University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.
HOW THE BILIOUS ORATOR ESSAYED.

“A good deal has been said in respect to the monotony of
the prospect while passing through the North-Carolina country.
In respect to such influences as are derived from the moral
world, and by which places are lighted up by a brilliancy not
their own, the same thing may be said of most of the ordinary
stage and railway routes everywhere in our country. Roads
are usually drawn through the most accessible regions. The
lands commonly surrendered for this purpose are generally the
most inferior, and the man of taste rarely establishes a fine mansion
upon the common highway. In the South, this is particularly
the case. The finer dwellings of the planter are to be
approached through long and sinuous avenues, that open only a
green arch upon the roadside, and show you nothing to convey
any tolerable idea of the beauty, taste and comfort which are
buried in noble woods away from vulgar curiosity. The landscape,
in the eye of the hurrying traveller, needs to possess but
a single element — variety. Let it be broken into great inequalities
— steep rocks, and deep dells and valleys, overhanging
precipices, and thundering waterfalls — and the voyager, who is
only the pendant to a locomotive for the nonce, is quite satisfied.
Beauty of detail is, of course, quite imperceptible to his vision.
In the old countries of Europe, the site is illustrated by tower
and temple, picturesque ruin and votive tablet. The handbook
which you carry distinguishes the spot with some strange or
startling history. In our world of woods, we lack these adjuncts.
If we had the handbook, we should doubtlessly discover
much to interest us in the very scenes by which we hurry
with contempt. Dull and uninteresting as the railroad route
appears through North and South Carolina, were you familiar
with the facts in each locality — could you couple each with its

local history or tradition — the fancy would instantly quicken,
and the mind would not only take a lively interest in the scene
through which you pass, but would, by a naturally-assimilative
process, begin to explore for its underlying beauties.”

“What a pity that handbooks for the South are not provided
by some patriotic author!”

“They will be furnished, no doubt, when the tide of travel
sets in this direction, and you will then be surprised at the discoveries
which shall be made. He who goes over these common
routes has no idea of the wondrous scenic beauties which
lie in wait to delight him, hidden from sight only by the roadside
umbrage. With a considerable knowledge of the history
of the country in all these states, I am able to identify scenes
of interest as I pass; and I find, at every step, in my course
along these regions which seem so barren to the stranger, fruitful
interests and moving influences, which exercise equally the
memory and the imagination — the imagination through the
memory. There is scarcely a mile in the passage over the
common roads, in South Carolina, which I do not thus find suggestive
of events and persons, legends and anecdotes, which
elevate the aspect of the baldest tracts, each with a befitting
moral. To him who can recall these events and traditions, the
scene becomes invested with a soft and rosy light — the sterile
sands put on features which sublime them to the thought, and
the gloomy wastes of pine and swamp forest commend themselves
to sympathies which lie much deeper than any which
we can reach through the medium of the external senses. No
doubt this is the same in all the wild states of the South, to
him who is of `the manor born.' There will be a thousand
local matters, of colonization, early adventure, peculiar strifes
and endurances — the long records of history and tradition, from
the first coming of the colonists — which, if known to the wayfarer,
would make him forgetful of the monotonous features of
his progress.”

“It is a great pity that for these we have no guide-books —
no monuments along the wayside — no `Old Mortality' to show
us where the stone lies half buried, and, with his chisel, to
deepen all its features to our eyes. Some of these days, no
doubt, we shall have rare chroniclers springing up, who shall

reveal to our successors these things — these objects, as well of
mind as of sight — which we hourly hurry by unseeing.”

“Of this I have no sort of question. The development is in
progress. The mines of the South have been struck. The
vein is revealed. The quarry is discovered, and in due season
it will be worked. The very impatience with which we complain
that the thing is not done, is in some degree a guaranty
for the performance. We must wait upon Providence. The
great error of our people, as a whole, is that they live too fast,
and endeavor at too much. If suffered to go ahead, according
to the motive impulse in their veins, our posterity would have
neither necessity nor field for achievement. I am for leaving
something to be done by our children. To him who remembers
the South— North Carolina, for example — but twenty, nay,
ten years ago, her social and mental progress is absolutely
wonderful.”

“Hear that, young Turpentine, and be consoled at all my
flings at the old North state.”

“Ah, he knows it better than either you or me.”

“But, without looking to the social progress of North Carolina,
and regarding her as a region only for the exploration of
the picturesque and adventure-seeking traveller — the artist, the
man of taste, the lover of fine manly sports, — the good old
North state is one of the most attractive in all the confederacy.
Her vast ranges of mountain render her especially attractive to
all these classes.”

“Yet, how little promise of this is there along the Atlantic
shore!”

“Even here, to the painter of detail, to the contemplative and
musing taste and nature, there are thousands of scenes of great
interest and beauty. To find these, however, you need the eye
that sees; and the man whose eyes have been properly couched
by art may spend months and years along the Atlantic coast,
and discover new provinces of beauty with the ramble of each
succeeding day. Nature, in her arrangement of the scenery of
the South, differing from the rule of the artist, has thrown her
most imposing forms and aspects into the background. Her
mountains and majestic altar-places are nowhere visible along
the sea; and the superficial traveller is prepared to doubt the

existence of any such throughout our land. Their absence on
the Atlantic would not, perhaps, be so greatly felt, if men were
not always most easily taken by the bald outline, the mere surface,
the simply salient and externally imposing. There is
much in the scenery along our coast which, closely examined,
would, by its exquisite delicacy and nice variety of detail, quite
as much attract the mere explorer as the artist. One of the
peculiarities of this region, as distinguished from the northern
coasts, is the presence of the numerous beautiful islets, that
seem to guard our shores and cities from the wave. Roving in
boat or steamer along these islets, or among them, they appeal
to a moral instinct, the exercise of which puts a thousand genial
fancies into activity. They rise up suddenly around you, like
gems from out the sea; fairy abodes at least; sometimes green
in shrub, and vine, and tree, to the very lips of ocean; and
again, spread out, a sandy plain, glittering with myriads of diamond
sparks, garlanded with myriads of fantastic shells, and
seeming, for all the world, — particularly when seen by the
moonlight — to have been devised and chosen as favorite places
for the sports of Oberon and Titania, of Puck and Little John,
the capricious Loline and the tricksy Anatilla. Southward as
you go, they spread away, diamonds or emeralds, till they conduct
you to the great waters of the Mississippi. They grow in
size and lose in beauty as you advance northwardly. But they
still constitute a remarkable feature of our whole coast; and to
him who spreads sail among them at moonlight, especially in
the more southwardly points, they compel the thought of all the
beings recognised by the old system of pneumatology. The
terrors of Cape Hatteras might well make it to be supposed a
region of mischief, upheaved from the sea, by races of ungentler
beings than such as harbor in those little sand-dunes which lie
so smilingly in the moonlight, with the sea moving between them
in such placid currents. At Hatteras, we may supposes, the malicious
elves, the grim Brownies, the savage Kobolds inhabit —
demon tribes that lie waiting, in malignant watch for the unconscious
bark — slyly slipping beneath the wave, seizing without
noise upon the prow of the vessel, and drawing her into the
insidious currents, and upon the sands of the treacherous islet.
The fancy that peoples the innocent islets, which wreck no vessels,
with the `good people,' may with equal propriety refer
the dangerous capes and headlands to such hostile tribes of
demons as haunt the wilds of Scotland, the Harz mountains and
Black forests of the German, and the stormy shores of the
Scandinavian.”

“Not an unreasonable notion. But was not Hatterask the
old Indian name of the cape and the sea about it, as given by
the ancient chroniclers?”

“Yes: they varied, however; sounds imperfectly caught from
the Indian tongue were imperfectly rendered in the various
tongues of Dutchman, Spaniard, Frenchman, and Englishman.
We must content ourselves with making them euphonious, and
leave their absolute propriety in doubt.”

“And a pretty sort of euphony we should have of it, if we
leave the matter to American discretion.”

“This need occasion no concern. The poets settle this for
succeeding time, when our generations have no longer the
power to pervert the ears of the future. The necessity of
verse compels the gradual growth of harmony in every language.
The oral authority lasts no longer than it can compel
the echo. The poet, always resisted while he lives, leaves a
voice behind him that survives all others. Let him make his
record, and be satisfied to leave it to the decision of posterity.
There is no speech of the future that rises in conflict with his
own.”

“Are the historical and traditional material of North Carolina
of attractive character?”

“None more so. The very regions of country which are so
barren in the eyes of the stranger, pursuing the railway routes
along the Atlantic coast, would alone afford materials for a
thousand works of fiction. I have identified, along this very
route, the progress of more than one curious history. Take
an example: —

“Our first serious war with the redmen of the South, broke
out in 1712. The savages of the old North State took up the
tomahawk and scalping knife in that year, with terrible effect.
Numerous tribes were leagued together for the extermination of
the whites of the colony of New Berne. This colony was of
Swiss, from the Canton of Berne in Switzerland, and Germans

of the Palatinate. They came out to America under the patronage
of Queen Anne. They were led by the Baron De Graffenreidt,
who was created a landgrave. He, with Louis Mitchell,
a leading man among the Swiss, received a grant of ten thousand
acres of land on either of the rivers Neuse and Cape Fear, or
their tributary branches, at the rate of ten pounds sterling for
every thousand acres, and a quitrent of five shillings. The
number of Germans is unknown; but the Swiss were fifteen
hundred. They reached the confluence of the Neuse and Trent
in December, 1710, and laid off the limits of the colony in that
neighborhood.

“The conditions upon which these people came to America,
were specious and encouraging. Each of them received, in England,
an outfit in clothes and money, of from five to ten pounds
sterling; and two hundred and fifty acres were allotted to each
family, which was to be five years exempt from rent or taxation.
At the end of that time, they were to pay at the rate of half per
cent, Carolina currency.— They were credited one year with
provisions, and seven years with the materiel for a certain farming
establishment. This included cows and calves, sows and
pigs, lambs, &c. Tools and implements for clearing land and
building, were furnished without any charge by the proprietors.

“To a poor people, driven from their native abodes, the prospect
was encouraging enough; and the treatment which they
received seemed very liberal. Indeed, the colony very soon began
to put on the most prosperous appearance — was flourishing
in fact, growing daily in numbers and affluence. But the Indians,
as the phrase goes, began to look on the whites with jealousy.
Jealousy, it probably was not. In brief the savages coveted
treasures which they beheld for the first time, and which were
indifferently guarded.

“In the fall of 1711, certain tribes agreed to combine their
forces for the purpose of massacre and plunder. The Tuscaroras
undertook to cut the throats of the settlers upon the Roanoke,
and between that river and Pamlico, otherwise Tar river. The
Cotheckneys and Corees arranged to do the same benevolent
office for the settlements on the Neuse and Trent. The Mattamaskettos
and Matchapangos had the duty assigned them of
scalping the whites in the neighborhood of Bath.

“The work was done with little reservation at the designated
period. But a few days before the massacre, the Indians succeeded
in taking captive the Baron De Graffenreidt and John
Lawson, the surveyor-general of the province, whose book of
travels, a highly-interesting narrative, constitutes one of the best
of our Indian authorities of the South, and should be in every
good American library.

“These distinguished persons, totally unsuspicious of danger,
were engaged in an exploring expedition up the Neuse. Their
vessel was a mere dug-out, a cypress canoe of native manufacture:
and they were accompanied only by a negro, who paddled the
canoe, right and left. They landed at evening with the view
of encamping, when they were suddenly surrounded by more than
sixty Indians. They were made prisoners and marched off to
a village some distance up the river—a march that occupied the
whole night. Here the tribe and their neighbors met in solemn
consultation on the fate of their prisoners. The baron was an
intruder, but Lawson was an invader. As it was after his surveys
that they found their lands appropriated, they assumed him
to be the source of the evil of which they complained. Both the
captives underwent a severe preliminary beating, the better to
prepare them for what was to follow. They were then deliberately
doomed to the fire torture, carried to the field of sacrifice,
kept there in durance vile, and in the most gloomy apprehensions
for a day and night, when the number of the savages having
greatly increased to behold the spectacle, the preparations were
immediately begun for carrying the terrible judgment into effect.
The orgies and phrensied brutalities of the Indians may be
imagined. The hour for execution came. The parties were
bound to the stake; but at this moment the baron pleaded his
nobility, appealing to the chiefs for protection, for that he too
was a chief.

“Strange to say, the appeal was entertained. They concluded
to spare his life: but no entreaty could save Lawson and the
negro. They were subjected to the fiery ordeal, and perished
by a terrible and lingering death, protracted to their utmost capacity
to endure, with all the horrid ingenuity of savage art. Then
followed the general massacre, which spread consternation

throughout the province. More than one hundred and sixty
persons were butchered in a night.”

“Certainly, the romancer could work up such a history with
good effect. What a terrible scene, in these awful forests, with
thousands of the begrimed and painted savages, howling terribly,
and dancing fiercely about them. Did the affair end here?”

“How could it? It is the necessity of civilization that it must
conquer. At the first tidings of the affair, the assembly of South
Carolina, then in session at Charleston, called out her militia,
and appropriated eighty thousand dollars to the relief of the sister
province. Six hundred militiamen, under Col. Barnwell, immediately
took the field. An auxiliary force of friendly Indians,
consisting of two hundred and eighteen Cherokees, seventy-nine
Creeks, forty-one Catawbas, twenty-eight Yemassees — all commanded
by white officers — were joined to the force under Barnwell
— the Indians being chiefly used as scouts and hunters.

