Читать книгу Tomahawk Rights - Hal G. Evarts - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Several more days of traveling west and south with strange Indians and Rod came to a tremendous Indian town which he was to know as Chillicothe, the capital of the Shawnee nation. Later, he was taken a day's march to a smaller Shawnee town and conducted to a sizable lodge in which were a young squaw and her son, a youth of about Rod's own age. The squaw took him to the creek, scrubbed him thoroughly and divested him of his tattered shirt, then clothed him in leggings and jacket of soft deerskin. His feet were incased in moccasins.

He had traveled so steadily that he believed this to be but another overnight stop but when morning came he ate with the others and was not summoned to take the trail again. The Indian youth, stripped of his buckskins and playing in the sun with others of his age, made frequent pilgrimages to the entrance of the lodge to display the captive to his fellows. The squaw had gone to work in the cornfield. Upon her return she took Rod by the hand and led him forth, visiting various lodges in the village, in each of which the white captive was offered food. Then she left him outside with the Indian boy of the household and several other naked urchins.

They spoke to him in a strange tongue and their advances seemed friendly. When they signed him to accompany them to the creek, he followed, and when they took to the water he peeled his buckskins and joined them. He was as much at home in the water as an otter. The Indian boy took him for a precarious ride in a tiny elm-bark canoe and allowed him to shoot two blunt arrows from his bow.

Rod slept again in the lodge and left it next morning without hesitation at a summons from his dusky companion. A group of hunters returned during the day, bringing a black bear, a dozen deer and several turkeys and raccoons. One of them took up quarters in the lodge as head of the household and seemed to accept Rod's presence there as a natural thing. The boy afterwards learned that he had been adopted to fill the place of a son that had died. Kill-cat, the Shawnee warrior, presented him with a small bow and a bark quiver filled with arrows. Winnebanca, his foster mother, lavished affections upon him. In every way he was treated with the same consideration as that accorded his foster brother, Standing Bear.

He accompanied the Shawnee youth on long hunting excursions in the forest, stalking birds and small rodents and launching many shafts without doing much execution. These hunts became almost daily affairs. The vibrating rattle of a woodpecker, the strident shriek of a flicker, the plaintive call of wood pewee, sprightly conversation of a chickadee or the sneering clamor of a jay would serve to transform them into miniature images of the wilderness hunter, stalking with utmost caution toward the sound. The Indian lad would hold up his hand and pronounce a strange word when the voice of some bird reached them and presently, with the natural imitativeness of youth, the white boy repeated these words after him. In a surprisingly short span of time he learned the names of all the wild things, also of the various utensils and articles of food in common use.

One day the Indian boy lifted his voice in imitation of the call of a crow that was winging high overhead. Rod did likewise and the dusky youth was surprised at the accuracy of the white boy's rendition. There was admiration in his glance as he petitioned Rod to repeat the call. For several minutes the forest rang with their alternate vocal efforts. Rod's imitation was by far the best of the two. Expanding under the other's approval, he suddenly gave the piercing liquid whistle of the cardinal and received a prompt answer from a leafy thicket. The young Shawnee was elated. From his earliest recollection, Rod had amused himself with imitating the notes of the birds and had acquired an astonishing degree of proficiency. Such matters were part of the schooling among the young of the Indians and they were amazed that this newcomer, so little skilled in their games, should excel in this particular. He was called upon for frequent performances and so, day after day, perfected the art for which he had been gifted with a natural aptitude.

He rapidly picked up a smattering of the Shawnee tongue and a workable knowledge of the sign language common to all the tribes of the Indian Confederacy. When the snows came and the streams were frozen over, he fished with the other youths of the village through holes cut in the ice of lake and stream. The warriors, between protracted spells of loafing, indulged in hunting excursions and returned burdened with meat and hides. By spring Rod had become proficient at the various sports of the village youths and had mastered the Shawnee tongue.

