Chapter 7

With the maiden on his arm, all wounded and bleeding, his own body lacerated and torn, yet unyielding as ever, does the brave Moscharr pursue his flight. But he feels as if the moment of death was near at hand. Exhausted by his almost superhuman efforts to escape, he finds a weakness and trembling stealing over his limbs, and he faints, and falls with his lovely burthen to the earth, at the very moment of victory and safety. The Manitou has reached him, and, with a fiend-like laugh on his horrid face, bends exultingly forward to seize his helpless victims. One hand he lays upon the tender arm of the forest-flower, the other is in the hair of the lover. But, as he bends forward, a sudden jerk of the Iroquois, occasioned by returning life, draws him unwittingly over the line which marks the boundaries of his kingdom and sway. In a moment--in a breath--ere the eye could have winked, or the spirit thought--multitudes of bright beings start up from each nook, and dell, and dingle--from field and flood. The deep space, the rocks above them, below them, at their side, the air above and around them, as far as the eye can reach, is filled with beneficent spirits. "He is ours!" they shout; "he is ours! He has passed from the region over which he had sway; he has left the dominions and powers over which he held rule. He is ours! he is ours! Not in vain did we leave our verdant bowers in the distant Lake of the Thousand Islands, to hasten to the succour of the maiden flower of the forest and her brave and faithful lover. It was the Great Spirit that inspired us to come hither, that we might save from death, and what were far worse, the beautiful betrothed of the valiant Moscharr. He is ours! he is ours! the Manitou is ours! Now launch your light barks, brothers--launch your light barks! The skiffs that brought us hither must be moored in the calm bays of our dear island before the broad sun looks over the tops of the eastern hills. But first we must punish our ruthless foe. Let us inflict on him the fate he threatened to inflict on the beauteous maiden--let us bind him and throw him down these rugged rocks into the wave that rolls furiously below! He is ours! he is ours!"

At once--at the conclusion of their song of triumph--a thousand bright forms sprung upon the prostrate and powerless Manitou, and bound and dragged him to the steep. And while again arose their wild but melodious cry, "He is ours! he is ours!" they launched him into the thundering torrent below, which swept his mangled and lifeless body into utter oblivion.

When the destruction of the fiend was accomplished, the beautiful spirit-bird, which, while the deed of his death was doing, sat eyeing them intently from a broken crag above their heads, rose from its perch, and, after dropping upon the pair, from his radiant wings, showers of light as the tokens of the love of its Master for them, soared back to the skies whence it came. The happy Moscharr and his loved Mekaia then accompanied the friendly spirits, who had assisted in the overthrow of the bad Manitou, to their home in the beautiful Lake of the Thousand Islands. The pair were welcomed with songs and rejoicings to the spirit shores, and loud were the revels, and boisterous the mirth, of its little inhabitants. Triumphs were made for them, mingled with rejoicings, at the downfall of their long-feared and much hated foe. And when they had displayed their love for the pair, by all the means within their power--dancing, feasting, and kind speech--they dismissed them to their homes, with many blessings upon their heads, and invocations of the Good Spirit to protect and prosper them. The brave Moscharr and his beautiful bride soon reached the home of his people, and lived to see their children's children listen with mute astonishment to the tale of the escape of their father's parents from the Manitou of the Cataract.

NOTES.

(1) _Beautiful bird._--p. 104.

The Spirit-Bird or the Wakon Bird is the Indian bird of paradise. It is held in the utmost veneration by the Indians as the peculiar bird of the Great Spirit. The name they have given it is expressive of its superior excellence, and the veneration they have for it; the Wakon Bird being, in their language, the bird of the Great Spirit. It is nearly the size of a swallow, of a brown colour, shaded about the neck with a bright green; the wings are of a darker brown than the body; its tail is composed of four or five feathers, which are three times as long as its body, and which are beautifully shaded with green and purple. It carries this fine length of plumage in the same manner as a peacock does, but it is not known whether it ever raises it into the erect position which that bird sometimes does. The Naudowessies consider it of superior rank to any other of the feathered creation.

