The Prairie (32 page)

"So much for your knowledge!" returned the trapper, laughing with great
exultation. "So much for the l'arning of one who has look'd into so many
books, that his eyes are not able to tell a moose from a wild-cat! Now
my Hector, here, is a dog of education after his fashion, and, though
the meanest primmer in the settlements would puzzle his information, you
could not cheat the hound in a matter like this. As you think the object
no man, you shall see his whole formation, and then let an ignorant
old trapper, who never willingly pass'd a day within reach of a
spelling-book in his life, know by what name to call it. Mind, I mean no
violence; but just to start the devil from his ambushment."

The trapper very deliberately examined the priming of his rifle, taking
care to make as great a parade as possible of his hostile intentions, in
going through the necessary evolutions with the weapon. When he thought
the stranger began to apprehend some danger, he very deliberately
presented the piece, and called aloud—

"Now, friend, I am all for peace, or all for war, as you may say. No!
well it is no man, as the wiser one, here, says, and there can be no
harm in just firing into a bunch of leaves."

The muzzle of the rifle fell as he concluded, and the weapon was
gradually settling into a steady, and what would easily have proved a
fatal aim, when a tall Indian sprang from beneath that bed of leaves and
brush, which he had collected about his person at the approach of the
party, and stood upright, uttering the exclamation—

"Wagh!"

My visor is Philemon's roof; within the house is Jove.
—Shakespeare.

The trapper, who had meditated no violence, dropped his rifle again,
and laughing at the success of his experiment, with great seeming
self-complacency, he drew the astounded gaze of the naturalist from the
person of the savage to himself, by saying—

"The imps will lie for hours, like sleeping alligators, brooding their
deviltries in dreams and other craftiness, until such time as they see
some real danger is at hand, and then they look to themselves the same
as other mortals. But this is a scouter in his war-paint! There should
be more of his tribe at no great distance. Let us draw the truth out
of him; for an unlucky war-party may prove more dangerous to us than a
visit from the whole family of the squatter."

"It is truly a desperate and a dangerous species!" said the Doctor,
relieving his amazement by a breath that seemed to exhaust his lungs of
air; "a violent race, and one that it is difficult to define or class,
within the usual boundaries of definitions. Speak to him, therefore; but
let thy words be strong in amity."

The old man cast a keen eye on every side of him, to ascertain
the important particular whether the stranger was supported by any
associates, and then making the usual signs of peace, by exhibiting the
palm of his naked hand, he boldly advanced. In the mean time, the Indian
betrayed no evidence of uneasiness. He suffered the trapper to draw
nigh, maintaining by his own mien and attitude a striking air of dignity
and fearlessness. Perhaps the wary warrior also knew that, owing to the
difference in their weapons, he should be placed more on an equality, by
being brought nearer to the strangers.

As a description of this individual may furnish some idea of the
personal appearance of a whole race, it may be well to detain the
narrative, in order to present it to the reader, in our hasty and
imperfect manner. Would the truant eyes of Alston or Greenough turn, but
for a time, from their gaze at the models of antiquity, to contemplate
this wronged and humbled people, little would be left for such inferior
artists as ourselves to delineate.

