Читать книгу The Master of Life - W. D. Lighthall - Страница 4

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The stag was brought forth. Well rested but anxious-eyed, he was held with thongs by two men of splendid brown skins, some thirty paces in front of where the chiefs sat, along the trail leading into the forest.

Hiawatha and the Black Wolverine, the young champions of their respective nations—stripped of all but belt and loincloth—bent forward ready for the race, their bronze sinews and muscles gleaming and their faces shining with the smile of contest. Their mothers, seated near by, watched them silently but intensely, their faces shaded by their robes. The thousands of both tribes present bent forward, too, especially the young braves, all pent and tense as full drawn bows. They regarded the stag as a cousin—a man in the guise of a stag.

He was quietly slipped off his thongs.

As soon as the chief of the white-breasted tribe felt the lightness of freedom, he drew in one quivering breath through his silken black nostrils and with a lightning bound darted, as if through the air, into the woods. A single scream leaped from thousands of throats and the two runners shot after him. Their task was to defeat the very symbol of fleetness—to run the stag down!

The Sun, the Chief of Chiefs, passing high in the west, looked full upon the contest and rejoiced.

The stag had the whole green forest before him, covering the forty square leagues of the Island, but all knew with native certainty that he would follow some one of a few runs only—for at the commencement the Great River was on his left hand and the Little River on his right; and the smoke-scent of habitations along the Great would drive him to choose the side of the Little; and thus they reasoned for other parts of his flight, for they knew the Sacred Island Tiotiaké better than he a stranger. Hours passed and the two runners still fled after him, catching at rare intervals a glimpse of red and white hindquarters amid the distant green shadows and being left miles on miles behind again, to be guided only by their unerring nostrils and eyes. The marvel of human endurance was yet to be shown. So, the quill-embroidered ends of their loin-cloths streaming behind them, we leave them running, and increasing in swiftness. After the start, the people returned from the forest to the weedy point, where the Little River ran into the Great, or, as it was mostly called, the River of the Master of Life, for the Master of Life dwelt under its majesty of vast waters and his voice could be heard continually speaking. No other river was so wide or so great. Multitudes of ruddy bark canoes bearing strange insignia of eyes and suns and beasts were drawn up on shore as far as the eye could see, and many smoky-topped wigwams of pictured skin were near them, many black-edged pots, sunk in sand beside many little fires, and among the cornfields which held up their tasseled heads over some sixty acres at a little distance off, seven immense, round-topped bark houses stood, each the home of several families of the Men of Men, whose chief town, Hochelaga, was a crow's flight inland. Looking up the shallow gravels of the Little River, the visitors saw the grasses and scrub willows of a marsh whose limits were lost in outlines of distant forest.

Why were all these thousands of the dwellers in wigwams and the dwellers in houses now assembled?

Every year, at full moon of cornharvest, the people of the Northern Lights—scattered hunters of the woods—came in from their fishing haunts by many far off lakes, to meet the Men of Men, the polished race of the town, here where the Pine of Peace, standing alone on this point, dominated for miles the view up and down the River of the Master, and now dwarfed the whole assembly of both tribes into pigmies by its mighty, rough-ribbed girth and straight rise of the height of thirty braves. And here on the fragrant brown needles beneath it the gifts of both nations were laid, a pile for each band, and the council fire was made ready. There the strangely-painted Sachems of the Wilderness sat down in a wide semicircle on the side towards the river, and behind them their braves, and behind these the multitude of their women and children; while on the side towards the land sat the statesmen and warriors of the Hochelagans, and behind them their women and children. It was easy to distinguish the two races, if only by their ornaments and feathers, for those of the Nation of the Town were rich and well-made, while those of the Wilderness were clumsy and scant. A long and solemn silence was their first tribute of respect to each other.

Awitharoa, Peace-Chief of Hochelaga, at length rose, lit the fire of hospitality, and, lifting the brilliant-feathered Calumet between his outstretched hands, presented it first reverently in turn to the gods of the East, the South, the West and the North, passed it to Nikona, the oldest of the People of the Northern Lights, and, facing the assembly under the boughs of the Pine above them, addressed the guest tribe:

"People of the Night-dawn!"

He checked his utterance. A muttering roll was heard in the sky. A high-piled cloud appeared over the woods, advancing rapidly eastward. In it all saw some vivid portent. The Algonkins discovered it as the mighty bird, the Ahnemeekee, fraught with magic and mishap, flashing its eyes and clapping its great wings together. The Men of Men beheld the glorious form of their Uncle the Thundergod, wrestling overhead with the Stone Giants. In each detonation they heard him smiting them with loud-resounding blows. Neither nation moved or spoke, but the former bowed their heads and the latter held themselves erect.

Then Awitharoa recommenced:

"People of the Night-dawn, be not afraid. We are the Nephews of the Thunder.

"It was our Uncle who spoke, who approves of this our meeting. Our Father the Sun is also on high. The gods are with us.

"People of the Night-dawn! Our forefathers met yours here when they first landed on the Island before the memory of any of the living, and this Pine, which then was young, was chosen as the everlasting meeting-place. They cut upon it our Bear; they cut upon it your Rabbit; and these totems have now grown together. The Pine was then small: it has risen to the sky, and its roots are fixed in the country below the earth. That it may never be cut down I give to each of your head-chiefs a belt embroidered with a pine-tree."

"Hoh! Hoh!" all the Algonkins ejaculated approvingly as he placed the shapely belts on the mat before him and continued:

"Your feet are torn by the thorns of the journey ye have come. That you may forget the thorns and the cold and have incense for sacrifice, I give you this asogun, the noble crop not raised by women, but by warriors." He pointed to a great heap of fragrant Indian tobacco.