(2) _Louder than the thunder of the Spirits Bay of Lake Huron._--p. 105.

Nearly half-way between Saganaum Bay and the north-west corner of Lake Huron, lies a Bay, which is called Thunder Bay. The Indians, who have frequented these parts from time immemorial, and every European traveller that has passed through it, have unanimously agreed to call it by this name, on account of the continual thunder they have always observed here. Whilst Carver was making over it a passage which lasted near twenty-four hours--it thundered and lightened during the greatest part of the time to an excessive degree. It is difficult to account for the phenomenon--perhaps the organic structure of the neighbouring cliffs invites the concentration of the electric fluid at this spot.

THE ISLAND OF EAGLES.

At a short distance below the Falls of St. Anthony, there is a small rocky island, covered with huge trees, oak, pine, and cypress, its water-fretted shores and steep cliffs formed of ragged rocks, against which the waves of the cataract dash and foam in vain endeavours to overwhelm it. This little island, so annoyed by the mighty and wrathful fiends who sit in that surge, is famous throughout the Indian nations for being the abode of the spirits of the warriors of the Andirondacks--a tribe which no longer exist--who, once upon a time, many ages ago, warring against the spirits of the cataract, were completely overthrown, and by the power of their enemies transformed into eagles. As a punishment, they were bidden to dwell for ever on that misty, foggy, and noisy island; doomed to a nicer perception of hearing than belongs to mortals, that their fate might be the more awful. If my brother wishes to hear the tradition, let him open wide the doors of his understanding, and be silent.

The tribe of the Andirondacks were the mightiest tribe of the land--neither in numbers nor in valour had they their equal--their rule stretched from the broad Lake Huron to the river of the Osages, from the Alleghany to the Mississippi. All the tribes which dwelt in their neighbourhood were compelled to bow down their heads and pay them tribute. The Hurons sent them beaver-skins; the Eries wove them wampum(1); even the Iroquois, that haughty and warlike nation, who lorded it over their eastern neighbours with the ferocity of wolves, bowed to those mighty warriors, the Andirondacks, whose number was greater than that of the flights of pigeons in the month before the snows, and who wielded spears, and bent bows, and shouted their war-cry with more power than any other tribe or people in the land. Some of the more distant tribes, to secure themselves against invasion, sent ambassadors with the pipe of peace wrapped in soft furs as a present; others offered their most beautiful women for wives to the "lords of the land"--all, by various means, and in various ways, testified their inability to cope with them in war, and their anxiety to become friends and neighbours. If the proud Andirondacks granted the boon of peace, it was always with some hard condition annexed to it; not always did a favour granted by them prove a favour in the end.

So long and uninterrupted a course of prosperity begot pride and arrogance in the bosom of the Andirondacks, and they forgot the Being who had bestowed so many blessings upon them, making their wives fertile as a vine in a rich soil, giving them victory over all their enemies, and health, and bounteous harvests, and successful hunts. They paid no more worship to that Great Being; no more offered him the juicy fruits of their hunt; no more ascended the high hills at the rising or setting of the sun, with their heads anointed with clay, to pour out their souls in the song of gratitude for past, or in a prayer of supplication for future, favours; they no more scarified their bodies in deprecation of his anger, but, believing themselves--vain fools!--able to do without his aid, they shook off their duty and allegiance to him, and bade him, if not in words at least in their deeds, defiance. Pride now possessed their souls, and hardness their hearts.

