Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

We encamped beside Stranger Creek, on the banks of the Wakarusa, and on
the Great Divide separating the Osage from the Wakarusa Valley.

After we left Council Grove, Meotona, I noticed, was on the watch,
constantly peering off into the illimitable distance. One day I learned
the cause. An exclamation from the Indian led me to look at him. For
once, fire flashed out of his eyes,--he had forgotten himself. He was in
ecstasy as he saw a party advancing over the prairie.

"Here they come! Now for the heart of the wilderness!" exclaimed my
husband, as they rode up.

"We are not going away from the guard?" I ventured to suggest, as chief
after chief came up. I knew them in their wild orders, having by this
time learned something of Indian customs. They were equipped for the
Plains, and among their number I distinguished two white men.

"I know them,--they are safe and true, Lucy,--fear nothing!" whispered
Saul close to my whitening cheek; and afterwards we turned aside from
the Santa Fe trail to the north of the American Desert.

My husband did not leave me for an instant that afternoon; and I,
simple-minded woman, tried to look as happy--well, as a woman and a
professor's wife could look under the circumstances. The wings of my
tent that night were spread to the breeze that swept low and cool across
the Divide.

The next day we came to the lodges of the Indians. Swarthy-faced girls
and women came to greet us. It was evident that many of them had never
before seen a white woman. As evening came on, I noticed in one group
outside the principal lodge an unusual amount of grimace that was
incomprehensible, until, very timidly, a little girl left the crowd.
Half-way toward me she stopped and turned back, but again the violent
gesticulations were enacted, when the child made a sudden evolution in
my direction, and with one hard finger rubbed the back of my hand,
until I thought myself quite a Spartan; then looking at her own finger,
doubtfully at first, she ran back, and went from one to another, showing
her finger. The design was evident. Indians (the women, at least) have
some curiosity;--they thought _me painted white_. I forgave them.

We went five hundred miles from this lodge into the wilderness,--two of
the squaws accompanying us, for my comfort.

At last came the sight of buffaloes, feeding on the short tufts of grass
on the Grand Prairie. My heart grew sick with the shout that rang from a
hundred Indian throats, and--must I write it?--from Saul's.

"Stay!" said Saul, and he left me a guard, and was away without one word
of farewell.

Night came down, and he was not returned. The stars shone out of the
vault like "red-hot diamonds," and on the sight no vision, to the ear no
sound.

The women pitched my tent. The guard lit the fire. They brought me
savory bits of food, and coffee. My throat was tightened, I could not
eat, and I arose and went out into the night alone. I lost all sense of
fear, as I wandered away. The prairie had just been burned, and I knew
must be free from serpents and other reptiles: beyond these I had no
thought. I turned once to see the little dot of fire-light, to see the
one point of canvas, my shelter and my home. At last I grew very weary,
and remember having lain down, and having thought that the stars were
raining down upon me, so near did they seem,--and one after one,
constellation mingled with constellation, until I fancied a storm of
stars was circling over my head.

I started with a sudden spasm, as a sound burst upon me, wild, ringing,
dreadful. A hundred Indians were uttering a war-cry, and, as I lay
there, with my head pressed to the burnt sod, I felt the shudder of
earth from many hoofs. I turned in the direction whence they were
coming;--raise my head from the ground I dared not. All was darkness.
Could I possibly escape? Not if I moved. Where I was, there might be a
chance that they would pass to the right or the left. On, on they came,
and I knew the cry,--it was for vengeance. Feebly, like a setting star,
gleamed the watch-fire of my guard in the distance. Suddenly it went
down. They had heard the alarm. How awfully my heart kept time to the
nearing echo of the many footfalls! My eyes must have been fastened on
the West. I saw dark heads rise first above the earth-line, then the
moving arms of the horsemen. I heard the ring of weapons, and saw them
coming directly over the place where I lay; but I did not stir,--it was
as if I had been bound with an equator to the ground. Something struck
my arm and was gone. The troop passed by.

It was morning. A low, deep breathing betokened something near me. I
opened my eyes, and saw the face of my husband,--but, oh, how changed! I
heard him say, "The Lord hear my vow, and record my prayer!"