Much of their play had to do with war. One faction would slip away to establish itself in some fancied secret stronghold. The opposing forces, by means of their scouts, must locate such enemy stronghold, sneak upon it and stage a surprise rush upon the foe. It was the aim of those who were being sought to lure the attacking force into ambush and launch a surprise assault. It was conducted much more realistically than the war games of civilized youths. The scouts were expected to do real scouting. There was no calling back and forth. When within sight of one another, comrades in arms communicated only by sign language. When separated they signalled by means of prearranged bird notes. Rod was easily the master of this latter means of communication and he rapidly acquired proficiency in all branches of the game. He could glide through the forest as noiselessly as a shadow. His quick eye detected the slightest movement in thicket or tangle of down-timber ahead. He could move from one bit of cover to the next, writhing along on his stomach with almost the expertness of a snake. There was no hurry in these games, the whole day being allotted to one such raid if deemed necessary, as there were no duties to which the Indian youths must hasten. This being the case, they acquired a patience that could scarcely be emulated by white youths of the settlements, whose play wars necessarily must be staged in the brief intervals between periods of labor and brought to a termination before the time that such duties were required of them.

Relieved of this pressure for time, such as had characterized his games with Johnny Aiken, Rod now found himself with ample leisure in which to cultivate the incredible patience of his companions. He learned the art of remaining absolutely motionless behind a down log or ensconced in a tree, concealed by a tangle of wild grapevines, or perhaps to lie flat in the merest depression of the forest floor while his enemies of the day prowled past almost within reach of him, then to glide after them with utmost cunning.

From his foster brother, Rod learned that in this one small Shawnee village no less than six of the inhabitants were white, though the closest scrutiny would not reveal that fact. One was an ancient squaw, another a young woman who was the wife of a sub-chief among the Shawnees and mother of two children. One of the captives, a young warrior of sixteen named Gray Wolf, could remember a few words of English. He had been captured with his three brothers when he was eight years old, he told Rod, but they had been separated and he had seen none of them since. Rod inquired what his name had been. Gray Wolf reflected for the space of a minute, then replied that his former name had been William Herne.

Rod's Shawnee father, Kill-cat had bestowed upon Rod a many syllabled name meaning Talk-with-birds from his proficiency in the art of bird imitation. One night during his second year among the Shawnees, a war party of Wyandottes stopped overnight in the town and Kill-cat instructed his foster son to demonstrate his talents for the benefit of several who had gathered outside his lodge.

The boy started off with the call of the crow, then the liquid whistle of the cardinal. From the extreme back of his throat came the quavering falsetto of the screech owl, then the querulous yelping of a hen turkey. The warriors gave voice to loud "Hahs!" of approbation and signed him to proceed. He gave a perfect imitation of the quail, both the bobwhite note and the more difficult muster call by which scattered coveys reassemble. From the seductive cooing of a dove he broke suddenly into the shrilling chorus of young frogs on a spring night, the metallic whirr of cicadas on a July afternoon, the chattering bark of a red squirrel; the plaintive cry of the phœbe, the hoarse rasp of the bull bat, the thunder-pumping notes of a bittern far out in the marshes, the silvery notes of migrating plover and the surprised cry of the killdeer.

Several other Wyandottes had come up to join the group, accompanied by a French trader. Roving Frenchmen were no novelty in the Indian towns and the boy, engrossed in his performance, paid small heed to this one until, standing almost at the man's feet, he glanced up into his face. He found himself confronted by the features of Benoit, the face that was associated in his thoughts with all that was monstrous—indelibly linked in his mind with that ghastly occurrence on the Muskingum. The bird notes were frozen on his lips, he sprang back as if from the strike of a rattler, uttered a shrill yelp of terror and fled. The light was none too good and Kill-cat, the Shawnee, believing that Benoit had struck or pinched Talk-with-birds, leaped to confront the man with uplifted tomahawk and angry demands for explanation.

The man fiercely denied the accusation. When the protesting youth was hailed before him, Rod said that the man had not touched him, but in his manifest terror of the trader his denial did not quite convince Kill-cat. The man scowled upon Rod and declared that he had never before set eyes on him. Doubtless he believed the truth of his own utterance, having no recollection of the cowering little captive that had crouched in the dim shadows of the lodge that night on the Muskingum. He came to the Shawnee town on several occasions and was vastly annoyed at the fear and dislike evidenced toward him by the foster son of Kill-cat.