It need not be told my brother that the Great Spirit is slow to anger. Knowing his power to crush with a wink of his eye every living creature; to rend asunder the mightiest hills, yea, shake to its centre the very earth with a puff of his breath; he is loth to put forth his powers or to call into action the whirlwinds of his wrath. He suffers men to revile him long before he attempts to punish them; he permits them to raise the finger of defiance many times before he strikes it down, and the tongue to utter many a scornful word before he dooms it to the silence of death. It is so with the creatures of this world, as my brother must know. The strongest man--he who feels most confident of his power to repel aggression, and to command respect and obedience, is slowest to provocation, and, when excited to anger, the easiest to be soothed and calmed. The prairie-dog oftener shows his teeth than the wolf; the imbecile adder than the death-dealing rattlesnake. And my pale-faced brother has told us the wondrous tale, that, in his own land beyond the Great Waters, the mighty animal which is called the King of Beasts is, save only when he lacks food, as mild as the dove or the song-sparrow. And thus it was with the Great Spirit, as regarded the scoffing and wickedness of the Andirondacks. Long he resisted the importunities of the subordinate Manitous, that the haughty tribe might be punished for their insolence; long he waited with the hope that their eyes might be opened, and repentance seize their hearts, and amendment ensue. He waited in vain, each day they grew worse, until at length they brought down upon their heads the vengeance which could be no longer delayed.

There was among the Andirondacks a youth who, from the moment of his birth, was the favourite of the being who rules the world. While yet an unfledged bird, his words were the words of grey-headed wisdom; while yet a boy his arm was the arm of a strong man, his eye the eye of a cool man, and his heart like the heart of a brave man. He was as cool as a warrior who has lived to be aged in scenes of war. While he sat in his cradle of woven willow, his father chanced to speak in his hearing of an expedition which the Braves were about to undertake against the distant Coppermines, who had their lodges on the skirts of the sea of eternal ice. The wise child bade the father call the chiefs and counsellors of the nation around him, and to them he said, "You will not succeed in this war. The Coppermines dwell in the regions of great cold; before they can be met, icy hills and frozen lakes, and stormy winds and bleak tempests, must be encountered. If you meet them, success would be doubtful, for they are on their own hills, with nerves fitted to endure the searching cold, and possessed of that which the Andirondacks want--a thorough knowledge of every path that crosses their snow-clad vales and ice-bound waters. Stay at home, Braves, help your women to plant corn, and cut up the buffalo-meat, rather than go upon an expedition from which you will never return. Do I not see the torturing fires lighted, and Braves wearing the Andirondack mocassins bound to the stake of death? Do not mine ears hear a death-song in the Andirondack tongue? And are not these fearless sounds which come to mine ears the cries of the vulture and the wolf, fighting for the remains of a human carcase, which hath the Andirondack tuft of hair? Stay at home, Andirondacks, help your women to plant corn, and cut up the buffalo-meat, rather than go upon an expedition from which you will never return."

But the young and ardent warriors said this was the speech of a boy, and they would not listen to them. They said that, were the words of Piskaret the words of a man, they might hearken to them, but was he, who sat in his willow cradle, a fit counsellor to gray-headed sages, or even to young Braves, who had eaten the bitter root, and put on new war-shoes, and fasted for six suns, and been made men. In vain did the boy assure them that his _medicine_, the Great White Owl, had revealed to him many strange things, and among others this--that if the Andirondacks engaged in a war against the Coppermines, the wrath of the Great Spirit, whose worship they had forsaken, would be upon them, and of those who went not one should ever return. They laughed at his words, treating them as they would the song of a bird that has flown over. They bound on their mocassins, and, taking their spears, and bows and arrows, bade adieu to the land of their fathers' bones. Did these valiant youths return, and did the words of the prophet-boy fall to the ground? Let the wolf, and the vulture, and the mountain-cat, answer the question. They will tell my brother that their voracious tribes held a feast in the far country of the Coppermines, and that the remains of that feast were a huge heap of human bones. Were they the bones of Andirondacks? They were, and thus were the prophetic words of the wise boy rendered true, and his reputation was established throughout the land.

