University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.

The war-dance was begun in the presence of the
prisoner. He looked down upon the preparations for
a conflict, no longer doubtful, between the savages
and his people. He watched their movements, heard
their arrangements, saw their direction, knew their design,
yet had no power to strike in for the succour or
the safety of those in whom only he lived. What
were his emotions in that survey? Who shall describe
them?

They began the war-dance, the young warriors, the
boys, and women—that terrible but fantastic whirl—
regulated by occasional strokes upon the uncouth
drum and an attenuated blast from the more flexible
native bugle. That dance of death—a dance, which,
perfectly military in its character, calling for every
possible position or movement common to Indian
strategy, moves them all with an extravagant sort of
grace; and if contemplated without reference to the
savage purposes which it precedes, is singularly pompous
and imposing; wild, it is true, but yet exceedingly
unaffected and easy, as it is one of the most familiar
practices of Indian education. In this way, by extreme
physical exercise, they provoke a required degree
of mental enthusiasm. With this object the aborigines
have many kinds of dances, and others of
even more interesting character. Among many of
the tribes these exhibitions are literally so many
chronicles. They are the only records, left by tradition,

of leading events in their history which they
were instituted to commemorate. An epoch in the
national progress—a new discovery—a new achievement
was frequently distinguished by the invention of a
dance or game, to which a name was given significant
of the circumstance. Thus, any successful hunt, out
of their usual routine, was imbodied in a series of
evolutions or the gathering for a feast, exhibiting frequently
in sport, what had really taken place. In
this way, handed from tribe to tribe, and from generation
to generation, it constituted a portion, not merely
of the history of the past, but of the education of the
future. This education fitted them alike for the two
great exercises of most barbarians,—the battle and the
chase. The weapons of the former were also those
of the latter pursuit, and the joy of success in either
object was expressed in the same manner. The dance
and song formed the beginning, as they certainly made
the conclusion of all their adventures; and whether in
defeat or victory, there was no omission of the practice.
Thus we have the song of war—of scalp-taking
—of victory—of death, not to speak of the thousand
various forms by which their feelings were expressed
in the natural progress of the seasons. These songs,
in most cases, called for corresponding dances, and the
Indian warrior, otherwise seeming rather a machine
than a mortal, adjusted, on an inspiring occasion, the
strain of the prophet and the poet, to the wild and various
action of the Pythia. The elements of all uncultivated
people are the same. The early Greeks, in
their stern endurance of torment, in their sports and
exercises, were exceedingly like the North American
savages. The Lacedæmonians went to battle with
songs and dances; a similar practice obtained among
the Jews; and one peculiarity, alike, of the Danes and
Saxons, was to usher in the combat with wild and discordant
anthems.

The survey was curious to Harrison, but it was also
terrible. Conscious as he was, not merely of his own,
but of the danger of the colony, he could not help feeling

the strange and striking romance of his situation.
Bound to a tree—helpless, hopeless—a stranger, a
prisoner, and destined to the sacrifice. The thick
night around him—a thousand enemies, dark, dusky,
fierce savages, half intoxicated with that wild physical
action which has its drunkenness, not less than wine.
Their wild distortions—their hell-enkindled eyes, their
barbarous sports and weapons—the sudden and demoniac
shrieks from the women—the occasional burst
of song, pledging the singer to the most diabolical
achievements, mingled up strangely in a discord which
had its propriety, with the clatter of the drum, and the
long melancholy note of the bugle. And then, that
high tumulus, that place of sculls—the bleached bones
of centuries past peering through its sides, and speaking
for the abundant fulness of the capacious mansion-house
of death within. The awful scene of torture,
and the subsequent unscrupulous murder of the heroic
Irishman—the presence of the gloomy prophet in attendance
upon the sacred fire, which he nursed carefully
upon the mound—the little knot of chiefs, consisting
of Sanutee, Ishiagaska, and others, not to
speak of the Spanish agent, Chorley—in close council
in his sight, but removed from hearing—these, and the
consciousness of his own situation, while they brought
to his heart an added feeling of hopelessness, could
not fail to awaken in his mind a sentiment of wonder
and admiration, the immediate result of his excited
thoughts and fancy.

But the dance was over at a signal from the prophet.
He saw that the proper feeling of excitation had been
attained. The demon was aroused, and, once aroused,
was sleepless. The old women waved their torches
and rushed headlong through the woods—shouting
and shrieking—while the warriors, they struck their
knives and hatchets into the neighbouring trees, giving
each the name of an Englishman, and howling out the
sanguinary promise of the scalp-song, at every stroke
inflicted upon the unconscious trunk.