During temporary periods of peace, American border woodsmen also came occasionally to the Shawnee town. These woodsmen, a wild and roving lot, led lives that were even more nomadic than those of the savages themselves. Their lives were spent roaming alone or with a few companions far beyond the most isolated frontier posts. In common with the roving French traders, the restrictions of even the smaller settlements were irksome to their wild and unrestrained natures. It was, therefore, quite easy for them to understand why a large majority of the white captives who had been long among the savages had become so accustomed to the free-and-easy life in the Indian towns as to have abandoned all thought of returning to civilized ways. Such captives as did desire to return, however, were often able to send word of their whereabouts to frontier posts by these men and so were ransomed ultimately by their families.

Suddenly the Indian towns were again inflamed with war talk. To the south lay the vast region of Kentucky, swarming with every variety of game, a veritable hunters' paradise. The Cherokees of the South had made a treaty with the Northern tribes of the Indian Confederacy of the Ohio whereby it was mutually agreed that this area between their respective habitats should be set aside forever as the common hunting ground of them all, to be permanently occupied by none.

Now the Long-knives of Virginia, so named from their habit of fighting with the saber, were violating this ancient hunting ground. Under the leadership of a man named Boone, small groups of settlers were crossing over the Cumberlands with a view to establishing themselves on the fertile lands of Kentucky.

Runners came from other Shawnee towns and from other tribes of the federation. Rod heard much fierce oratory round the council fires. He was particularly impressed with the eloquence of one old Shawnee warrior as he sketched the wrongs of his people.

"My brothers," he began. "My eyes have looked forth upon the passing of a hundred winters and they have seen that the way of the bird who calls the sky his own yet shares it with his fellows is not the way of the porcupine who lives in a burrow in the ground which no other can use. Every Indian owns much land and shares it with all. Every white man owns a little land and shares it with none."

"Ho! We have seen it!" a warrior shouted.

"I have known the day when the red man owned all the land toward the rising sun and shared it with the white men," the sachem continued. "Who owns it now? The mighty Ottawas are gone save for a few. The Wyandottes and Ojibwas are but a handful. The Senecas number but few warriors now. The great nations of our grandfathers the Delawares no longer own the rivers that run to the rising sun and put forth in their canoes upon the inlets of the eastern sea. Most of those remaining now sit in their wigwams on the Muskingum and pray from the white man's medicine book. The once mighty nations of the Potawatamis, Eries and we Shawnees, all are crowded here with those others beyond the Ohio. The Great Spirit has opened my eyes to the future as they have looked upon the past. What has been will be again."

"No!" proclaimed a warrior who was pacifically inclined. "The Long-knives promise by their own God and by Manitou of the red men that if we give them but a fraction of Kentucky they will never ask for more land again."

"The white men write their promises in the sands," said the ancient. "Then they blow the sands with wind raised by their own voices so there is no trace of what was written."

"But this time—" the pacific one began.

"My son," the ancient interrupted, "almost a hundred years ago I heard the seductive hooting of a grouse when I was starving—and I stalked cautiously toward the sound. I had not yet learned that the grouse causes its voice to rise from thickets other than that in which it hides, so that the hungry hunter will stalk the voice and fail to find the substance. After a hundred years, I have learned to disregard the voice and seek out the hidden bird."

"But this time—" the other began again.

"But this time," the oldster said, "the hunter may find the echo a more filling meal than the meat of the grouse, you think? There is that way too. The Praying Delawares have traveled that trail. It has led them from a mighty nation on the eastern seas to three pitiful villages on the Muskingum since they laid down the tomahawk and picked up the prayer book. It is for you younger men to say whether you shall set the feet of the Shawnees upon it."

An angry murmur rose from the throng. Every warrior scorned to emulate the example of the Praying Delawares.

"What has been will be again," the ancient intoned. "If we listen once more to the ventriloquial hooting of the grouse and let but one Long-knife dig his burrow in the fair lands of Kentucky, then as we have lost the lands of the East, so shall we lose all the lands of the West, even to the setting sun. Then shall the red man vanish from the earth. I have seen it written. I am done."