All that day I lay there, on the prairie, Saul sitting beside me,
shielding me from, the sun, and giving me drops of coolness, which the
Indians pressed from herbs and shrubs that grew not far away. I was in
a dream, and when the stars arose they lifted me up and bore me away.
I knew it was to the eastward. I felt no resistance in my nature, as I
always do when going to the west, either voluntarily or otherwise. We
came, after many days, to the Indian lodge. I never saw the guard again,
that I left in peace, when I was _driven_ out to wander, because I felt
wretched and lonely to be deserted for the chase by my husband. They
were carried into captivity by the hostile Sioux. There was mourning in
the lodge. An Indian mother, whose daughter had gone with me, sat down
in the ashes of sorrow, and moved not for two days; then she arose, and,
scattering dust from the earth toward the setting sun, she went into her
wigwam and they gave her food.

It was September before I was able to leave the place whither they
carried me. My arm was cut with the hoof of the flying horse, and when
Saul found me, I had fainted; I was dying from loss of blood, which his
coming only had stayed. After I grew stronger, I closely observed my
husband.

I never saw such an ache, such a strife, as week after week
hunting-parties went out in the morning and returned at evening with
their game. Saul grew reserved and silent when I begged him to go, to
leave me for a day.

"It is of no use, Lucy; I made a vow, and I must keep it. This Indian
blood within me must be subdued; it has met a stronger current on the
way, and _must_ mingle with it."

He said no more on the subject, and I would not question him. We took
our last walk on the prairie. Everything was in readiness for our
departure to meet the expected United States mail-train. We returned
to the lodge, and Saul left me for a few minutes to make some last
arrangements with Meotona. An old Indian woman, whose eyes I had often
noticed on me, crept stealthily in at my tent-door, and said to me in
English,--

"Let me be welcome; I come to teach you."

I knew that among her tribe she had the reputation of a prophetess, but
I had never heard her speak English.

"I am waiting to hear," I said; and this woman fixed her sad, solemn
eyes on me and said,--

"Child of the pale man, a great many moons ago, when my eyes were bright
like the little quiver-flower, and the young warriors sought me in my
father's wigwam, I had a sister. Her name _he_ called Luella. The
chiefs of the tribe were going for a grand hunt on the Huron. Some
pale men from across the lake came to join them. One of them looked on
Luella, and her eyes grew soft and sad. She wrapped her blanket about
her, and walked often under the stars at night. Through the winter, she
would not talk with the young chiefs; and when the leaves grew again,
the pale men came back, and Luella walked again under the stars. She
learned English, and no one knew who taught her.

"The hunt went on again until the snow came; and when the pale men
left the lodge, Luella was lost from the wigwam. The warriors went
in pursuit, but they came back without Luella. She was not with the
pale-faces. Many moons came and went, and one night I heard a voice
singing in the distance. I knew it was Luella, and she led a child by
her side, and he said soft English words. She would not come into the
lodge. She only came to tell me that she was with the white man who
loved her, that she was content, and to show me her boy; and Luella
walked away into the night again, and I told no one.

"I made many moccasons, and wove baskets of twigs; and when Uncas, the
chief of the tribe, my father, went to the great hunting-ground beyond
the Sun, then I gathered up my moccasons, and went out before the gate
opened to let the light through. I left the wigwam for Luella. I hated
white people; I hated the white man who stole Luella from me; but the
pale-faces took my moccasons, and gave me white wampum, and with that I
crossed the lake, and went from town to town, and everywhere I showed
the people this,"--and the wrinkled woman extended her hand to me; but,
at the instant, Saul lifted the tent-curtain and came in. She hid her
hand under her blanket, and, wrapping it closely about her, walked out
without a glance to testify that ever she had spoken.

Saul asked me the cause of this visit, and I was about to tell him, when
there arose in the lodges without such screams and cries as brought all
the population into the air. The Indian woman who so lately had left my
tent lay on the ground, in the apparent extreme of agony.

"Let the pale-face come," said the knot of savages around her; "it is
for her she calls."

