Читать книгу The Master of Life - W. D. Lighthall - Страница 6

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Iakonon, the Buffalo! it needed not that any one should explain the name. The huge man, as he moved along the top of the wall in the gloaming, scanning each rock and bush without, and each lane within, where a stranger might have lurked, had something of the fierce large eye, the heavy neck and shoulders, the deep brown color and the forceful advance of the lord of the plains and woods.

His stone-headed mace of double size swung in his right hand, his bow with an arrow ready-fitted between the fingers, was in his left, and his face was streaked with white and red warpaint. He stopped as his glances caught a frenzied runner dashing from the woods down the lower slopes of the mountain from the southwest. He hailed the man as he drew near, and the latter, whose breath was spent, gasped a feeble "Ko-weh!"

The Buffalo started. Never before had the cry of war, uttered in earnest, been heard in Hochelaga. Generations of peace had accustomed the town to unbroken tranquility, and that tranquility had been ascribed to the favor of the Holder of the Heavens. Nevertheless Iakonon echoed the war cry in a scream that had the ring of a bellow. A band of thirty braves, sitting ready within the wall below him, answered it. Their cry was transmitted by others, and astonishment filled the place. Soon the top of the palisade was thick with figures brandishing bows, axes, spears, stones and clubs, and shrilling the "Ko-weh."

Iakonon raised his hand for silence and it was given.

"What is it, my brother?" he cried from the wall to the newcomer.

The exhausted man could only gesture back along the route he had taken. Iakonon waited for him to catch his breath, and noticed that blood was dried, in thick streams, down his arm and legs.

"At the lake——" he gasped at length, sitting down—then more freely, "the lake above the Great Rapid."

"Has some bear wounded thee?"

"Nay, chief—it was outlandish men."

"Toudamans?"

These enemies of the Stadaconans had never reached the neighborhood.

"Nay, chief, they were not Toudamans. This night as I passed through the wood, by the lake shore, on the Long Point, I saw a canoe of elm-bark, of five paddles, in the bushes along the trail to our lodges. Two men slept under it, and one kept watch, sitting against a cedar. They had no fire. Their faces were painted, their quivers full of war-arrows. I covered myself with moss. I lay all night behind a fallen birch. Thus I watched them till, at the last of the night, two others came, running fast through the woods. Their faces were painted. And as I watched the men pushed out the canoe and paddled westward across the lake with all their strength. Then I ran along the bank and hailed them in the moonlight, calling, "Okanaguen?—Of what tribe be ye, friends?"

"One rose in the canoe, and saying, "Of the Bear tribe, thou coward!" drew bow, and sent an arrow into this arm, and the others derided me and paddled yet more swiftly across the lake. The speech of the men was strange for it was like ours, yet different, and I could not understand some words, but no Northern Light speaketh that language."

Iakonon saw that the two runners were the elk men.

"Thinkest thou men could catch them, my brother?"

"Such is not my opinion, unless they lay on the other shore of the lake."

"Had they corn or meat with them?"

"None."

"They must stop then, to hunt or fish. Away, braves!" cried he, leaping down from the wall.

"To the village of the Rapid for canoes! Take pouches of corn about your necks!"

Awitharoa had been listening. "Carry also your pipes," he said, "and see that ye disgrace not your people in hospitality any more than ye disgrace them in war."

The thirty braves, impatient to distinguish themselves, broke away in file for the lake. Their expedition proved entirely useless, for though they closely searched the opposite shores and many leagues of the water westward, they found not the slightest trace of the strangers and in the end it was whispered that after all these were spirits in disguise.

The many souls of warriors that Hiawatha had seen rushing through the night-sky were remembered, and women asked each other tremblingly what was in store for the nation.

The Black Wolverine watched these events very sharply. Why?

Awitharoa had named the six young men who were to hunt with the Algonkins. Hiawatha was included, for every one saw that the real object of the invitation was a return contest where the Wolverine would have a chance of recovering his prestige lost in the stag race. Not only had his pride been aroused by the defeat itself, but he could not bear the merciless chaffing of the wigwams. Nevertheless he now paid good-humored attentions to Hiawatha and made him a gift of two otter skins, so that the latter could not avoid the implied challenge. Nor would he; it would have brought his disgrace.

The Hochelagans assembled in a great crowd, and cried the bear-hunters success as they filed northward, clad in the scant array of the chase, their sleek forms looking, in the grace of their athletic perfection, like so many Doric warriors of the ancient world.

Quenhia kept her eyes on Hiawatha until the file disappeared among the distant trees. She foreboded all sorts of evils.

"Would that it were even for war instead of this!" she thought.

The glances of the Black Wolverine at herself were hateful enough, but she could not forget his resentful gaze at her "elder brother's" victory feather. So, to quiet her heart-beats she sought out Onata. She found her beside the clay-pit, at the west brook, making pottery. A mass of blue clay lay beside her, on a flat stone, together with a heap of pounded quartz. Onata had mixed portions of the two and worked them well together, had shaped a round-bottomed jar with her hands, flared the rim and formed two little ball-like projections within the edge to suspend the vessel by.

