University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WHITE BIRD.

Such was the condition of things, at the barony, when Harry
Calvert made his night-ride to the precinct, in company with
Gowdey. It was the night of the day when the cassique had
brought her offences home to the Honorable Mrs. Masterton;
when Olive's reproaches — faint and few as reproaches, terrible
thrusts as the simple utterances of a wo-stricken heart — had smitten
heavily, though almost with as little profit as her lord's, upon
the rocky nature of the world-wise mother. She was stunned,
rather than subdued or convinced.

Had her loving purposes, on her child's behalf, been really so
mischievous in result? How should she think so? Surely, but
for the peculiar perversity of that child's nature, they must have
been productive of the very best sort of human happiness — according
to her definition of the word, which comprised little beyond
ample fortune, and a fine social establishment in the beau monde.

But, leaving her to work out the worrying problem as she may
— leaving her lovely victim to the hallucinations in which lay at
once her danger and her delight — let us follow the steps of the
cassique.

His policy is to stifle the pangs of heart in the employments
of his head. He must work down the demon of Unrest and
Thought! and Will must subjugate Sensibility. With the dawn
he had gone forth. The first gleams of sunshine found him busy,

with a score of workmen around him, and his own hands grasping
square and rule.

He was thus employed when almost surprised by the embassage
of the Indians, whose camp-fire had been discovered by
Gowdey the night before, as described in a previous chapter.

An embassage of the red men is no ordinary affair. They have
a great sense of their dignity. The cassique knew enough of the
character to recognise the claims of its vanity. He was desirous
of conciliating the race. He had philanthropic purposes, to lift,
and ennoble, and civilize it — if he could. He had dedicated no
small sums of money to this purpose, some thought, and much
patient painstaking. He had laid in stores of such commodities
as the red men most desired. These were to be used as presents.
He had already given much: he was prepared to give more.
But, first, he must receive them in such state as became his dignity
and their own; the latter consideration by far the most important,
and necessarily involving due regard to the former.

He hurried back to the dwelling the moment he was apprized,
by a runner, of the approach of the cassique — the Micco Cussoboe
— the great chief of the Kiawahs — and hastily put on the
uniform of a British colonel. Clothed in scarlet, with rich facings,
chapeau bras on his head, and long-sword by his side, he too was
a chief, and he came forth properly accoutred for the reception of
his brother-noble.

But we have no intention of making a scene of it. It will help
us nothing in our narrative. The reader must fancy, for himself,
the reserved airs of the red man and his followers; the lofty carriage,
the imposing manner, the grand speeches — which Gowdey
helped to translate — and the gifts of strouds, blankets, bells,
beads, knives, and hatchets, with which the white cassique of
Kiawah proceeded to gratify, at the close of the orations, the cupidity
of his copper-colored namesake and visiter. The belts of
wampum, symbols of treaty, amity, and commerce, were interchanged,
with a state and grace becoming higher potentates.

The white cassique, with proper policy, humored the red one
to the top of his bent. He could have smiled many times during
the proceedings, but his heart was too full of its own peculiar cares.

That he should go through the scene at all, having his own
agonies to endure all the while, was no small proof of his strength

of soul, and the brave will which he brought to bear upon, and
crush down, the keen, sharp, incessant struggle of his sensibilities.

But the embassage was not one simply of courtesy. It contemplated
a special business, for which there had been a previous
understanding between the parties. The red cassique of Kiawah
came, in fact, to apprentice his only son to his European namesake.
“How apprentice,” you ask, “and to what occupation?”
To explain this will require but few words.

It is perhaps not generally known that the custom had been
for some time adopted, among the wealthy settlers of the white
race in the Carolinas, of hiring experts from among the red men,
to hunt for their families and procure their game. The red chief
Cussoboe, hearing of the want of our cassique, had voluntarily
offered his son for this purpose; and the boy, only sixteen years
old, had been hurried through the usual Indian novitiate which
prepares for the toils of manhood, in order to meet the known
wishes of Colonel Berkeley.