Awitharoa as he spoke moved about with dramatic gestures, according to the custom of their oratory. Thick-set, but all muscle, was the Peace Chief, with small hands and feet, mighty neck cut with deep wrinkles of seasoned power, a face also cut with a mass of sharpened wrinkles made by weather rather than age; a dark metallic complexion; eyes so keen that they seemed to see into the bones and heart—a man so generous that his own poor shreds of clothing told the people of his many gifts to others.

"Your eyes have been dimmed in winter by the demon Famine," he continued, as he walked about under the tree. "We make them clear by this mountain of maize, into which the Chief of the Sky has put his beams, in eating which you will take the Sun within you to drive the clouds from your sky and that demon from your wigwams.

"You have been tracked in the wilds by the black Windigos who live upon the flesh of men, by demons of waterfalls, of mountains and of dark ravines. I give you for protection these cunning amulets of black stone, the art of which the Men of Men were taught of old by our Uncle the Thunder, of whom all Windigos are afraid.

"People of the Northern Lights! my nation and yours are one house. Whenever you are hungry come into our doors and sit down by the fires; our women will bring you corn; they will spread you mats; we will pass you the pipe; you shall see through the smoke of it your mother and brothers."

"Hoh! hoh!" replied the Algonkin chorus, the people eagerly eyeing the gifts.

Nikona, their patriarch, walked to the orator's place as Awitharoa sat down. A fierce energy lit the eyes which looked out between his bent shoulders; it held together his palsied frame, and stamped the dark face, wrinkled in many folds.

"Our people know not crops nor crafts," he said in a voice shaky with age, but not weak.

"We are not as yours, who can make palisades and houses, and amulets: ye are a wonderful nation. But this our country is large; it feeds thousands of deer, and there are none like the Algonkins in the killing of stags. I give you, then, these many pelts of buckskin which will make leggins and moccasins for your women to embroider, and here is fawn skin for white pouches of braves and for your feet at the dances. Our swamps are fat with nations of beaver, and as we slay them we tell them their skins shall be beds and robes for our friends the Nephews of the Thunder, and then they die gladly. Therefore, Nephews of the Thunder, I give you this hill of beaver-skins. Also for the warriors I give these bark parcels of war-paint from the lake where the Bright One placed it—Onomening. And from the shore of the mighty Salt Lake we bring you these strings of shell wampum which is precious. Hang it in the house of your Council that it may say to you whenever you are gathered together, 'What is more beautiful than peace.' And to thee, Awitharoa, I give this axe of the sharp green copper we have brought from the Sorcerers of the Sunset. It is full of magic for cutting of trees and slaying of foes."

"Hoh! Hoh!" all the Hochelagans responded. "Hee-a-hee-ee-hoh!"—because of the pearly sheen of the polished wampum and the red shining of the axes.

Other orators having spoken, until the Sun had passed far down towards his Red Tepee, the two divisions of the assembly thronged forward together to the partition of the presents. The Algonkin women were already loading the first portions on each other's backs for removal to the canoes, when a shout echoed and re-echoed in the woods just across the Little River.

The women threw down their loads of maize and tobacco, braves hastily ran for their bows, the chiefs and great warriors disdainfully looked round, and all, as by one movement, faced the opposite bank. They saw issuing from the trees along it the stag. But how changed! No more a chief in mien, he tottered towards the water, a red-streaked froth dripping from his lips, his tongue hung out on one side, his eyes were dull, his nostrils quivered with fear, broad stripes of perspiration moistened his sides, and his failing limbs struck against one another. Another moment and young Hiawatha sprang out, dishevelled and red, not fresh as at the start, but withal like a man who has labored yet is fit for his labor, as with a final burst of speed he leaped down the slope, and catching the horns crushed the forehead of the deer with his stone axe, and it dropped with a loud groan. Another blow, and the creature, breathing a deep sigh of final effort, passed out of life at the water's edge. The youth, all shining with perspiration, his hair fallen from its fastenings, his face flushed, his chest heaving for breath, and his eyes brilliant with triumphant excitement, faced the multitude, waved his axe, and uttered the piercing "Ko-weh" of victory. Man had outrun deer. Not only had he outrun him, but by a refinement of skill, had compelled him to end his career at a given spot!

Nor had game ever any audience more able to appreciate and enjoy it. The Algonkins, it is true, regretted that their champion had not won this year's contest, but as they had been victorious at several previous meetings, they were willing to give way to the admiration of the moment; on the other hand, the Hochelagan youths and boys screamed and screamed their congratulations; their women wept with joy, and waded into the water to take charge of the stag. Hiawatha's mother, Onata, sat, bright-eyed, within her shawl, and Awitharoa, coming down to the waterside, invited the victor, who now sat modestly upon a boulder near his victim, to cross, and when he did so, took a red-tipped eagle feather from his own head-dress and placed it in the youth's hair to be worn all his life thereafter in feast and war. Long afterwards the Hochelagans remembered the first wearing of this feather in tragic and momentous experiences. But none of them dreamt even then that it was to affect, as it did, the history of the whole world.

The stag was speedily stripped of its hide by the women, brought over and arranged for broiling, and during the preparation of the feast the dance of peace was started under the Pine. It was only then that the Black Wolverine wearily emerged from the forest, angrily waded over to the tree, and, refusing to utter a word, sat down apart on the bank of the River of the Master, steadily following the red-tipped feather in Hiawatha's hair with a sullen fury which the Hochelagan women liked not.

[1]	["Beside the Up-and-Down," i.e., the Great Rapids—the oldest and present Iroquois name for Montreal.]