of the serpent that was twined
round his body—each bursting into flame before it
reached his head. There was a sudden flood of
lurid light about the place; and, when its bewildering
glare subsided, the form of the Ietan maiden
was fully disclosed to the awe-struck gaze of her
lover, as she stood with her hand locked in that of
the terrible being before him.

A thousand conflicting feelings tugged at the
heart-strings of the noble youth; a thousand changing
images of love and fear, hope and horror, shot in
maddening confusion across his brain. His senses
reeled in the effort to rally their flying powers; and
Petaleshàroo, the dauntless partisan of the

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

Pawnee-Loups—he whose heart had never quailed, whose
nerves had never shrunk in the wildest horrors of
savage warfare—swooned at the feet of the sinking
damsel.

The day of the sacrifice to the Great Star had
arrived. It was a beautiful morning in April when
the misguided children of the wilderness were
assembled at the call of the magi, to celebrate the
anniversary of their cruel deity.

The scene of their infernal orgies was a tall grove
upon the edge of the prairie, an islet of timber which,
viewed at a distance, seemed rather to repose upon,
than to spring from, the broad green surface. It
was a grand festival day with the Pawnee-Loups,
and the wonted military watchfulness of this warlike
tribe was dispensed with upon the occasion of general
relaxation, the usual sentinels of the camp were
scattered round in groups among the rest of the
people; and their horses, which generally were tethered,
ready saddled, near the lodges of the guard,
were now scattered over the prairie with the other
cattle of the tribe. There were two chargers only
that did not seem to share the general liberty; and
these stood fully equipped, pawing the ground as if
impatient of confinement, behind a small copse not
far from the scene of the sacrifice. One of them, a
light and graceful palfrey, was tied to a sapling which
grew upon the spot, while the reins of the other were
held by as gallant a cavalier as ever crossed a saddle.
He was a young man, of not more than three-and-twenty,
of the finest form, tall and muscular, and of
a most prepossessing countenance. His head-dress
of war-eagle's feathers descended in a double series

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

over his back, like wings, to his saddle-croup: his
shield was highly decorated, and his long lance was
ornamented with a plaited casing of red and blue
cloth. The steed he backed was every way worthy
of such a rider.

It was the partisan, Petaleshàroo and his charger,
Leksho, the Arrow. The large dark eye of the
young warrior wore an expression of seriousness
and concern but little in unison with the festivities
of the day. And ever and anon he turned to look
along the edge of the thicket, and grasped the handle
of his tomahawk, as if as restive as the champing
courser beneath him. But his lips were compressed
in resolution rather than anger, and the nervous
bracing of his feet in the stirrups gave an air of high
determination to his whole figure.

At length the different groups of Indians were
collected around one central spot, where a cross was
erected upon a slight elevation in the prairie, and
the captive Lataka was led forth among them, to be
offered up as a sacrifice to the Great Star. Her
youth and beauty were lost upon the sterner part of
the assemblage; but her gorgeous apparel, rich with
wrought ornaments of the precious metals, and gay
with the woven texture of beads and feathers of the
most elaborate and costly workmanship, drew a murmur
of admiration from those of her own sex who
mingled with the crowd.[12] The multitude were

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

generally overawed by the solemnity of the occasion,
and preserved a decorous silence as the principal
Meta, with his train of Ouabineaux, led on the captive.
A few, however, would thrust their heads
over the shoulders of their neighbours, and fix their
savage eyes as eagerly upon the victim as if, by
reading her feelings in her face, they could enjoy in
anticipation the horrid festival. But Lataka was an
Indian maiden, and her soul was too proud to let the
enemies of her tribe guess the feelings which swelled
in her bosom as she moved with the step of an
empress to the spot on which she was to be immolated.
The Ouabineaux now, under the direction
of the Meta, entered at once upon their barbarous
office; and, rudely seizing the fragile girl, her limbs
were bound to the stake almost before she discovered
the full extent of the fate that awaited her. Still
not a murmur was made by the Indian maiden; not
a sob nor a sigh escaped the lips that quivered in
the effort to repress the thrilling emotions of the moment.
Her eye wandered mildly around the dusky
circle of faces, as if seeking rather for sympathy
than rescue—as if she wished only for some one
being to appreciate the fortitude with which she
could offer up her life. The grim gaze of a motionless
multitude was all that met her view. There
was no one there who could have an emotion kindred
to her own. There was no one there who
could care for Lataka; and, raising her eyes to heaven,
she commended her spirit to the Wacodnah,
who cares for all.

And now the solemn dance commenced around
the prisoner, slowly and silently at first, but

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

gradually increasing in rapidity, as, with savage yells, they
encouraged each other, until the fiendish faces of
her executioners whirled around her in one continuous
chain of glaring and demoniac glances. The
motion ceased, and the chief of the magi stepped
into the open space to make his sacrificial prayer to
the Great Star.