This novitiate of the red man? A few words on this subject.

In the complacency of our civilization we rate the red men
somewhat below humanity. At all events, we give them credit
for a very small advance beyond the condition of the mere barbarian.
And yet, setting aside the bias of our peculiar convention,
we are, probably, in one respect, wanting somewhat in the
wisdom of the red man. Our discipline of the young, contemplating
the relative duties of the two races, is scarcely so exacting,
so proper, or so elevated, as theirs. We shall make no comparisons,
lest we make ourselves odious: and we admit, in limine,
that the larger complications of civilization embarrass the subject
of discipline in a degree which the red man scarcely feels; and
civilization contemplates objects which do not enter at all into
his calculations. But, regarding only what are his, he undoubtedly
has a better idea of propriety, and the mode by which his
ends are to be attained, than we have reached, with all our gains
of learning and science, and in respect to the variety of considerations
which press upon our cares.

The red man has two great studies before him. He is to be
the hunter and the warrior. His life is thus simplified, as narrowed
down to these occupations. How to train himself and son
for these? Hardihood, dexterity, cunning, fleetness of foot, firmness

to endure, inflexibility in trial, a steadfast purpose, a strong
heart, a cool head, deliberate courage, and a steady aim — these
are the objects of his education, training him equally for the two
employments of his life. He is schooled even more severely than
was the Spartan. His pride, from childhood, is brought into play,
and made to stimulate all his proper faculties. He longs to emulate
the great hunter, and circumvent the bear, and trap deer and
turkey, and transfix the flying game with his unerring arrows;
and so, from eight to fifteen years, the naked urchins of the tribe
are engaged in every exercise which can increase the volume and
elasticity of muscle, the strength of legs and arms, the quickness
and farsightedness of eye, the subtlety of pursuit and snare, the
agility of movement, the rapidity of flight, the dexterity of aim
and action, and the cool, resolute purpose to achieve and to endure.

At fifteen, just when the moral nature begins to stir with discontent,
the lessons rise, so as to appeal to the spiritual and imaginative
faculties. At fifteen, there is a new ordeal, when the
priesthood interpose and take up the training, just where the
merely physical development is supposed to be sufficiently compelled
by habit.

We do not, of course, deem it necessary to dwell upon certain
incidental lessons which have been imparted in the meantime.
These are preparatory, a part of the training, though they may
seem to have been delivered without any apparent consciousness
that the boy is listening. Wild songs are sung, of ancient
braves, in his hearing; tales are told, of wondrous deeds of daring
and endurance in the past; and traditions are transmitted, of such
as, from extra developments of character, have risen to the rank
of demigods, and shine in the mythology of the red men as brightly
to their imaginations as ever did the Thesean and other mythic
heroes in the imagination of the Greeks. Of course, we do not
propose to compare the two races, though some of the red men
might well challenge the comparison with Greek or Roman fames.
But their hero-deities, having no poet, have no record — none, at
least, which can spell our senses into fond allegiance. We will
suppose that, from eight to fifteen, the Indian boy has eagerly
listened to thousands of such legends of myth and hero.

At fifteen, all his early training of the physique, and its tributary
faculties of sight, and smell, and taste, and touch, and hearing,

together with those lessons which have wrought upon his
imagination and superstition, are appealed to, by a new and peculiar
process, which is training also; and the boy is solemnly dedicated
to the Great Spirit and yielded to his hands, and made to
go through an ordeal which brings into exercise all that is spiritual
in his nature.

This process is but imperfectly described, in our language, as
the initiation of youth for manhood. In one sense, it is this. It
is the taking on of the toga virilis. It is the assumption, for the
first time, of the responsibilities of life. But it is something more.
It is a sacrifice, a consecration, an invocation — a religious rite,
the higher purpose of which is to place the neophyte within the
immediate care of the Great Spirit; to commend him to special
favor; and to procure, if possible, such a visitation from the Deity
as will prefigure to him the particular rôle which he shall adopt
in the vague future which lies before him.