My husband interpreted the words for me, and in doubt and fear I went to
her. Her screams had ceased; she held her hands tightly over her heart,
as if there had been the spasms of pain. She rolled her eyes around to
see if any one was within hearing, and then said,--

"I had fear that you would tell him; stay a little, and let me tell you
now. I went on after Luella until I found her. I had the name of the
white man to guide me. She was living as the pale-faces live, in a great
town of many lodges.

"I saw with my eyes that she was happy, and then I walked many moons
back to the Huron, and rowed across the lake in a canoe that I found in
the woods.

"Luella came back again. I don't know how she found the way alone, but
she came into the wigwam when the leaves were falling, and before the
buds grew again she went to Uncas in the West. I asked her about the
white man, and she shook her head and hid her eyes. I asked her for the
boy, and she threw open her arms wide, to show me he was not there.
Look!" said the woman, "I am dying; I'm very old; I ought to have walked
with Luella this long time. Listen,--let me teach you. The pale face
that you look into has eyes like my Luella. Take care! When he would
walk under the stars alone, go not with him. When he would hunt bison,
give him all the prairie; don't stand at the wigwam-door to keep him
in. And when you are far away beyond my people, you may see this,"--and
she handed to me the small parcel from close to her wild heart. I took
it.

"You'll keep it for Luella's sake. She held it close when she went away;
now I'm going, there's no one else to care. Bring it with you, when the
Great Spirit calls."

I could win no more words from the woman. She spoke to those who came to
her, and Saul said she told them that I had "taken away the torment."

"I shall think my Lucy witches somebody beside poor Saul," said my
husband; and he gave a sigh as he stood in the tent-door, and watched
the westering moon for the last time.

In the morning they told us that the Prophetess had gone into the light
beyond the Sun.

Saul went in to see her, and as he came back to me I saw that he was not
in a mood for words. Our farewell was very silent. Meotona went with us.
Once again, bounding over the prairie, my heart grew lighter than it
had been for many days; but I had no opportunity to examine Luella's
treasure.

We met the long caravan of wagons on the summit of the Great Divide, and
it was joy to unite my fate once more with that of my countrymen. Saul
saw this, and said,--

"Know now, Lucy, that you have the portion meted out to me, when I saw
the freemen of the wild coming. Your pleasure is that of civilization;
mine was that of barbaric life. I bid adieu to it henceforth,"--and my
brave husband, at this instant, looked out upon the head-waters of the
Neosho, where Nature, when she built up the world, must have made a
storehouse of material, and never came back for her treasures, they lie
so magnificently rolled over the land.

Saul's eyes gathered up the view, as if they were, what they are,
memory's absorbents, and said, sadly,--

"It is for the last time, Lucy!"

We went into corral the next evening by the side of a grassy mound
covered with low-growing shrubs.

Afterwards Saul wandered out alone. I would have gone with him; but
at the instant I put my face outside the tent-door, the memory of the
Indian woman's caution came to me, and with it the opportunity to
examine Luella's secret.

I entered my tent, lighted the little lamp that had travelled a thousand
miles and never done service till now, and opened Luella's treasure. It
was wrapped in soft white fur, bound about with the long, dried grass
that grows beside the Huron. A scroll of parchment was rolled within
it, faded, yellow, and old. I opened it, with a smile at my strange
inheritance.

At the first glance, I thought I had before me some Indian
hieroglyphics; but bringing back from the place of its long obscurity
the little knowledge of the French language that I held in possession, I
deciphered, that, "fourscore years before, beside the froth of the Huron
Water, Father Kino had performed the marriage-rite upon Luella, daughter
of Uncas, of the Dacotahs, and Richard Monten, of Montreal." Below the
certificate of the priest of the Church were strange characters beyond
my power to decipher.

With trembling I looked out for Saul's return. Here, upon the banks
of the Neosho, I had learned the secret which my life in the East had
hidden so long.

A certain kind, of guiltiness came over me, as Saul drew near, breaking
down with every tread the sun-cured grass,--a sense of unworthiness, to
hold in my hand a possession which essentially was his, and which he had
not freely given me.