The eye of Lataka had been cast heavenward
during the utterance of this prayer; and, when it was
concluded, she merely murmured the plaintive, Dadainsh-ta-a,
“Oh! alas! for me,” and resigned
herself once more to her cruel fate. The master of
the infernal rite then turned round to give the signal
for her tortures to begin, and the deep roll of the
Indian drum commanded silence while he spoke
again for the last time. The murmur of the multitude
was hushed, and the melancholy dirge died
away in the distant prairie.

The Meta had raised his arm to give the fatal
signal, when forth from the thicket, like an arrow

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

from the bow of the thunder-god, shot the war-like
form of Petaleshàroo. With one hand he couched
his quivering lance, and waved his gleaming tomahawk
high above his head with the other. His bridle
floated loose on the neck of his charger. On—
on he came like a bolt from heaven, while his charging
cry speedily made a lane for him through the
multitude as his courser bounded into the midst of
it. A blow from his tomahawk severed the thong
which bound Lataka, in an instant, and, before his
startled and astounded tribesmen could recover from
their surprise, he had gained anew his greenwood
covert with the sinking form of the rescued damsel.
A moment sufficed to place her on the fleet palfrey
that bowed his neck to the beautiful rider; in another
they were speeding like the wind over the smooth
prairie; while, before his disappointed and baffled
countrymen could mount in pursuit, Petaleshàroo
had placed a broad strip of forest between them;
and the infuriated yells of the baffled multitude died
upon the breeze which whispered naught but hope
and confidence to the flying lovers.

The Pawnee and his bride enjoyed the blessings
of summer in another land. But before the snows
of the next season had come again, his tribesmen
had invited him back to the lodges of the Ske-re.
Nor since that day have they ever offered up a
human victim to the Great Star.[13]

eaf154v2.n10

[10] The account of this singular and sanguinary superstition, as
well as the interesting historical incident which follows it, and the
description of the dress and personal appearance of the heroic Indian
who abolished the barbarous rite, will be found in “Major Long's
Expedition to the Rocky Mountains,” with but little variation from
the text. The portrait of the youthful and handsome Petaleshàroo
is preserved in the Indian Gallery at Washington.

p154-278 SCENES AMONG THE ALLEGHANIES.

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

It haunts me yet! that early dream
Of first fond love;
Like the ice that floats on a summer stream
From some frozen fount above:
Through my river of years 'twill drifting gleam,
Where'er their waves may rove!
It flashes athwart each sunny hour
With a strangely bright but chilling power,
Ever and ever to mock their tide
With its illusive glow;
A fragment of hopes that were petrified
Long, long ago!

There are few parts of the United States which,
for beauty of scenery, amenity of climate, and, I
might add, the primitive character of the inhabitants,
possess more peculiar attraction than the mountainous
region of Eastern Tennessee.

It is a wild and romantic district, composed of
rocks and broken hills, where the primeval forests
overhang valleys watered by limpid streams, whose
meadowy banks are grazed by innumerable herds of

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

cattle. The various mountain-ridges, which at one
point traverse the country almost in parallel lines,
while at another they sweep off in vast curves, and
describe a majestic amphitheatre, are all more or
less connected with the Apalachian chain, and
share the peculiarities which elsewhere characterize
those mountains. In some places the transition from
valley to highland is so gradual, that you are hardly
aware of the undulations of surface when passing
over it. In others, the frowning heights rise in precipitous
walls from the plains, while again their
wooded and dome-like summits will heave upward
from the broad meadows like enormous tumuli
heaped upon their bosom.

The hills also are frequently seamed with deep
and dark ravines, whose sheer sides and dimly-descried
bottom will make the eye swim as it tries
to fathom them; while they are often pierced with
cavernous galleries, which lead miles under ground,
and branch off into grottos so spacious that an army
might be marshalled within their yawning chambers.[14]

Here, too, those remarkable conical cavities whioh
are generally known by the name of “sink-holes”
in the western country, are thickly scattered over
the surface; and so perfect in shape are many of
them, that it is difficult to persuade the ruder residents
that they are not the work of art, nor fashioned
out as drinking bowls for the extinct monsters whose
fossil remains are so abundant in this region. Indeed

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

the singular formation of the earth's surface, with the
entire seclusion in which they live amid their pastoral
valleys, must account for, and excuse, many a
less reasonable belief and superstition prevailing
among those hospitable mountaineers. “The Enchanted
Mountains,” as one of the ranges I have
been attempting to describe is called, are especially
distinguished by the number of incredible traditions
and wild superstitions connected with them. Those
uncouth paintings along their cliffs, and the footprints
of men and horses stamped in the solid rock upon
the highest summits, as mentioned by Mr. Flint in
his Geography of the Western Country, constitute
but a small part of the material which they offer to
an uneducated and imaginative people for the creation
of strange fantasies. The singular echoes which
tremble through these lonely glens, and the shifting
forms which, as the morning mist rises from the
upland, may be seen stealing over the tops of the
crags and hiding themselves within the crevices, are
alike accounted for by supernatural causes.

