University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.
THE INDIAN LEECH.

Bryant.

The wound of Greyslaer had been given precisely
in the manner described by the panic-struck
fugitive, though both he and De Roos were mistaken
in thinking that their party was surrounded. A
large body of Indians had indeed crossed the river,
under the shelter of the cape or headland, during
the few moments that the moon was obscured; but
this was after De Roos was in full retreat: and the
“skulking savage” who had so alarmed his followers,
as well as the sharpshooter who had subsequently
picked off Greyslaer, and struck a panic into his
party in turn, was no other than the single desperado
who had so gallantly achieved his escape from
the canoe. This formidable warrior—for, as Balt
surmised, it was no other than “old Josey,” or
Thayendanagea himself—was aided by fortune, not
less than by his own address, in escaping the perils
of the night. Foiling by his prowess the ambushed
foes that attempted to seize him, he had, in
the first instance, after breaking from their hands,
struck directly across the neck of the promontory

as the shortest way to the station. He had nearly
gained the little bay on this side, where he would
take the water to swim to the opposite shore, when,
discovering the position of De Roos's band by
hearing some of the outlyers whispering together,
he made a detour to turn their flank. The gleam
of his rifle soon after betrayed his vicinity to them,
as was indicated by a movement of alarm among
them; and, perceiving that he was observed, he
widened his circuit by striking inland toward the
hill. This route brought him immediately beneath
the projecting ledge whereon Greyslaer was
reclining. Deeming himself now surrounded by
foes, the chieftain thought that it only remained for
him to fight his way through them as best he might;
and when the moon, after being a few moments
obscured by a cloud, shone out, bringing the form
of Greyslaer above him in clear relief against the
sky, Brant discharged his piece and raised the
war-whoop. His fire was returned with a volley
from the bushes, where the whites lay within a few
yards of their officer; but their shot were thrown
away, for the darkness that reigned below the cliff
prevented them from taking aim at their unseen
assailant. The single war-whoop of Brant was the
next moment echoed back by a tumultuous yell
from the nearer side of the river, and the dismayed
borderers, hearing no order from their insensible
leader, concluded that he was slain, and sought their
own safety in instant flight.

The darkness of the woods rendered pursuit ineffectual.
The forest rung for a while with the impatient
yells of an Indian chase, and then, before
an hour had passed away, the lonely whoop of some
solitary savage, hailing his comrades after a reluctant
and disappointed return, was all that met the
ear These last sounds, had Greyslaer had sufficient

consciousness to comprehend them, would
have told him of the safety of his friends, however
precarious might be his own. The wounded officer,
upon reviving from his swoon, found himself
stretched upon a pile of skins in an Indian wigwam,
with a noble-looking Mohawk, a man of majestic
figure and commanding aspect, standing near, with
eyes bent keenly upon his own. Greyslaer made
a movement as if to lift one of his hands, and was
about to speak, but the Medicine-man—for such the
Indian seemed by the talisman which he wore
around his neck, as well as other emblems and
equipments of the aboriginal leech, or conjuror's
trade, that marked his appearance—motioned the
youth to remain silent and quiet. The sage then,
baring the wound by stripping off some moss or
lichen with which the blood had been temporarily
stanched, proceeded to dress it. This he did, with
the assistance of a withered old squaw, who stood
by, holding the various preparations in her hands,
while ever and anon she bowed reverently to the
muttered charm of the operator. When this part of
his medical treatment was carefully completed, the
magician administered a draught with the same solemn
and superstitious ceremonial; and his patient
soon after slept.

The slumberg of Greyslaer must have been long
and refreshing, for he found himself so much revived
upon awaking as to feel a disposition to rise.
But upon the first indication of such an intention,
his ears were saluted by a shrill and discordant cry
from the old squaw, who sat crouched among the
ashes, watching a brazen kettle, into which from
time to time she cast certain roots and herbs, muttering
some gibberish to herself the while. Her
call was answered from without by a gruff “umph,”
as of some voice chiding her shrewish cry; and

straightway the mat which formed the only door of
the lodge was raised, and the benignant features of
the Medicine-man were seen at the entrance. He
advanced to the couch of Greyslaer, and placing
his hand upon the forehead of his patient, while he
gazed upon him thoughtfully for some moments,
seemed to be at length thoroughly satisfied with the
results of his treatment thus far, for straightway he
began to engage him in conversation, speaking
English at the same time with an ease and fluency
that astonished the soldier-student.

“The Spirit hath not yet need of thee in another
land, young man. He leaves thee here yet
a while, to repent of thy wickedness in aiding to
drive his red children from their country.”

“I drive them? I love the Indians!” said Greyslaer,
with spirit. “It is only those who make
themselves the slaves of a foreign king, to aid in
enchaining my countrymen. It is only the murderous
Brant and his renegade crew upon whom I
would make war.”