Wild, tangled, gloomy, was the wilderness which they had to
traverse — a region utterly savage, inhabited by bear and panther,
or by tribes of men quite as ferocious and untameable.
The governor of North Carolina called out the militia of North
Carolina, but seemingly in vain. His proclamation was little
heeded.

Barnwell crossed the country, in spite of all impediments, and
came up with the Indians, who were in great strength upon the
Neuse, where they had erected a strong fort of logs, at a point
some thirty miles below the spot where the railroad crosses the
river. The battle that followed resulted in the utter defeat of the
Indians, and the annihilation of some of their tribes. More than
three hundred of the redmen were slain — we have no report of
the wounded — and one hundred were made prisoners. The
battle had taken place without their fortress, the Indians having
boldly become the assailants. The fugitives found shelter in
the fort, which, after much loss and great suffering, they surrendered,
and sued for peace; which was granted them by their
conqueror. Barnwell was censured for being too indulgent to
the vanquished; but what could he exact from the savages?
They had nothing farther to concede than submission — could
make no farther sacrifice but in their lives. The fortress thus
captured was called after the conqueror, and you may still trace

out its ruins. Would these have no interest in the eyes of the
traveller who is familiar with the history?

“Now, if I say that all this region is marked in like interesting
manner, by wild, savage, bloody, strange, and wonderful
events, you will be no longer doubtful of the attraction with
which an ordinary handbook, such as in Europe distinguishes
every crumbling fabric or fortress with a human interest, would
invest this seemingly barren country. There are true histories
throughout all these old states of the south, not inferior to those
of Powhatan and Pocahontas, and that remarkable old Roman
red man of Virginia, the mighty Opechancanough.”

“It is curious,” said Selina Burroughs, “that our own people
are quite as ignorant of these local histories as anybody else.”

The remark stirred the bile in the bosom of our Alabama orator,
who was never more ready to lift the tomahawk than when opportunity
offered to indulge in a fling at the Yankees, and pour
out his sarcasms at the expense of those of the South, who were
adverse to decisive or hostile measures.

“Nothing curious about it, Miss Burroughs. We are a poor,
mouthing, meanspirited people after all, with long tongues and soft
brains, and no resolution. Our ignorance in respect to our own
history and own resources, and our own rights, is sufficiently conclusive
against our perpetually vaunted patriotism. Our constant
travel at the North among a people who are for ever assailing
us, is enough to shame and discredit all our boasting.”

“But there is a great change going on in this respect, sir.”

“Yes, indeed! I can acknowledge this, though the acknowledgment
does not a whit lessen the necessity of denouncing the
practice which is still too much continued. We must continue
to denounce until the reform is complete. It is a great consolation,
full of hope and promise, that it is at last begun.”

Here the orator dashed off into an essay, somewhat in the
vein of his anniversary oration, which, as it contains sundry
startling things, and striking sarcasms, our reporter has thought
it proper to preserve. In fact, there is a wholesome word for
North and South, in the very energetic expression of this man's
feelings. He is the true type and representative of a large portion
of the southern people, speaking the bitterness which they
have been taught to nourish, their jealous resentments, and the

spirit with which they will seize upon any opportunity of obtaining
redress and remedy for the evils and injuries of which they complain.
Let North and South consider, and be wise in season.
The usual caprice in the destiny of nations precipitates catastrophes
which men may lament but never repair; and one of the
most dangerous of the errors which prevail among the people of
the North, is their obstinate faith in the integrity of the Union.
It is a faith against which all histories, in all periods, bear the
most unvarying testimony — testimony which we should be authorized
to disregard and reject, only when we shall be able to
assure ourselves that we have stronger claims, by reason of our
greater virtues, upon the protecting care of God, than any of
the myriad generations by which we have been preceded. But,
to the essay of our orator, which, though extempore, was delivered
as rapidly as an oration memorized; not as if read simply,
but with the freedom of one who declaims passionately, in hot
blood, and with the bold impetuous action of a fiery soul, in
which the long-fettered torrents have at length broken all their
barriers, and are dashing headlong, in foam and fury, over the
still resisting but incapable rock.

“Yes, soft-heads! soft-heads! That is the word — soft-heads!
But there is hope, even for a soft-head!”

“We should only be indulging in one of the commonest of all
truisms, were we to protest that there is no such thing as unmixed
evil in the world; and all the philosophy may be compassed in
a nut-shell, which chuckles over the `ill wind that blows nobody
good.' It will suffice if we insist that our bitter is, frequently,
the wholesome medicine whose benefit is in the future; and what
we regard as the mishap of the day, and lament accordingly,
becomes to our great surprise, the parent of a necessity that
leads to most pleasant and profitable results. To bring our maxims
to bear upon our present topic, we have but to remark, that
the cholera, which devastated the cities of the North last summer,
and the abolition mania, — which is destined to root them out,
and raze them utterly from the face of the earth, if not seasonably
arrested, — have proved, in some degree, highly serviceable,
if not saving influences, for the people of the South. How
many thousand of our wandering idlers, our absentees who periodically
crave a wearisome pilgrimage to northern regions, instead

of finding greater good in a profitable investment of thought
and curiosity at home — who wander away in mere listlessness
and return wearied and unrefreshed — were denied their usual
inane indulgences by the dread of pestilence. And how many
other thousands, capable of appreciating the charms of nature,
and the delights of a glorious landscape, were, in like manner,
compelled to forego the same progress, by the patriotic sentiment
which revolts at the thought of spending time and money among a
people whose daily labor seems to be addressed to the neighborly
desire of defaming our character and destroying our institutions.

“The result of these hostile influences has been highly favorable
to the development of the resources of the soil. We have,
in the South, a race of `soft-heads,' — a tribe that corresponds
admirably with the `dough-faces' of Yankee-land. These are
people born and wedded to a sort of provincial servility that
finds nothing grateful but the foreign. They prefer the stranger
to the native, if for no other reason than because they are reluctant
to admit the existence of any persons, in their own precincts,
who might come in conflict with their own importance.
In like manner, and for a similar reason, they refuse to give faith
to their own possessions of scenery and climate. Their dignity
requires foreign travel for its proper maintenance. It is distance
only, in their eyes, that can possibly `lend enchantment to the
view.' They are unwilling to admit the charms of a region
which might be readily explored by humbler persons; and they
turn up their lordly noses at any reference to the claims of
mountain, valley, or waterfall, in their own section, if for no other
reason than because they may also be seen by vulgar people.
To despise the native and domestic, seems to them, in their inflated
folly, the only true way to show that they have tastes infinitely
superior to those of the common herdlings.

“For such people, it was absolutely necessary that they should
speed abroad in summer. The habit required it, and the self-esteem,
even if the tastes did not. It is true that they were
wearied with the monotonous routine. It is true that they were
tired of the scenery so often witnessed; tired of the flatness of
northern pastimes, and outraged constantly by the bad manners,
and the unqualified monstrosity of the bores whom they constantly
encountered, from the moment that they got beyond the

line of Mason and Dixon. All the social training of a polished
society at home, was disparaged by the reckless obtrusiveness
by which that was distinguished which they met abroad — the
free, familiar pertness of moneyed vulgarity, or the insolent assumptions
of a class whose fortunes have been realized at the
expense of their education. A thousand offensive traits in the
social world which they sought, added to the utter deficiency of
all freshness in the associations which they periodically made,
combined to lessen or destroy everything like a positive attraction
in the regions to which they wandered; but, in spite of all,
they went. Habit was too inflexible for sense or taste; and,
possibly, the fear that the world might not get on so well as before,
unless they appeared as usual at the opening of the season
in Broadway, and found themselves, for a week at least each
year, at Newport and Saratoga, seemed to make it a duty
that they should, at large pecuniary sacrifice, submit to a dreary
penance every summer.

“But the cholera came in conflict with the habit. It unsettled
the routine which was only endurable in the absence of thought
and energy. It suggested unpleasant associations to those who,
perhaps, would suffer under any sort of excitement, the wholesome
as well as the pernicious; and the idea of eating cherries
and cream, at the peril of utter revolution in the abdominal
domain, had the effect of startling into thought and speculation
the inane intellect which, hitherto, had taken no share in regulating
the habits of the wanderer. When, at the same time, it
was found that the pestilence confined its ravages to the
North, — that either the climate of the South was too pure,
or the habits of its people too proper, to yield it the requisite
field for operation, — and that Charleston, Savannah and other
cities in the low latitudes, were not within the reach of its terrors,
— then it was that patriotism had leave to suggest, for the
first time, the beauties and attractions of home, and to make the
most of them. Her argument found succor, as we have hinted,
from other influences. Our `Soft-heads' no longer found that
unlimited deference, and servile acknowledgment, which the
societies they visited had uniformly shown, in return for their
patronage. Society at the North was in revolution. Old things
were about to pass away; all things were to become new. Property

was to undergo general distribution in equal shares. Every
man, it was argued, had a natural right to a farmstead, and a
poultry-yard; as every woman, not wholly past bearing, had a
right to a husband. The old Patroons of Albany were not permitted
to rent, but must sell their lands, at prices prescribed by
the buyer, or the tenant. Debtors liquidated their bonds in the
blood of their creditors. The law of divorce gave every sort
of liberty to wife and husband. The wife, if she did not avail
herself of the extreme privileges accorded to her by this benevolent
enactment, was, at all events, allowed to keep her own
purse, and to spend her money, however viciously, without accounting
to her lord. If he was lord, she was lady. She was
not simply his master, but her own; and a precious household
they made of it between them. Churches multiplied, mostly, at
the very moment when a restless and powerful party — avowedly
hostile to all religion — was denouncing and striving to abolish
the Sabbath itself, as immoral, and in conflict with the privileges
of labor and the citizen.

“In this universal disorder in laws and morals — this confusion
of society, worse confounded every day — in its general aspects
so wonderfully like those which, in France, preceded, and properly
paved the way for, a purging reign of terror — all the usual
amenities and courtesies were fairly at an end, even in those
places, hotels and haunts of summer festivity, in which decency
and policy, if not charity and good-will to men, requires that
everything should be foreborne, of manner or remark, that might
be offensive to any sensibilities. But the cloud and blindness
which everywhere overspread society, was a madness too sweeping
to forbear any subject, in which envy, malice, conceit, and
a peevish discontent, could find exercise at the expense of one's
neighbor. In destroying, at home, the securities of religion, the
domestic peace of families, the inviolability of the laws, the guarantees
of the creditor — nay, taking his life, as that of an insolent,
when he presumed to urge his bond — these reckless incendiaries
(like the French, exactly) must carry their beautiful system
to the hearts of other communities. They are by no means
selfish. They must share their admirable blessings with others
— nay, force them, even against their desires, to partake of their
drunken mixtures. No situation, accordingly, is sacred from

their invasion. No refuge is left for society, unembarrassed by
their presence. They rage in all places, fireside, street, exchange,
hotel, and, not so much seeking to reform and teach,
as to outrage and annoy, they studiously thrust upon you, at
every turn, the picture of the miserable fanatic, whose vanity
prompted him to fire a temple only that he might be seen in
its blaze.

“Our `Soft-heads,' who have been busily engaged, for the
last thirty years, in feeding these fanatics, by draining the profits
from their own soil, are, at length, beginning to feel somewhat
uncomfortable, sitting cheek-by-jowl, at Saratoga, and
other places of vulgar resort, and hearing themselves described
as robbers and wretches by the very people whose thieving ancestors
stole the negro with whom to swindle our forefathers.
They begin to suspect that their pride is not wholly unimpaired,
when they hearken quietly to such savory communications. A
lurking doubt whether they are not the persons meant, all the
while, begins to stir uneasily within them; and in a half-drowsy
state, between dozing and thought, they ask themselves the
question, whether it were not much more to their credit to resolve,
henceforward, neither to taste, nor touch, nor commune
with a people, who, in mere wantonness and insolence, are making
so free with all the securities of their country, its reputation,
and its property!