And when years came over him, and the fire of early manhood beamed in his eye, the same signs of his being favoured of Heaven were displayed. He needed no practice to enable him to conquer in all the sports and exercises which are indulged in by the boys of his nation. He went beyond them in all which bespoke possession of the skill and courage necessary to make a patient and expert hunter, or a brave and successful warrior. In the game of archery, his arrow was ever nearest the clout, and in hurling the spear, his oftenest clove asunder the reed which was fixed as the mark. Ere he had seen fifteen harvestings of the maize, he could throw the stoutest man of the tribe in the wrestle, and his feet in the race were swifter than the deer in its flight from the steps of the red hunter. When grey-headed men assembled in the council to deliberate upon the affairs of the tribe, their invasions, or their projected removals to other hunting-grounds, they asked "Where is the wise boy?" If he were not present, he was sent for, and no determination was made till he came, and had delivered his thoughts. And thus grew up the young Piskaret, till he had reached his twentieth spring.

There was in the neighbouring nation of Ottawas a maiden who was as much celebrated for her beauty, and her charms, and her wit, as the Andirondack youth was for strength, and wisdom, and prudence. Her Indian name was Menana, which means the Daughter of the Flood. She had reached the sixteenth summer of her residence among the Ottawas, the gentlest and lightest hearted, the mildest and sweetest maiden, that ever gazed on the pale full moon, or the glittering stars, or listened to the song of the sparrow, or the waterfall. She knew how to do every thing that was beautiful, or useful. If you saw a piece of gorgeously dyed wampum, or a robe curiously plaited of the bark of the mulberry, or the feathers of the canieu or war-eagle, you needed not ask who did it--you might be sure it was Menana. Her voice was the sweetest thing ever heard, her face the most beautiful ever seen--the first had in it the melody of birds, with the expression they can never have till they are gifted with the reason given to man--the last--but what is so beautiful as the face of a beautiful woman! And then her laugh was as joyous as a dance of warriors after a great victory, and her foot was the speediest foot that ever brushed the dew from the grass. Every body loved her, and she loved every body. So kind, and so good, and so sweet-tempered, and so beautiful a maiden, was never known among the Ottawas, famed as they are throughout the land for kind, and good, and sweet-tempered, and beautiful maidens.

She was not the daughter of an Ottawa woman, or any other woman, nor was her father an Ottawa man, or any other man. She was the daughter of the mighty cataract. The moon in which she came to the land of the Ottawas was the moon in which the forest trees put forth their earliest buds, and the blooming takes place of the little blue flower, which our forest maidens love to twine with their hair, and our forest boys to gather as the harbinger of returning warmth, and joy, and gladness. She came not at first to the village of the Ottawas in the perfect shape of a human being. It was many years before that, one morning, as the head warrior of the nation went out, as was his wont, to look abroad on the early sky, he found sitting at his door a little creature of a form such as he had never beheld, nor ever dreamed of. Woman she seemed from her waist upward, but fish or rather two fishes below. Her face was that of a most beautiful maiden in the charming hours when she begins to dream of tall youths; her eyes were blue as the deepest tinge of the water, and mild as a summer morning, her teeth white as the teeth of a salmon, and her locks fell sweeping the very earth. Her hands and arms were perfectly shaped, but they were covered with scales, and here and there tinted with red, which glittered like the evening sun on the folds of a cloud. Her height was about that of a small child who is just beginning to use its feet. The strange little creature did not stir as the warrior approached it, but suffered him to survey it unmoved, and, when he kindly wiped the dew from its waving locks, bent its eyes upon him with the deepest gratitude depicted in its countenance. As an Indian believes that every thing, even trees, and rivers, and mountains, have souls, or spirits, and are all worthy to be adopted as his protecting _okkis_, the warrior addressed the strange creature, and besought it to become his intercessor with the Great Spirit, his _okki_ in peace and war. What was his surprise when it made reply to him, in a tone very nearly like the tone of a human being, and in a dialect of the Ottawas, as follows!