One after another the ablest warriors rose to declare fiercely that the Long-knives should never get foothold in Kentucky. War parties of ferocious Senecas, Ottawas, Wyandottes and Shawnees began filing toward the south. Kill-cat was among the first to go.

The war games of the Shawnee urchins blazed forth with fresh intensity. Of nights they kindled council fires in the forest and harangued one another after the fashion of grown warriors. Their youthful eloquence was launched upon the winds. When all had been heard, a sapling was topped to serve as a war post and they circled round it. Talk-with-birds, foster son of Kill-cat, was first to strike the war post with his tomahawk and so declare himself for war. His brother, Standing Bear, was next, and stabbed his bone knife deep into the sapling. One and all, even to the most timid, after many circles, rushed upon the war post and smote it. The young Shawnees were unanimously for war.

Then came days of mourning in the Shawnee town and there was wailing in the lodge of Kill-cat. Among the first to go, he had been among the first to fall in battle and his scalp now hung in the wigwams of the Long-knives.

In this small Shawnee town, as among all other Indian communities, the improvident day-and-night gorging so long as the food held out occasioned alternate periods of feast and famine. The hunters brought in deer and buffaloes and turkeys. Wild fowl swarmed the marshes in unbelievable abundance at certain seasons. Bears were numerous and the delicious fat of these animals was pressed into skin containers. The squaws of the Shawnees were adept at making maple sugar. Raccoons were so numerous that the boys caught them by the hundreds in dead-fall traps. Fish were plentiful and were taken with elm-bark nets, spears, gigs and baited hooks. Beaver meat formed a considerable item of the menu during the trapping season. There were wild fruits for the picking in the autumn, bee trees from which great quantities of honey were extracted. Then there was always the staple succotash, a mixture of boiled corn and beans. But despite the abundance and variety of the food supply, there were several months during each winter when the improvident feasting of former days resulted in the pinch of famine—and Rod learned what it was to go without food for long hours at a time.

But he learned also of savage generosity. Every morsel of food was justly apportioned. The one who had so much as a pound of meat or a bark bowl full of succotash and yet shared it not with all would have been degraded in his own eyes and those of his fellows. Gray Wolf, once William Herne, had fought beside his comrade Kill-cat when the latter had fallen in battle. Gray Wolf had been wounded while trying to carry off the body of his friend. The young warrior now took a great interest in the dependent family of his departed comrade and he hunted for the widowed Winnebanca and the two boys, Talk-with-birds and Standing Bear, as conscientiously as if he had been the head of their lodge.

During Rod's eleventh year a little white girl of perhaps six years of age, golden-haired and blue-eyed, was brought into the Shawnee town. A squaw proceeded to scrub the infant at the creek. Her stark terror inspired Rod with a desire to comfort her. English words came awkwardly to his lips when he sought to speak to her in her native tongue.

"They not hurt," he managed at last.

She stared at him wide-eyed.

"They not hurt little girl," he essayed.

She broke away from the squaw and fled to him, casting her tiny wet form against him and clinging desperately.

"I'se so 'fraid," she sobbed frantically. "Don't let them hurt me."

Her little arms gripped his thigh convulsively as he awkwardly patted her wet yellow head.

"They not hurt," he promised grandly.

In some childish way she attributed her subsequent good treatment entirely to his promise. He loomed as benefactor and protector in her infant mind. Alone of all the village, he could understand her and answer questions—reassure her. Later, attired in her tiny suit of buckskins, she persistently haunted the lodge of his foster mother and dogged his footsteps at every opportunity, as faithfully adoring as a pup. With the adaptability of the young she slipped rapidly into natural acceptance of the life of the village. When the Indian youths engaged in sports, her blue eyes followed the antics of her hero with serene devotion and open pride.