The Indian in question was in every particular a warrior of fine stature
and admirable proportions. As he cast aside his mask, composed of such
party-coloured leaves, as he had hurriedly collected, his countenance
appeared in all the gravity, the dignity, and, it may be added, in the
terror of his profession. The outlines of his lineaments were strikingly
noble, and nearly approaching to Roman, though the secondary features of
his face were slightly marked with the well-known traces of his Asiatic
origin. The peculiar tint of the skin, which in itself is so well
designed to aid the effect of a martial expression, had received an
additional aspect of wild ferocity from the colours of the war-paint.
But, as if he disdained the usual artifices of his people, he bore none
of those strange and horrid devices, with which the children of the
forest are accustomed, like the more civilised heroes of the moustache,
to back their reputation for courage, contenting himself with a
broad and deep shadowing of black, that served as a sufficient and an
admirable foil to the brighter gleamings of his native swarthiness.
His head was as usual shaved to the crown, where a large and gallant
scalp-lock seemed to challenge the grasp of his enemies. The ornaments
that were ordinarily pendant from the cartilages of his ears had been
removed, on account of his present pursuit. His body, notwithstanding
the lateness of the season, was nearly naked, and the portion which was
clad bore a vestment no warmer than a light robe of the finest dressed
deer-skin, beautifully stained with the rude design of some daring
exploit, and which was carelessly worn, as if more in pride than from
any unmanly regard to comfort. His leggings were of bright scarlet
cloth, the only evidence about his person that he had held communion
with the traders of the Pale-faces. But as if to furnish some offset
to this solitary submission to a womanish vanity, they were fearfully
fringed, from the gartered knee to the bottom of the moccasin, with the
hair of human scalps. He leaned lightly with one hand on a short hickory
bow, while the other rather touched than sought support, from the long,
delicate handle of an ashen lance. A quiver made of the cougar skin,
from which the tail of the animal depended, as a characteristic
ornament, was slung at his back, and a shield of hides, quaintly
emblazoned with another of his warlike deeds, was suspended from his
neck by a thong of sinews.

As the trapper approached, this warrior maintained his calm upright
attitude, discovering neither an eagerness to ascertain the character of
those who advanced upon him, nor the smallest wish to avoid a scrutiny
in his own person. An eye, that was darker and more shining than that of
the stag, was incessantly glancing, however, from one to another of the
stranger party, seemingly never knowing rest for an instant.

"Is my brother far from his village?" demanded the old man, in the
Pawnee language, after examining the paint, and those other little signs
by which a practised eye knows the tribe of the warrior he encounters in
the American deserts, with the same readiness, and by the same sort of
mysterious observation, as that by which the seaman knows the distant
sail.

"It is farther to the towns of the Big-knives," was the laconic reply.

"Why is a Pawnee-Loup so far from the fork of his own river, without a
horse to journey on, and in a spot empty as this?"

"Can the women and children of a Pale-face live without the meat of the
bison? There was hunger in my lodge."

"My brother is very young to be already the master of a lodge," returned
the trapper, looking steadily into the unmoved countenance of the
youthful warrior; "but I dare say he is brave, and that many a chief has
offered him his daughters for wives. But he has been mistaken," pointing
to the arrow, which was dangling from the hand that held the bow, "in
bringing a loose and barbed arrow-head to kill the buffaloe. Do the
Pawnees wish the wounds they give their game to rankle?"

"It is good to be ready for the Sioux. Though not in sight, a bush may
hide him."

"The man is a living proof of the truth of his words," muttered the
trapper in English, "and a close-jointed and gallant looking lad he is;
but far too young for a chief of any importance. It is wise, however, to
speak him fair, for a single arm thrown into either party, if we come
to blows with the squatter and his brood, may turn the day. You see
my children are weary," he continued in the dialect of the prairies,
pointing, as he spoke, to the rest of the party, who, by this time, were
also approaching. "We wish to camp and eat. Does my brother claim this
spot?"

"The runners from the people on the Big-river, tell us that your nation
have traded with the Tawney-faces who live beyond the salt-lake, and
that the prairies are now the hunting grounds of the Big-knives!"

"It is true, as I hear, also, from the hunters and trappers on La
Platte. Though it is with the Frenchers, and not with the men who claim
to own the Mexicos, that my people have bargained."

"And warriors are going up the Long-river, to see that they have not
been cheated, in what they have bought?"

"Ay, that is partly true, too, I fear; and it will not be long before an
accursed band of choppers and loggers will be following on their heels,
to humble the wilderness which lies so broad and rich on the western
banks of the Mississippi, and then the land will be a peopled desert,
from the shores of the main sea to the foot of the Rocky Mountains;
fill'd with all the abominations and craft of man, and stript of the
comforts and loveliness it received from the hands of the Lord!"

"And where were the chiefs of the Pawnee-Loups, when this bargain was
made?" suddenly demanded the youthful warrior, a look of startling
fierceness gleaming, at the same instant, athwart his dark visage. "Is a
nation to be sold like the skin of a beaver?"