Having always been imbued with a certain love
of the marvellous, and being one of the pious few
who, in this enlightened age of reality, nurse up a
lingering superstition or two, I found myself, while
loitering through this romantic district, and associating
upon the most easy terms with its rural population,
irresistibly imbibing a portion of the feeling and
spirit which prevailed around me. The cavernous
ravines and sounding aisles of the tall forests had
“airy tongues” for me as well as for those who are
more familiar with their whisperings. But as for

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

the freakish beings who were supposed to give them
utterance as they pranked it away in the dim retreats
around, I somehow or other could never obtain a fair
sight of one of them. The forms that sometimes
rose between my eyes and the mist-breathing cascade,
or flitted across the shadowy glade at some
sudden turn of my forest-path, always managed to
disappear behind some jutting rock, or make good
their escape into some convenient thicket, before I
could make out their lineaments, or even swear to
their existence at all. My repeated disappointments
in this way had begun to put me quite out of conceit
with my quickness and accuracy of vision, when a
new opportunity was given me of testing them, in
the manner I am about to relate.

I happened one day to dine at a little inn situated
at the mouth of a wooded gorge, where it lay tucked
away so closely beneath the ponderous limbs of a huge
tulip tree, that the blue smoke from the kitchen fire
alone betrayed its locality. Mine host proved to be
one of those talkative worthies who, being supplied
with but little information whereon to exercise his
tongue, make amends for the defects of education
and circumstance by dwelling with exaggeration
upon every trivial incident around him. Such people
in polished society become the scandal-mongers of
the circle in which they move, while in more simple
communities they are only the chroniclers of every
thing marvellous that has occurred in the neighbourhood
“within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.”
I had hardly placed myself at the dinner-table, before
my garrulous entertainer began to display his

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

retentive faculties by giving me the exact year and day
upon which every chicken with two heads or calf
with five legs had been born throughout the whole
country round. Then followed the most minute particulars
of a murder or two which had been perpetrated
within the last twenty years; and after this I
was drilled into the exact situation and bearings of a
haunted house which I should probably see the next
day by pursuing the road I was then travelling;
finally, I was inducted into all the arcana of a remarkable
cavern in the vicinity, where an “ouphe, gnome,
moon-elf, or water-sprite” had taken up its residence,
to the great annoyance of every one except my landlord's
buxom daughter, who was said to be upon the
most enviable terms with the freakish spirit of the
grotto.

The animated, and almost eloquent, description
which mine host gave of this cavern, made me readily
overlook the puerile credulity with which he
wound up his account of its puculiarities. It interested
me so much, indeed, that I determined to stable
my horse for the night, and proceed at once to
explore the place. A fresh and blooming girl, with
the laughing eye and free step of a mountaineer, volunteered
to be my guide on the occasion, hinting, at
the same time, while she gave a mischievous look at
her father, that I should find it difficult to procure a
cicerone other than herself in the neighbourhood.
She then directed me how to find the principal entrance
to the cave, where she promised to join me
soon after.

A rough scramble in the hills soon brought me to

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

the place of meeting, and, entering the first chamber
of the cavern, which was large, and well lighted from
without, I stretched myself upon a rocky ledge which
leaned over a brook that meandered through the place,
and, lulled by the dash of a distant waterfall, surrendered
myself to a thousand musing fancies.

Fatigue from an early and long morning ride, or
possibly too liberal a devotion to the good things
which had been placed before me at table, caused me
soon to be overtaken by sleep. My slumbers, however,
were broken and uneasy; and, after repeatedly
opening my eyes to look with some impatience at
my watch as I tossed upon my stony couch, I abandoned
the idea of a nap entirely, momentarily expecting
that my guide would make her appearance, and
contented myself with gazing listlessly upon the
streamlet which rippled over its pebbled bed beneath
me. I must have remained for some time in this vacant
mood, when my idle musings were interrupted
by a new source of interest presenting itself.

A slight rustling near at hand disturbed me, and,
turning round as I opened my eyes, a female figure,
in a drapery of snowy whiteness, appeared to flit before
them, and retire behind a tall cascade immediately
in front of me. The uncertain light of the place,
with the spray of the waterfall, which partially impeded
my view of the farther part of the cavern, made
me at first doubt the evidence of my senses; but
gradually a distinct form was perceptible amid the
mist, apparently moving slowly from me, and beckoning
the while to follow. The height of the figure
struck me immediately as being about the same as

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

that of the buxom daughter of my landlord; and,
though the proportions seemed more slender, I had
no doubt, upon recalling her arch expression of countenance
while her father was relating to me the wild
superstitions of the cavern, that a ready solution of
one of its mysteries at least was at hand. Some
woman's whim, I had no doubt, prompted the girl to
get up a little diversion at my expense, and sent her
thither to put the freak in execution. I had been
told that there were a dozen outlets to the cavern,
and presumed that I was now to be involved in its
labyrinths for the purpose of seeing in what part of
the mountain I might subsequently make my exit.
He is no true lover of a pair of bright eyes who will
mar the jest of a pretty woman. The maiden beckoned,
and I followed.

