Chapter 8

There was once upon a time in the village of Keoxa, in the tribe of Wapasha, a young Indian woman, whose name was Winona, which means "the first-born." She was good and beautiful, and much beloved by all. She had conceived a strong attachment to a young hunter of her nation, who loved her as much as she loved him. They had frequently met, sometimes in the shady coverts of the wood, at others beneath the river's banks, but, according to the forms of Indian courtship, more frequently at the side of her couch, when all the village were at rest. They had confessed their love, and agreed to be united as soon as the consent of her family could be obtained. But, when he asked her of her parents, he was denied, and told that she was to become the wife of a warrior of distinction, who had sued for her. The warrior was a great favourite with the nation; he had acquired a distinguished name by the services he had rendered the village when it was attacked by the Chippewas; yet, notwithstanding all this, and the support which he received from her parents and brothers, Winona persisted in preferring the hunter. To all their loud commendations of the warrior, she replied that she loved another better; that she had made choice of a man, who, being a professed hunter, would spend his life with her, and secure to her comfort and subsistence, plenty of food, and abundant happiness: while the warrior would be constantly intent upon martial exploits, exposing her, if she staid at home, to the evils of want and hunger; if she accompanied him, to the dangers of defeat and death. Winona's expostulations were, however, of no avail; and her parents, having succeeded in driving away him she preferred to all the world, began to use harsh measures in order to compel her to marry the man of their choice. To all her entreaties that she might not be forced into a union with a man she did not love, they turned a deaf ear--to all her tears they were blind. She begged to be allowed to live a single life, and to spend her days watching the sleep, and preventing the cares, of her father and mother: they answered, No. Winona had at all times enjoyed a greater share in the affections of her family, and had been indulged more than is usual among Indian females. She had not been obliged to join in the labours of the field, nor in the more arduous of those within doors. She planted no corn, and the fire-wood and the buffalo's meat were brought home on other shoulders than hers. Being a favourite with her brothers, they expressed a wish that her consent to this union should be obtained by persuasive means, rather than that she should be compelled to it against her inclination. With a view to remove some of her objections, they took means to provide for her future maintenance, and presented to the warrior all that in their simple mode of life an Indian might covet. They furnished his cabin with the various implements used in Indian housewifery--the skins to form the bed, the boiling pot, and the roasting spit. About that time, a party was formed to ascend from the village to Lake Pepin, in order to lay in a store of the blue clay which is found upon its banks, and which is used by the Indians to adorn their persons. It was on the very day that they visited the lake that her brothers made their presents to the warrior. Encouraged by these fresh signs of their approbation, and inflamed by the beauties of the charming Indian girl, he again solicited her in the most passionate language to become his wife, but with the same ill success. Vexed at what they deemed an unjustifiable obstinacy on her part--for seldom does love among Indians urge to lengthened opposition on the part of the female--her parents remonstrated in strong language, and even used threats to compel her to obedience. They spoke, as parents always do, who have in view a husband to their liking, and care little for the peace and happiness of a daughter, so they see her possessed of what they covet. "Well," said Winona, "you will drive me to despair. I said I loved not the man of your choice, the warrior covered with the blood of peaceable women, and helpless children, and painted to resemble only those hideous things we see in sleep. I said I could not live with him and be his wife. I wished to remain a maiden--my father's daughter, and my brothers' sister--but you will not let me; you wish me to become a wife. You say you love me; that you are my father, my brothers, my relations, yet you have driven from my arms, and would now drive from my heart, the only man with whom I wish to be united--the only man I ever loved. You have persecuted him with wrongs; you have reviled and taunted him; you have compelled him to withdraw from the village. Alone, he now ranges through the gloomy and lonely forests, with no one to assist him, none to comfort him, none to spread his blanket, none to build his lodge, none to pound his corn. Yet, he was the man of my choice, the only beloved of my heart. Often have you taken me on your knee, and smoothed down my hair, and kissed my cheek, and said you loved me. Is this your love? But it appears that even this is not enough; you would have me do more--you would have me rejoice in the absence of my beautiful hunter. While yet his parting words are in my ear, the light of his eyes in remembrance beaming on me, and his tender promises all unforgotten, you wish me to unite with another man, with one whom I do not love, whose image comes before me but to make me weep and shudder. Since this is your love, let it be so; but soon you will have no daughter, sister, or relation, to torment with your false professions of friendship. I will go to the happy land of souls, where I shall be free from your threats and reproaches."