"I will not look into his eyes with a veil lying in the air," I said,
very quietly to myself; and so, when my husband saw the burning of the
little lamp and asked the cause, I told him all the story of the
Indian woman, and put into his hand her gift to me. Saul's mind was
preoccupied; he paid very little attention to the story; but when I
gave him the white-furred scroll, and he opened it, then the grave
professor----Well, it is better that I do not put into words what
followed, even here, on the Big Blue.

An hour afterwards Saul spoke. He said,--

"Lucy, you have given me the key of my life, I knew my Indian blood, but
I knew not whence it came; therefore I said nothing to you. I remember
being tormented by it, when a boy, but never knew by what right. Let me
translate for you this Indian register of--let me see--my grandmother's
marriage. 'Ten moons from the lost moon, and many sleeps from the life
of the big Huron Water, the Great Spirit called Luella to walk with a
son of the Pale-Faces. The mystery [the priest] met them, and told them
to go on to the Sun. They are gone in the path of the lost moons.'"

"Let us go to Skylight by the way of Montreal," I suggested.

Saul said, "It is well."

At the Missouri I laid aside my prairie costume, and assumed the raiment
of fashion.

We found in Canada pleasant people bearing our name, and they welcomed
us as relatives.

Richard Monten lay beside a fixed cloud of marble; and although Luella's
sister had said she died far away, yet her name was beneath her
husband's.

Tradition told us of the beautiful Indian wife with eyes like
light,--and how her husband took her, every year, alone with him into
the wilds,--and how, when they came back, and the winter snows fell,
she would sit all day beside him, with her eyes on figures and letters,
whilst her impatient fingers were threading her long hair, and memory
shook her head at the attempted education, perhaps wisely and well.

When Mr. Monten died, and left her houses and lands, she turned away
from them all, and, leading her boy by the hand, went out of her home
and was seen no more until long after, when Father Kino, a kind old
priest, going home late one night from a dying soul, in passing the
cloud of marble, heard faint moans coming out of it, and, going near,
found an Indian woman, in festive dress, like a chief's daughter,
kneeling there. A few minutes afterwards, when Father Kino came back
with an assistant, there were no more moans, for Luella had "gone on to
the Sun."

The fate of the little boy was never known until then, and then it was
only known that he had lived and died and was buried in Skylight.

We found houses and lands, but no record that they were ours. So we left
them under British rule, and returned to Skylight, to our cottage and
duty.

Aunt Carter came in before we had been an hour at home. I think she
watched the opportunity of Saul's absence to find me alone.

"See!" she exclaimed, holding up to my view a small eminence of
stockings, "see what I have done, while you've just been going about the
world doing nothing at all!" And with a really warm shake of my hand,
Aunt Carter seated herself, for the second time, in Saul's chair.

"Why, I've been knitting too!" I said, in extenuation.

"What?" asked Aunt Carter. "Some new-fashioned thing or other, I'll
warrant."

"No,--something that is as old as Eve."

"Who ever beard of Eve's knitting? The Bible doesn't say one word about
it, Mrs. Monten. Besides, I don't think little Cain and Abel wore
stockings at all."

"I did not say that Eve knit in Paradise. I only said I'd been knitting
at something as old as Eve. I meant the thread of life. Here comes my
husband to tell you how industrious I have been."

Saul led Aunt Carter on to talk of her youth, and gradually of his
father, until he had learned all that she knew of his history. It was
very little: only that a fur-trader and a party of Dacotahs came to the
village, she had heard her father say, to sell their skins, bringing a
brown little boy with them; that the child fell sick with scarlet fever,
and they left him to the mercy of the village people, and never came
back for him, although they had said they would.

Did Luella give her boy away?--Never, I was convinced, and Saul
likewise.

Saul went back into his round of professional duties, and with much
heart for a while.

Delighted with civilization, and peopled with memories, and joyous with
the divine plumage ever hovering around me, my life ran on. I watched
Saul narrowly. He would often take up his hat, after hours of
application to science, and rush out of the house, as if a mission lay
before him. He would come back, and devote himself to me, as if he were
conscious of some neglect in his absence. I planned short excursions all
over the adjacent country. I became addicted to angling, because I saw
Saul liked it. There were many righteous eyeballs that reproved me
for wandering in places not fit for a woman, and Aunt Carter became
exceedingly disturbed, even to the point of remonstrance.