“Sangarrah-me,—Sangarrah-me, Yemassee,” was the

cry of each chief to his particular division; and as they
arranged themselves under their several commands,
Harrison was enabled to form some idea of the proposed
destination of each party. To Ishiagaska and
Chorley, he saw assigned a direction which he readily
conjectured would lead them to the Block House, and
the settlement in the immediate neighbourhood. This
was also to be inferred from the connexion of Chorley
with the command of Ishiagaska, as it was not reasonable
to suppose that the former would desire any duty
carrying him far from his vessel. To another force
the word Coosaw sufficiently indicated Beaufort as the
point destined for its assault; and thus party after
party was despatched in one direction or another, until
but a single spot of the whole colony remained unprovided
with an assailant,—and that was Charlestown.
The reservation was sufficiently accounted for, as
Sanutee, and the largest division of the Yemassees, remained
unappropriated. The old chief had reserved
this, the most dangerous and important part of the adventure,
to himself. A shrill cry—an unusual sound—
broke upon the silence, and the crowd was gone in
that instant;—all the warriors, with Sanutee at their
head. The copse concealed them from the sight of
Harrison, who, in another moment, found himself
more closely grappled than before. A couple of tomahawks
waved before his eyes in the glare of the
torches borne in the hands of the warriors who secured
him. No resistance could have availed him, and
cursing his ill fortune, and suffering the most excruciating
of mental griefs as he thought of the progress
of the fate which threatened his people, he made a
merit of necessity, and offering no obstacle to their
will, he was carried to Pocota-ligo—bound with thongs
and destined for the sacrifice which was to follow
hard upon their triumph. Such was the will of the
prophet of Manneyto, and ignorance does not often
question the decrees of superstition.

Borne back with the crowd, Harrison entered Pocota-ligo
under a motley guard and guidance. He had

been intrusted to the care of a few superannuated old
warriors, who were deemed sufficient for the service
of keeping him a prisoner; but they were numerously
attended. The mob of the Yemassees—for they had
their mobs as well as the more civilized—consisted
of both sexes; and when we reflect upon the usual
estimation placed upon women by all barbarous people,
we shall not be surprised to know that, on the
present occasion, the sex were by far the most noisy
if not the most numerous. Their cries—savage and
sometimes indecent gestures—their occasional brutality,
and the freedom and frequency with which they inflicted
blows upon the captive as he approached them
on his way to prison, might find, with no little appropriateness,
a choice similitude in the blackguardism
of the Eleusinian mysteries—the occasional exercises
of a far more pretending people than that under our
eye. They ran, many of them, with torches waving
wildly above their heads, on each side of the prisoner,
some urging him with blows and stripes, less dangerous,
it is true, than annoying. Many of them, in their
own language, poured forth all manner of strains—
chiefly of taunt and battle, but frequently of downright
indecency. And here we may remark, that it is
rather too much the habit to speak of the Indians, at
home and in their native character, as sternly and indifferently
cold—people after the fashion of the elder
Cato, who used to say that he never suffered his wife
to embrace him, except when it thundered—adding, by
way of jest, that he was therefore never happy except
when Jupiter was pleased to thunder. We should be
careful not to speak of them as we casually see
them,—when, conscious of our superiority, and unfamiliar
with our language, they are necessarily taciturn,
as it is the pride of an Indian to hide his deficiencies.
With a proper policy, which might greatly benefit
upon circulation, he conceals his ignorance in silence.
In his own habitation, uninfluenced by drink or
any form of degradation, and unrestrained by the presence
of superiors, he is sometimes even a jester—
delights in a joke, practical or otherwise, and is not
scrupulous about its niceness or propriety. In his
council he is fond of speaking—glories in long talks,
and, as he grows old, if you incline a willing ear, even
becomes garrulous. Of course, all these habits are
restrained by circumstance. He does not chatter
when he fights or hunts, and when he goes to make a
treaty, never presumes to say more than he has been
taught by his people.

The customary habit of the Yemassees was not
departed from on the present occasion. The mob
had nothing of forbearance towards the prisoner, and
they showed but little taciturnity. Hootings and howlings—shriekings
and shoutings—confused cries—
yells of laughter—hisses of scorn—here and there a
fragment of song, either of battle or ridicule, gathering,
as it were, by a common instinct, into a chorus of
fifty voices—most effectually banished silence from
her usual night dominion in the sacred town of Pocota-ligo.
In every dwelling—for the hour was not yet
late—the torch blazed brightly—the entrances were
thronged with their inmates, and not a tree but gave
shelter to its own peculiar assemblage. Curiosity to
behold a prisoner, destined by the unquestionable will
of the prophet to the great sacrifice which gave gratitude
to the Manneyto for the victory which such a
pledge was most confidently anticipated to secure,—
led them forward in droves; so that, when Harrison
arrived in the centre of the town, the path became
almost entirely obstructed by the dense and still gathering
masses pressing upon them. The way, indeed,
would have been completely impassable but for the
hurrying torches carried forward by the attending
women; who, waving them about recklessly over the
heads of the crowd, distributed the melted gum in
every direction, and effectually compelled the more
obtrusive to recede into less dangerous places.

Thus marshalled, his guards bore the captive onward
to the safe-keeping of a sort of block house—
a thing of logs, rather more compactly built than was

the wont of Indian dwellings usually, and without any
aperture save the single one at which he was forced
to enter. Not over secure, however, as a prison, it
was yet made to answer the purpose, and what it
lacked in strength and security was, perhaps, more
than supplied in the presence of the guard put upon it.
Thrusting their prisoner, through the narrow entrance,
into a damp apartment, the earthen floor of which was
strewn with pine trash, they secured the door with
thongs on the outside, and with the patience of the
warrior, they threw themselves directly before it.
Seldom making captives unless as slaves, and the
punishments of their own people being usually of a
summary character, will account for the want of skill
among the Yemassees in the construction of their dungeon.
The present answered all their purposes, simply,
perhaps, because it had answered the purposes of
their fathers. This is reason enough, in a thousand
respects, with the more civilized. The prison-house
to which Harrison was borne, had been in existence
a century.