As she uttered these words, the canoe touched the shore in the immediate vicinity of the high precipitous crag of which a description has been before given. Heedless of her complaints, and wearied out with what they regarded as a most unreasonable repugnance, her parents at the moment decreed that Winona should that very day be united to the warrior. Her resolution was at once taken; it was such a one as could have been adopted only in a moment of deep love and deep despair. While all were engaged in busy preparations for the festival, she wound her way slowly to the top of the hill which overlooked the scene of their gay and mirthful doings. When she had reached the summit, boldly approaching the edge of the precipice, she called out with a loud voice to her friends below, upbraiding them with their cruelty to herself and her lover, and thanking the Good Spirit that had put it in her power to baffle their designs, and laugh at their tyranny. "You," said she, "were not satisfied with opposing my union with the man whom I had chosen; you endeavoured, by deceitful words, to make me faithless to him; but when you found me resolved to remain single, you dared to threaten me: you knew me not, if you thought that I could be terrified into obedience. Now, you are preparing the bridal feast, but you shall see how well I can defeat your designs." She then commenced a plaintive song of death, which ran thus:

WINONA'S DIRGE.

Adieu to these green vales, And to the pleasant shades, Where oft I sate and listened to the song Of birds at morn, and, in the evening hour, To that which gives the alarm, and bids the band Of Indian warriors grasp their spears. No more my ears shall hear those sounds, In this my father's land; The notes of singing-birds shall pass me by, And the soft sighing of the month of buds; But I shall hear no howl of wolves, Nor cry of famished bears, Nor hissing of envenomed snakes, Nor what more chills the heart, The tyranny of father, brothers, friends.

Nor shall I be compelled For ever to behold a hated face, And shudder at the voice of him who sleeps Beneath my blanket; Nor, when within my cabin, Young faces smile on old ones, shall I wish Another eye looked on their beaming cheeks; When the storms howl, I shall not think of one, Alone in the far forest, With none to spread his blanket, With none to build his lodge-- Cold, hungry, lonely, in the desert glen.

But I shall cross the sharp and fearful rock, And reach the dwelling-place of happy souls. No deeds shall bar me out. I never told a lie; Kind have I been to father and to mother. Returning from the hunt or field of war, His daughter handed him a lighted pipe; And she who gave her birth sat in the sun Upon her bench, beside the lodge's door, While young Winona baked the buffalo, And drew the crystal water from the stream.

And I shall go where there is peace, And where joy wakes for ever: There I shall meet my hunter; He shall build our lodge beside the murmuring stream, And thatch it with the vine, whose ripe, black grapes Shall hang adown in clusters; Our little babes shall pluck them. Warrior, I shall not be your wife-- Father, you have no daughter-- Brothers, your sister lies upon the earth, Cold, bleeding, lifeless, and too late you mourn!

The light wind which blew at the time wafted the bitter words of her mournful dirge to the spot where her friends were. They immediately rushed, some towards the summit of the hill to stop her, others to the foot of the precipice to receive her in their arms, while all with tears in their eyes entreated her to desist from her fatal purpose. Her father promised her that no compulsive measures should be resorted to, that she should marry or not as, she chose. Her brothers, who loved her with great affection, urged every thing that they thought likely to be of avail, but in vain. She was resolved, and, as she concluded the words of her song, she threw herself from the precipice, and fell at their feet, a corpse.

EXPEDITION OF THE LENNI LENAPES.

The Lenni Lenapes, who are the grandfather of nations[A], were quietly reposing in their lodges on the banks of a shallow and noisy river, that finds an outlet in the mighty waters beyond the great mountains, and far, very far, towards the setting sun. If my brother would see this river; if he would behold the cataract that impedes the progress of the Indian canoe; if he would witness the strife that takes place when the waters that are fresh first mingle with those that are salt, let him call together his youngest and stoutest warriors, the nimble of foot, and strong of heart--the faint and failing, the old and trembling, the weak and cowardly, will not do, for the path is beset with savage beasts and strong warriors, and hostile spirits. Let him load his women with much provision, and make his mocassins of tanned bear-skin, for many are the suns it will take to journey thither, and rocky is the path that leads to that far abode. Mountains must be crossed, which are covered with snow, and upon whose summits the clouds break as the mist rises from the Oniagarah[B]. The warriors, who shall be seen in its path, will not bow down their heads to the axe of the stranger, till their spears are broken, and their quivers are bare of arrows. Nor then will they die like women, but with songs of past glory and present defiance in their mouths. And the spirits will not be appeased unless they have many offerings, and there will be in their paths the Dread Destroyer of Deer[C], he who laughed at the avenging arrow of the Master of Life, and is gone to prey upon the moose of the Lake of the Woods.

[Footnote A: The greater part of the Indians of the Western Continent believe themselves descended from, or colonies of, the Lenni Lenapes, and hence give to that tribe the epithet, "grandfather." Several of the tribes have a tradition, that they came from beyond the Rocky Mountains.]

[Footnote B: Oniagarah, Niagara: the former is the Indian pronunciation of the name of that celebrated cataract.]