“The `Soft-head,' it is true, is not without grateful assurances,
from one class of his neighbors, that his assailants are very sorry
fanatics who deserve no sort of consideration; that, though Tray,
Blanche, and Sweetheart, bark at him furiously, yet he, Dick,
and his brother Tom, and his cousin, Harry, all tavern-keepers,
living in the broad route of southern travel, are his friends —
are the true, sturdy butcher's dogs, who will keep the curs in
proper fear and at a proper distance. But, after a while, `Soft-head'
asks himself — having asked the question fruitlessly of
Tom, Dick, and Harry — why do these curs, which are said to
be so despicable — why do they continue this barking? nay,
why, when the barking becomes biting — why do not these
famous butcher's dogs use their teeth for the protection of their
friends? Why are Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart — worthless
puppies as they are — why are they in full possession of the

roast? The fanatics of abolition are said to be few; but why
do they shape the laws, dictate the policy, control the whole action
of society? `Soft-head' gets no answer to all this; and
now naturally begins to suspect that all parties either think entirely
with the offenders, or possess too little courage, honesty,
or proper sympathy with the south, ever to be relied upon as
allies. In fact, our `soft-head' discovers that, whether guilty or
otherwise, the party denounced as so weak and worthless, wields,
in reality, the entire power, and represents wholly the principles
and feelings of the north. The thing is not to be gainsayed.
Your merchant, having large dealings with the `soft-heads,'
makes little of it; your hotel-keeper, entertaining large squadrons
of `soft-heads,' `for a consideration,' every summer,
gravely insists that it is nothing but the buzz of a bee in a tarbarrel;
your Yankee editor, crossing the line of Mason and
Dixon — a northern man with southern principles! who teaches
the `soft-head southron,' from `hard-head northern schoolbooks'—he
is potent in the asseveration that there is no sort of
danger — that it is the cry of `wolf,' only, made by the cunning
boys, who wish to see the fun of the false chase; and that, in
his hands, as grand conservator of the peace, everything that's
worth saving is in a place of eminent security. Your thorough
slave of party, whig or democrat, who hopes for a secretaryship,
or a vice-presidentship, or a foreign mission — or who, with commendable
modesty, resigns himself to a postmastership, or a
tide-waitership — all these come in to the assistance of our `soft-heads,'
and take monstrous pains to reassure them and restore
their equanimity! Governed by self, rather than by nation or
section, they cry `peace' — all — when there is no peace!
When there can not be peace, so long as the south is in the
minority, and so long as the spirit and temper of the north are
so universally hostile to our most vital and most cherished institutions.
Until you reconcile this inequality, and exorcise this
evil spirit, that now rages rampant through the Northern States
— allied with all sorts of fanatical passions and principles —
Agrarianism, Communism, Fourierism, Wrightism, Millerism,
Mormonism, etc.,— you may cry peace and union till you split
your lungs, but you will neither make peace nor secure union.

“Well, our `soft-head' begins to discover this. He has been

weak and lazy — listless and indifferent — vain, and an idler;
weary, and a wanderer; but he still has latent sympathies that
remind him of his home, and he is not blind to the warnings
which tell him that he has a property which is threatened, and
may possibly be destroyed. He rubs his eyes, and shakes himself
accordingly. He begins to bestir himself. It is high time.
He is no longer in the condition to say with the sluggard, `A
little more sleep — a little more folding of the arms to slumber.'
`Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart,' the full-mouthed abolition
curs, are at his heels, and, with their incessant barking, they
suffer nobody to sleep. `Soft-head' soon finds that they are
not satisfied to bark simply. They are anxious to use their
teeth upon him as well as their tongues. His wife's maid, Sally,
is persuaded to leave his bonds, for a condition of unexampled
human felicity, which is promised her in the neighborhood of the
Five Points; and his man, Charles, walks off with two loving
white brothers, who soon show him how much more moral it is
to become a burglar than to remain a slave. `Soft-head' very
soon hears of both in their new Utopia. Sally writes to him
from the Tombs or Blackwell's Island, and Charley from Sing-Sing.
They relate a most horrid narrative of their condition;
their follies, their crimes, the sufferings and abuses they have undergone
at the hands of their sympathizing brethren, whose object
has been, not the good of the wretched slave, but the injury
and annoyance of the `soft-head' owner. They declare their
repentance, and entreat his assistance. They beg that he will release
them from prison, and make them once more humbly happy
in the condition which was so justly suited to their intellect and
morals. The heart of `soft-head' is touched. In this region he
is quite as tender as in his cranium. He obtains their discharge,
gives bail, pays fees, and suffers a world of trouble and expense,
in helping the poor wretches into daylight. But, will the abolitionists
suffer this triumph? Will they let the prey escape
them at the last? Oh no! They dart between, a mob at their
heels, and rend Charley and Sally away once more — this time
by violence — the poor darkies all the while struggling against
the cruel fate of freedom, for which they are so totally unfit, and
declaring, with tears in their eyes, how infinitely they prefer
being slaves to a gentleman, than brethren of such a gang of
blackguards. `Soft-head,' himself, barely escapes by the skin
of his teeth. He is compelled to cast off the indolence which
he has hitherto fondly conceived to form a part of his dignity,
and, with all haste, to throw the Potomac between him and the
pursuing curs of abolition.

“Growling over the popular sentiment at the North, which
thus dogs their footsteps and disturbs their equanimity, or grumbling
at the sudden invasion of cholera, which makes them tremble
for their bowels, it is probable that more than twenty thousand
Southrons forebore, last summer, their usual route of travel.
Mason and Dixon's line, that season, constituted the ultima thule,
to which they looked with shiverings only. Thus `barred and
banned,' almost hopeless of enjoyment, but compelled to seek
for it where they were, and to find their summer routes and recreations
in long-neglected precincts, it was perfectly delightful
to behold the sudden glory which possessed them, as they
opened their eyes, for the first time in their lives, upon the
charming scenery, the pure retreats, the sweet quiet, and the
surprising resources which welcomed them — at home! Why
had they not seen these things before? How was it that
such glorious mountain ranges, such fertile and lovely valleys,
such mighty and beautiful cascades, such broad, hard and oceangirdled
beaches and islets, had been so completely hidden from
their eyes? By what fatuity was it that they had been so
blinded, to the waste of millions of expenditure, in the ungrateful
regions in which they had so long been satisfied to find retreats,
which afforded them so little of pleasure or content?
Poor, sneaking, drivelling, conceited, slavish provincialism never
received such a lesson of unmixed benefit before; and patriotism
never a happier stimulus and motive to future enjoyment as
well as independence.

“It is a too melancholy truth, and one that we would fain deny
if we dared, that, in sundry essentials, the Southern people have
long stood in nearly the same relation to the Northern states
of this confederacy, that the whole of the colonies, in 1775, occupied
to Great Britain. A people wholly devoted to grazing
and agriculture are necessarily wanting in large marts, which
alone give the natural impulse to trade and manufactures. A
people engaged in staple culture are necessarily scattered remotely

over the surface of the earth. Now, the activity of the
common intellect depends chiefly upon the rough and incessant
attrition of the people. Wanting in this attrition, the best minds
sink into repose, that finally becomes sluggishness. As a natural
consequence, therefore, of the exclusive occupation of agriculture
in the South, the profits of this culture, and the sparseness
of our population, the Southern people left it to the Northern
States to supply all their wants. To them we looked for books
and opinion — and they thus substantially ruled us, through the
languor which we owed to our wealth, and the deficient self-esteem
naturally due to the infrequency of our struggle in the
common marts of nations. The Yankees furnished all our manufactures,
of whatever kind, and adroitly contrived to make it
appear to us that they were really our benefactors, at the very
moment when they were sapping our substance, degrading our
minds, and growing rich upon our raw material, and by the labor
of our slaves. Any nation that defers thus wholly to another
is soon emasculated, and finally subdued. To perfect, or even
secure, the powers of any people, it requires that they shall
leave no province of enterprise or industry neglected, which is
available to their labor, and not incompatible with their soil and
climate. And there is an intimate sympathy between the labors
of a people, and their higher morals and more ambitious sentiment.
The arts are all so far kindred, that the one necessarily
prepares the way for the other. The mechanic arts thrive as
well as the fine arts, in regions which prove friendly to the latter;
and Benvenuto Cellini was no less excellent as a goldsmith
and cannoneer than as one of the most bold and admirable
sculptors of his age. To secure a high rank in society, as well as
history, it is necessary that a people should do something more
than provide a raw material. It is required of them to provide
the genius also, which shall work the material up into forms and
fabrics equally beautiful and valuable. This duty has been
neglected by the South; abandoned to her enemies; and, in
the train of this neglect and self-abandonment, a thousand evils
follow, of even greater magnitude. The worst of these is a slavish
deference to the will, the wit, the wisdom, the art and ingenuity
of the people to whom we yield our manufactures; making
it the most difficult thing in the world, even when our own people
achieve, to obtain for them the simplest justice, even among
themselves. We surrendered ourselves wholly into the hands
of our Yankee brethren — most loving kinsmen that they are —
and were quite content, in asserting the rank of gentlemen, to
forfeit the higher rank of men. We were sunk into a certain
imbecility — read from their books, thought from their standards,
shrunk from and submitted to their criticism — and (No! we
have not yet quite reached that point — Walker still holding his
ground in the South against Webster), almost began to adopt
their brogne! They dictated to our tastes and were alone allowed
to furnish the proper regions for their exercise. Above
all, theirs was all the scenery; and the tour to Saratoga, West
Point, Newport, Niagara, almost every season, was a sort of
pilgrimage, as necessary to the eternal happiness of our race of
`soft-heads,' as ever was that made, once in a life, to Mecca, by
the devout worshipper in the faith of Islam!

“But, owing to causes, already indicated, the change has come
over the spirit of that dream which constituted too much the
life of too large a portion of our wealthy gentry; and the last
summer, as we said before, left them at liberty to look about
their own homes, and appreciate their own resources. The discoveries
were marvellous; the developments as surprising as
those which followed the friction of the magic lamp in the hands
of Aladdin. Encountered, on the opposite side of Mason and
Dixon's Line, by the loathsome presence of Asiatic cholera and
African abolition, they averted their eyes from these equally offensive
aspects, and found a prospect, when looking backward
upon the South, at once calculated to relieve their annoyances,
and compensate admirably for all their privations. The tide of
travel was fairly turned; and, through the length and breadth
of the land, in the several States of Virginia, the two Carolinas,
Georgia, and even Florida, nothing was to be seen but the
chariots and the horsemen, the barge and the car, bearing to new
and lately discovered retreats of health and freshness, the hungering
wanderers after pleasure and excitement. For such an
event, the country was almost totally unprepared. A few ancient
places of resort excepted, the numerous points of assemblage
had scarcely ever been indicated on the maps. The means for
reaching them were rude and hastily provided. The roads were

rough, and, with the vehicles employed to traverse them, admirably
adapted to give wholesome exercise to rheumatic joints and
dyspeptic systems. The craziest carriages were hastily put in
requisition, to run upon the wildest highways. Paths, only just
blazed out in the woods, conducted you to habitations scarcely
less wild, of frames covered with clapboards, — queer-looking
log tenements, unplastered chambers, and little uncouth cabins,
eight by twelve — where pride, in the lap of quiet, at all events,
if not of comfort, might learn upon what a small amount of capital
a man may realize large results in health and independence.
It was the strangest spectacle, in Georgia and South Carolina,
to see the thousands thus in motion along the highways, and
thus rioting in rustic pleasures. Such cars and carriages, as bore
the trooping adventurers, never figured in fashionable use before.
You might see the railway trains, long and massive frames of
timber, set on wheels, with unplaned benches, an interminable
range, crowded with the living multitudes, wedged affectionately
together, like herrings in boxes — sorted, if not salted masses —
without covering, speeding through sun by day, and rain by
night, to the appointed places of retreat; and, strange to say,
in the best of all possible humors with themselves and all mankind.
A certain grateful determination to make the most of the
novel désagremens of their situation, in acknowledgment of the
substantial good, in healthy excitement, and moral compensation,
which they enjoyed at home, operated to make cheerful all the
aspects of the scene, and to afford a pleasing animation to the
strangest combinations of society. Here encountered, to the
common benefit, circles and cliques that had never before been
subjected to attrition. The reserved gentleman of the lower
country, nice, staid, proper and particular, was pleased to receive
a freshening stimulus from the frank, free, eager and salient
manners of the gentleman of the interior. The over-refined
ladies of the city were enlivened by the informal, hearty, lively
and laughing tempers of the buoyant beauties of the mountain
and forest country. These shared equally in the benefits of the
association. The too frigid and stately reserves of the one region
were thawed insensibly by the genial and buoyant, the unsophisticated
impulse of the other; while the latter, insensibly
borrowed, in return, something of the elaborate grace, and the
quiet dignity, which constitute the chief attractions of the former.
The result has compassed something more than was anticipated
by the several parties. Seeking only to waste a summer gratefully,
to find health and gentle excitements, — the simple object
of the whole, — they yet found more precious benefits in the unwonted
communion. Prejudices were worn away in the grateful
attrition; new lights were brought to bear upon the social
aspects of differing regions; thought was stimulated to fresh
researches; and the general resources of the country, moral as
well as physical, underwent a development, as grateful and encouraging
as they were strange and wonderful to all the parties.

