Chapter 19

Seeing the angry and ireful Spirit determined upon mischief, the chief departed, his bosom filled with sorrow, to summon the beautiful and beloved Spirit of Snow to the presence of the being who claimed her as his wife. He found her not unapprised of the dreadful fate which awaited her. Bathed in tears, her head reclined on the shoulder of the doting Teton, sat the lovely Spirit, her eyes now bent on him she loved so fondly, and now on their beautiful children, who slept all unconscious of the grief which wrung their fond mother's bosom. At length, with sudden resolution, she rose from her seat, and, folding the beloved warrior to her breast in one long and passionate embrace, she left the cabin.

"I have found thee at last," exclaimed the angry ruler of tempests, as the beautiful woman approached him. "Thou, who fledst from my arms to those of an earthly paramour, how dost thou like the exchange?"

"So well," replied the trembling Spirit, "that if thou wilt consent to let me remain where I am, I will never return to thee or to my clime of snows."

"Base-minded woman! And wilt thou abandon the glorious destiny of ruling the elements for the mean one of sharing in the labours of a Teton cabin?"

"The destiny which thou deemest glorious may be well abandoned for that which thou holdest mean. However well it may once have suited me to dwell in the bleak climes of the north, and be the mistress of the flaky dew, it now more glads my heart to share in the labours of a Teton cabin. I know, from my own brief experience, that the fevers and agues of mortality are to be preferred a thousand times to the unvarying, unchanging, existence of a Spirit without passion, feeling, sympathy, love, or tenderness. I pray thee let me remain as I am, and where I am."

"And so thou preferrest the earth to the sky; sensibility to insensibility; a humble Teton warrior to the mighty Spirit of the clime over which thou wast created to exert thyself a wondrous influence?"

"Let it not displease thee that I do. I have become in love with the pains of human life, and delighted with the anxieties which cling to it, as moist snow clings to a pine in the warm spring."

"Becoming a mortal being thou must die."

"I shall first have lived."

"Thy spirit--"

"Disincumbered of its earthly load, will return to its former starry mansion."

"Once more I ask, dost thou prefer to remain on earth? Rough and noisy though I be, yet will I not exert force to compel thee back to thine own region."

"I would remain. In my cabin is a Teton warrior--him I love; there are ten beautiful children at his side--the Spirit of Snow fed them with her own milk--the Teton warrior is their father. Thou canst not, passionless as thou art, know my feelings; but, believe me, that to part me from them is to banish all peace and joy from my soul, and to drive me into a depth of affliction, which will last till time shall be no more. Nor deem that aught save death can weaken the force of those affections which are now kindled in my bosom."

"I see, I see; and, but that stern pride forbids it, I, too, would, throw off the state of a ruler of tempests and wintry winds, to become the master of a cabin in one of the green vales of the earth, to gather around me children like thine, and to feel the hopes and fears, which have rendered thee so unlike the being thou wast. But we shall meet again. When thou wert invested with the attributes of mortality, death was also appointed to thee--a few years, and thou wilt quit the house of clay, again to rove free and unconfined among the glittering stars, and through the endless realms of space."

With these words, the Spirit of Storms took his departure from the land of the Tetons, and none ever saw him more. Released from his presence, joy again took possession of the bosom of the beautiful wife of the Teton, and the traces of tears were soon removed from her fair cheek. His assurance had quieted her soul, and fear was no longer an inhabitant of her bosom. She no longer sought the gloomy privacy of the cabin at the approach of night, but joined the dance of maidens, herself the most sportive of them all. Every season added a little stranger to the laughing and merry groupe, till twenty and seven sons and daughters were in the cabin of the Teton Swift Foot. Old age came over the husband, but not the wife. When his knees had grown feeble, and his voice faint, and his eye dim, and his heart craven, her faculties were in full perfection--her cheek still wore the blush of youth, and her step was lighter than the fawn of four moons. And, if time had abated nothing of her wondrous beauty and sprightliness, neither had it of her goodness, and kind attention to the wants of the poor Indians. Her care that they should want for nothing was as much exerted as ever--still their hunting-grounds and their rivers were the best stocked of any in all the land, and their war expeditions for forty seasons were invariably blest with success. Let not my brother wonder, then, if the Tetons almost forgot their duty to the Great Spirit, in their affection for the good being whom they deemed his fatherly care had sent among them.