“Darest thou, young man, speak thus of the great
Thayendanagea? and yet it fits thy presumptuous
years to pass in judgment upon the deeds of a sachem
who hath sat in council with the wisest of thy
race.”

“The great Thayendanagea!” scornfully repeated
Max. “A presumptuous half-breed! whose
demi-barbarous vanity has been tickled by sharing
in the mummery of European courts. A degenerate
hound, that has exchanged the noble instincts
of his forest training for the dainty tricks of a parlour-bred
spaniel. He sit in council! the poor tool
of profligate Tory partisans, who will use him to
enslave his people when they have destroyed mine.”

The eyes of the Medicine-man shot fire as
Greyslaer, feverish perhaps from his wound, spoke

thus intemperately of Brant, whose doubtful Indian
origin did not commend him to the romantic student,
and whose clerkly employment as secretary of
Guy Johnson had not raised him in the eyes of the
aspiring young soldier; while recent events made
Max regard him as a crafty, cruel, semi-civilized
barbarian, who brought the name of “Mohawk”
into abhorrence and contempt. Greyslaer had his
eyes fixed upon the rafters above him while thus
warmly and disdainfully inveighing against the captor
of Alida, and he did not, therefore, observe the
agitated movement with which the Medicine-man
carried his hand to the knife which he wore in his
girdle, though, from the excitement under which
he spoke, it is doubtful if even such observation
would have restrained his heated expressions.

The magician took two or three turns through
the narrow apartment before he trusted himself to
reply, which he did at last with calmness and dignity.

“Young man, you speak falsely, though probably
unknowingly, in calling Joseph Brant a half-breed;
and, were you not intrusted by him to my
care, you should die on this ground for so vile a
slander. Thayendanagea is a Mohawk of the full
blood. And if any gainsay this truth, Brant, much
as he holds your European usages to scorn, will—I
take it upon myself to say—meet any rebel officer
of his own rank in private quarrel, after the foolish
fashion of the whites. For the rest—” and here
a strange and undefinable expression of emotion
passed over the swarthy features of the speaker,
who seemed to hesitate for words to express his
mingled feelings—“for the rest, the Sachem would,
I know, forgive you for the love you seem to bear
his race; and it may be true that he has done ill
in linking the fortunes of his tribe with those of

either party of the whites. The carrion birds might
have quarrelled over the carcass, but the eagle
should never have stooped to share their wrangling,
if he would soar with untainted plumage.”

“Your tribesmen, noble Mohawk, if indeed you
be an Indian,” answered Greyslaer, touched by the
proud yet feeling tone with which the last words
were uttered, “your red brethren had indeed better
keep aloof from us, alike in war or in peace, for
they seem to acquire only the worst attributes of
civilized life by attempting to mingle with us as
one people: and their share in this struggle must—”

“Ay, you speak well, young man,” interrupted
the Indian, now wholly thrown off his dignified
reserve of manner by what appeared to be a theme
of great excitement with him; “if your vaunted
civilization be not all a fraud, your perverted learning
but a shallow substitute for the wisdom of the
heart, your so-called social virtues but a loose covering
for guile, like the frail thatch of leaves that
hides the traps of an Indian hunter; if your religion
be not a bitter satire upon the lives of all of
ye; if, in a word, all your conflicting teachings
and practices be indeed reconcilable to Truth and
pleasing to The Spirit, then hath he created Truth
of as many colours as he hath man; and his red
children should still rest content with the simple
system which alone their hearts are fitted to understand.”

Greyslaer was precisely at that age when most
men of an imaginative cast of mind mistake musing
for philosophizing, sentiment for religion; and with
that ready confidence in the result of one's own reflections
and mental experience which is the darling
prerogative of youth and immaturity of thought, he
did not hesitate to assume the attitude of a teacher
in reply to the last remark of the Indian. “Truth,

noble Mohawk, hath ever been, will ever be the
same. But the truths of the other world, as well as
of this, are often wrapped in mystery. God has, in
two dispensations of light from above, revealed to
mortals so much of his holy truth as the human
mind was fitted to receive.