“The désagremens of these extemporaneous progresses were
not limited to bad roads and clumsy or crazy vehicles, rude dwellings,
and the absence of the usual comforts upon which the
gentry of the low country of the South, trained in English
schools, are apt to insist with, perhaps, a little too much tenacity.
We are compelled to make one admission, in respect to our interior,
which we do in great grief of heart and much vexation
of spirit. If the schoolmaster is abroad, the cook is not! Our
cuisine is not well ordered in the forest country. The `Physiologie
de Goût' has never there been made a text-book, in the
schools of culinary philosophy. We doubt if a single copy of
this grave authority can be found in all the mountain ranges of
the Apalachian. They have the grace and the gravy; but these
are not made to mingle as they should. The art which weds
the vinegar and the oil, in happiest harmonies, so that neither
is suffered to prevail in the taste, has never, in this region, commanded
that careful study, or indeed consideration, which their
union properly demands. The rank of the cuisinier is not properly
recognised. The weight and importance of a grain of salt
in the adjustment (shall we say compromise?) of a salade, is, we
grieve to say, not justly understood in our forest watering-places;
and, skilful enough at a julep or a sherry-cobler, they betray
but `'prentice han's' when a steak, or a sauce, is the subject of
preparation. Monsieur Guizot, speaking in properly-dignified
language of the common sentiment of France, insists that she is
the most perfect representative of the civilization of Christendom.
Of course, he bases her claims to this position entirely on the
virtues of her cuisine. The moral of the nation comes from the

kitchen. The `good digestion' which should `wait on appetite'
must be impossible where the chef de cuisine falls short of the
philosopher as well as the man of science. Now, of all that
philosophy, which prepares the food with a due regard, not only
to the meats and vegetables themselves, the graces and the
gravies, but to the temperaments of the consumers, we are sorry
to confess that we have but little in our vast interior. Our
mountain cooks think they have done everything when they
have murdered a fillet of veal or a haunch of venison, — sodden
them in lard or butter, baked or boiled them to a condition
which admirably resembles the pulpy masses of cotton rag, when
macerated for paper manufacture, — and wonders to see you
mince gingerly of a dish which he himself will devour with the
savage appetite of a Cumanche! You have seen a royal side
of venison brought in during the morning, and laid out upon the
tavern shambles; — you have set your heart upon the dinner of
that day. Fancy reminds you of the relish with which, at the
St. Charles, in New-Orleans, or the Pulaski, in Savannah, or the
Charleston Hotel, you have discussed the exquisitely dressed
loin, or haunch, done to a turn; the red just tinging the gravy,
the meat just offering such pleasant resistance to the knife as
leaves the intricate fibres still closely united, though shedding
their juices with the eagerness of the peach, pressed between
the lips in the very hour of its maturity; — or you see a fine
`mutton' brought in, of the wild flavor of the hills; and you
examine, with the eye of the epicure, the voluminous fat, fold
upon fold, lapping itself lovingly about the loins. Leg, or loin,
or saddle, or shoulder, suggests itself to your anticipation as the
probable subject of noonday discussion. You lay yourself out
for the argument, and naturally recur to the last famous dinner
which you enjoyed with the reverend father, who presides so
equally well at the Church of the St. Savori, and at his own excellent
hotel in the Rue des Huitres. You remember all the
company, admirable judges, every one of them, of the virtues
and the graces of a proper feast. The reverend father, himself,
belongs to that excellent school of which the English clergy
still show you so many grateful living examples, — men whose
sensibilities are not yielded to the barren empire of mind merely,
but who bring thought and philosophy equally to bear upon the
humble and too frequently mortified flesh. With the spectacle
of the venerable host, presiding so gracefully and so amiably —
the napkin tucked beneath his chin, and falling over the ample
domain in which certain philosophers, with much show of reason,
have found the mortal abiding place of the soul — you associate
the happy action with which, slightly flourishing the bright steel
before he smites, he then passes the scimitar-like edge into the
rosy round before him. It is no rude or hurried act. He feels
the responsibility of the duty. He has properly studied the relations
of the parts. He knows just where to insinuate the blade;
and the mild dignity with which the act is performed, reminds
you of what you have seen in pictures, or read in books, of the
sacrifices of the high priests and magi, at Grecian or Egyptian
altars. What silence waits upon the stroke! and, as the warm
blood gushes forth, and the rubied edges of the wound lie bare
before your eyes, every bosom feels relieved! The augury has
been a fortunate one, and the feast begins under auspices that
drive all doubts of what to-morrow may bring forth, entirely
from the thought.

“With such recollections kindling the imagination, our extempore
hotels of the Apalachian regions will doom you to frequent
disappointment. You see yourself surrounded by masses that
may be boiled or roasted polypi for what you know. But where's
the mutton and the venison?

“You call upon the landlord — a gaunt-looking tyke of the
forest, who seems better fitted to hunt the game than take charge
of its toilet. He is serving a score at once; with one hand heaping
beef and bacon, with the other collards and cucumbers, into
conflicting plates; and you fall back speechless, with the sudden
dispersion of a thousand fancies of delight, as he tells you that
the mutton, or the venison, which has been the subject of your
revery all the morning, lies before you in the undistinguishable
mass that has distressed you with notions of the polypus and
sea-blubber, or some other unknown monstrosities of the deep or
forest. But the subject is one quite too distressing for dilation.
We have painful memories, and must forbear. But, we solemnly
say to our Apalachian landlord: —

“`Brother, this thing must be amended. You have no right
to sport thus with the hopes, the health, the happiness of your

guests. You have no right, in this way, to mortify your neighbors'
flesh. Have you no sense of the evil which you are doing
— no bowels of sympathy for those of other people? Is it pride,
or indolence, or mere blindness and ignorance, which thus renders
you reckless of what is due to humanity and society, and
all that fine philosophy which the Roman epicure found essential
to reconcile to becoming sensibilities the mere brutish necessities
of the animal economy? You must import and educate your
cooks. You must appreciate justly the morals of the kitchen.
You must study with diligence, night and morning, the profound
pages of the Physiologie de Goût; you must forswear those
streams of lard, those cruel abuses of the flesh, those hard bakings
of meats otherwise tender; those salt and savage soddenings of
venison, otherwise sweet; those mountains of long collards, inadequately;
boiled and those indigestible masses of dough,
whether in the form of pies, or tarts, or biscuit, which need a
yesty levity before they can possibly assimilate with the human
system. We have often thought, seeing these heavy pasties
upon your tables, that, if they could only command a voice, they
would perpetually cry out to the needy and devouring guest, in
the language of the ghosts to Richard the Hunchback — `Let
us lie heavy on thy soul to-morrow.'”

Here was a pause. Our orator had fairly talked himself out.

“Have you been speaking, sir?” was the artlessly-expressed
inquiry, of Selina Burroughs.

“Good heavens, my dear little creature, you do not mean to
say that you have been sleeping all the while!”

Here was a laugh!

“Oh! no, sir,—I merely wished to suggest that there is a story
due to us from some quarter, and if you are in voice, sir,— I do
not see who can better satisfy our expectation than yourself.”

“Voice! I never was in better voice in all my life! You shall
have a story and, in tribute to yourself, it shall be a love-story.”

“Oh! thank you — a love story.”

“A love story, and of the red man.”

“Oh! that will be curious enough.”

“It shall be as malicious and pathetic, and sad and humorous,
and sedate, and fantastical, as Kotzebue himself could have
desired.”

And the group composed itself around, and the bilious raconteur
told the following legend: —

LEGEND OF MISSOURI:
OR, THE CAPTIVE OF THE PAWNEE.

INTRODUCTION.

There are certain races who are employed evidently as the
pioneers for a superior people — who seem to have no mission
of performance, — only one of preparation, — and who simply
keep the earth, a sort of rude possession, of which they make no
use, yeilding it, by an inevitable necessity, to the conquering
people, so soon as they appear. Our red men seem to have belonged
to this category. Their modes of life were inconsistent
with length of tenure; and, even had the white man never appeared,
their duration must have still been short. They would
have preyed upon one another, tribe against tribe, in compliance
with necessity, until all were destroyed; — and there is nothing
to be deplored in this spectacle! Either they had no further
uses, or they never, of themselves, developed them; and a people
that destroy only, and never create or build, are not designed,
anywhere, to cumber God's earth long! This is the substantial
condition upon which all human securities depend. We are to
advance. We are to build, create, endow; thus showing that
we are made in the likeness of the Creator. Those who destroy
only, by laws of strict moral justice, must perish, without having
been said to live!

And yet, surveying this spectacle thro' the medium of the
picturesque, one naturally broods with sympathy over the fate
of this people. There is a solitary grandeur in their fortunes,

and the intense melancholy which they exhibit, which compels
us, in spite of philosophy, to regret the necessity under which
they perish. Their valor, their natural eloquence, their passionate
sense of freedom, the sad nobleness of their aspects, the
subtlety of their genius, — these forbid that we should regard
them with indifference; and we watch their prolonged battle for
existence and place, with that feeling of admiration with which
we behold the “great man struggling with the storms of fate.”
The conflict between rival races, one representing the highest
civilization, the other the totally opposite nature of the savage,
is always one of exquisite interest; and not an acre of our vast
country but exhibits scenes of struggle between these rivals,
which, properly delineated, would ravish from the canvass, and
thrill all passions from the stage. The thousand progresses, in
all directions, of the white pioneer; — the thousand trials of
strength, and skill, and spirit, between him and the red hunter;
— make of the face of the country one vast theatre, scene after
scene, swelling the great event, until all closes in the grand denouëment
which exhibits the dying agonies of the savage, with
the conquering civilization striding triumphantly over his neck.
Tradition will help us in process of time to large elements of
romance in the survey of these events, and the red man is destined
to a longer life in art than he ever knew in reality.

The sketch which follows might as well be true of a thousand
histories, as of the one which it records. It is one which the
painter might crown with all the glories of his art; one which
future invention may weave into permanent song and story, for

generations, to whom the memory of the red man will be nothing
but a dream, doubtful in all its changes, and casting doubts upon
the sober history.

1. CHAPTER I.

The Pawnees and the Omahas were neighboring but hostile
nations. Their wars were perpetual, and this was due to their
propinquity. It was the necessity of their nature and modes of
life. They hunted in the same forest ranges. They were contending
claimants for the same land and game. The successes
of the one in the chase, were so many wrongs done to the rights
of the other; and every buck or bear that fell into the hands of
either party, was a positive loss of property to the other. That
they should hate, and fight, whenever they met, was just as
certain as that they should eat of the venison when the game
was taken. Every conflict increased the mutual hostility of the
parties. Successes emboldened the repetition of assault; defeat
stimulated the desire for revenge. Every scalp which provoked
triumph in the conqueror, demanded a bloody revenge at the
hands of the vanquished; and thus they brooded over bloody fancies
when they did not meet, and met only to realize their bloody
dreams. It was soon evident to themselves, if it was not known
to other nations, that the war was one of annihilation — that
there could be no cessation of strife between them, until one of
the parties should tear the last scalp from the brows of his hateful
enemy.

Such a conviction, pressing equally upon the minds of both
people, forced upon them the exercise of all their arts, their subtlety,
their skill in circumventing their opponents, their savage
and unsparing ferocity when they obtained any advantages. It
prompted their devotions, also, to an intensity, which rendered
both races complete subjects of the most terrible superstitions.
Their priests naturally fed these superstitions, until war, which
is the usual passion of the red man, became their fanaticism.
Wild, mystical, horrid, were their midnight orgies and sacrifices;
and, when they were not in battle — when a breathing spell from
conflict had given them a temporary respite, in which to rebuild
and repair their burned and broken lodges, and store away the
provisions which were to serve them in new trials of strength,—

then religion claimed all their hearts, and fed their souls upon
the one frenzied appetite which it thus made the decree of providence.
The red man's Moloch has always been supreme among
his gods, and he now absorbed wholly the devotions equally of
Pawnee and Omaha. And thus, from generation to generation,
had the fierce madness been transmitted. Their oldest traditions
failed to say when the hatred did not exist between the two nations;
and the boy of the Pawnee, and him of the Omaha, for
hundreds of moons had still been taught the same passion at the
altar; and his nightly dream, until he could take the field as a
man, was one in which he found himself bestriding an enemy,
and tearing his reeking scalp from his forehead. And this, by
the way, is the common history of all these Indian tribes. They
were thus perpetually in conflict with their neighbors, destined
to slaughter or be slain. What wonder the sad solemnity on
their faces, the national gloom over their villages, their passions
which hide darkly, as wolves in the mountain caverns, concealing,
in the cold aspect, their silent wretchedness; their horrid rages,
under the stolid, though only seeming, indifference in every
visage. Their savage god was dealing with them everywhere,
after his usual fashion. They were themselves the sacrifices upon
his bloody altars, and he nursed their frenzies only for self-destruction.

Gloomy, stern, intensely savage, was the spirit thus prevailing
over the minds of both people, at the time of which we speak.
The season was approaching, when, their summer crops laid by,
they were again to take the field, in the twofold character of
warriors and hunters. The union of the two, in the case of
people living mostly by the chase, is natural and apparent
enough. The forests where they sought their prey equally
harbored their enemies, and for both they made the same preparations.
The period of these events is within modern times.
The coasts of the great Atlantic have been populously settled
by the white race. The red men have gradually yielded before
their pioneers. The restless Anglo-Norman is pushing his way
rapidly into the forests — into the pathless solitudes — into sullen
mountain-gorges, and dense and gloomy thickets. He has
possessed himself everywhere of some foothold, and converted
every foothold into a fastness. The borderers were already

known to both Pawnee and Omaha. But, while these raged
against each other, they took little heed of that approaching
power under which both were to succumb. Its coming inspired
no fear, while the hate for each other remained undiminished.