At length, the Teton warrior, overcome by years, lay down and died. Then it was that deep grief visited the bosom of his still beautiful and still youthful wife. In vain, did the priest remind her that all must die--she would not be consoled. They dressed the body of the deceased warrior in his robe of fur, and then laid it, together with his spear, and bow, and war-hatchet, and sheaf of arrows, and pipe, and camp-kettle, in the house of death(4). While they were rendering the last service to the body of the Swift Foot, the wife sat motionless, looking on--when they had finished, she rose, and spoke to them thus:--

"We have now dwelt together, Tetons, for forty summers, and, during that time, there has been a pure, unclouded sky in our village. We have been friends, and so we will part. I cannot abide longer on the earth; I go to take the soul of my beloved husband to the mansion prepared for him in my own bright clime of the north. My children I leave to the care of the brave warriors and good hunters, bidding one to protect, and the other to feed them, till the Good Spirit sees fit to deprive them of the life he has given. Be this your recompense.

"It is known that, among all the red men of the forest, none are so fond of dancing, and none so excellent therein, as the Tetons. Ask any man, or any woman, of any nation, who best and most gracefully perform the War Dance, and the Scalp Dance, and the Calumet Dance, and the Dance of Green Corn, and he will answer, 'The Burntwood Tetons.' Now, if ye will continue to watch over my helpless children till their days of helplessness are past, ye shall continue to dance even after death--the spirit released from the flesh shall still caper as merrily as ever over the clear skies of the north. Those skies were once mine--to-morrow I shall resume dominion over them."

"It is cold, very cold in those regions," said the great chief. "The dance will not keep us warm, and our way will be impeded by the ice and snow."

"Neither shall be an impediment," answered the beautiful Spirit. "I will cause my little people to kindle huge fires, the flames of which, flashing over the northern skies, shall at once dissipate the flaky mists, and be a light to the steps of the dancers. And thus shall it be. When a Teton departs, his spirit shall go to the northern skies, which henceforth shall be the Teton's Paradise. There shall he enjoy, uninterrupted, his beloved pastime; and, till time shall be no more, have full permission to foot it as joyfully as he did on earth."

These were the concluding words of the Spirit-wife. When they looked up she was gone from their sight, no one knew whither. Presently there was a slight fall of snow, which soon, however, again gave place to the beams of the warm and refreshing sun. They never saw her again. They never saw her again, but they forgot neither her nor her wishes. The children she left were adopted by the nation, and became in time so many of them fathers and mothers, that, at this day, half the tribe are descended from them.

My brother asks, if the good Spirit-wife kept her promise to the Tetons. She did, as he will see, if he will but look at the northern skies in the time of summer and autumn. He will then see flashing over the face of the broad heavens the flames which the good people kindle to thaw the frosty air, and thus remove the impediments which exist to the merry dance of the souls of those Tetons, who have repaired to the Happy Abode. He will hear very plain the laugh[A] of the sprightly dancers; and frequently, when the air is very clear, he will see their nimble forms dancing up and down the moonbeams. Who would not wish that his spirit might be permitted to go to THE TETON'S PARADISE?

[Footnote A: The _aurora borealis_, or "northern light," as my readers know, is usually attended by a whizzing sound, somewhat resembling laughter.]

Brother, this is no lie.

NOTES.

(1) _String of Wampum_.--p. 293.

A party of Indians, intending to go to war, first observe a rigorous and protracted fast. When the fast is ended, he who is to command it assembles his friends, and, holding in his hand a string of wampum, makes a speech, in which the causes of war, and the injuries and insults which justify it, are fully and artfully set forth. When he has finished, he lays the collar on the ground, and he who takes it up, by so doing, declares himself embarked in the same expedition.

(2) _Eat up the Nation_.--p. 294.

This is a frequent figure of the Indian orator, when endeavouring to inflame the passions of his hearers. It signifies that a war is to be waged against the nation respecting whom the "talk" is held, in the most outrageous and destructive manner. When they wish to engage in their quarrel an ally who is not present, they send a belt of wampum, with an invitation to him to drink the "blood" or "the broth of the flesh of their enemies." It is not to be inferred from this, that the North American Indians are _Anthropophagi_. It is undoubtedly an allegorical manner of speaking, with frequent examples of which the Scriptures furnish us, _e.g._ Psalms xxvii. 2.

(3) _The stormy Lake of Michabou._--p. 294.

