University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.

Without giving more than a single glance to the
maiden, Occonestoga approached the snake, and, drawing
his knife, prepared to cut away the rattles, always
a favourite Indian ornament, which terminated his

elongated folds. He approached his victim with a
deportment the most respectful, and, after the manner
of his people, gravely, and in the utmost good faith,
apologized in well set terms, in his own language, for
the liberty he had already taken, and that which he
was then about to take. He protested the necessity
he had been under in destroying it; and urging his
desire to possess the excellent and only evidence
of his own prowess in conquering so great a warrior,
which the latter carried at his tail, he proceeded to cut
away the rattles with as much tenderness as could
have been shown by the most considerate operator,
divesting a fellow-creature, still living, of his limbs.
A proceeding like this, so amusing as it would seem
to us, is readily accounted for, when we consider the
prevailing sentiment among the Indians in reference to
the rattlesnake. With them he is held the gentleman,
the nobleman—the very prince of snakes. His attributes
are devoutly esteemed among them, and many of
their own habits derive their existence from models
furnished by his peculiarities. He is brave, will never
fly from an enemy, and for this they honour him. If
approached, he holds his ground and is never unwilling
for the combat.—He does not begin the affray,
and is content to defend himself against invasion. He
will not strike without due warning of his intention,
and when he strikes, the blow of his weapon is fatal.
It is highly probable, indeed, that even the war-whoop
with which the Indians preface their own onset, has
been borrowed from the rattling warning of this fatal,
but honourable enemy.[1]

Many minutes had not elapsed before the operation
was completed, and the Indian became the possessor
of the desired trophy. The snake had thirteen rattles,
and a button, or bastard rattle; it was therefore fourteen
years old—as it acquires the button during its
first year, and each succeeding year yields it a new rattle.
As he drew the body of the serpent from that of
Bess Matthews, her eyes unclosed, though but for an
instant. The first object in her gaze was the swollen
and distorted reptile, which the Indian was just then
removing from her person. Her terror was aroused
anew, and with a single shriek she again closed her
eyes in utter unconsciousness. At that moment, Harrison
darted down the path. That single shriek had
given wings to his movement, and rushing forward and
beholding her clasped in the arms of Occonestoga,
who, at her cry, had come to her support, and had
raised her partially from the ground—he sprang fiercely
upon him, tore her from his hold, and sustaining her
with one hand, wielded his hatchet fiercely in the
other above his own head, while directing its edge
down upon that of the Indian. Occonestoga looked
up indifferently, almost scornfully, and without exhibiting
any desire or making any show for his own defence
or protection. This exhibition of recklessness arrested
the blow of Harrison, who now addressed him
in tones of anxious inquiry:—

“Speak, what is this—speak, Occonestoga, or I
strike.”

“Strike, Harrison!—the hatchet is good for Occonestoga.
He has a death-song that is good. He can
die like a man.”

“What hast thou done with the maiden—tell me,
Occonestoga, ere I hew thee down like a dog.”

“Occonestoga is a dog. Sanutee, the father of Occonestoga,
says he is the dog of the English. There
is no fork in the tongue of Sanutee. The war-rattle
put his eye on the girl of the pale-face, and she cried.
Look, Harrison, it is the arrow of Occonestoga,” and
as he spoke he pointed to the shaft which still stuck

in the neck of the serpent. Harrison, who before
had not seen the snake, which the Indian had thrown
aside under a neighbouring bush, now shivered as
with a convulsion, while, almost afraid to speak, and
his face paling like death as he did so, he cried to
him in horror:—

“God of Heaven—speak, Occonestoga—speak—is
she struck—is she struck?” and before he could hear
the reply, his tremours were so great that he was compelled
to lay the still insensible form of the maiden,
unequal then to her support, upon the grass beside
him.

The Indian smiled with something of a scornful satisfaction
as he replied—

“It was the swift arrow of Occonestoga—and the
war-rattle had no bite for the girl of the pale-faces.
The blood is good in her heart.”

“Thank God—thank God! Young chief of the
Yemassees, I thank thee—I thank thee, Occonestoga—
thou shalt have a rich gift—a noble reward for this;”
and seizing the hand of the savage wildly, he pressed
it with a tenacious gripe that well attested the sincerity
of his feelings. But the gloom of the savage was
too deeply driven into his spirit by his recent treatment
and fugitive privations, to experience much pleasure
either from the proffered friendship or the promised
reward of the English. He had some feeling of
nationality left, which a return to sobriety always
made active.

“Occonestoga is a dog,” said he, “death for Occonestoga!”

For a moment, Harrison searched him narrowly
with his eye, but as he saw in his look nothing but the
one expression with which an Indian in the moment
of excitement conceals all others, of sullen indifference
to all things around him, he forbore further remark,
and simply demanded assistance in the recovery
of the maiden. Water was brought, and after a few
moments her lover had the satisfaction of noting her
returning consciousness. The colour came back to

her cheeks, her eyes opened upon the light, her lips
murmured in prayer,—a prayer for protection, as if
she still felt the dangers from which she had escaped
so happily. But the glance of her lover reassured
her.