I had some difficulty in scaling the precipice over
which tumbled the waterfall; but, after slipping
once or twice upon wet the ledges of rock, which
supplied a treacherous foothold, I at last gained the
summit, and stood within a few yards of my whimsical
conductor. She had paused upon the farthest
side of the chamber into which the cavern here expanded.
It was a vast and noble apartment. The
lofty ceiling swelled almost into a perfect dome, save
where a ragged aperture at the top admitted the noonday
sun, whose rays, as they fell through the vines
and wild flowers that embowered the orifice, were
glinted back from a thousand sparry points and pillars
around. The walls, indeed, were completely
fretted with stalactites. In some places small, and
apparently freshly formed, they hung in fringed rows

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

from the ceiling; in others they drooped so heavily
as to knit the glistening roof to the marble floor
beneath it, or rose in slender pyramids from the
floor itself until they appeared to sustain the vault
above.

The motion of the air created by the cascade gave
a delightful coolness to this apartment, while the
murmur of the falling water was echoed back from
the vibrating columns with tones as rich and melodious
as those which sweep from an æolian harp.
Never, methought, had I seen a spot so alluring.
And yet, when I surveyed each charm of the grotto,
I knew not whether I could be contented in any one
part of it. Nothing, indeed, could be more inviting
to tranquil enjoyment than the place where I then
stood; but the clustering columns, with their interlacing
screen-work of woven spar, allured my eye
into a hundred romantic aisles which I longed to explore;
while the pendant wild flowers which luxuriated
in the sunshine around the opening above,
prompted me to scale the dangerous height, and
try what pinnacle of the mountain I might gain by
emerging from the cavern through the lofty aperture.

These reflections were abruptly terminated by an
impatient gesture from my guide, and for the first
time I caught a glimpse of her countenance as she
glided by a deep pool in which it was reflected.

That glance had a singular, almost a preternatural,
effect upon me; the features were different from
those I had expected to behold. They were not
those of the new acquaintance whom I thought I
was following; but the expression they wore was

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

one so familiar to me in bygone years, that I started
as if I had seen an apparition.

It was the look of one who had been long since
dead—of one around whose name, when life was
new, the whole tissue of my hopes and fears was
woven—for whom all my aspirations after worldly
honours had been breathed—in whom all my dreams
of earthly happiness had been wound up. She had
mingled in purer hours with all the fond and homeloving
fancies of boyhood; she had been the queen
of each romantic vision of my youth; and, amid
the worldly cares and selfish struggles of maturer
life, the thought of her had lived separate and apart
in my bosom, with no companion in its hallowed
chamber, save the religion learned at a mother's knee—
save that hope of better things which, once implanted
by a mother's love, survives amid the storms
and conflicts of the world—a beacon to warn us
more often, alas! how far we have wandered from
her teachings, than to guide us to the haven whither
they were meant to lead.

I had loved her, and I had lost her: how, it matters
not. Perchance disease had reft her from me
by some sudden blow at the moment when possession
made her dearest. Perchance I saw her fade
in the arms of another, while I was banned and barred
from ministering to a spirit that stole away to
the grave with all I prized on earth. It boots not
how I lost her; but he who has centred every thought
and feeling in one only object, whose morning hopes
have for years gone forth to the same gaol, whose
evening reflections have for years come back to the

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

same bourne, whose waking visions and whose midnight
dreams have for years been haunted by the
same image, whose schemes of toil and advancement
have all tended to the same end—he knows
what it is to have the pivot upon which every wheel
of his heart hath turned, wrenched from its centre—
to have the sun, round which revolved every joy
that lighted his bosom, plucked from its system.

Well, it was her face; as I live, it was the soulbreathing
features of Linda that now beamed before
me, fresh as when in dawning womanhood they first
caught my youthful fancy—resistless as when in
their noontide blaze of beauty I poured out my
whole adoring soul before them. There was that
same appealing look of the large lustrous eyes, the
same sunny and soul-melting smile which, playing
over a countenance thoughtful even to sadness, touched
it with a beauty so radiant that the charm seemed
borrowed from heaven itself.

I could not but think it strange that such an image
should be presented to my view in such a place;
and yet, if I now rightly recollect my emotions, surprise
was the least active among them. I cared not
why or whence the apparition came; I thought not
whether it were reality or mocking semblance, the
fantasy of my own brain, or the shadowy creation
of some supernatural Power around me. I knew
only that it was there; I knew only that the eyes
in whose perilous light my soul had bathed herself
to madness, beamed anew before me; that the lips
whose lightest smile had often wrapped me in elysium;
that the brow whose holy light— But why should

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

I thus attempt to paint what pencil never yet hath
reached? why essay a portrait whose colours I
have nowhere found, save in the heart where they
are laid so deeply that death alone can dim them?
Enough that the only human being to whom my
spirit ever bowed in inferiority—enough that the
idol to which it had knelt in adoration, now stood
palpably before it. An hour agone, and I would
have crossed the threshold of the grave itself to stand
one moment in that presence—to gaze, if but for an
instant, upon those features. What recked I now,
then, how or whence they were conjured up? Had
the Fiend himself stood nigh, I would have pressed
nearer, and gazed and followed as I did. The figure
beckoned, and I went on.