"I cannot be thy guardian spirit, for I am about to throw off my spiritual nature, and to become as thou art, a mortal, or rather I am to assume my former nature and state. Though I wear a form which is neither fish nor flesh, yet have I not always been thus. Once, many years ago, I was a human being. Gazing one evening on the blue sky, filled with shining lights, a passion came over my soul to behold them nearer. I besought the Master of Life to suffer me to ascend to the land of those bright things, and to visit the beautiful rainbows which had been equally the objects of my fond contemplation. My prayer was heard; I fell asleep, and, when I awoke, found myself where I wished to be. I was among the stars, sailing with them as an eagle or a cloud is wafted along on the winds which sweep the lower world. I beheld them glorious as you behold them from the earth, bright, round, and twinkling balls of every size, all endued with life, and all busily engaged in dancing their intricate dances, to music which came from unseen hands. My words cannot describe the splendour of the scene. Yet shall I tell the Ottawa warrior that the scene and the dances soon ceased to give pleasure. Who would wish to gaze for ever on the sun, bright and dazzling though he be? What one of all the fair things of the earth may be looked on for ever with delight? Its lakes, its rivers, its mountains, its bold youths, and lovely maidens, and many other things, are very fair, but each would tire were the eye to be chained to that alone. I was soon tired of the splendour of the starry world, and wished myself again upon the earth. I asked the Master of all for permission to return. He said, 'Thou hast been disembodied, thy flesh is decayed--thou art but a spirit, it may not be.' 'May I not', said I, 're-animate some form from which the breath has just departed? may I not enter the corse of some child, and live out the remainder of the days of a favoured mortal?'

"The Great Spirit answered, 'It cannot be. But if thou art content to return to the earth and assume a form which shall be neither mortal nor immortal, neither man nor beast, be it so. Remember thou shalt not be endowed with the shape of a human being till thou shalt hear in the cataract, where I doom thee to dwell, the voice of one crying, 'Now is the time.' Then shalt thou leave the flood, repair to the land of my beloved people, the Ottawas, and there gradually return to the shape which once was thine. But, an immortal soul shalt thou not possess till thy bosom shall be lit up by the flame of love.'

"Thus spake the Great Being, and in a breath I found myself descending from the land of the stars upon the glorious rainbow. Speedy and uninterrupted was my descent, till I came to the mighty cataract; its capacious and stormy bosom received me, and there have I dwelt with the Spirits of the Flood, the adopted daughter of their chief, till now. Lo, Ottawa! I am at thy door, a strange creature, but demanding hospitality and protection from thee. Wilt thou give it me till I am permitted to take that form which shall give me the powers of a human being, and feel my bosom lit up by that flame which may give me one bound to feed and protect me?"

The Ottawa answered, that "his cabin had a quiet corner, and there should the strange maiden--if, indeed, she were a woman--rest; his house was always the abode of plenty, and of that should the stranger partake." So the creature, who was neither fish nor flesh, continued to reside in the cabin of the Ottawa warrior.

But each day was she observed to be assuming more and more the appearance of a mortal maiden. The scales fell from her arms and hands, which lost their red tints, and became soft and fair as the flesh of a new-born child. The two fishes gradually became two well proportioned legs. But though she had now become identified in form with the human race, she retained many of the propensities of that with which she had formerly dwelt. She loved to sport in the cataract, and lave herself in the lakes and rivers. Often would she fly from the company of the Ottawas to that of her old friends, the Spirits of the Flood. How her eyes would glow with childish delight, when the rain dashed from the clouds in torrents, and how mirthful she would be when the spring thaws swelled the noise and the volume of the cataract! And she better loved to feed on the ooze and the seeds of the grass, which were found in the torrent, and on those species of fish which are made the prey of the larger, than on the food prepared on the hearth of the Ottawa. Gradually, however, and at length fully, did her tastes conform to the tastes of those with whom she dwelt.