The Indians believe that Michabou, the God of the Waters, formed Lake Superior to serve as a nursery for beavers. The rocks at the _Sault de Saint Marie_, or Falls of St. Mary, according to the tradition of the Indians, are the remains of a causeway made by the God in order to dam up the waters of the rivers, which supply this great lake. At the time he did this, he lived, they add, at Michillimackinac, _i.e._ a great place for turtles, pronounced Mak-i-naw. He it was who taught the ancestors of the Indians to fish, and invented nets, of which he took the idea from the spider's web. Very many of the northern tribes recognise this same divinity, but the Hurons alone assign Lake Superior as the place of his residence.

(4) _House of Death._--p. 302.

The funeral customs of the Indians are very various, and all are sufficiently curious to merit a place in this note. I have only space for a few. The first extract relates rather to the place of deposit for the dead, than to the dead themselves. It describes the common cemetery of the tribes living west of the Rocky Mountains.

"Among the Pishquitpaws, who live beyond the Rocky Mountains, the place in which the dead are deposited is a building about sixty feet long, and twelve feet wide, and is formed by placing in the ground poles or forks six feet high, across which a long pole is extended the whole length of the structure. Against this ridge-pole are placed broad boards and pieces of canoes in a slanting direction, so as to form a shed. It stands east and west, and neither of the extremities are closed. On entering the western end we observed a number of bodies, wrapped carefully in leather robes, and arranged in rows on boards, which were then covered with mats. This was the part destined for those who had recently died: a little further on, bones half decayed were scattered about, and in the centre of the building was a large pile of them heaped promiscuously on each other. At the western extremity was a mat on which twenty-one sculls were placed in a circular form, the mode of interment being first to wrap the body in robes, and as it decays the bones are thrown into the heap, and the sculls placed together. From the different boards and pieces of canoes which form the vault were suspended on the inside fishing-nets, baskets, wooden bowls, robes, skins, trenchers, and trinkets of various kinds, obviously intended as offerings of affection to deceased relatives. On the outside of the vault were the skeletons of several horses, and great quantities of bones were in the neighbourhood, which induced us to believe that these animals were most probably sacrificed at the funeral rites of their masters."--_Lewis and Clarke_, ii, 24.

It was not worth while for these travellers to imply a doubt that those animals were sacrificed. The custom obtains among all the tribes of the Western continent, from Labrador to Cape Horn, of sacrificing the most valuable animals, on the death of their master. In this they are actuated by a common belief that the deceased will need their assistance in the land of spirits. See the various traditions.

The Choctaws, a tribe living near the gulf of Mexico, till very late years had a practice similar to that of the Pishquitpaws, of exposing their dead upon scaffolds, till such time as the flesh was decayed; it was then separated from the bones by a set of old men, who devoted themselves to this custom, and were called "bone-pickers;" after which, the bones were interred in some place set apart for the purpose.

With the tribes living far towards the northern lakes, the ceremonies and superstitions which formerly preceded inhumation, were these:--Charlevoix, the best writer that ever treated of the Indians, is my authority. "As soon as the sick person expires, the place is filled with mournful cries. The dead body, dressed in the finest robe, with the face painted, the arms, and all that belonged to the deceased, by his side, is exposed at the door of the cabin, in the posture it is to be laid in the tomb; and this posture is the same in many places as that of a child in the mother's womb. The custom of some nations is for the relations to fast to the end of the funeral; and all this interval is passed in tears and cries, in treating their visiters, in praising the dead, and in mutual compliments. In other places, they hire women to weep, who perform their part punctually: they sing, they dance, they weep, without ceasing, always keeping time: but these demonstrations of a borrowed sorrow do not prevent what nature requires from the relations of the deceased.

"It appears that they carry the body without ceremony to the place of interment, at least I find no mention made about it in any relation: but, when it is in the grave, they take care to cover it in such a manner that the earth does not touch it. It lies as in a little cave lined with skin, much richer and better adorned than their cabins. Then they set up a post on the grave, and fix on it every thing that may shew the esteem they had for the deceased. They sometimes put on it his portrait, and every thing that may serve to shew to passengers who he was, and the finest actions of his life. They carry fresh provisions to the tomb every morning; and, as the dogs and other beasts do not fail to reap the benefit of it, they are willing to persuade themselves that these things have been eaten by the souls of the dead.

