University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

The moment in which the Indian damsel lay thus
prostrate, and at the mercy of one who seemed about
to complete the rites in which she had been engaged,
by the sacrifice of the innocent creature in her grasp,
was a moment of the most cruel humiliation to the
imbecile Spaniard. His sensibilities were violently
excited. Every sympathy of his heart was awakened.
His better nature, his human training, his Christian
teaching—such as it was possible for him to acquire
in that day of constant war and rapine—were all active
in urging him to adventure his own life in saving
her who seemed about to perish before him. She too,
so young, so resigned, and—not the least consideration—so
really beautiful. But the necessary nerve
was wanting to the Maroon. He who dared not
the single stroke, though prompted by the woman he
professed to love, when it would have saved her from
shame, and himself from the bitter exile which he
now endured, was not likely to exhibit any rashness,
any ordinary courage, though with such a threatening
spectacle of death before him.

Happily for humanity, his apprehensions were all
idle. The meditated sacrifice in which the priestess
was about to officiate, contemplated not the life, but
the long and flowing locks of the damsel. These
were severed at a stroke, and hung up in the chamber,
from an arrow, the shaft of which was made to penetrate

a crevice in the rock. Then the maiden rose,
and taking the bunch of arrows which she had brought,
she snapped them in twain before the altar, which the
matron still continued to supply with aromatic gums
and fuel. Some further ceremonies were performed—
there was a solemn imposition of hands, while the
virgin knelt before the priestess, and the lips of the
latter were glued to the forehead of the girl. A
brief dialogue, in subdued and murmuring tones,
passed between them, and then the voices of both
rose in a wild, sad chant, the burden of which was
caught up by the voices of the females without. One
embrace followed the subsidence of the strain, and
the matron and the virgin parted—the former hurrying
from the cavern, and the latter sinking down, in
an agony of fear and grief, before the fitful blaze
upon the altar.

Lopez de Levya drew a long breath. He began to
grow courageous. The voices of the women without
were dying away in the distance. Could they have
retired to the boat, and could they be returning to
the distant shore from whence they came, leaving the
maid alone, as he himself had been left. Her evident
sorrow and apprehension declared this to be the case.
But it was evident that no such feeling moved her
abandonment as had occasioned his. The proofs of a
deep and tender interest had been shown her to the
last. He had heard the sighs, the moans, the murmurs
of the officiating matron. He had witnessed
her fond caresses of the damsel. He had heard with
quivering sensibilities, the wild sad chant of the attending

women, whose song still feebly fell upon his
senses from without.

The scene which he had witnessed was a religious
ceremony. But what did it contemplate? Was the
maiden thus left to herself—and to him—destined for
a sacrifice—to perish at last, before the altars of
some strange and savage divinity? It might be so;
but certainly no such purpose was designed at present,
for he did not fail to perceive that an ample supply
of food was left with her, sufficient for a month's consumption.
Or, was she destined, herself, to become
a priestess, officiating, like the matron, who had
left her, in the same and other mysterious rites, hereafter?
This was the more probable conjecture. At
least, such was the thought to which, after a rapid
mental survey of probabilities, our Maroon arrived.
Perhaps a little more deliberation might have rendered
it doubtful whether the innumerable signs which the
walls of the chamber presented, of repeated ceremonials
like the present, were not proofs that the
proceeding could not regard any such appropriation
of the neophyte. It was a ceremonial evidently common
to the tribe or nation. It was one through which,
at a certain period, each virgin had to pass. It was
indeed, a dedicatory, but it was an invocatory service
also. We may, in this place, briefly declare the object
of the ceremonial.

Among the Caribbeans, as among the aborigines of
the New World in most quarters, both sexes were dedicated,
separately, and by different rites, to fortune.
The period in life when they were to emerge from the

salutary restraints of the parent, and to be left to the
assertion of their own wits, and the exercise of their
own intelligence, was that chosen in which to solicit
for them the protection of the gods, who should confer
upon them some especial spiritual guide and guardian.
To propitiate the gods for this favor—to move them
to an indulgent dispensation—to secure a friendly and
favoring protector, and to inspire the young with
wisdom, courage, and faithfulness, were the objects of
the ceremonial. In the case of males, they were thus
consecrated when able to commence the labors of the
chase. They were subjected to severer ordeals than
the other sex, since the leading desire, with them,
was their proper endowment with hardihood and courage.
Long abstinence from food, exposure to cold,
and frequent stratagems by which to alarm them and
try their courage, were resorted to by those having
charge of their initiate. The maidens were more
gently entreated. Isolation, rather than exposure,
was the influence employed upon their courage. Food
was provided them, but of a sort rather to inflame the
fancies than the blood. This was to be chastened
rather than exhilarated. Roots of rare efficacy, the
virtues of which they knew—herbs which assailed the
brain and the nervous system, were silently mingled
with the food which was left for their sustenance, and
the very fumes of the aromatic woods and gums with
which they were appointed to feed their daily and
nightly fires, possessed a partially intoxicating effect
upon those who continued to inhale them. It was
while under such influences that the visions of the
youth were to be observed with heed. The images
that were most frequent in their dreams—the scenes
which they witnessed—the voices that they heard—
the laws which were declared—these were to be the
oracles by which their whole succeeding lives were to
be regulated. By these the young warrior was to be
guided in the chase or the conflict, and the young
woman, in the keeping of her household, the training
of her young, and the exercise of her sympathies and
tastes. The favorite or leading aspect, or object, in
their visions, was to become their guiding spirit forever
after. It was customary in many tribes, perhaps
in most, to adopt this object as their mark or sign;
—and this was the totem, inscribed upon the arm or
breast—not dissimilar to those of knighthood in the
Middle Ages, drawn from favorite objects of sight, or
the events most conspicuous in their lives; with this
difference, that, in Europe, the totem was inscribed
upon the shield, the surcoat, or the pennon—among
the savages of the New World, upon the naked person.