"Right enough—right enough, and where were truth and honesty, also?
But might is right, according to the fashions of the 'arth; and what
the strong choose to do, the weak must call justice. If the law of
the Wahcondah was as much hearkened to, Pawnee, as the laws of the
Long-knives, your right to the prairies would be as good as that of the
greatest chief in the settlements to the house which covers his head."

"The skin of the traveller is white," said the young native, laying a
finger impressively on the hard and wrinkled hand of the trapper. "Does
his heart say one thing and his tongue another?"

"The Wahcondah of a white man has ears, and he shuts them to a lie.
Look at my head; it is like a frosted pine, and must soon be laid in the
ground. Why then should I wish to meet the Great Spirit, face to face,
while his countenance is dark upon me."

The Pawnee gracefully threw his shield over one shoulder, and placing
a hand on his chest, he bent his head, in deference to the grey locks
exhibited by the trapper; after which his eye became more steady, and
his countenance less fierce. Still he maintained every appearance of a
distrust and watchfulness that were rather tempered and subdued, than
forgotten. When this equivocal species of amity was established between
the warrior of the prairies and the experienced old trapper, the latter
proceeded to give his directions to Paul, concerning the arrangements
of the contemplated halt. While Inez and Ellen were dismounting, and
Middleton and the bee-hunter were attending to their comforts, the
discourse was continued, sometimes in the language of the natives,
but often, as Paul and the Doctor mingled their opinions with the two
principal speakers, in the English tongue. There was a keen and subtle
trial of skill between the Pawnee and the trapper, in which each
endeavoured to discover the objects of the other, without betraying
his own interest in the investigation. As might be expected, when the
struggle was between adversaries so equal, the result of the encounter
answered the expectations of neither. The latter had put all the
interrogatories his ingenuity and practice could suggest, concerning the
state of the tribe of the Loups, their crops, their store of provisions
for the ensuing winter, and their relations with their different warlike
neighbours without extorting any answer, which, in the slightest degree,
elucidated the cause of his finding a solitary warrior so far from his
people. On the other hand, while the questions of the Indian were far
more dignified and delicate, they were equally ingenious. He commented
on the state of the trade in peltries, spoke of the good or ill success
of many white hunters, whom he had either encountered, or heard named,
and even alluded to the steady march, which the nation of his great
father, as he cautiously termed the government of the States, was making
towards the hunting-grounds of his tribe. It was apparent, however, by
the singular mixture of interest, contempt, and indignation, that were
occasionally gleaming through the reserved manner of this warrior, that
he knew the strange people, who were thus trespassing on his native
rights, much more by report than by any actual intercourse. This
personal ignorance of the whites was as much betrayed by the manner
in which he regarded the females, as by the brief, but energetic,
expressions which occasionally escaped him.

While speaking to the trapper he suffered his wandering glances to stray
towards the intellectual and nearly infantile beauty of Inez, as one
might be supposed to gaze upon the loveliness of an ethereal being.
It was very evident that he now saw, for the first time, one of those
females, of whom the fathers of his tribe so often spoke, and who were
considered of such rare excellence as to equal all that savage ingenuity
could imagine in the way of loveliness. His observation of Ellen was
less marked, but notwithstanding the warlike and chastened expression
of his eye, there was much of the homage, which man is made to pay to
woman, even in the more cursory look he sometimes turned on her maturer
and perhaps more animated beauty. This admiration, however, was so
tempered by his habits, and so smothered in the pride of a warrior, as
completely to elude every eye but that of the trapper, who was too well
skilled in Indian customs, and was too well instructed in the importance
of rightly conceiving, the character of the stranger, to let the
smallest trait, or the most trifling of his movements, escape him. In
the mean time, the unconscious Ellen herself moved about the feeble
and less resolute Inez, with her accustomed assiduity and tenderness,
exhibiting in her frank features those changing emotions of joy and
regret which occasionally beset her, as her active mind dwelt on the
decided step she had just taken, with the contending doubts and hopes,
and possibly with some of the mental vacillation, that was natural to
her situation and sex.