Quenhia sat down and began to mould a lump of the mixture into the form of a face. The matron understood her presence. "Little daughter," said she softly, proceeding to draw a pattern with a pointed bone on the rim of the jar, "it is not the part of women to show fear for sons and brothers, and therefore I went not to see my son depart. Before you were born we had many wars with the people of the Lake of the South Wind and of the Stony Mountains to the east of it. Every spring our braves sang their songs and went out on the path against our enemies. We women incited them to go, and if any held back we offered him our pots to boil, the gathering of wood, the hoe, and a woman's skirt—thus we told our scorn, unless he were lame, or old, or wasted with disease, or under age, or honored with wounds. And when the forerunner came announcing their return we went out to meet them, bringing them berries, cakes and their best apparel and their crowns of feathers, and sang songs of their valor, unless some of us had lost a son in the fighting, in which case the lamentation was first sung. That girl was happy whose lover brought a prisoner or a scalp, or wounds, or wore in his hair a new feather marked with the sign of some act of war. The tribe lives by brave women as well as by brave men, and the bravery of a woman is to give her men to war."

"If this were but open war!" Quenhia sighed.

"But the treachery of this barbarian will accomplish nothing. I have never seen the Men of Men beaten by such people. Hiawatha will prove himself ready."

"Still, if the Black Wolverine should take him unawares?"

"He will not take him unawares."

The statement relieved Quenhia much. Though she could not rise to the heroism of the matron, she could picture Hiawatha meeting the expected treachery and checkmating it. Yet as she went back to the gate Onata looked after her and murmured: "She is different—she is different. Even her steps turn not inward as she walks, like the pure race of the living. The nature of the dead is to be pale, slender, trembling, like the three-leaved lily of spring."

Five days later, one pleasant afternoon as her cheeks aglow and her tongue quick with the chatter of girls, Quenhia came merrily back towards the clearing with a score of the maidens who had been gathering beech nuts, one of them hushed the rest and listened. They heard a faint sound borne to them in snatches on the wind. They started forward and, a few yards on, stopped in a group to listen again. The sound was a man's voice chanting at a distance. The chant was a dirge. Was it some mourner beside a grave in the woods? There was no new grave, and no man mourned aloud in solitudes. They hurried to the open and saw the warriors issuing from the town and running towards a point where the trail from the north entered the clearing. Approaching this spot they saw a man sitting in the middle of the trail, facing the town, his countenance blackened with ashes and his head bowed upon his knees; and they made out, under the disguise of the ashes, the features of Keraronwe the swift runner, one of the five who had set out with Hiawatha and the Algonkins. He seemed famished and exhausted, and his countenance was drawn with woe, but not more mournful than the quaver of his chant, whose volume and despair rose as the people gathered.

"Tell me, mothers of Hochelaga, where are your children?

"Those that ye carried on cradle-boards, and that ran about your knees;

"That grew up like sapling oaks, the promise of all these forests;

"Whom your eyes delighted to follow in the ball game;

"Who were first in hunting, first in war!

"Mothers, where are your sons?

"Mothers, where are your sons?

"Maidens, where are your lovers?

"Ball players, where are your companions?

"Warriors, where are your nephews, your successors?

"Where is thy son, O mother of Shadekaronyes?"

The mother of Shadekaronyes shrieked. Bitter wailing rose from her and all the women of the clan of the young ball player, and amidst their grief Keraronwe continued:

"Where is thy son, Onata, mother of the Pine Tree, the pleasure of all the others."

A long wail went up from stricken Onata. A scream came from the lips of Quenhia. The women of all the Turtle clan added their wailing. A universal fierce lamentation arose and continued among all the people like a stormwind, and Keraronwe continued his chanting, calling upon mother after mother.

"Five is their number; the number of the travellers is five.

"They travel through the dark of the woods, and are weak for want of provision.

"On the long, long path to the west they go;

"Across the Dark River behind the sunset—

"To the villages of the departed,

"None will provide them with meal, nor with fire, wild plums, nor tobacco,

"Nor arms; but lost and weary they shiver and starve in the swamps.

"Across the Dark River they wend to the villages of the departed."

The report Keraronwe made to the chiefs was this: The evening after leaving Hochelaga the twelve hunters camped beside the fort of the Long Rapid of the Ottawa. As they sat around the fire the Algonkins grew boastful. The Black Wolverine told Hiawatha that he and his companions would show "the beaver-hunters" how bear were killed—a different play from running down deer. Hiawatha replied good-humoredly to every taunt. Next day the Algonkins, having first danced their bear-dance, invoking the bear-spirits to come and be slain, started out alone, but though absent all day in the hills, returned at night empty-handed. Two Hochelagans, however, found and killed bears, and a cow moose and two deer were among the spoil of their companions. The Wolverine was in bad temper.