The vaulted pathway was at first smooth and
easily followed; but, after passing through several
of the cavernous chambers into which it ever and
anon expanded, the route became more and more difficult;
loose masses of rock encumbering the floor,
or drooping in pendant crags from the roof, rendered
the defiles between them both toilsome and hazardous.
The light which fell through the opening behind
us soon disappeared entirely, and it gave me
a singular sinking of the spirits, as we passed into
deeper and deeper gloom, to hear the musical sounds,
which I have already noted in the grotto from which
we first passed, dying away in the distance, and
leaving the place at last in total silence. Long, indeed,
after they had ceased to reach my ear with
any distinctness, they would seem at times to swell
along the winding vault, and break anew upon me

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

at some turn in our devious route. So strangely, too,
do the innumerable subtle echoes metamorphose
each noise in these caverns, that I continually found
myself mistaking the muttered reverberations for
the sounds of a human voice. At one moment it
seemed in gay tones to be calling me back to the
sparry grotto and bright sunshine behind, while the
very next it appeared, with sudden and harsh intonation,
to warn me against proceeding farther. Anon
it would die away with a mournful cadence, a melancholy
wailing, like the requiem of one who was
beyond the reach of all earthly counsel or assistance.

Again and again did I pause in my career, to listen
to this wild chanting, while my feelings would for
the moment take their hue and complexion from the
sources which thus bewildered my senses. I thought
of my early dreams of fame and honour, of the singing
hopes that lured me on my path, when one fatal image
stepped between my soul and all its high endeavour.
I thought of that buoyancy of spirit, once so
irrepressible in its elasticity, that it seemed proof
alike against time and sorrow, now sapped, wasted,
and destroyed by the phrensied pursuit of one object.
I thought of the home which had so much to embellish
and endear it, and which yet, with all its heartcheering
joys, had been neglected and left, like the
sunlit grotto, to follow a shifting phantom through a
heartless world. I thought of the reproachful voices
around me, and the ceaseless upbraider in my bosom,
which told of time and talents wasted, of opportunities
thrown away, of mental energies squandered,
of heart, brain, and soul consumed in a devotion

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

deeper and more absorbing than Heaven itself exacts
from its votaries. I thought—and I looked at the
object for which I had lavished them all—I thought
that my life must have been some hideous dream,
some damned vision in which my fated soul was
bound by imaginary ties to a being doomed to be its
bane upon earth, and shut it out at last from heaven;
and I laughed in scornful glee as I twisted my
bodily frame in the hope that at length I might wake
from that long-enduring sleep. I caught a smile from
the lips; I saw a beckon from the hand of the phantom,
and I wished still to dream, and to follow for
ever. I plunged into the abyss of darkness to which
it pointed; and, reckless of everything I might leave
behind, followed wheresoever it might marshal me.

A damp and chilling atmosphere now pervaded
the place, and the clammy moisture stood thick upon
my brow as I groped my way through a labyrinth
of winding galleries, which intersected each other
so often both obliquely and transversely, that the
whole mountain seemed honeycombed. At one
moment the steep and broken pathway led up acclivities
almost impossible to scale; at another the
black edge of a precipice indicated our hazardous
route along the brink of some unfathomed gulf;
while again a savage torrent, roaring through the sinuous
vault, left scarcely room enough for a foothold
between the base of the wall and its furious tide.

And still my guide kept on, and still I followed.
Returning, indeed, had the thought occurred to me,
was now impossible; for the pale light which seemed
to hang around her person, emanating, as it were,

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

from her white raiment, was all that guided me
through these shadowy realms. But not for a moment
did I now think of retracing my steps or pausing
in that wild pursuit. Onward, and still onward
it led, while my spirit, once set upon its purpose,
seemed to gather sterner determination from every
difficulty it encountered, and to kindle again with
that indomitable buoyancy which was once the chief
attribute of my nature.

At length the chase seemed ended, as we approached
one of those abrupt and startling turns
common in these caverns, where the passage, suddenly
veering to the right or left, leads you, as if by
design, to the sheer edge of some gulf that is impassable.
My strange companion seemed pausing for
a moment upon the brink of the abyss. It was a
moment to me of delirious joy, mingled with more
than mortal agony; the object of my wild pursuit
seemed at length within my grasp. A single bound,
and my outstretched arms would have encircled her
person; a single bound—nay, the least movement
toward her—might only have precipitated the destruction
upon whose brink she hovered. Her form
seemed to flutter upon the very edge of that horrid
precipice, as, gazing like one fascinated over it, she
stretched her hand backward toward me. It was
like inviting me to perdition. And yet, forgive me,
Heaven! to perish with her was my proudest hope,
as I sprang to grasp it. But, oh God! what held I
in that withering clasp? The ice of death seemed
curdling in my veins as I touched those clammy and
pulseless fingers. A strange and unhallowed light

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

shot upward from the black abyss; and the features
from which I could not take my eyes away, were
changed to those of a DEMON in that hideous glare.
And now the hand that I had so longed to clasp,
closed with remorseless pressure round my own,
and drew me toward the yawning gulf; it tightened
in its grasp, and I hovered still nearer to my horrid
doom; it clenched yet more closely, and the phrensied
shriek I gave—AWOKE ME.