"You're spoiling your husband," she would say,--"he'll not know but what
you are a squaw," she said to me one day, in true distress.

However, I endured it delightfully for three years. Saul received in one
week four letters, each containing the offer of a professor's chair in a
desirable institution.

For many months I had seen the spell weaving around my good husband;
I had seen it flash out of his eyes; I had heard its undertone in his
voice; I had felt it in his whole manner, and I knew the hour of battle
was near.

I was strong, and I came to the rescue. It was on this wise. Hearken! is
he coming? No, it is only the wind coming up the Big Blue.

We sat in our Skylight door in an April evening,--unwise, perhaps,--but
we were there. Saul had taken down that wild warble of Longfellow's,
"Hiawatha." He read to me until the moon came up; then he threw down the
book, and said, "Pshaw!"

"What is that for, Saul?" I asked, in some surprise.

"It is not for the book,--for myself, Lucy. I had better not have opened
it Let us go and talk with the Doctor." And we went.

Saul had not answered his letters on the chair question, and I put up a
petition.

"I think I never felt so well as when I was in Kansas," I said. "Really,
Saul, I've felt a strong inclination to cough for some time, every
morning. The climate of Kansas is wonderfully curative for pulmonary
difficulties. I wish you would go out there now, and build a log cabin,
plant a few miles of maize, gather it in, and then, when the season is
over, come back and go to ----. You know they value you too highly not
to wait your time."

I saw a slow kindling up in Saul's eyes, but an instant later it had
gone down, and he said, looking into mine,--

"Do you really and truly wish this, Lucy?"

And Lucy answered,--

"I really and truly wish it, Saul."

We came hither with the violets and bluebirds. My wigwam points to the
sky. We have roamed on the prairies, and wandered in the timber-lands.
Under the heavens of the Big Blue we have drunk "the wine of life all
day," and "been lighted off" to hemlock-boughs "by the jewels in the
cup."

Oh, this life that is passing, passing in unseen marches on to the Great
Plains where we shall corral forever! I've just opened my cabin-door
to look for Saul; he's been gone ten days. The drought came; our maize
withered and died. Ten miles away, there is a town; two houses are
there. We left our vast-wilderness lodge to Nature in October, and
turned our faces eastward. Reaching the town, we found Azrael hovering
there. It was impossible to go on and leave such suffering, and we
stayed. While we waited, winter came along, tossing her white mail
over the prairie, and we were prisoned. Azrael folded his pinions, and
carried in them two souls out of the town of two houses. Afterward, Saul
and I came back to our home. I kindled the fire, and Saul went forth to
earn our daily food. Life began to grow painfully earnest. The supply of
wheaten flour waxed less and less, and I sometimes wished--no, I _did
not wish_ that I was a widow, I only wished for flour.

I began to look for manna, and it came,--not "small and white, about
the size of coriander-seed," but in the form of the flying life of
yesterday.

I have cried many tears over eyes that were shut for me, but I've never
been sorry that I came hither.

At last, no more wings came flying over the prairie. Saul came home
without food. That was ten days ago. He carried me the next morning to
the village, to leave me there, till he should return,--then retraced
the ten miles through the snow, and went for food.

I stayed until there was no more for the children to eat. I could not
abide that, and this morning I stole away. I've come the ten miles
through the snow to light the fire, that Saul may not pass by, and go on
to the town this cold night. Where is he now? Not perishing, dying on
the prairie, as I was once, when he found me? I'll walk and see. It
is so lone outside, there is such an _awful sound_ in the _voice of
stillness,_ and Saul is not in sight!

Where is my life now? Since Saul went away, so much of it has gone, I
feel as if more of myself were there than here. Why couldn't I go on
thinking? It was such relief! The moon is up at last. A low rumble over
the dried grass, like a great wave treading on sand. I am faint. I have
tightened my dress, to keep out hunger, every hour of this day. Those
starving children! God pity them! A higher wave of sound,--surely 'tis
not fancy. I will look out. The moon shines on a prairie sail, a gleam
of canvas. Another roll of the broad wheel, and Saul is here.