The autumn campaign was about to open, and the Pawnees
and the Omahas were soon busy in their preparations for it.
Before setting out upon the war-path, many things had to be
done — mystic, wild, solemn — by which to propitiate their gods,
and consecrate their sacrifices. The youth of each nation, who
had never yet taken the field, were each conveyed to the
“Silent Lodges,” where, for a certain time, under trials of hunger,
thirst, and exposure, they were to go through a sort of
sacred probation, during which their visions were to become
auguries, and to shadow forth the duties and the events of their
future career. This probation over, they took their part in
solemn feast and council, in order to decide upon the most
plausible plans of action, and to obtain the sanction and direction
of the Great Spirit, as ascertained by their priests. You
already possess some general idea of the horrid and unseemly
rites which were held proper to these occasions. We are all,
more or less familiar with that barbarous mummery, in which,
on such occasions, most savages indulge; blindly, and to us
insanely, but having their own motives, and the greatest confidence
in the efficacy of their rites. These proceedings lasted
days and nights, and nothing was omitted, of their usual performances,
which could excite the enthusiasm of the people,
while strengthening their faith in their gods, their priesthood,
and their destiny. In the deepest recesses of wood the incantations
were carried on. Half naked, with bodies blackened and
painted, the priests officiated before flaming altars of wood and
brush. On these they piled native offerings. The fat of the
bear and buffalo sent up reeking steams to the nostrils of their
savage gods, mingled with gentler essences, aromatic scents,
extracted from bruised or burning shrubs of strong odorous properties.
The atmosphere became impregnated with their fumes,
and the audience — the worshippers, rather — grew intoxicated
as they inhaled. The priests were already intoxicated, drinking
decoctions of acrid, bitter, fiery roots of the forests, the
qualities of which they thoroughly knew. Filled with their

exciting fires, they danced, they sang, they ran, and sent up,
meanwhile, the most horrid howls to their demon. Filled with
a sacred fury, they rushed hither and thither, smiting themselves
unsparingly with sharp flints, which covered their breasts
and arms with blood. Thus maddened, they divined, and the
nation hung trembling, as with a single heart, upon the awful
revelations from their lips. The scene is one for the most vivid
and intense of the melodramas. Talk of your Druid sacrifices,
as seen in your operas. They are not, for the picturesque and
terrible, to be spoken of in the same hour with those of our
aboriginal tribes.

In the case of both nations, as might be expected, the priests
divined and predicted general success. They took care, however,
as is usually the case with the prophets of the superstitious,
to speak in language sufficiently vague to allow of its application
to any sort of events; or they rested solely upon safe predictions
which commonly bring about their own verification. They
did not, however, content themselves with prophesying the
events of the war. They consulted as well the course of the
action to be pursued — the plans to be adopted — the leaders
chosen; and this, too, in such manner as to leave no loopholes
for evasion. Thus they encouraged their favorites, rebuked
and kept down leaders whom they feared, and kept the nation
subject wholly to their own exclusive despotism.

The response especially made by the Pawnee priesthood,
when consulting their gods with reference to the approaching
campaign, announced the victory to rest with that nation which
should first succeed in making a captive. This captive was
doomed to the torture by fire. Such a response as this, however
cruel and barbarous it may seem, was yet of a highly merciful
tendency, calculated really to ameliorate the horrors of
war, and to promote the safety of human life. The effect upon
the Pawnees — a people eager and impetuous — was to restrain
their appetite for battle. Their great policy was to escape
unnecessary risks of any sort, while employing all their subtlety
for the possession of a native Omaha. To this the warriors
addressed themselves with wonderful unanimity, but to
the grievous sacrifice of their chief appetites, all of which indicated
the fiercer conflict as their true delight.

2. CHAPTER II.

The Omahas, on the other hand, had their favorite auguries
also, and the response from their gods was not dissimilar to that
which had been given to the Pawnees. It said that the nation
should infallibly succeed in the campaign, which should receive
the first blow. But nothing was said of captivity. Similar, but
in conflict, were the predictions. In both cases, as in battles
usually, everything was made to depend upon the first blow.
While, therefore, the policy of the Pawnees was to escape from
everything like conflict, that of the Omahas was to provoke
action and hurry into danger. Their warriors assembled, accordingly,
at all points, and issued from their lodges and towns,
taking the trail for the enemy's country. This they soon penetrated.
But the Pawnees were very wary. They stood only
on the defensive, and wholly avoided action; retreated before
equal numbers, and simply contented themselves with keeping
out of danger, while keeping the Omahas for ever vigilant.
Their caution, which was a very unwonted virtue, provoked the
Omahas to desperation. Their effrontery was prodigious. They
exposed themselves to the shaft on all occasions, rushing beneath
the fastnesses of the Pawnees, striking their naked breasts,
and defying their enemies to shoot. But the latter lay perdu,
quietly, if not calmly, looking on, and apparently satisfied to
keep their towns and camps in safety. They neither invited
attack nor awaited it, and resolutely avoided giving — what the
Omahas solicited — that first blow! It is true that the young
Pawnee braves felt sorely the necessity to which they were
required to submit. Bitterly, in their hearts, they cursed the
decree which kept them inactive; forced to submit to taunts,
reproaches, and invectives, from a people whom they loathed,
and affected to despise. It was scarcely possible to restrain
the young Pawnee bloods under such severe trials of their
temper; — but the voice of the priesthood was paramount; and,
blindly believing that safety lay only in their predictions, they
were persuaded to suspend the thirst of blood, and to substitute
subtlety for valor. To circumvent the enemy — to make the
captive, — not to slay, not even to wound: this was the great
duty and the eager desire with the warriors of the Pawnee.

But this was no easy matter. The Omahas longed for the conflict.
They desired to be smitten. They would struggle to
receive the stroke. They would force the captors to strike the
blow, which was to defeat the one prophecy and satisfy the conditions
of the other. They were not to be ensnared. They
exposed themselves but seldom singly, and they were always
armed for battle. Turn where the Pawnees would — set what
snares they might — employ what arts, — still they found themselves
met and foiled by their now strangely insolent and assailing
enemies.

But the Pawnee warriors had some long heads among them,
and they cogitated earnestly, and planned with equal deliberation
and method. Among these was a fellow of great renown,
with the uneuphonic name of Kionk, or as he was sometimes
called, Awé-Kionk. He was as shrewd and sensible as he was
brave and active, and was full of energy and spirit, being just
about thirty years of age. He was what we might call a splendid
looking savage — a sort of Mark Antony among the red
men — fond of good living — a rather merry companion for an Indian,
but in battle a genuine Birserker — becoming drunk and
delirious with a Hunnish rapture at the sight or taste of blood.
Such was the chief Kionk. He had his devices, and after a secret
conference with the head men of the nation he suddenly
disappeared with a small but select party of warriors, to put them
into execution. What was this famous project about which so
much mystery was thrown? So secretly did Kionk and his
followers depart, that nobody dreamed of their absence, even
when they were far away; and so wide was the circuit which
they took that they passed unseen and unsuspected, meeting
not one of the cloud of spies whom the Omahas had set to watch
along the line separating them from their enemies. The object
of Kionk was the captive, unhurt, unwounded, whose agonies,
reserved for the fiery torture, were to satisfy all the demands of
their gods and secure them the victory.

Within the whole wide ranges of a country which boasts an
almost perpetual spring, the Omaha village occupied one of the
sweetest and most beautiful situations that could anywhere be
seen. Their principal settlement was upon a small island, embosomed
in a broad and glassy lake, which empties into the

river Platte. The Pawnees had long looked with eager and
lustful eyes upon this lovely abiding place. It seemed to realize
to their imaginations the dream of the Indian heavens. It
was so cool, so solitary, and, though an island, so shady with
noble groves. There the banks seemed to wear the green of a
perpetual summer. Never were there such flowers as bloomed
for them by the wayside; and the singing birds loved the region,
and dwelt there, cherished choristers, throughout the year.
There were other luxuries in that little island home of the Omahas
which were even more precious and wooing in the sight of
the hungry Pawnees. The fish inhabiting the lake were in
abundance, and of surpassing fatness and flavor. No wonder
that the Loups hated a people in the exclusive possession of such
a delicious home!

The great scheme of Kionk was to effect a descent upon the
island, and carry off one at least of the inhabitants. This, it
was assumed, it was quite easy to do, provided the utmost caution
was observed, and that nothing happened to render the
Omahas suspicious of their object. Kionk reasoned rightly,
when he urged upon the chiefs that, while invading their enemy's
country, the Omahas would never dream of any foray into
their own! Their chief strength was well known to be in the
field, hovering all about the Pawnee settlements. It was argued
that the secluded situation of the village — its remoteness from
the scene of active operations — and its natural securities would,
in all probability, render the Omahas over-confident of its safety;
that they had probably left few men upon the island, and those
mostly the infirm and timid. These would offer but a weak defence;
but as assault was not the object, only surprise, even this
was not apprehended. Kionk, as we have seen, succeeded in
persuading the chiefs in council, and departed with his chosen
band, making a successful circuit, which enabled him to pass the
scouts of the Omahas, his progress entirely unsuspected.

3. CHAPTER III.

Meanwhile, the Omahas labored in vain to provoke their
enemies to action. Never did warriors show themselves so solicitous
of being beaten — struck at least — and never did Christian

warriors show themselves more reluctant to bestow the much
desired chastisement. This sort of strategy could not last for
ever. Our Omahas began to be very impatient, and to curse
the priesthood and its prophecies, in their heart of hearts. It is
true that they were not kept idle, but constantly watchful and
busy; true, also, that they kept their hands in for war, by practising
a very slaughterous campaign against bear, buffalo, and
buck. But this did not satisfy the national appetite for the
blood of their hated rivals. And they groaned with impatience
at the difficulty of complying with the conditions of the war,
which the prophets had prescribed, in consequence of the most
unnatural forbearance displayed by the Pawnees.

Among the young warriors of the Omahas who suffered from
this impatience, there was one, a gallant youth, little more than
grown to manhood, who had already made himself famous by
his excellence in all the qualities of warrior and hunter. A
more daring or accomplished fellow than Enemoya, the nation
did not possess. Though quite young still, he had been tried
in frequent battles, and had acquired such a reputation for equal
spirit, skill, and understanding, that he took a foremost rank
among his people, whether in action, or in the preliminary deliberations
of the council. But Enemoya, though brave and
savage in war, had yet his weaknesses. He was not insensible
to the tender passion. There was a young woman of his tribe,
known by the pretty poetical name of Missouri; and the first
symptoms which Enemoya had that this young woman was of
any importance in his eyes, consisted in his sudden discovery of
the great beauties of this name.— The Indian warrior, like Richard
Cœur de Leon, and the knights most famous of Provence, is
something of a Jongleur.— At all events, every chief of the red
men sings his war song, his battle hymn, his song of rejoicing,
and his death chant. Of the quality of these songs, as works
of art, we have not a syllable to say. They were probably not
any better than those of Cœur de Leon and his brother bardknights
of Provence. Perhaps, metrical harmony considered,
they were not half so good. In making songs for the fair Missouri,
Enemoya did by no means set up for a poet; and that
his song has been preserved at all, is due to the fact that it has
been found to answer the purposes of other lovers among the

red knights of the Omaha. It has even found circulation among
the Pawnees, and, by the last advices from that tribe, it is said
that this people actually claim the original verses for one of their
own warriors — a claim which we need scarcely assure you
is totally unfounded. Perhaps, however, it matters very little
with whom the authorship properly lies. It is certain that
Enemoya, stealing behind the lovely Missouri, while she played
with her sister's children in a stately grove on the borders of
the beautiful lake, chanted the following ditty in her ear. We
make a close translation from the original, putting it, however,
into good English rhymes, in the hope that it may be adopted
by Russell, or some other popular singer, and become the substitute
for the poor, flat, puny, mean-spirited love songs, which
are at present so discreditable to the manhood of the Anglo-Saxon
race. We are constrained to add that Enemoya, though
he had a good voice, and could scream with any eagle, was yet
rather monotonous in singing his ditty.

LOVE SONG OF ENEMOYA,
ONE OF THE GREAT WAR CHIEFS OF THE OMAHAS.

This will be called rather a rough style of wooing, in our
softly sentimental society, but, among the red men, the chant
of Enemoya, on this occasion, was deemed the very perfection

of a love song. It dealt frankly with the maiden. It
told her all that she ought to know, and warned her of what she
had to expect, whether she took him or not. The lover never
thought of the damsel's fortune; but he freely tendered everything
that he himself possessed. It was herself only that he
wanted. He was no fortune-hunter. He was a man, and he
talked to her like a man. “See what provision I have made for
you. Look into my lodge. See the piles of meat in yonder
corner. They are humps of the buffalo. These alone will last
us two all the winter. But look up at the thirty venison
hams, and the quarters of the bear now smoking, hanging from
the rafters. There's a sight to give a young woman an appetite.
They are all your own, my beauty. You perceive that
there's much more than enough, and in green pea season we can
give any number of suppers. Lift yon blanket. That is our
sleeping apartment. See the piles of bear skins: they shall
form our couch. Look at the tin ware — that most precious of
all the metals of the white man — yet I have appropriated all
these to culinary purposes. As for jewels and ornaments, the
beads, of which I have given you a sample, are here in abundance.
These are all your treasures, and you will do wisely to
accept. Now, my beauty, I don't want to coerce your tastes, or
to bias your judgment in making a free choice; but I must say
that you shall never marry anybody but myself. I'm the very
man for you; able to fight your battles and bring you plentiful
supplies; and feeling that I am the only proper man for you, I
shall scalp the first rival that looks on you with impertinent
eyes of passion; nay, scalp you too, if you are so absurd as to
look on him with eyes of requital. I'm the only proper person
for you, I tell you.”