A soft palm was gently pressed against my own;
a pair of laughing blue eyes were bent archly upon
me; and the fair locks which floated over her blooming
cheeks revealed the joyous and romping damsel
who had promised to act as my guide through
the cavern. She had been prevented by some
household cares from keeping her appointment
until the approach of evening made it too late, and
had taken it for granted that I had then returned to
my lodgings at the inn. My absence from the
breakfast-table in the morning, however, had awakened
some concern in the family, and induced her
to seek me where we then met. The pressure of
her hand in trying to awaken me will partially account
for the latter part of my hideous dream; the
general tenour of it is easily traceable to the impression
made upon my mind by the prevalent superstition
connected with the cavern; but no metaphysical
ingenuity of which I am master, can explain how
one whose daily thoughts flow in so careless, if not
gay, a current as mine, could, even in a dream, have
conjured up such a train of wild and bitter fancies;
much less how the fearful tissue should have been

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

so interwoven with memories of the dream-love of
boyhood as to give new shape and reality to a phantom
long—long since faded. And I could not but
think that, had a vision so strange and vivid swept
athwart my brain at an earlier period of life, I should
have regarded it as something more than an unmeaning
fantasy. That mystical romance, which is the
religion of life's spring-time, would have interpreted
my dream as a dark foreboding of the future, prophetic
of hopes misplaced, of opportunities misapplied,
of a joyless and barren youth, and a manhood
whose best endeavour would be only a restless effort
to lose in action the memory of the dreary past.

If half be true, however, that is told concerning
them, still more extravagant sallies of the imagination
overtake persons of quite as easy and indolent a
disposition as my own, when venturing to pass a
night upon the Enchanted Mountains.

eaf154v2.n14

[14] The great limestone cavern of Kentucky, which has been explored
twelve miles in one direction, is said, in the current phrase
of the country, to extend under a whole county.

p154-294

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

Travelling on horseback is generally the most
agreeable mode of seeing a country. But it is only
in a broken mountain region that one fully enjoys it.
The prairies, so delightful to scamper over with a
fresh horse, become tedious and monotonous when
obliged to jog along at the easy pace to which you
must restrain your roadster in a long journey: and
when one reaches a well-travelled mail route, you
are incessantly put out of conceit of your slow
travel of thirty or forty miles a day only, as a
stage-coach ever and anon whirls by you on the
dusty road. It is when rugged steeps are to be
climbed, hill-side torrents to be forded, and, amid
narrow ways in the deep woods along the edges
of precipitous paths, obstructive and perilous, if not
wholly impassable to a wheeled carriage, that the
horseman enjoys his full sense of independence,
and, I may add, of Power—sheer animal power:
a source of pleasure, by the way, which in this
pre-eminently intellectual era many of my countrymen
seem to regard as excessively vulgar.

Reader, put your horse aboard of a North River
steamer, land at Kingston on the Hudson. Ride to
Paltz, at the base of the Shawungunk Mountains,
the same night. Mount on the morrow, and, with

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trouting-rod in hand, trace the sources of the Delaware
among the peaks of the Katzbergs. The whole
range of the Alleghanies can give you nothing better
in the way of animated riding, choice fishing, or
exquisite scenery. But “to return to our mutton.”

Still wandering among these mountains, I had
passed from the beautiful pastoral region described
in the opening of the previous story, to a gloomier
district of Eastern Tennessee. After a harsh and
lowering day, the evening closed in dull and thick
with that stagnant heaviness of the atmosphere which
often precedes a storm. There was a moon, but its
face was veiled by the leaden clouds; and its light,
dissipated through the murky air, created that kind
of “darkness visible” which gives a drearier aspect
to the landscape than when it is wholly obscured.

The only cabin in sight lay in the midst of a desolate
“clearing,” which, though completely walled
round by the forest of firs from whose depths I had
just issued, bore not a trace of shrubbery to relieve
the waste of blackened stumps. A well of primitive
construction, with the bucket dangling at the
end of a grapevine attached to a long lever pole,
crowned a naked knoll where the stumps had been
cleared away. The pole, from which the bark had
never been stripped, was nearly covered with that
pale green moss which will often collect upon the
dry rails of a fence which have not for years been
disturbed; and this, with the night wind whistling
through the parted staves of the decrepit bucket,
proved sufficiently that the well, if not dried up entirely,
was still no longer used. A low shed, built

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of logs and roofed with bark, was the only other
outward appurtenance of the cabin.

The whole picture, it will be acknowledged, was
a dreary one. Comfortless, monotonous—almost
heart-depressing! A scene of wildness without
beauty, of solitude without dignity, a woodland
home without one attribute of rural cheerfulness.
An abode in the wilderness utterly destitute of forest
shelter and security.