"Send the man on quickly," I cried; "the children are starving in the
town."

"And you?" said Saul.

The power of his eyes is almost gone. I scarcely heed them. I see--a bag
of meal.

NAPOLEON THE THIRD

On the 6th of October, 1840, a young man was brought up for sentence in
one of the highest courts of Europe, before which he had been tried, and
by which he had been found guilty of one of the greatest crimes that can
be charged upon any human being, though the world seldom visits it with
moral condemnation. The young man was Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,
the court was the French Chamber of Peers, and the sentence was
imprisonment for life. Had the French government of that day felt strong
enough to act strongly, the condemned would have been treated as the
Neapolitans treated Murat, and as the Mexicans treated Yturbide. He
would have been perpetually imprisoned, but his prison would have been
"that which the sexton makes." But the Orleans dynasty was never strong,
and its head was seldom able to act boldly. To execute a Bonaparte,
the undoubted heir of the Emperor, required nerve such as no French
government had exhibited since that day on which Marechal Ney had been
shot; and there were seven hundred thousand foreign soldiers in France
when that piece of judicial butchery was resolved upon. The army might
not be ready to join a Bonaparte, but it could not be relied upon to
guard the scaffold on which he should be sent to die. The people might
not be ready to overthrow Louis Philippe, to give his place to Louis
Napoleon, but it did not follow that they would have seen the latter's
execution with satisfaction, because they desired peace, and he had
fallen into the habit of breaking it. The enthusiasm that was created in
France by the arrival in that country of the remains of Napoleon I.,
not three months after the coming Napoleon III. had been sent to the
fortress of Ham, showed how difficult a matter it would have been to
proceed capitally against the Prince. Louis Philippe has been praised
for sparing him; but the praise is undeserved. Certainly, the King of
the French was not a cruel man, and it was with sincere regret that he
signed the death-warrants of men who had sought his own life, and who
had murdered his friends; but it would have been no act of cruelty, had
he sent his rival to the guillotine. When a man makes a throw for a
crown, he accepts what is staked, against it,--a coffin. Nothing is
better established than this, that, when a sovereign is assailed, the
intention of the assailant being his overthrow, that sovereign has a
perfect right to put his rival to death, if he succeed in obtaining
possession of his person. The most confirmed believer in Richard III.'s
demoniac character would not think of adding the execution of Richmond
to his crimes, had Plantagenet, and not Tudor, triumphed on Bosworth
Field. James II. has never been blamed for causing Monmouth to be put to
death, but for having complied with his nephew's request for a personal
interview, at which he refused to grant his further request for a
mitigation of punishment. Murat's death was an unnecessary act, but
Ferdinand of Naples has never been censured for it. Had Louis Philippe
followed these examples, and those of a hundred similar cases, he could
not have been charged with undue severity in the exercise of his power
for the conservation of his own rights, and the maintenance of the
tranquillity, not of France alone, but of Europe, and of the world,
which the triumph of a Bonaparte might have perilled. He spared the
future Emperor's life, not from any considerations of a chivalric
character, but because he durst not take it. He feared that the blood
of the offender would more than atone for his offence, and he would
not throw into the political caldron so rich a material, dreading the
effects of its presence there. Then the Orleans party and the Imperial
party not only marched with each other, but often crossed and ran into
each other; and it was not safe to run the risk of offending the first
by an attempt to punish its occasional ally. There was, too, something
of the ludicrous in the Boulogne affair, which enabled government to
regard the chief offender with cheap compassion. Louis Philippe is
entitled to no credit, on the score of mercy, for his conduct in
1840,--for the decision of the Court of Peers was his inspiration; but
he acted wisely,--so wisely, that, if he had done as well in 1848, his
grandson would at this moment have been King of the French, and the
Emperor that is a wanderer, with nothing but a character for flightiness
and a capacity for failure to distinguish him from the herd, while many
would have regarded him as a madman. But the end was not then, and the
hand of Fate was not even near that curtain which was to be raised for
the disclosure of events destined to shake and to change the world.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19