He is expected to dream dreams, and to see visions; each of
which is to have a special purport to his mind. In the Yemassee,
and the kindred dialects of the Kiawahs, Edistohs, Cussoboes,
Stonoes, Sewees, Ockettees, Accabees, and other tribes, occupying
or ranging through the same precincts, this ordeal was called the
Beni-as-ke-tau; among the Muscoghees, it was A-boos-ke-tau;
and the several Indian nations had, each, its peculiar name for a
ceremonial which was common to them all.

According to Gowdey, and no doubt many others of the whites
who knew the habits and character of the red man, it was the
formal introduction of the boy to the Indian devil!

But, to the process itself:—

The youth, having reached the proper age, say fifteen, and
promising to be worthy, by reason of the progress he has made in
the sports and exercises which are meant to harden properly his
physique, is suddenly withdrawn from the tribe, and conducted to
a region of extremest solitude. With the nations of the interior,
this was chosen among lonely dells in the mountains, or deep
thickets of the forest, remote from the travelled routes. Along
the seaboard, according to the season, it was in the depths of the
swamp, or on some desert islet, which was consecrated to this
especial purpose.

Here, after various exorcisms of the priest, he was left with a

certain meagre allowance of food, carefully measured for a limited
space of time — varying, according to the different usages of the
tribes, from seven to twenty-seven days. The food left him was
just in sufficient quantity to preserve life. He was left weaponless.
He had nothing but coarse meal of the maize, and water
was always convenient; he might drink what he pleased of that.
In addition, he had provided him certain quantities, duly measured
out, of bitter roots, which are emetic in their property.
These are sodden in water, and he drinks of the water at morning
and evening. When he has vomited freely, he partakes sparingly
of his allowance of meal. Having thus fed and physicked
himself, with the occasional countenance of the priest, for a space
of five days, he substitutes for the emetic roots those of another
sort, which have the effect of intoxicating: in fact, from the description
given of their properties, we may suppose them to resemble
those of the oriental hacksheesh, the preparation from hemp.
They produce delirium, if they do not temporarily madden.

Then the visions follow. And these visions have a divine
import, which the young man must carefully remember. They
embody the mystery, and the moral, and perhaps the model, of
his future life. They present to his mind the ideal which governs
his aims and aspirations; and from these he detaches, for special
worship, the chief object which fastens most tenaciously upon his
fancy.

We can well understand how and why it is that, with little or
no food, and under the constant appliance of medicine which exhausts
the system, and then, with an imagination wrought to intensest
activity by the intoxicating potion, the boy should see
wondrous things in his visions, and that these should exercise
most potent influences over his mind in all succeeding years. The
only wonder is, that he should escape from madness.

And you may trust these Indian boys, alone, to carry out faithfully
all the duties prescribed to them. They know the object of
the ordeal. Their ambition has been raised to the occasion. They
are eager for the trial, and never fail in its acquisitions. They
would die sooner than skulk. In the meantime, should the boy
meet another, undergoing the same novitiate, he neither touches
nor speaks with him. They are left wholly to God: they will
commune with no meaner being. Ablutions and lustrations follow,

and a copious sweating process closes the ceremonial, when
the priest reappears, and performs certain mystic rites, and the
mockasons of manhood, prepared for the occasion, “esta-la-pee-ca,”
are fastened upon his feet, and he is armed with a new bow, belt,
and arrows, which we may suppose to have been prepared by the
young women of the family. They are consecrated by the priest,
and the boy usually receives a new name, which is temporary,
and to be changed with his first remarkable achievement to one
which is significant of the event.

The reader will suppose us to have abridged this description,
cutting off many minor details. We have given the main features
and objects of the ceremonial, and these must suffice.