[Footnote C: See the note relating to the Mammoth in the tradition of "The Coming of Miquon."]

The Lenapes were living in their lodges, warring upon the Flatheads, feasting upon the salmon, and drinking the juice of the sacred bean[A], when it happened to one of their young warriors, that he dreamed a dream. Wangewaha, or the Hard Heart, though his years were but few, was one of the most celebrated chiefs of the nation. His days were but those of a young eagle; yet the bravest, even those who had watched the nut-tree from its sprout to its bloom, ranged themselves in battle under his faultless command, in the chase followed the ken of his eagle eye. He had struck more dead bodies, he had stolen more horses, he had taken more scalps, than any man of his nation. He could follow the trail of a glass snake from sun to sun, he could see the wake of a fish a fathom below the surface of the water. When he cast his eye upon a young maiden, she became his without a wrestle(1); when he told the revelations of the spirit of sleep, the aged men and wise councillors never called their truth in question, but acted upon them without reflection, believing them to be the voice of the Great Spirit, speaking through his favourite son. If he excelled in war and perilous pursuits, he excelled as much in those pastimes and games, wherewith the warrior in times of peace and rest beguiles the tedious hours. When Wangewaha struck the ball, its flight was above the soaring of the bird of morning, and he never rose from the game of bones(2) without giving proof that he was the favourite of heaven.

[Footnote A: Intoxicating bean.--See Long's First Expedition to the Rocky Mountains.]

It was a beautiful night in the month in which the Indians gather their first green corn, when, as the chief lay sleeping on his bed of skins, with the mother of his youngest child on his arm, he saw strange things in his slumbers. He dreamed that the bands of the Lenni Lenapes had taken the bones of their fathers from the burying places of the nation, loaded their women with pemmican and dried corn, folded up their tents, and departed towards the regions of their great father, the sun. He saw mountains, whose summits breathed fire, and others, which were the abode of the snow spirit--now noisy with the war of the Holy People above the clouds, and now with the hissing of the Great Serpent in the deep, awful, and inaccessible valleys of the bright old inhabitants.[A] They overcame, he thought, the impediments of fire and storm; they charmed away the wrath of the evil spirits, and looked at length from the eastern ridge of those mighty hills upon the interminable glades and prairies spread out in their shade. Onward they went, he thought, till at length they saw rolling before them a mighty river, upon whose banks abode a nation of warriors, whose size was much greater than that of the Lenape, and who dwelt behind hills of their own making, whence they would make incursions into the territories of the neighbouring tribes. Before him stood one of the maidens of the land. She was beautiful as a straight tree, as a meadow of flowers, as a tree covered with blossoms, as a clear sky lit up with stars. Her voice was sweeter than the notes of the Mocking-Bird[B], and her eye brighter and softer than the eye of the mountain-goat. She wore a cloak made of the tender bark of the mulberry-tree, interlaced with the white feathers of the swan, and the gay plumage of the snake-bird, and the painted vulture. Strings of shells depended from her ancles, and flowers were braided into her hair. When she spoke to the young Lenape, it was with a soft voice, as if it would assure him, that the heart which dwelt within was as gentle as that voice, and as mild as that eye. He thought he wooed that maiden to be his wife, but, when she would have become such, and he would have pressed to his bosom the lovely flower of the giant people, there only appeared a little white dove which flew away, and nestled in the branches of the great medicine trees[C].

[Footnote A: See the tradition, entitled "The Valley of the Bright Old Inhabitants."]

[Footnote B: When an Indian wishes to express his admiration of music, he likens it to the notes of the Mocking-Bird. When the Winnabagoes visited Philadelphia, in the winter of 1828, they went to the Chesnut-street theatre, to hear Mrs. Knight sing: one of the chiefs, wishing to testify his delight, plucked an eagle's feather, and sent it to her by the box-keeper, with the message, that "she was a mocking-bird squaw."--_American paper._]

[Footnote C: The _physic-nut_, or Indian olive. The Indians, when they go in pursuit of deer, carry this fruit with them, supposing that it has the power of charming or drawing that creature to them.]