The spirits of evil, which in some lands are believed
to take up their abode in every deserted palace
or ruinous castle, methought would straightway
migrate hitherward, did they dream of a spot so utterly
lonely, and, as it seemed, so man-forsaken!
I say “seemed,” for, though the traces of what are
called improvements were about me, I could scarcely
realize that the hands which had once wrought there
might still be busy near. The man who had made
such an opening in the forest must, I thought, have
been frighted at his own work the moment he ceased
from his toil, and became aware how uncouthly
he had given shape and form to the spirit of solitude
which still sighed among the tall trees around him.

I dismounted near the cabin, and scarcely touched
the door with the butt of my riding-whip, when it was
flung open from within by some one who instantly
retired from the threshold. The abruptness of the
act did, I confess, startle me. Though not easily
alarmed, my mood of mind at the moment was such
as to prompt some mystic association with the scenes
and circumstances already detailed. I am a perfect
barometer of the weather, and the approach of a

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thunder-gust always weighs down my spirits with
undefinable oppression, in the same degree that a
driving snow-storm exhilarates them. The low mutterings
of the oncoming tempest, which were now
beginning to be audible, would, then, be sufficient
to account for my present sensibility to gloomy influences;
but I might also mention other things
which, perhaps, added to the present anxiety of
feeling, if the phrase be not too strong a one. It
will suffice, however, to state merely that I had not
heard the sound of human speech in the last two
days, and that which now met my ears was harsh
and discordant. It was the croaking tone which you
may sometimes catch from a sour-tempered virago
as she strolls from the conventicle.

“I thought you'd a been here afore,” said this
ungracious voice; which, upon entering the apartment,
I recognised as belonging to its only occupant.

She was a heavy-built woman, of coarse, square
features and saturnine complexion. She wore her
straight black hair plainly parted over her eyebrows,
which were bushy and meeting in the middle. One
elvish lock had escaped from behind her ears as she
stooped over the hearth, holding a tallow-candle to
the ashes, which she was trying to blow into a flame,
when my summons interrupted the process.

“You thought I would have been hear before?”
I exclaimed at last, in reply to her singular salutation;
“why, my good woman, I have lost my way,
and only stumbled upon your house by accident—
you must take me for somebody else.”

“I'm no good woman. Don't good woman me,”

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she replied, with a scrutinizing glance, which had
something, I thought, of almost fierceness in it, as,
shading the now lighted candle with one hand, she
turned scornfully round and fixed her regards upon
me.

“Yes! yes, strannger, you are the man, the very
man that was to come at this hour. I dreamed ye—
I dreamed yer hoss—yer brown leggins and all, I
dreamed 'em—and now go look after yer critter
while I get some supper for ye.”

Those who are so good as to follow me in my
story, will, perhaps, be vexed and impatient when I
tell them here that the whole of this singular scene
has no immediate bearing upon its denouément.

“Why, then,” it may be asked, “do you delay
and embarrass the relation with the detail of matters
that have no connexion with the incident for which
you would claim our interest?”

I did not say they had no connexion with it!
They have an intimate—a close connexion. It was
these very circumstances which still farther fashioned
the mood of mind under which I became an observer,
and partially an actor, in the startling, though
grotesque, events which followed, and I wish to place
the reader in exactly the same position that I was in.
I wish to win him, if possible, to perfect sympathy
of feeling with me for the hour, and let him exercise
his judgment, if he care to, from precisely the same
point of mental observation.

We have returned, then, to the cabin; he (the reader)
or I are again alone in the midst of the wilderness;
in that dreary room; alone with that

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weirdlooking woman. The storm is now howling without,
but it does not chafe savagely enough to excite
the dispirited temper of our feelings, or offer a contrast
of any dignity to the gloomy influences within.

Supper was already prepared for me when I returned
from looking after my horse. The coarse
bacon and hoe cakes were placed before me without
another word being spoken between my hostess
and myself. I drew a rude stool to the table, and
was in the act of helping myself from the wooden
platter—

“Stop! I hear them coming!” cried the woman.

“Hear them! who?” said I, turning round sharply
as some new, though undefinable, suspicion flashed
upon me.

“Them as will have to share that supper with
ye, strannger—if hows' be 't they let ye eat any of
it.”

I had no time to weigh farther the meaning of her
words, for at this instant there was a sharp flash of
lightning, the door was dashed suddenly open, and
three armed men strode into the apartment, the
storm pelting in behind them as they entered, and a
terrific thunder-burst following instantly the lightning
amid whose glare they crossed the threshold.
The palor of their countenances, set off by their long
black, dripping locks, seemed measurably to pass
away when that livid light was withdrawn; but from
the moment that the door was flung open there was
an earthy smell in the room, which, whether coming
from the reeking soil without or from the garments
of these wild foresters, was most perceptible. Those

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less familiar than myself with the raw-savoured odours
which sometimes travel out with the rich perfume of
the woods, would, I am persuaded, have identified it
with the grave-damps which our senses will sometimes
take cognizance of in old churchyards.