We enable him to understand now why we have introduced this
description here, when we recall to his memory the scene, in the
first part of this veritable history, in which honest Jack Belcher
detected the Indian canoe on its passage to the sacred isle of
Kiawah, and when subsequently the alarm was given to the same
personage, in company with his superior, Calvert, when they discovered
the same Indian canoe so nearly athwart the hawser of
the saucy cruiser, the Happy-go-Lucky. The inmates of that
canoe were the chief Cussoboe, the priest, and the favorite son,
just brought back from Kiawah, the latter having gone bravely
through his ordeal of seven days, the usual term of the novitiate
among the Yemassee.

“How came he — the Spirit?” was the first query of the cassique
to the nearly-exhausted boy.

“An-he-gar; lac-o-me-ne-pah.”

“Ha! the little white bird? Saw you no great wings? — no
eagle? Was there no wolf that howls — no panther that springs?
Heard you no cry as of the bird that tears the throat?”

The boy gasped out only the one response —

“An-he-gar; lac-o-me-ne-pah!”

“What hast thou to do with little white bird? It is not for
thee. I would have had thee see the great sea-eagle; better
the panther that leaps, or the wolf that howls; or the great bear,
whose embrace is death! But so the Great Spirit hath spoken!
And who shall say, `Wherefore this speech?'”

This was all said in the dialect of his people. The philosophy,
as spoken, was unexceptionable; but the gloomy brow of the chief

was scarcely in unison with the uttered sentiment. He was
troubled. He walked away dissatisfied.

But he soon returned, and, with great effort, shaking off his dissatisfaction,
he proceeded to some of the final ceremonials, such
as the fastening on the mockasons and belt, and arming with bow
and arrows. And then the whole party walked away together
to the beach, where the boat awaited them.

And even as they walked, there lay in the path before them a
long, beautiful white feather, as if just fallen from some snowy
bird in flight. And the boy reverently stooped and picked it up,
and fastened it within the fillet that encircled his brows. And he
murmured in low tones, as he did so —

“An-he-gar; lac-o-me-ne-pah.”

The father heard the words, and again he frowned; for it did
not please him that the image which had made the deepest impression
on the boy's mind should be so insignificant of character.
But the lad had gone bravely through his ordeal; and, though
feeble, he carried himself erect; and his eye was bright, and his
bearing calm and resolute. So the chief made no reply to the
words, and no comment upon the action. In fact, whatever the
symbol vouchsafed the boy in his visions, it was of sacred origin;
and the faith of the red man rarely questions the wisdom in the
ultimate designs of the Deity, though it may be that it conflicts
with his own pride and the calculations of his policy. It appeared
to do so in the present instance, and Cussoboe was troubled. He
had a cunning policy, a profound purpose in view, which required
that the boy should exercise the highest attributes of manhood;
which contemplated for his future, and that at an early period,
tests which would tax his strength to the utmost, and trials which
should demand his best courage.

In brief, the boy was dedicated almost as solemnly as Hannibal;
and long, searching, and severe, was the examination by which,
subsequently, the sire sought to probe the nature of the son, and
raise his mind to the height of those duties which were in reserve
for his future execution.

But we must not anticipate. Ostensibly, he was simply apprenticed
to the great white chief as a hunter of the deer and turkey.
The terms of this compact were all understood between
the parties, prior to their present meeting. It only remained to

the English cassique to bestow his gratuities upon his dusky
brother. This was done, and the liberality of the one even surpassed
the expectations of the other.

But Colonel Berkeley was careful, among his gifts, to bestow
no weapons; and this was a disappointment to the chief Cussoboe.
He might not have been so placid under this disappointment, but
that he meditated schemes which would supply hereafter all present
deficiencies of this description.

It was in the midst of this scene, and while Cussoboe was
eagerly clutching and putting aside the coveted gifts — robes,
shawls, knives, bells, blankets, and a score of “what-nots” besides
— that a bright, fairy-like creature, an English girl, fair as a
new-budded rose, and fresh as morning, pressed in between the
spectators, and made her way into the circle. This was Grace
Masterton, the sister of Olive, the wife of Berkeley, a tall girl of
twelve or fourteen years, perhaps; a light, graceful creature, whose
eyes sparkled with impulse and kindled with every imagination.
Scarcely did she appear, when the Indian boy murmured, as if
unconsciously —

“An-he-gar! — lac-o-me-ne-pah!”