Then the dream of the warrior took another direction, and he had visions, and saw sights, and the phantoms of things more congenial to his disposition than even the smiles of beautiful maidens. He heard, in his sleep, the shrill war-cry of his nation, among whose foremost warriors he stood; and his ears were open to a loud shout of defiance from the enemy. He saw himself and his nation victorious, the Great River crossed, and the last canoe of his enemies committed in flight to its rapid bosom. The beautiful maiden became his wife. Again his course was onward like a torrent unchecked, and again other mountains opposed his course; but nothing offers insurmountable obstacles to the ardent spirit of an Indian warrior. He stands on the sunny brink of that mountain, and sees the beautiful lands spread out before his eye. A voice speaks to him from the hollow wind, "Warrior of the Lenni Lenape, how likest thou the land which I place before thee? The rivers are beautiful--are they not? and yet thou canst not see, as I see, their better part--the sleek and juicy fish which glide through them, or the fowls which feed on their margin. The forests are tall--are they not? but thine eyes do not pierce their glades as mine do, to behold the stately bucks which browze in their flowery copses, or the gay birds which sing their soft songs of love and joy, perched on the lofty branches of the chesnut and the hickory. I have given these lands to thy tribe, and thou shalt continue to occupy them till the coming of Miquon."

Wangewaha, or the Hard Heart, awoke from his dream, and calling together the priests and conjurors of the nation, related to them the strange things he had seen and heard in his sleep. The expounders of dreams gave it as their opinion, that the Great Spirit had bidden the familiar genius of the warrior to reveal to him the work to which he had ordained the Lenapes. They were unanimous in this opinion. Yet they advised, that the Master of Life should be consulted by sacrifices, after the due fasts should have been kept, and that his assistance should be supplicated by songs and dances(3), as they were ever wont to be. The advice of the expounders of dreams was followed, and the priests prepared for the fast. First they feasted themselves, and the chiefs, and warriors. The remains of the feast were then removed to the outside of the camp, and the crumbs carefully swept out, till the cabin, in which the fast was to be held, was as clean as the brow of a grassy hill after a summer rain. Then it was proclaimed aloud by the head priest, that the warriors and chiefs of the Lenape nation should enter the cabin, and observe the fast, and that the women and children, and all who are uninitiated in war, who had never hung up a scalp-lock in the temple of the Wahconda, nor offered a victim to the Great Star, should keep apart from those who had done both. When those who had bound themselves to observe the sacred ceremonial had entered the holy square appointed for the fast, a man armed with the weapons of war was stationed at each of the corners, to keep out every thing except the initiated. If a dog had but dared to breathe upon the sacred spot, he had met the fate of a thievish Flathead.

Then the Lenapes drank, as is their wont, of the root[A], which purges away their evil and cowardly inclinations and propensities, making them tellers of nothing but truth, bold and strong in war, cunning and dexterous in the theft of horses, patient in scarcity, and beneath the torments of the victor. The while they filled the air with loud invocations to the great Wahconda, and with petitions to him, that, in the succeeding sacrifice, he would reveal the meaning of the dream which had so filled their minds. Lest the unexpiated sins of the uninitiated, the women and the children, should stifle their own purer voices, the priest sent by the hands of the oldest of the women a portion of the small green leaves of the beloved weed[B] to the sinners. And thus, for three suns, the priests and warriors of the Lenapes ate no food, but mortified their sinful appetites to please the Master of Life.

[Footnote A: Button snakeroot.]

[Footnote B: Tobacco.]

The fast being over, and the expiation made, according to the customs of the nation, the multitude assembled to the feast and sacrifice. Proclamation was made, that, the holy rites being performed, it was lawful for the hungry to taste food. But first came the sacrifice. The deer's flesh was laid on the burning coals, and the warriors who had fasted danced their most solemn dance around the hearth of sacrifice. The priest most reputed for intimacy with the Great Spirit, he who had oftenest, by his incantations, procured plentiful crops of maize, who had oftenest charmed the bisons to the unsheltered prairies, called the deer from the tangled coverts, and the horses from the hills of the Men of Black Garments[A], and given to the enemies of the Lenape the heart of the bird that runs low among the grass[B], arose, and began his hymn of supplication:

SONG OF THE LENAPE PRIEST.

Wangewaha dreamed a dream, The Hard Heart slept, When to him came the Manitou of Night, And visions danced before his eyes. What did Wangewaha see? This he saw.

He saw the valiant warriors of his land, Assembled as for warfare; wives and babes Were at their feet; the aged on their sheds. The dogs were harnessed; The bones of many generations Were taken from the burial places, where They had reposed for countless suns; The food was all prepared, Dried corn and pemmican, And folded tents proclaimed that the Lenapes Had shod their mocassins for lengthened travel.

Dread Master of the earth, Wahconda of the thunder, and the winds, Who bid'st the earth shake, and the hills be thick With hail and snow, Shall we arise, and take Our father's relics from the burial shed? Shall we depart, and wilt thou guide Our feet to fairer lands? Does success await us, In this, our distant pilgrimage? Will these, our young men, strike and overcome? Shall we possess the lands the dreamer saw? And will their maidens look with favouring eyes Upon our warriors? Answer us, Spirit of the Mighty Voice!

[Footnote A: The Spaniards.]

[Footnote B: The partridge, a common figure with the Indians to express cowardice.]