“The first revelation was like a dawn in the forest,
where the young day shoots its horizontal rays
beneath the dusky canopy of tree-tops, and, glancing
between the columned trunks, streams upon the path
of the benighted wanderer of the wilderness. That
matin-light—those holy rays of the virgin morn of
true religion—I am willing to believe, illumined the
lake-girdled mountains of the Iroquois hunter as
well as the cedar-crowned hills of the Hebrew
shepherd. It shone alike, perhaps, upon the pathway
of either, if indeed they were not one and the
same people. But the realm of glory to which that
pathway led; the snares that beset it; the solace
and refreshment that lay within reach of the traveller,
alternating his perils, these it required a second
revelation to bring to light; when the sun of righteousness,
fairly uprisen, should throw the blaze of
noontide into that forest, revealing now, in stern
reality, its yawning caverns, its precipices and pitfalls;
now touching with mellow beauty its mossy
resting-places, or sparkling with cheerful radiance
upon its refreshing wayside-waters; and now bathing
with glorious effulgence the region beyond
the wilderness, where lay the final rest and reward
of the wanderer. The good men of my race, therefore,
preach not a new Truth to the Indian! they
seek but to share with him that broader light which
has been vouchsafed to us regarding the same one
Eternal Truth.”

The Mohawk listened with an air of deep respect
to the earnest language of the youth, but his

own feelings and prejudices were too deeply excited
to permit the discussion long to preserve the
abstract character which Greyslaer attempted to
give it.

“I spoke not against the truths of Christianity,”
said he; “for they may have their sanctuary
as well in the desert and the forest as in the city;
I spoke not, I say, of the pure light of Christianity,
which your mobbled faith no more resembles than do
the stained and distorted rays that struggle through
a dungeon's window resemble the beams of the
noontide sun. The holy teachings of your Master
come to us like those unwholesome airs which,
travelling cut pure and invigorating from the skies,
are polluted and made pestiferous by traversing
some noxious marsh before they reach the unfortunate
mortal who is doomed to breathe them. It is
your vaunted social system from which I recoil with
loathing. Your so-called civilization is, in its very
essence, a tyrant and enthraller of the soul; it merges
the individual in the mass, and moulds him to
the purposes, not of God, but of a community of
men. It follows the guidance of true religion so far
only as that ministers to its own ends, and then it
turns and fashions anew its belief from time to
time, to suit the `improved' mechanism of its artificial
system. In crowded Europe the evil is irremediable;
for man the machine occupies less room
than man the herdsman or hunter; but your mode
of existence is not less a curse to ye—the white
man's curse, which he would fain share with his red
brother! But have I not seen how it works among
you? Have I not been to your palaces and your
churches, and seen there a deformed piece of earth
assume airs that become none but the great Spirit
above? Have I not been to your prisons, and seen
the wretched debtor peering through the bars? You

call the Indian nations cruel! Yet liberty to a rational
creature as much exceeds property in value
as does the light of the sun that of the smallest
twinkling star! But you put them on a level, to
the everlasting disgrace of human nature. I have
seen the white captive writhing at the Indian stake,
and rending the air with shrieks of agony; strange
that the unhappy man did not endeavour, by his fortitude,
to atone in some degree for the crimes committed
during the life thus justly shortened. I have
witnessed all the hideous torments that you ascribe
to such a death, and yet I had rather die by the most
severe tortures ever inflicted by the Indian than
languish in one of your prisons a single year!
Great Spirit of the Universe! and do you call yourselves
Christians? Does the religion of him you
call your Saviour inspire this spirit and lead to these
practices?”[3]

Greyslaer, who listened with curious attention to
this strange harangue, as coming from the lips of an
Indian, was completely bewildered by the fluency
and energy with which the magician delivered his
tirade, and he scrutinized his features and complexion,
as if expecting to discover the lineaments of
some disguised renegado white, who, with talents
fitted for a better sphere, had, induced by caprice
or compelled by crime, banished himself from society,
and assumed the character of one of the aborigines.
But the natural and easy manner in which
the object of his suspicions turned the next moment
and addressed the Indian woman in her own language,
not less than the veneration with which the

squaw received his behests, dispelled the idea, while
little opportunity was given him for making a more
minute examination. The Medicine-man, smiling
blandly, as if he read what was passing in the mind
of his patient, approached to his side, and telling
him that he was now about to consign him to the
care of others, asked Greyslaer, as the only return
expected for any service he might have rendered
him, to curb his tongue hereafter in speaking of Joseph
Brant!

Before the patriot officer could reply, the magician
had turned upon his heel and gained the door;
but, as if struck with an after thought, he instantly
returned, and, ere Greyslaer was aware of his intention,
he had bared his arm to the shoulder, produced
a stained flint from his pouch, and branded an uncouth
device, that made the skin smart with pain as
the blood oozed through.

“He who loves the Red-man may die by rifle or
tomahawk, but he will never be disgraced by the
scalping-knife or tortured at the stake if he shows
this mark to the followers of Thayendanagea!”

And, before Greyslaer could find language to express
his astonishment, either at the act or the words
which accompanied it, he was alone with the old
woman, who busied herself in reverentially picking
up and putting away the mumming tools of his profession
which the pseudo magician had flung upon
the ground as he disappeared through the door.