And his eyes were fastened upon her face with a long, meditative
gaze. And she, too, regarded him with keenest scrutiny
for a few moments, when the English cassique, noticing her presence,
said to her:—

“Grace, my dear, this is the young Indian hunter, who is to
bring us venison. You must treat him kindly, my child. He is
the son of the cassique.”

“To be sure I will, brother,” replied the girl, promptly. “I
like his looks. He 's handsome, though so red. He shall play
with me. I can go with him into the woods.”

“You shall teach him English, Grace, when he 's off the hunt.
Won't you like that better? He knows nothing of our language
yet. I fancy. Ask him, Gowdey, if he understands what we say.”

The interpreter translated for the parties. The boy replied in
his own tongue:—

“I hear the strange bird singing in the woods of Kiawah. 'T is
the white bird that sings. It is sweet to the ears of the young
hunter, but he knows not what she sings. He will listen closely,
till he learns.”

As the interpreter rendered this speech, the girl, with the utmost
frankness and simplicity, as if the answer was quite sufficient
for friendship, crossed over to where the boy stood, his eyes bright
and watchful, and, suddenly taking one of his hands in her own,
said:—

“I like what you say, red boy, and I like your looks. You
shall play with me, and tell me all about the woods, and I will
tell you all about the English and England; and I will teach you
how to speak with me, so that we may understand each other.
And you shall hunt for me, too, and shall catch and bring me a
beautiful smart young fawn—a young deer, you know: you must n't
shoot it, mind you, nor hurt it, but catch it in a snare, and just bring
it to me so; and I will put a collar round its neck, and hang my
silver bell to it, and it shall follow me about wherever I go.
Will you not bring me the beautiful little fawn, red boy?”

When she spoke, the boy started, as if from a dream. But he
did not withdraw his hand from her grasp, and he looked reverently
in her eyes, as if trying to comprehend her speech; but
when she stopped speaking, he could only murmur as before, but
now looking to his father —

“An-he-gar; lac-o-me-ne-pah.”

“He calls you the white bird, Miss Grace, the little white bird
that sings. Anhegar is the Yemassee for little white bird.”

Such was the translation made at the moment by Gowdey.

“Ugh! ugh!” with a nodding head, was the commentary of
Cussoboe; but he looked on with great gravity, apparently not
much pleased with the scene.

“And what is the name of your son?” asked Berkeley.

The question was understood by the chief, but he was not so
successful in conveying his reply, though he attempted one in
English. Gowdey came to his assistance.

“The chief says, your honor, that the boy has no proper name
yet; that he can have no good name till he makes one. That's
Injin custom, your honor. What they call him now is not a name
to last. It 's to be taken off, he says, but not till he 's made a
mark for himself; that is, a totem. If he should have a stiff fight
with a bear, now, and take his hide, they 'd call him by some
name that means `The boy that skinned the bear;' or if 't was
war-time, and he took a man's scalp, the name would tell all

about the affair. Now they call him `Iswattee,' and I do n't know
well what that means; but the nearest I can come to it is, `The
tree put to grow.' For short, they call him `Iswattee;' and I
reckon that 's the name he means you to call him.”

“Ugh! ugh! Iswattee — good boy Iswattee. Shoot dear, kill
bear; good boy Iswattee. Hunt for white Micco. Heap kill —
heap catch! Good hunter is young chief, Iswattee.”

We spare the reader more of these details. The ceremonials
were ended. Cussoboe had made up his piles; had clutched the
hand of the English cassique with a hearty gripe, seemingly of
good will; then suddenly turned away for the forest, leaving his
treasures behind him, but under the guardianship of his followers.
None seemed to remark his going except the boy Iswattee. He,
suddenly, as if starting from deepest revery, took the track after
his father, and followed him in silence to the adjoining thickets,
which were close at hand, and in which both of them were soon
buried out of sight.