The aspect of two of these men was sufficiently
formidable, though in point of stature and an appearance
of burly strength they were inferior to their
companion. They were square-shouldered, blackbearded
fellows, armed both with hatchet and bowieknife
in addition to the short rifles, which they still
retained laid across their knees as they settled themselves
side by side upon a bench and looked coldly
around them. The third was a full-cheeked, heavyfeatured
man, of about eight-and-twenty, bearing a
strong resemblance to my hostess, both in complexion
and countenance, save that his eyebrows, instead
of being square and coal-black, like hers, were irregularly
arched and of a faded brown. His mouth
also lacked the firmness of expression which dwelt
around her thin and shrewish lips.

This man bore with him no weapon save a huge
old German piece, a Tyrolean rifle as it seemed to
me from the enormous length of the barrel and the
great size of the bore, as well as the outlandish and
cumbersome ornaments about the stock and breeching.
It was evidently a weapon intended for the
great distances at which the chamois hunter claims
his quarry, and, though serviceable for a long shot on
our western prairies, was ill suited to the thick woods
of the Apalachian Mountains. Inconvenient, however,
as the length and size of the piece might make

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it in some hands, it seemed to be nothing in the grip
of the sturdy mountaineer, (who had probably bought
it from some passing emigrant from the old world,)
for I observed even as he entered that he held the
gun vertically at arm's length before him. Still he
seemed glad of relieving himself of the weight as
soon as possible, for he instantly advanced to the
farthest corner of the room, where he placed the
piece with some care in an upright position against
the wall.

“Well! what for now?” said the virago; “why
do you stand looking at the gun after you've sot it
down? you think she'll walk off of herself, do ye?”

The youth looked gloomily at her—took a stool on
the opposite side of the hearth to his companions—
leaned his head doggedly upon his hand, but said
nothing.

I thought I had never fallen in with a more strange
set of people.

“What! Hank Stumpers, haint ye a word to
fling to a dog?” cried the woman, advancing toward
him; “is that the way you treat yer dead father's
wife?”

The young man looked up stupidly at her, gave a
glance with something more of intelligence at the
gun, but still said nothing.

“Yes, yer nateral-born mother, ye chucklehead
ye—and she a widder. Can't ye speak up to
her—where's the deer? the turkeys? the squirrels?
haint ye got even a squirrel to show for your
day's work? speak you, John Dawson; what's the
matter with the boy? He be n't drunk, be he?”

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“It's a matter of five hours, Mother Stumpers,
since either of us touched a drop,” replied one of
the men briefly, and he, too, gave a furtive glance
at the old firelock.

“Well—well, why don't ye go on? is any one
dead? are ye all distraught? Jackson Phillips,
you—you've felt the back of my hand across yer
chaps, afore now, for yer imperance—I know ye,
man, and that sober possum-look means something!
Do ye think to gum it over me afore this strannger—
speak up, and that at onst, or it'll be the worst
for some of ye, or my name's not Melinda Washington
Stumpers!”

(I did not smile, reader, as you do, at Mrs. S.'s
sponsorial dignity; I did not dare to smile.)

“You know we wouldn't offend you, no how,
Mother Stumpers,” deprecatingly replied the man
whom she addressed as Phillips. “Hank's misfor
tun, you see, has made us dull-like, as it were, and—”

“And what in the name of Satan is his misfortun?”
interrupted the mother, now for the first time
moved with concern as well as anger.

“That's it—that's it, mammy,” cried Hank,
with something of alertness; “she's druv the very
nail on the head—Satan is at the bottom of all of it.”

“At the bottom of all of what?” screamed the
virago, and even as she spoke the ancient piece in
the corner, untouched by any one—without the
slightest movement of the lock—discharged itself
toward the cealing.

“At the bottom of the bar'l of my gun—he speaks
for himself,” replied Hank, moodily, while his

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mother started back and I sprang to my feet at the sudden
report so near me.

“Your gun must be foul,” I said, resuming my
seat, “very foul, to hang fire so long. I suppose
she made a flash in the pan when attempting to discharge
her just before entering.”

Stumpers looked vacantly at me, shook his head,
muttered something about he and his mother being
“ruinated,” and then more audibly said, “Strannger,
you may have more book larnin than me, but I tell
ye, onst for all, that Satan's got into that gun!”

And bang! at that moment again went the gun,
as if to prove that his words were sooth.

“This is certainly most extraordinary,” I exclaimed,
as I rose to examine the gun for myself.

“You'd better not touch her strannger,” cried
Phillips.

“I tell you she's got Satan in her,” repeated
Hank.

I looked at Dawson inquiringly.

“Fact! strannger, every word of it. Hank's not
been able to get that gun off since noon; but about
a hundred rod afore we struck the clearing, she begun
firing of her own accord, just as you see—”

Bang!—Bang! went the gun.

“I told you that Satan was in her!” ejaculated
Hank.

“That's the way with her,” said Phillips, in a
tone of solemn sadness; “sometimes she'll not speak
for a matter of ten minutes or so; sometimes she
gives two little short barks like those; and sometimes
she gives a regular rip-snorter—

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