“Oh, Gabriel, such a dream—such a horrible dream,”
and she shuddered and looked anxiously around her.

“Ay, dearest, such as I never desire that you shall
have again. But fear not. You are now safe and
entirely unhurt. Thanks to our brave friend Occonestoga
here, whose arrow has been your safety.”

“Thanks, thanks to thee, chief—I know thee, I shall
remember,” and she looked gratefully to the Indian,
whose head simply nodded a recognition of her
acknowledgment.

“But where, Gabriel, is the monster? Oh! how
its eye dazzled and insnared me. I felt as if my
feet were tied, and my knees had lost all their
strength.”

“There he lies, Bess, and a horrible monster indeed.
See there, his rattles, thirteen and a button—an old
snake whose blow had certainly been death upon the
instant.”

The maiden shuddered as she looked upon the reptile
to whose venom she had so nearly fallen a victim.
It was now swollen to a prodigious size from the
natural effects of its own poison. In places about
its body, which the fatal secretion had most easily
effected, it had bulged out into putrid lumps, almost to
bursting; while, from one end to the other of its attenuated
length, the linked diamonds which form the
ornament of its back, had, from the original dusky
brown and sometimes bronze of their colour, now
assumed a complexion of spotted green—livid and diseased.
Its eyes, however, had not yet lost all of that
original and awful brightness, which, when looking
forth in anger, nothing can surpass for terrific beauty
of expression. The powers of this glance none
may well express, and few imagine; and when we
take into consideration the feeling of terror with which

the timid mind is apt to contemplate an object known
to be so fatal, it will not be difficult to account for its
possession of the charm, commonly ascribed to this reptile
in the interior of the southern country, by which,
it is the vulgar faith, he can compel the bird from the
highest tree to leave his perch, shrieking with fear and
full of the most dreadful consciousness, struggling with
all the power of its wings, and, at last, after every effort
has proved fruitless, under the influence of that unswerving
glance, to descend even into the jaws which
lie waiting to receive it. Providence in this way has
seemingly found it necessary to clothe even with a
moral power the evanescent and merely animal nature
of its creation; and, with a due wisdom, for, as the
rattlesnake is singularly slow in its general movements,
it might suffer frequently from want of food unless some
such power had been assigned it. The study of all
nature with a little more exactitude, would perhaps
discover to us an enlarged instinct in every other form
of life, which a narrow analysis might almost set
down as the fullest evidence of an intellectual existence.

The interview between Harrison and Bess Matthews
had been especially arranged with reference to a
discussion of various matters, important to both, and
affecting the relations which existed between them.
But it was impossible in the prostrate and nervous
condition in which he found her, that much could be
thought or said of other matters than those which had
been of the last few moments occurrence. Still they
lingered, and still they strove to converse on their
affairs; despite the presence of Occonestoga, who sat
patiently at the foot of a tree without show of discontent
or sign of hunger, though for a term of at least
eighteen hours he had eaten nothing. In this lies one
of the chief merits of an Indian warrior—

Thus, a perfect imbodiment of the character, so
wrought and so described, Occonestoga, calm, sullen,
and stern, sat beneath the tree, without look or word
significant of that fatigue and hunger under which he
must have been seriously suffering. He surveyed with
something like scorn those evidences between the
lovers of that nice and delicate affection which belongs
only to the highest grades of civilization. At length,
bidding him wait his return, Harrison took the way
with Bess, who was now sufficiently restored for that
purpose, to the cottage of the pastor. It was not long
before he returned to the savage, whose hand he again
shook cordially and affectionately, while repeating his
grateful promise of reward. Then turning to a subject
at that time strongly present in his mind, he inquired
into the recent demonstrations of his people.

“Occonestoga, what news is this of the Yemassee?
He is angry, is he not?”

“Angry to kill, Harrison. Is not the scout on the
path of Occonestoga—Occonestoga the son of Sanutee?
—look! the tomahawk of Sanutee shook in the eyes
of Occonestoga.—The swift foot, the close bush, the
thick swamp and the water—they were the friends
of Occonestoga. Occonestoga is a dog.—The scouts
of Yemassee look for him in the swamps.”

“You must be hungry and weary, Occonestoga.
Come with me to the Block House, where there are
meat and drink.”

“Harrison is friend to Occonestoga.”

“Surely I am,” was the reply.

“The good friend will kill Occonestoga?” was the
demand, uttered in tones of more solicitude than is
common to the Indian.

“No; kill you—surely not—why should I kill
you?”

“It is good! knife Occonestoga, Englishman; put
the sharp tooth here, in his heart, for the father of
Occonestoga has a curse for his name—” was the
solemn imploration.

“No, Occonestoga—no.—I will do no such thing.
Thou shalt live and do well, and be at friendship with
thy father and thy people. Come with me to the
Block House and get something to eat. We will there
talk over this affair of thy people. Come;” and with
an air of indifference, the melancholy savage followed
his conductor to the Block House, where the trader and
his wife received them.