We need scarcely say that this performance made Enemoya
as famous as a poet, as he had been as a warrior and hunter. It
is now universally considered the chef d'œuvre of the Omahas.
As a matter of course, it proved irresistible with the fair Missouri.
It had an unctuous property about it, which commended
the lover to all her tastes. She suffered him to put his arms
about her, to give her the kiss of betrothal, which, among the
Omaha women, is called the “kiss of consolation,” and the result
was, an arrangement for the bridal, with the close of the

present campaign, and the opening of the spring — that is, taking
for granted that Enemoya does not happen, by any chance, to
leave his own scalp along the war-path. But neither party
thought of this contingency, or they made very light of it. The
courtship occurred that very autumn, and just as the warriors
were preparing for the winter campaign. It was during the
“windy month” (October), and they were to wait till May.
And Enemoya was to be absent all the winter! It was quite a
trial even for a Birserker Omaha!

4. CHAPTER IV.

His new relations with the damsel Missouri, and the impossibility
of forcing the Pawnee Loups to make the assault, rendered
Enemoya very impatient of the war. Day by day he became
more and more restless — more and more dissatisfied — more and
more troubled by the strongest longing to steal away, and take,
if only a look, at the dusky but beautiful damsel, by the lake
side, and among the thickets. He had picked up certain spoils
among the villages of the Pawnees — for the decree of the
Omaha prophets did not denounce the spoiling of the Egyptians;
only the slaying of them — and, now that he was a betrothed
lover, Enemoya was quite as avid after spoils as ever feudal
chieftain in the palmy days of chivalry. And why should he
not draw off from the camp, and carry home his treasures and
his trophies? What was there to be done? The Pawnees would
not fight — would not strike, at all events — and eluded all efforts
to bring them to blows, and dodged admirably every sort of
danger. He could do no more than he had done, and the
business of the war having subsided into a question of mere vigilance
and patience, he felt that this could be carried on quite as
well by ordinary warriors as by the best. As for hunting, why
should he fatigue himself in this business? Had he not already
shown to Missouri the rafters of his cabin reeking of the most
savory meats? Thus thinking, he daily grew more and more
convinced of the propriety of returning home. His meditations
influenced his dreams, and these filled him with trouble. An
Indian is a great dreamer, and has a great faith in the quality
of dreams. The practice of oneirocromancy is a favorite among

his priests and prophets. The orientals were never such famous
interpreters in the days of “the Elders.” Being a poet also,
Enemoya shared in the dreaming endowment of the priesthood.
His sleep was wholly occupied with dreams. In all of these,
Missouri was a conspicuous feature. Now he saw her in flight;
now in tears, and trembling; anon he beheld her fettered; and
again she seemed to float away from his embrace, a bleeding
spectre, melting away finally into thin air. In most of these
dreams, he beheld always, as one of the persons of the drama, a
warrior in the hateful guise of a Pawnee. How should a Pawnee
dare to hover, even in a dream, about the person of Missouri, the
betrothed of a great chief of the Omahas? What had he to do
there? and why did the spectre of one unknown, whom indeed
he only saw dimly, and always with face averted, and looking
toward Missouri — why did he presume to thrust himself between
his visions and the object so precious and ever present to his
dreams? The heart of the young warrior became uneasy, as he
could conjecture no reasonable solution of his difficulty, unless,
indeed, one of which he dared not think. Was Missouri the
captive of the Pawnee? He recoiled at the notion — he laughed,
but rather hollowly, and with great effort — and became more
uneasy than ever. His waking dreams, shaped by those that
came to him in sleep, became still more troublesome, and he resolved
to depart secretly for the dear islet in the little lake, if
only to disarm his doubts, and get rid of his vexatious fancies.
An opportunity soon enabled him to do so. A large party of
the Omahas had resolved upon a long hunt, and they applied to
Enemoya to join them. The sport in no way promised to interfere
with the quasi warfare which was carried on; and, finding
it impossible to bring the Pawnees to the striking point, the
Omahas contented themselves with the warfare upon the quadrupeds
of the forest. Enemoya joined the hunt, but soon disappeared
from the party. They did not miss him till nightfall,
and in the meantime he had sped, fast and far, pushing backward
along the paths leading to the little island, and the dusky
damsel whom he loved.

But the young warrior was late, though no laggard. His
enemy had been before him. That subtle and enterprising Kionk
had led his party with surprising address, and had succeeded in

fetching such a compass as brought him entirely without the
alignment of spies and scouts, which the Omahas had stretched
across the country, and, without impediment or interruption, had
made his way successfully to the borders of the little lake in
which the blessed island seemed to be brooding upon its own
bosom in a dream of peace. — Nothing could look more calm,
more inoffensive, more winning. One would think that, to behold
it only, would disarm the hostile passions of the enemy.
There lay the quiet groves beyond. There rose the soft white
curling smokes from the little cabin; and see beneath the trees
where the young damsels and the children are skipping gayly
about, as little conscious of care as danger.

The prospect did not disarm the Pawnee chief. On the contrary,
it rather strengthened his resolve, and stimulated his
enterprise. “If we obtain this captive,” he thought to himself,
“we conquer these rascally Omahas; and then we take possession
of this beautiful island, this fine lake always full of the sweetest
fish, and these broad green meadows, where I can keep a score
of horses without sending them out to grass.” And the eye of
Kionk already selected a particular site for his own future settlement,
and by no means stinted himself in the number of his
self-allotted acres. But he did not, while thus thinking of his
own projects of plunder, become neglectful of the duties which
he had undertaken. He looked about him, the better to prosecute
his objects. We need not to be told that this inquiry was
prosecuted with as much caution as energy. Everybody understands
that the red men kept themselves well covered in the
woods, so that none of the innocent children and the thoughtless
girls, sporting along the banks of the islet, on the opposite shore,
could get the slightest glimpse of their persons or their projects.
The marauders stole up the stream, for the lake was simply
formed by the expansion of a river, which the islet divided in
the middle. The Pawnees kept under cover till they almost
lost sight of the islet. At length they emerged upon the banks
of the river. Here they found a canoe, with which they put out
from shore, leaving it to the current to take them down to the
islet, and using their paddles simply to shape their course, so as
to touch the point aimed at only where its shrubs and willows
would afford concealment. The whole affair was well managed,

and was quite successful. The Pawnee warriors found themselves,
for the first time, on the blessed island of the Omahas.
The reptile was in the garden. He crawled, and crept, or
sneaked, crouching or gliding from cover to cover, from thicket
to thicket, and stealing from side to side, wherever he thought
it most probable that he should happen upon the victim he
sought. More than once Kionk might have caught up a child,
a nice little girl of seven or eight, or a stout chunk of a boy of
similar age; but he had his doubts if such juveniles were contemplated
by the oracle. He must do his work thoroughly, and
having gone thus far in his enterprise, peril nothing upon a
miserable doubt.

5. CHAPTER V.

Little did the beautiful damsel Missouri fancy, as she sat
singing that evening by the shore of the quiet lake, while the
infant child of her sister, Tanewahakila, was rocking in a case
of wicker work from the boughs of an outspreading tree, that
danger hung about her footsteps. She sung, in the gladness of
a young warm heart, scarcely knowing what she sang, and
musing, in delicious reveries, upon the spring season, which it is
so pleasant to think of when one is lonely in cold weather, and
which was to bring back Enemoya to her arms, a triumphant
warrior. Alas! what a happy dream the Fates are about to
mock with their cruel performances. What a lovely picture of
peace and felicity is about to be blackened with the thunderbolt
and storm!

While Missouri sang, or mused, lost in her sweet reveries, the
hand of the fierce Pawnee chief, Kionk, was laid upon her shoulder.
Before she could turn to see who was the rude assailant,
his shawl had been wound about her mouth, shutting in her
cries. In another moment she was lifted in his powerful arms
and borne into the thickets. The infant was left swinging in his
basket rocker from the tree!

The lightfooted Enemoya, meanwhile, sped with all the impetuous
diligence of a lover toward the precious little islet, so
full of treasure for his heart. Pursuing a direct course, he was
not long in consummating his journey, and at the close of a fine

day in November we find him once more on the borders of the
little lake, and looking across to the happy haven which he
sought. He paused for an instant only to take from the bough
from which it depended the clear yellow gourd, such as was
everywhere placed conveniently for the wayfarer, and scooped
up a sweet draught from the flowing waters. Then he sought
out a little canoe,— one of many which lay along the shore,—
and paddled out into the lake, making his way toward the well-remembered
headlands, where Missouri was wont to play with
the children of her sister, Tanewahakila, the wife of his cousin,
the grim warrior of Ouanawega-poree. It somewhat surprised
Enemoya that he seemed to be unseen by the villagers, of whom
he himself beheld none; and it was with a feeling of inquietude
that he looked vainly to the headlands he was approaching for
some signs of Missouri herself.—But, when he reached the island,
and his little boat shot up along the si0lvery beach, he began to
tremble with a strange fear at the deep and utter silence which
prevailed everywhere. He pushed rapidly for the lodge of Tanewahakila,
but it was silent and untenanted. The fire had gone
out upon the hearth. He was confounded, and hurried off to
the village. Here he found the women and children gathered
within the picketed enclosure, and, from a score of tongues, he
soon learned the disaster. Missouri had disappeared. She had
been seen borne upon strong Pawnee shoulders to the boat at
the upper end of the island, and, before the alarm could be given,
she had been carried safely to the opposite side. Not knowing
how many of the subtle Pawnees were about, the old and decrepit
warriors of the village had all set off on the route said to
be taken by the enemy. As yet, there was no report of the
result. But what report, or what result, could be anticipated —
unless that of disappointment — from a pursuit against young and
vigorous foes, undertaken by the superannuated? Poor Enemoya
listened with the saddest feeling of hopelessness and desolation.
“One stupid moment motionless he stood;” then, having
heard all which the women had to tell, he darted off in pursuit,
resolved to perish or rescue his dusky beauty from the talons of
her cruel ravishers!

While Enemoya was thus, with all his soul and strength,
urging the pursuit, Kionk, with his captive and his companions,

was equally earnest in pressing his retreat. But, to make this
safe, he was compelled to make it circuitous. He had to fetch
a wide compass, as before, to escape the scouts and war parties
of the Omahas. Though indefatigable, therefore, in the prosecution
of his journey, Kionk made little direct headway. But
he was in no hurry. He could afford to lose time now that he
had his captive. It was only required that he should keep his
trophy. To do this needed every precaution. He knew that
he would be pursued. He gave sufficient credit to his enemies
to assume that they would not give slumber to their eyelids, nor
rest to their feet, in the effort to rescue his prey, and to revenge
the indignity which they had suffered. He also took for granted
that they would bring to the work an ingenuity and skill, a
sagacity and intelligence, very nearly if not equal to his own.
He must be heedful, therefore, to obliterate all traces of his
progress; to wind about and double upon his own tracks; to
take to the streams and water-courses whenever this was possible,
and to baffle by superior arts those of his pursuers. That
there would be much energy in the pursuit, whatever might
be its sagacity, he did not apprehend; for he knew that the
guardians of the village were mostly superannuated, and a cold
scent is usually fatal to enterprise. He knew that they would
fight, perhaps as well as ever, upon their own ground, and in
defence; but for a war of invasion, or one which involved the
necessity of prompt decision and rapid action, old men are
nearly useless. He was therefore cool, taking his leisure, but
playing fox-work admirably, and omitting no precaution. He
contrived to throw out the veterans after a brief interval, and to
shake himself free of their attentions. But he did not dream
of that fierce wolf-dog upon the scent — the young, strong, and
audaciously-brave chief, Enemoya.

6. CHAPTER VI.

It was not long before Kionk began to take a curious
interest in the looks and behavior of his captive. Very sad
and wretched, indeed, was our dusky damsel; but she was very
patient withal, and bore up firmly against fatigue, and never
once complained, and seemed to show herself perfectly insensible

to danger. She had been chosen as the wife of a great
warrior, and she was resolved to show that she possessed a soul
worthy of so proud a destiny. Kionk beheld her patience and
endurance with a grim sort of satisfaction. Such a woman, he
thought, deserves to have a famous husband: she will do honor
to the fire torture. And yet, again, he mused upon the grievous
pity of burning up so much fine flesh and blood; such a fine
figure, such a pretty face; a creature of so many graces and beauties;
and one who would bear such noble-looking men-children,
gladdening a warlike father's heart. Kionk began to think
how much better it would be if he could pick up another captive,
and save Missouri from the fire-torture. She would make
such a commendable wife. But Kionk had a wife already; for
that matter, it must be confessed that he had three, and did not
enjoy any great reputation as an indulgent husband. But great
chiefs have peculiar privileges, and a chief like Kionk might
as safely repudiate his wives as any of the Napoleons, or any
of the Guelphs of Europe. Positively, the thought began to
grow upon the mighty Kionk, of the beauties and virtues and
excellent domestic nature of Missouri. More than once he
caught himself muttering: “What a pity such a fine figure
should be scorched and blackened by the fire!” He watched
her pitifully as he mused. When they paused for food and
rest, he attended kindlily to her wants. He brought her the food
himself; he chose the ground where she slept, and threw his
buffalo robe over her, and watched at her head during the brief
hours at midnight which were accorded to rest. When, long
before dawn, the party was again in motion, he himself gave her
the signal to rise, and helped her up. He was curiously attentive
for so rough a sort of Birserkir. Could Enemoya have witnessed
these attentions! Could he have seen what thoughts were
passing through the brain of Kionk — what feelings were working
in his heart! But his jealous and apprehensive spirit conjectured
all. What lover but apprehended the worst of dangers
from a charming rival?