The morning following the Algonkins made magic with their medicine bags, and set off swearing that to-night they would bring back a triumphant load. Hunter's luck was nevertheless against them, while the Hochelagans returned with great rejoicings, for they brought back the skins, paws and choice parts of four bears whom they had found together up a beechtree feeding on the nuts. The Algonkins met them with pleasant faces, accepted tidbits roasted for them by their rivals, and joined in jubilation. Hiawatha warned Keraronwe to be on his guard. The latter kept his ears open as long as he could after the others had fallen asleep. A few minutes doze had overcome him at last, when, on reopening his eyes he saw the six Algonkins standing, each with his hammer raised above a Hochelagan and awaiting a signal which the Wolverine was about to give, for the simultaneous blow. Their leader had chosen Hiawatha, and the hatred and delight of which his countenance was the mirror made him pause to enjoy the moment of triumph. The face of the nomad who stood over Keraronwe was turned towards his leader. In an instant Keraronwe, seeing that his arms had been removed, gave voice to a terrific shout, and, darting into the forest, fled for safety. The shout awoke some of his companions, but too late, for the crunch of the hammers and the groans he heard told him the conclusion. He saw Hiawatha start, being less deeply asleep than the others, but it was only to escape some of the direct force of the Black Wolverine's hammer and swerve it a little by his hand. A glance back when running showed the son of Onata, stunned and bleeding, stagger to the edge of the rocks on which they were encamped, reel and fall into the seething Rapid and sink, lost in its rushing waters. Keraronwe, pursued by the traitors, made speed to reach the Sacred Island, and now, approaching the town, sang his dirge.

The account fell upon the tribe like a stroke of lightning. The flower of their clans were destroyed and every one mourned a cousin, a brother, a son, or a lover. The women threw their hair out of braid into wild dishevelment, rubbed their faces with ashes, tore their clothing and sacrificed gifts to the dead. The chiefs were filled with silent sorrow and disturbed with the future consequences of the troubles, feeling their tribe surrounded as if by a fire of the forest. In view of the peace of generations with the Northern Lights, here was a beginning of reprisals and miseries, to an extent none could tell. An earthquake seemed to have rent their cornfields with a yawning chasm.

The avengers—the nearest males of kin—according to a custom from which it would have disgraced them to depart—wrought themselves to fury over the murderers. They ran through the village to the square shouting of vengeance, and each in turn striking the old war-post with his axe.

In the crisis the Peace-chief proclaimed a Lodge of Silence. At dusk the principal men of the town came into the Council-house, deposited sticks on the fireplace, and seated themselves, without a word, in their established precedence. The orators' mats were placed, the fire was lit, an offering of fragrant asogun was cast upon it, the great Calumet was passed from chief to chief, and then all sank into motionless contemplation. Many hours they sat thus, absorbed in thought, the flame of the fire illumining ring upon ring of intent and troubled faces, until, far on in the night, Awitharoa commanded the ancient liturgy of condolence to be sung to the bereaved families. He chanted the opening words:

"Children, we are met together this night. The Master of Life has appointed the time.

"We meet because of the solemn event which has befallen.

"To earth have they gone upon whom we were wont to look.

"Yea, therefore, in tears let us condole together."

The sachems intoned their portions of the rite; the warriors responded. Each hereditary chief sang the lines ordained for his ancestor. And the mourners found comfort in the holy words. Speakers then rose one after another. They condoled with the bereaved. They gave their advice on the emergency. The effect of the silent meditation showed in the weight of their utterances; passion was not absent, for all were full of grief; and revenge was determined, but their recommendations were solely for the good of the nation. It was agreed that messengers be sent to the Algonkin chiefs offering to meet them for discussion of the murderers; that a party be despatched with Keraronwe to bury the dead; that they should lay beside them gifts suitable for their journey to the Land of Souls; that the Mysterymen be counseled with as to pacifying the spirits; that the town be prepared against attack; and that runners be sent to all the hamlets along the river to warn them of the occurrence.

The country of the Men of Men is now known as the St. Lawrence valley; the Sacred Island Tiotiaké is Montreal; the River of the Master of Life is the St. Lawrence; the Lake of the South Wind is Lake Champlain; Stadacona, the Town of the Rock, is Quebec; the Man-eating Ghosts were the explorer Jacques Cartier and his company, who visited Hochelaga in 1535. The little band of stray Hurons who, generations before, had discovered these rich plains and waters had multiplied and extended their settlements to great distances towards the east and south. On the Sacred Island they founded, besides the population of the town, a ring of flourishing settlements around the shores, who fished, hunted and raised crops, in peace and plenty. A little above and a little below the Island they had villages, and then a gap of some eighty miles left to the Algonquin tribes the possession of their immemorial fishing-ground of Lake St. Peter and the Three Rivers. Lower down, near Stadacona, a string of seven unfortified villages was found—Hochelay, Tekenonday, Stadacona, Satahdin, Starnatam, and Ajoasté, interspersed with many smaller places, whose large fishing parties were wont to push for hundreds of miles into the Gulf. A population as strong had pushed across the great plain to the south-east of Hochelaga and up the river afterwards named Richelieu, making clearings and planting villages on the way and fortifying the strategic hills until they had established themselves in considerable number on Lake Champlain. The number of the race may perhaps be set at ten or eleven thousand, and all, though each settlement considered itself independent, were strongly bound by the tie of origin to Hochelaga, the head of the confederation. Awitharoa had all these souls upon his care in keeping the Algonkin peace.