Rod accepted this attention with the indifferent kindness of a youth who is engrossed with games imitative of the pursuits of his elders. When her persistent following threatened to interfere with his very serious duties as a scout by revealing his position to the enemy, he firmly insisted that she return to the village. When she followed too closely upon his heels as he cautiously stalked some prey on his hunting expeditions, he signalled peremptory orders for her to stand motionless. But when he had killed a bird and roasted it over a fire kindled in the forest, he grandly permitted her to partake of the repast. At all times, however, his firmness was tempered with kindliness. And when engaged in less serious pursuits, she was welcome to participate. She soon learned to swim like a baby otter. On occasion he took her for a turn in his little elm-bark canoe. When she complained of the vermin with which every Indian town was infested, and knew not how to rid her clothing of the pests, he instructed her in the art of depositing her tiny buckskin garments, turned wrong side out, upon the lair of big red ants. The warriors of the latter tribe promptly swarmed forth and converted all stray occupants of the garments into rations for the ant army and rendered them habitable again.

She told him that her name was Patty Lander.

"Patricia?" he asked, and she nodded.

She described events prior to and at the time of her capture. He gathered that she had lived in a small Pennsylvania settlement. For a time he thought of her as Patty Lander and addressed her thus. Then she was given the Indian name of White Fawn and thereafter he addressed her by that title and thought of her in the same way, the other matters which she had related slipping gradually into the background of his mind.

Some six months after her arrival, occasional white men again began to put in an appearance in the Shawnee town. Boone's first ambitious attempts to take settlers into Kentucky had been savagely repulsed. Temporary peace had come again. Rod's Indian mother, Winnebanca, seemed troubled, and lavished her affection upon him. Standing Bear, his brother, was quite openly alarmed.

"They will take you away," he grieved. "The Long-knives will come for you."

This seemed a remote possibility to Rod and he was not much concerned about its probable fulfillment. He could think of no reason why the Long-knives would tear him from this very satisfactory home.

Eventually, just after he had passed his twelfth birthday, though he was not then aware of its passing, two white men appeared in the village. One was a middle-aged border woodsman whom Rod had seen on former occasions. The other was a large gentleman whose very air proclaimed him a personage of importance. This latter party, he learned, was his uncle—which meant nothing to him.

His foster mother, Winnebanca, sadly explained that a recent treaty stipulated that all captives in the Indian country who wished to return to the settlements must be surrendered to the whites. Rod most emphatically expressed the opposite of any desire to return. But he had not yet attained to the age where his own decision was accepted by his elders and he was to be surrendered whether he would or no. The prospect not only filled him with apprehension but also with profound grief at parting from those he loved.

Gray Wolf, once William Herne, grieved at the boy's impending departure.

"Too much bad, you go," he said, resurrecting his imperfect English for the benefit of the two white men who were taking the captive away. "If they not treat you too much pooty good, you come back sometime. Injun man, he treat Talk-with-birds better."

The little girl captive, known among the Shawnees as White Fawn, had been concealed in the forest so that the whites would have no knowledge of her presence. Standing Bear, unable to stand the strain of parting, had absented himself. Winnebanca shed copious tears and voiced her soft plaint, "Ay-ee, Ay-ee," rocking sidewise where she sat in the lodge as her foster son was led away.

The youth planned desperately to effect his escape as soon as night mantled the woods with darkness. An anguished wail reached his ears. That despairing cry from the forest, expressing vocally the same depth of anguish that seethed within himself, for the first time made the departing youth acutely aware of the strength of the bond between himself and the tiny captive White Fawn. She was grieving at his departure, as he was grieving for himself.

From a tangled thicket flanking the trail came the plaintive cooing of a mourning dove; later, from a rush-grown marsh, the startled notes of a killdeer. Later still, from far behind, the faint cawing of a crow. Rod knew that these were the calls of Standing Bear, flanking their route and signalling his farewell. The woodsman also knew this, but Colonel Buckner remained placidly unaware of it.

"Damme, sir!" he chafed to the border man. "From the lad's expression you'd think we were dragging him away to captivity instead of rescuing him from it."

"That's the way it goes, Colonel," said the borderer. "I've seed it many the time."

"But I can't account for any such condition of mind on the part of one in whose veins runs Buckner blood. He's a Buckner of Virginia."

"Right now he's a young Shawnee of the Injun country," the frontiersman chuckled.