While such were the relations between the captor and the
captive, Enemoya pursued the search with as much rapidity as
consisted with the necessity of keeping on the track of the
fugitives. He encountered the party of exhausted veterans at

the spot where they were thrown out of the chase; and, while
they returned sorrowfully to the little islet, no longer safe and
happy, he contrived to catch up the traces which they had
lost, and once more resumed the pursuit with new hopes and
spirit. Under any circumstances, the free step, the bold heart,
the keen eye, and prompt sagacity, of Enemoya would have
made him fearful as a pursuer; but now, with jealous fire and
a fierce anger working terribly in his soul, all his powers of
mind and body seemed to acquire greater vigor than ever.
Passion and despair gave him wings, and he seemed to carry
eyes in his wings. Nothing escaped his glance. He soon persuaded
himself that he gained upon his enemy. There are
traces which the keen vision of the hunter will detect, even
though another hunter shall toil to baffle him; and, in spite of
the care and precautions of Kionk, he could not wholly succeed
in obscuring the tracks which his party unavoidably made.
Besides, anticipating pursuit, though certainly not that of her
lover, Missouri had quietly done all that she might, in leaving
clues of her progress behind her. She was not allowed to
break the shrubs as she passed, nor to peal the green wands,
nor to linger by the way. Where she slept at night the careful
hands of her captors stirred the leaves, and smoothed out all
pressure from the surface. But the captors were not always
watchful, and Missouri noted their lapses very heedfully. As
Enemoya hurries forward over a little sandy ridge, what is it
that sparkles in the path? It is one of the bright blue beads
which he himself has wound about the neck of the dusky maiden.
His hopes rekindle and multiply in his breast. Anon he sees
another, and another, dropped always on the clear track, and
where it may imprison the glistening rays of the sun. Now he
hurries forward, exulting in the certainty of his clues. Toward
sunset he happens upon the clearly-defined track of a man's
moccasin. The foot is large and distinct. There are other like
tracks, set down without any reserve or seeming apprehension.
Enemoya at once concludes that the Pawnee party, deeming
themselves secure, no longer continue their precautions. This
encourages him still further. He will now catch them napping.
Again he darts forward, following the obvious tracks before
him. But night came down, and he could only travel under the
guidance of a star, chosen, as pointing in the seemingly given
direction. Thus, for an hour or more after night, he followed
on through the dim forest. Suddenly, as he rounds a water-course,
which he can not wade, he is startled by the blaze of a
camp-fire.

“Such a fire,” quoth Enemoya to himself, “was never made
by Pawnee warrior. He would never be the fool so to advertise
his sleeping place to his enemies.”

The prospect which would have cheered the white man, disappointed
our chief of Omaha. He now knew that he had been
misled, and had turned aside from the true path indicated by the
beads of Missouri, to follow upon one which had been evidently
made by quite another party. But, though mortified with himself
at this blundering, and in allowing himself to reason from a
false assumption — his pride as hunter and warrior being equally
wounded — he cautiously approached the fire, around which the
outlines of a group of persons, dimly seen by the blaze, were
crouching. They proved to be a party of white men, and were
busily engaged in the discussion of a supper of broiled venison
and smoking hoecake. — The intercourse of Enemoya with the
white traders, had, as we have already seen, been rather considerable,
and the larger profits had not certainly lain with the
red man. The chief had learned some little of the English
tongue in this intercourse, however, and he suddenly stood
among the strangers, introducing himself with a softly murmured:
“Huddye do, brudder; I berry glad to see you in my
country.”

Our pioneers were fellows of “the true grit,” to employ their
own verbal currency, — as big-limbed, muscular, hardy, and daredevil
scamps, as ever came from “Roaring river.” They were
taken by surprise, but were on their legs in the twinkling of an
eye, each brandishing his rifle, club-fashion, and feeling that his
knife was convenient to his grasp. They were on the old route
looking for a new route; had drawn up stakes in a too thickly
settled neighborhood, having three neighbors in a square league,
and were seeking where to plant them anew in a less-crowded
region. The gentle language of Enemoya reassured them.

“No fight — good friends — brudders all. The Omaha chief
is a friend to the pale-faces.”

And he extended his hand which they promptly shook, all
round, and then frankly bade him sit and share of their provisions.
Enemoya's heart was not in the feast, nor yet with his
new companions. He would much rather never have encountered
them, but still kept on the track of the true enemy, as pointed
out by the occasionally dropped bead of the poor Missouri. Many
were the secret imprecations which he muttered against the big
feet of the pale-faces, which had diverted him from the true
course. Weary, almost to exhaustion, he was for the moment
utterly desponding. The last feather breaks the camel's back.
Now Enemoya's spine was still, in sooth, unshaken, but the conviction
that he had lost ground which he might never be able to
recover, made him succumb, as the hardiest man is apt to do,
for a time, under the constantly accumulated pressure of misfortunes.
He did as the Kentuckians bade him, and sat down
with them to the supper, but not to eat. The white men noted
his despondency, and, little by little, they wound out of the warrior
the whole history of his affairs — the present war between
Pawnee and Omaha — the predictions upon which the result was
to depend — the secret foray of the Pawnees, and their capture
of the dusky beauty whom he was to carry to his lodge in the
spring. He narrated also the details of his pursuit thus far, and
confessed in what manner he had been misled, never dreaming
of the moccasin track of a white man in the country of the red,
at such a moment.

“Well, now, yours is a mighty hard case for a young fellow;
I must say it though I'm rather an old one myself,” was the
remark of one of the elders of the white party — a grisly giant,
some forty-five years of age, yet probably with a more certain
vigor than he had at thirty-five. “It's not so bad to lose one's
wife, after he's got a little usen to her; but where it's only at
the beginning of a man's married life, and where it's nothing but
the happiness of the thing that he's considerin', to have the gal
caught up, and carried away by an inimy, makes a sore place in
a person's feelings. It's like having one's supper snapped up
by a hungry wolf, jest before he's tasted the leetlest morsel, and
when he's a-wiping his mouth to eat. I confess, I feels oneasy
at your perdicament. Now, what do you say ef we lends you a
hand to help you git back the gal.”

Enemoya was cheered by the prospect, and expressed his
gratitude.

“Well, that's pretty well said for a red-skin. We are the
boys to help you, my lad, for there ain't one of us that can't
double up an Ingin in mighty short order. With these pretty
little critters here,” touching one of the rifles, “we can see to a
mighty great distance, and can stretch the longest legs you ever
did see after an inimy. And we're good at scouting, and can
take a track, and sarcumvent the heathen jist as well as we can
sarcumvent the b'ar and buffalo.—And we will sarve you, ef
we can make tarms upon it.”

Enemoya was willing to admit the prowess of the white men;
but he didn't altogether comprehend the latter part of what was
said about the “tarms.”

“Oh! don't make out that you're so green as all that comes
to. You've been trading with our people, and ought to know
what we mean by `tarms.' But, ef you don't, it's only to make
it cl'ar to you by using some easier words. Tarms is conditions
— that is, the pay, the hire, the salary — what you're to give us
for helping to git the gal back, sound in wind and limb, and
other sarcumstances. No cure, no pay — no gal, no tarms.”

Enemoya was not long in comprehending the suggestion. He
felt the importance of such an alliance, and well knew that the
proffered assistance was highly valuable. It filled him with
new hope and courage. He was accordingly as liberal as the
sunshine in his gratitude and promises. He had deer, and bear,
and buffalo skins, which were all at the service of his allies, if
they were successful in the chase.

“Ay, ay, all them's mighty good things; but the gal's worth
a great deal more. Now, you jist now spoke of this being your
country. Ef we chose, 'twould be mighty easy to dispute that
argyment; for what made it more your country than mine? It's
all God's country, and God grants no pr'emptions to any but a
Christian people. The heathen's got to die out, any how, some
day. But I won't dispute with a man when he's in a peck of
troubles, so we'll leave that argyment over for another time.
We'll take the skins, but you'll throw in some rifle-shots of land
with 'em, won't you, ef so be we gits back your gal?”

Enemoya required some further explanations, and finally

agreed that our pioneers, if successful in recovering Missouri,
should have as much territory of Omaha, wherever they were
pleased to locate, as they could shoot round in a day. He did
not calculate the number of acres that could be thus covered by
a score of long Kentucky rifles. The bargain was concluded.
And here we may observe that such leagues were quite frequent
from the earliest periods of our history, between the red men
and the white pioneers. The latter most commonly took sides
with the tribe with which they hunted, harbored, or trafficked.
The trappers and traders were always ready to lead in the wars
between the tribes, and their presence usually determined the
contest. They were in fact so many bold, hardy, fighting men,
and were always active in the old French war, in subsidizing
the Indians for their respective nations, against French or English,
as it happened. Let them fight as they pleased, however,
the red men were losers in the end. The rifle shots invariably
resulted in the absorption of their acres. But the bargain was
concluded, and the supper. The squatters leaped to their feet,
girded themselves up for travel, reprimed their rifles, and set
off, under the guidance of Enemoya — now refreshed by rest,
and a new stimulus to hope — to recover the trail of the fugitive
Pawness, which he had lost.

7. CHAPTER VII.

While Enemoya was thus strengthening himself for the pursuit,
passions of a strange and exciting character were slowly
kindling in the camp of the Pawnees. The growing sympathy
which Kionk showed for the beautiful captive, became intelligible
to his comrades a little sooner than to himself. They had
no such feelings, and they were a little resentful of his, accordingly.
Besides, one of his companions was a brother to one of
his many wives, and was particularly watchful of those peculiar
weaknesses of his kinsman, which were sufficiently notorious
among his people. Like Mark Antony, to whom we have
already compared him, Kionk had too tender a heart — he was
a born admirer of the sex, and would cheerfully lose the world
any day for any dusky Cleopatra. He suffered his companions
to see the progress which Missouri had made in his affections,

by gravely proposing to them, as they rested in camp, the very
hour that Enemoya was making his bargain with the white men,
to “seek for another captive.” He was not quite sure that a
woman sacrifice was contemplated by the gods, or would be acceptable
to them. He very much doubted it himself. Indeed,
how should it be so. It was the war-god to whom the victim
was to be offered, and what should the victim be but a warrior.
They had seen the defenceless condition of the islet. It would
surely be easy to cast the snare about the feet of some one of
the veterans, and carry him off, as they had carried off Missouri.”
The brother-in-law answered with a sneer:—

“Is my brother prepared, when he hath taken the old warrior,
to leave the damsel behind him?”

This was a puzzler, by which Kionk began to see that he was
suspected. But he was a bold fellow, who did not care much to
offer apologies or excuses. He answered with equal promptness
and determination:—

“No, indeed; the captive woman is comely, and would be
the mother of many braves to a chief among the Pawnees.”

“As if the Pawness had no women of their own,” was the
reply of the other; and his sentiments were clearly those of the
larger number of his companions.—Kionk, bold as he was, was
not prepared to take the bull by the horns at that moment. He
saw that public opinion was against him, and he must wait events.
And this forbearance became much more essential, when his savage
brother-in-law deliberately urged upon the party “to subject
Missouri in the fire torture where they then were, and thus render
the matter certain. They would thus free themselves from
an incumbrance; would be better able to turn upon their enemies;
could then strike and scalp with impunity, and revenge
themselves fearfully for all the taunts of their impudent assailants,
made safe by the oracle, to which they had found it so
painful to submit. The requisitions of the oracle once complied
with, they would be free to use their scalping-knives on every
side.”

It required all the logic and eloquence of Kionk to silence
this terrible suggestion, one which better taught him to understand
the extent of his newly-awakened passion for his beautiful
and dangerous captive. His argument proved conclusive

with all but his savage brother-in-law. He urged that the sacrifice
could only take place under the immediate sanction and
sight of the high-priest. But before the decision of his companions
could be made, the party had nearly come to blows. In
the midst of the discussion between Kionk and his kinsman, and
when both were nearly roused to madness, the latter sprang
suddenly upon Missouri — who had tremblingly listened to the
whole dispute — seized her by her long black hair, whirled her
furiously around, and actually lifted his knife to strike, before any
of them could interpose. Then it was that the whole lion nature
of Kionk was in arms, and tearing her away from the brutal assailant,
he hurled him to the earth, and, but for his companions,
would have brained him with his hatchet on the spot. But he
warned him with terrible eye, as he suffered him to rise, that if
he but laid his finger on the damsel again, he would hew him to
pieces. The kinsman rose, silent, sullen, unsubdued, and secretly
swearing in his soul to have his revenge yet. These events delayed
the party. It was long that night before they slept. It
was late — after daylight, next day — before the journey was
resumed. This gave new opportunities to the pursuers.