"When any one dies in the time of hunting, they expose his body on a very high scaffold, and it remains there till the departure of the troop, who carry it with them to the village. There are some nations who practice the same with regard to all their dead. The bodies of those who die in war are burnt, and their ashes brought back to be laid in the burying-place of their fathers. Others bury their dead in the woods, at the foot of a tree; or dry them, and keep them in chests, till the festival of the dead. In some places they observe an odd ceremony for those that are drowned or frozen to death. The savages believe, when these accidents happen, that the spirits are incensed, and that their anger is not appeased till the body is found. Then the preliminaries of tears, dances, songs, and feasts, being ended, they carry the body to the usual burying-place; or, if they are too far off, to the place where it is to remain till the festival of the dead. They dig a very large pit, and make a fire in it; then some young persons approach the corpse, cut out the flesh in the parts which had been marked by the master of the ceremonies, and throw them into the fire with the bowels. Then they place the corpse, thus mangled, in the place destined for it. During the whole operation, the women, especially the relations of the deceased, go continually around those that are at it, exhorting them to acquit themselves well of their employment, and put beads in their months, as we would give sugar-plums to children, to entice them to do what we desire."

The customs among some of the tribes, especially those who have had little intercourse with the white people, are substantially the same at this day. But, it has been the effect of their acquaintance with their conquerors to make them forget every thing laudable and praiseworthy, among which was their singular veneration for the dust of their ancestors. These now bury their dead with as few ceremonies as we observe in burying a dog.

Mackenzie's description of the funeral solemnities of the Knistenaux, who live further north than Charlevoix went, is something different from the above:--The funeral rites begin, like all other solemn solemnities, with smoking, and are concluded by a feast. The body is dressed in the best habiliments possessed by the deceased or his relations, and is then deposited in a grave lined with branches. Some domestic utensils are placed on it, and a kind of canopy erected over it. During this ceremony great lamentations are made, and the departed person is very much regretted; the near relations cut off their hair, pierce the fleshy part of their thighs with arms, knives, &c. and blacken their faces with charcoal. If they have distinguished themselves in war, they are sometimes laid on a kind of scaffolding; and I have been informed that women, as in the East, have been known to sacrifice themselves to the manes of their husbands. The whole of the property belonging to the deceased person is destroyed, and the relations take in exchange for their wearing apparel any rags that will cover their nakedness.--_Mackenzie_, p. xcix. _Journal_, 148.

The Delawares, and other Indians on the Atlantic coast, buried their dead after the following manner. Immediately after death, the corpse was dressed in a new suit, with the face and shirt painted red, and laid upon a mat or skin in the middle of the hut or cottage. The arms and effects of the deceased were then piled up near the body. In the evening, soon after sunset, and in the morning before day-break, the female relations and friends assembled round the corpse and mourned over it. Their lamentations were loud in proportion to the love and esteem they bore the deceased, or to his rank, or to the _pains he suffered in dying_. And they were repeated daily till his interment.

The burying-places of the Delawares were at some distance from the dwellings. The graves were generally dug by the old women, as the young people abhorred this kind of work. If they had a coffin, it was placed in the grave empty. Then the corpse was carried out, lying upon a linen cloth, full in view, that the finery and ornaments, with all the effects left by the deceased, might appear to advantage. The funeral was accompanied by as great a number of friends as could be collected. It was then let down into the coffin covered with the cloth. During the letting down of the corpse, the women set up a dreadful howl, but it was deemed a shame to weep. Yet, in silence and unobserved, they could not refrain from tears. It may be seen that they had partially conformed to the customs of the white people. The "coffin" and "linen cloth" were not Indian.

The funeral ceremonies of the tribes inhabiting New England were similar to the authentic part of those practised by the Delawares. Graves were dug and the body deposited therein, together with such utensils of cookery, and weapons of war, as it was deemed would be wanted by the spirits of the deceased in the world they were about to visit. They had one custom, however, which I did not observe among the southern tribes--that of placing weights on the grave to prevent the body from getting out again, and haunting its friends.

It will be seen from these various customs, that one belief is common to all the tribes scattered over the western continent--that of the existence in man of the spiritual essence which we call _soul_; of its flight after death to another and better world, variously located however; and of its being there actuated by the same wants and wishes, engaged in the same occupation and pursuits, and requiring the same means for the attainment of the same ends, as in this.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON: F. SHOBERL, JUN., LAZENBY COURT, LONG ACRE.