Читать книгу Winona, a Dakota Legend; and Other Poems - E. L. Huggins - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Winona,[2] first-born daughter, was the name

Of a Dakota girl who, long ago,

Dwelt with her people here unknown to fame.

Sweet word, Winona, how my heart and lips

Cling to that name (my mother’s was the same

Ere her form faded into death’s eclipse),

Cling lovingly, and loth to let it go.

All arts that unto savage life belong

She knew, made moccasins, and dressed the game.

From crippling fashions free, her well-knit frame

At fifteen summers was mature and strong.

She pitched the tipi,[3] dug the tipsin[4] roots,

Gathered wild rice and store of savage fruits.

Fearless and self-reliant, she could go

Across the prairie on a starless night;

She speared the fish while in his wildest flight,

And almost like a warrior drew the bow.

Yet she was not all hardness: the keen glance,

Lighting the darkness of her eyes, perchance

Betrayed no softness, but her voice, that rose

O’er the weird circle of the midnight dance,

Through all the gamut ran of human woes,

Passion, and joy. A woman’s love she had

For ornament; on gala days was clad

In garments of the softest doeskin fine,

With shells about her neck; moccasins neat

Were drawn, like gloves, upon her little feet,

Adorned with scarlet quills of porcupine.

Innocent of the niceties refined

That to the toilet her pale sisters bind,

Yet much the same beneath the outer rind,

She was, though all unskilled in bookish lore,

A sound, sweet woman to the very core.

Winona’s uncle, and step-father too,

Was all the father that she ever knew;

By the Absarakas[5] her own was slain

Before her memory could his face retain.

Two bitter years his widow mourned him dead,

And then his elder brother she had wed.

None loved Winona’s uncle; he was stern

And harsh in manner, cold and taciturn,

And none might see, without a secret fear,

Those thin lips ever curling to a sneer.

And yet he was of note and influence

Among the chieftains; true he rarely lent

More than his presence in the council tent,

And when he rose to speak disdained pretence

Of arts rhetoric, but his few words went

Straight and incisive to the question’s core,

And rarely was his counsel overborne.

The Raven was the fitting name he bore,

And though his winters wellnigh reached threescore,

Few of his tribe excelled him in the chase.

A warrior of renown, but never wore

The dancing eagle plumes, and seemed to scorn

The vanities and follies of his race.

I said the Raven was beloved by none;

But no, among the elders there was one

Who often sought him, and the two would walk

Apart for hours, and converse alone.

The gossips, marvelling much what this might mean,

Whispered that they at midnight had been seen

Far from the village wrapped in secret talk.

They seemed in truth an ill-assorted brace,

But Nature oft in Siamese bond unites,

By some strange tie, the farthest opposites.

Gray Cloud was oily, plausible, and vain,

A conjurer with subtle scheming brain;

Too corpulent and clumsy for the chase,

His lodge was still provided with the best,

And though sometimes but a half welcome guest,

He took his dish and spoon to every feast.[6]

Priestcraft and leechcraft were combined in him,

Two trades occult upon which knaves have thriven,

Almost since man from Paradise was driven;

Padding with pompous phrases worn and old

Their scanty esoteric science dim,

And gravely selling, at their weight in gold,

Placebos colored to their patients’ whim.

Man’s noblest mission here too oft is made,

In heathen as in Christian lands, a trade.

Holy the task to comfort and console

The tortured body and the sin-sick soul,

But pain and sorrow, even prayer and creed,

Are turned too oft to instruments of greed.

The conjurer claimed to bear a mission high:

Mysterious omens of the earth and sky

He knew to read; his medicine could find

In time of need the buffalo, and bind

In sleep the senses of the enemy.

Perhaps not wholly a deliberate cheat,

And yet dissimulation and deceit

Oozed from his form obese at every pore.

Skilled by long practice in the priestly art,

To chill with superstitious fear the heart,

And versed in all the legendary lore,

He knew each herb and root that healing bore;

But lest his flock might grow as wise as he,

Disguised their use with solemn mummery.

When all the village wrapped in slumber lay,

His midnight incantations often fell,

His chant now weirdly rose, now sank away,

As o’er some dying child he cast his spell.

And sometimes through his frame strange tremors ran—

Magnetic waves, swept from the unknown pole

Linking the body to the wavering soul;

And swifter came his breath, as if to fan

The feeble life spark, and his finger tips

Were to the brow of pain like angel lips.

No wonder if in moments such as these

He half believed in his own deities,

And thought his sacred rattle could compel

The swarming powers unseen to serve him well.

The Raven lay one evening in his tent

With his accustomed crony at his side;

Around their heads a graceful aureole

Of smoke curled upward from the scarlet bowl

Of Gray Cloud’s pipe with willow bark supplied.

Winona’s thrifty mother came and went,

Her form with household cares and burdens bent,

Fresh fuel adds, and stirs the boiling pot.

Meanwhile the young Winona, half reclined,

Plies her swift needle, that resource refined

For woman’s leisure, whatsoe’er her lot,

The kingly palace or the savage cot.

The cronies smoked without a sign or word,

Passing the pipe sedately to and fro;

Only a distant wail of hopeless woe,

A mother mourning for her child, was heard,

And Gray Cloud moved, as though the sound had stirred

Some dusty memory; still that bitter wail,

Rachel’s despairing cry without avail,

That beats the brazen firmament in vain,

Since the first mother wept o’er Abel slain.

At length the conjurer’s lips the silence broke,

Softly at first as to himself he spoke,

Till warmed by his own swarming fancies’ brood

He poured the strain almost in numbers rude.