It was not difficult to retrace the steps of the white men,
which Enemoya had so unwisely followed, until he reached the
point where he had turned aside from the true object of pursuit.
To this the squatters themselves, who were as good at scouting,
any day, as the red men, very easily conducted. This brought
them to a late hour in the night, and here our whites proceeded
to make their camp, though, this time, without venturing to
make a fire. The Omaha chief would have hurried on, but his
companions very coolly and doggedly refused. He soon saw
the wisdom of curbing his impatience, not only because of the
inflexibility of his allies, but because, as they showed him, his
impatience would only cause him again to lose the trail, which it
was not possible to pursue by night. With the dawn, however,
the whites were on the alert, and one of them soon appeared
with a bead in his hand, the certain indication of the damsel's
route and providence. Enemoya readily conjectured the general
direction which would be taken by the Pawnees, and an
occasional bead, glistening upon the sandy spots, sufficed every
now and then to encourage the pursuers. At this period, the

better knowledge of the country possessed by Enemoya, enabled
him, by striking an oblique course for the head of a creek,
which the Pawnees would be compelled to cross, to gain considerably
upon them, ignorant as they were of this shorter
route. The suggestion was fortunate; and, never once dreaming
of the events which had delayed the fugitives the last night, the
Omaha chief with his allies came unexpectedly upon them about
midday, where, squat beside a brooklet, they were taking a
brief rest and a little refreshment. This pause had become especially
necessary for Missouri, who, with incessant travel, and
the terror of the scene of the previous night, had succumbed,
and actually fainted that morning along the route. Kionk was
compelled to carry her, at various stages, in his arms — which
he did with the greatest tenderness — till the moment when the
party stopped for nooning beside the little brooklet, where Enemoya
and his white allies came upon them.

The Pawnees were overtaken, but not taken by surprise.
They did not certainly expect to be overtaken, but they had
relaxed in none of their vigilance, and their scout reported the
enemy before the latter had discovered the quarry. The Pawnees
were sitting upon the ground, scattered around a small circuit,
Missouri in the centre of the group, resting against a tree.
Her long hair was dishevelled, and lay heavily upon the leaves;
her face was sad and anxious, weary and without hope; — so
woful was the sight that the impulses of Enemoya, as he beheld
her, got for a moment the better of his prudence, and he rushed
out of the covert, shouting his war cry, and bounding forward
with uplifted tomahawk. It was with no scrupulous or gentle
hand that the elder of the white men caught him in his sinewy
grasp, and drew him back into the thickets.

With the signal whistle of their scout, the Pawnee warriors
were at once upon their legs, each covering himself with a tree;
and a dozen arrows were rapidly shot into the wood where our
squatters had taken harbor. But they were as quick and as
practised in woodcraft as the Pawnees, and laughed at this
demonstration. In numbers they exceeded the small party of
their enemies, and could have overwhelmed them probably by
a sudden rush from opposite quarters; but they were warned
against such audacity by beholding the danger of the dusky

maiden, who was seized by the hair by one of the captors as soon
as Enemoya had shown himself, while a knife lifted over her bosom
threatened her with instant death at the first demonstration
of attack. Never had Enemoya before found himself in a situation
in which he was so little capable of resolving what should
be done. But the squatters who accompanied him were persons
of as much shrewdness and experience as daring. While they
felt that confidence and boldness were prime qualities of the
warrior, they also well knew that rashness and precipitance
would be fatal to their object. They held counsel among themselves,
never consulting the red chief, though he stood up and
listened. The Anglo-Norman has profound faith in parliaments.
“We must argyfy the case with these red devils,” was the conclusion
to which they came. They had profound faith in their
ability for “argyment.” The result of their deliberations was
to send forth one of their number, accompanied by Enemoya,
bearing a white handkerchief at the end of his rifle, and a long
pipe in his left hand — both signs of truce and amnesty — the
calumet that of the red men, the flag that of the white. The
object was to ascertain upon what terms the maiden would be
given up. Of course they did not know what issues hung upon
her fate, or what was her destiny, or that she was the subject
of an awful oracle.

8. CHAPTER VIII.

At the appearance of the flag and the Omaha chief, Kionk,
followed by three others, emerged from his place of shelter.
They advanced to meet the flag without apprehension, though
both parties kept their weapons ready, and their eyes bright.
Treachery is a warlike virtue among the savages, and our squatters
well understood the necessity of covering an enemy, each
with his rifle, while their comrades were engaged in conference.
How shall we report this conference? It would be impossible
to follow step by step the details, as developed in the broken
English of the one party, and the half savage Pawnee of
the other. But the high contracting parties contrived, after a
fashion, to make themselves separately understood. Our squatter
embassador had little hesitation in coming as promptly to the

point as possible. We sum up much in little, when we report
the following: —

“'Taint a manly way of carrying on the war, catching a poor
young woman. What's the sperrit of a man to lay hands upon a
girl, onless for love and affection? And now you've got her,
what's the use of her to you? You have plenty of gals in your
own nation. What do you want with this Omaha?”

The Pawnee acknowledged that his people were by no means
wanting in specimens of the tender gender. They had enough,
Heaven knows, even if all their chiefs were of the Kionk temper.

“Well, then, let's have the gal. We'll buy her from you at
a fair vallyation. What do you say now to half a dozen tomahawks,
a dozen knifes, two little bells, a pound of fishhooks, four
pounds of beads, and a good overcoat, handsome enough for a king.”

The goods were all displayed. Kionk acknowledged that
the offer was a liberal one. But — and here he revealed the
true difficulty — the captive-girl was the subject of an oracle.
The fate of Pawnees or Omahas depended upon her life. She
was doomed to the fiery torture. In her ashes lay the future
triumph of his people over the accursed tribe of the Omaha!
There could be no trade; no price could buy the captive; no
power save her life; he would forego his hold upon her only
with his own life; and in a few days she should undergo the
torture by fire. Such was the final answer.

“May I be etarnally burned myself, ef I stand by and see her
burned; so look to it, red-skin! I'm a human, after all; and
my rifle shall talk like blazes before you take her off!”

The conference had reached this point, and Kionk had been
made to comprehend the fiercely-expressed declaration of the
representative squatter, when Missouri, arousing from her stupor,
caught a glimpse of Enemoya. The sight seemed to restore instantly
her strength and energies. With a single bound, and a
wild passionate cry, she darted suddenly away from the savage
who stood over her, and who had somewhat relaxed his vigilance
in the curiosity which he felt with regard to the conference.
She flew, rather than ran, over the space which lay between, and
Enemoya sprang forward to receive her. But before they could
meet, a blow from the fist of one of the savages felled her to the
earth.

In a moment the work of death had begun. The hatchet of
Enemoya cleft the skull of the brutal assailant. Then rose his
war-cry — then came the fierce shout of Kionk and the rest.
Every arrow was drawn to its head. Every rifle-bead rested
with dead aim upon the tree which gave shelter to an enemy.
The charge d'affaires of the squatters, quick as lightning, tore
the white kerchief from his rifle, and dodged into cover; while
Enemoya, no longer capable of restraint, dashed forward to
gather up the beautiful damsel from the ground where she still
lay, stunned by the blow of the Indian. But he was not permitted
to reach his object. It was now Kionk's turn. He threw
himself into the path of the young chief of the Omahas, and together
grappling they came together to the earth. It was the
death grapple for one or both. In their hearts they felt mutually
the instinct of a deadly personal hatred, apart from that which
belonged to their national hostilities. Closely did they cling;
sinuously, like serpents, did they wind about each other on the
earth, rapidly rolling over, fiercely striving, without a word spoken
on either part. But one weapon could either now use, and
that was the scalp-knife which each bore in his belt. But to
get at this was not easy, since neither dared forego his grasp,
lest he should give his opponent the advantage.

Meanwhile the rest were not idle. The Pawnees, highly excited
by the death of one of their number, and seeing but two
enemies before them — never dreaming that there were no less
than six Kentuckians in ambush — darted, with terrible yells,
into the foreground. Two of them, in an instant, bit the dust;
and the rest recoiled from the unanticipated danger. The Kentuckians
now made a rush in order to extricate Enemoya, and
to brain Kionk; and the aspect of affairs was hopeful in the last
degree; when, at this very moment, one of the Pawnees darted
out of cover. He was the brother-in-law of Kionk — the sullen
chief whom he had overthrown, and whose black passions meditated
the most hateful of revenges. Before the squatters could
reach the scene of action, the murderous monster, whose purpose
was wholly unexpected, threw himself upon the crouching Missouri,
and with a single blow buried his hatchet in her brain.
With a howl of mixed scorn and exultation he had shrouded
himself in the woods, and among his comrades, a moment after.

The wretched Enemoya beheld the horrid stroke, but, grappling
with his own assailant he had not the power to interfere.
In striving to loose himself for this purpose, he gave his enemy
the advantage. In a moment both were on their feet, and Kionk
already brandished his scalp-knife in his grasp. But the eyes
of Enemoya swam in a blind horror. He had seen the whizzing
tomahawk descend, crushing into the head of the dusky beauty
whom he so much loved. He saw no more; and the uplifted
knife of Kionk was already about to sheathe itself in his bosom,
when a rifle bullet from one of the squatters sent him reeling to
the earth in the last agonies of death. When Enemoya sunk
beside the poor damsel, her eyes were already glazed. She
knew him not. She looked on him no more. He took the scalp
of Kionk, but it gave him no consolation. He fought like a
demon — he slew many enemies,— took many scalps,— but never
felt a whit the happier. His hope was blighted — he loved the
dusky beauty of the blessed islet, much more tenderly than we
should suppose from the manner of his wooing: and he never
recovered from her loss. He moved among his people like a
shadow, and they called him the ghost only of the great warrior.

The campaign that season was indecisive between the rival
nations of the Pawnee and Omaha. Neither had succeeded in
complying with the requisitions of the oracle. The Pawnees had
forfeited their hope in failing to bring their captive to the torture
of fire. The Omahas had been equally unfortunate in being
compelled to strike the first blow. The first life taken in the
war was that of the savage Pawnee who smote Missouri with his
fist, and whom Enemoya immediately slew. But the campaign
of the ensuing winter went against the Omahas. They had lost
the soul of Enemoya; who ceased to exhibit any enterprise,
though he fought terribly when the hour came for conflict.
Meanwhile, our squatters from Kentucky were joined by others
from that daring region. Their rifles helped the Omahas for a
long time; but the latter were finally defeated. The remnant
of the nation were ready to disperse; they knew not where to
turn. The blessed island was almost the only territory remaining
in their possession. But for this there suddenly appeared a
new claimant.

“These are pleasant places, boys,” said the head man of the

squatters, looking at the lovely region around; “it seems to me
to be good if we drive stakes and build our cabins here — here
by this quiet lake, among these beautiful meadows.— What say
you,— shall it be here? I don't want to go further, 'till it comes
to be crowded.”

“But this is the abiding place of my people, my brother; —
here is the wigwam of Enemoya, — yonder was the dwelling
which I built for the wife of my bosom, the beautiful Missouri.”

“Look you, Inimowya,” answered the white chief, “the argyment
of territory, after all, lies at the eend of my rifle. As I told
you once afore, when we first met, I could dispute with you that
pr'emption title, but I wouldn't; and I won't now; considering
that you've had a bad time of it. But what's the use of your
talking, when you see the country's got to be ours. Why, you
know we kin shoot round it every day”— again touching his
rifle. — “But that's not the argyment I want to use with you.
Your brown gal, who was a beauty for an Ingin, I'm willing to
allow, is a sperrit now in the other world. What sort of heaven
they find for the red-skins, is unbeknowing to me; but I reckon
she's living thar. Thar's no living for her hyar, you see, so
what's the use of the cabin you built. But that's not to say I
wants to drive you out. By no possible means. I like you —
all the boys like you. For a red-skin you're a gentleman, and
as you hev' no nation now, and hardly any tribe of your own, why
squat down with us, by any man's fireside you choose, and ef you
choose, you kin only set down and look on, and see how we'll take
the shine out of these Pawnee cock-a-doodles. You kin share
with us, and do as we do, with all the right nateral to a free
white man; but as for your getting this island from us, now that
we're all ready to plant stakes, it's a matter onpossible to be
argyfied except with the tongue of the rifle. Thar's no speech
that ever was invented that shall make us pull up stakes now.”

And the rifle butt came down heavily upon the earth, as the
chief of the squatters declared himself. Enemoya regarded him
with a grave indifference, and said calmly: —

“Be it so: the island is young; the country! Why should you
not have it? I need it not! neither I nor Missouri! I thank
you for what you say. But though your cabin door is wide for
my coming, I do not see Missouri beside the hearth.”

“Oh! for that matter, as you are quite a gentleman for a red-skin,
there's many a pretty white gal that would hev you for
the axing.”

“No! I shall follow my people to the black prairies, and wait
for the voice of that bird of the Spirit, that shall summon me to
the happy valley where Missouri walks.”

“Well, as you choose, Inimowya; but let's to supper now,
and you'll sleep under my bush to-night.”

The chief silently consented. But at the dawn he was nowhere
to be seen, nor have the hunters ever heard of him since.
Meanwhile the country of the Omaha, which includes the lake
and the beautiful islet, has become the possession of the pale-faces,
but they call it still after the dusky damsel of Omaha, the
lovely and loving Missouri.