: Sketches of Aboriginal Life American Tableaux No. 1 by Vide V V - Historical fiction; Indians of North America Fiction; Mexico History Conquest 1519-1540 Fiction

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iefs, to show their trophies, and relate the incidents of their scout.

When the Athapuscow women, in examining the contents of the poor captive's bundle, discovered the still sleeping infant, they seized him as they would have done a viper, and dashed him on the ground. In vain did the fond mother plead for her child. In vain did the voice of nature, and a mother's instinct in their own bosoms, plead for the innocent. It was an enemy's child, a hated Chippeway, and that was enough to stifle every other feeling in their hearts, and make even "an infant of days" an object of intense and implacable hatred. With the Indian, the son of an enemy is an enemy, doomed only to death or torture. The daughter may be spared for slavery or sacrifice.

The morning dawned with uncommon brilliancy and beauty upon the Chippeway village, and warriors and children were astir with the earliest light, some to fish in the smooth stream, that, like a silver chain, bound their two beautiful lakes together--some to look after the traps they had set over-night--some to prepare for the hunt--and some for the merry games and athletic sports of the village. The quick eye of Ish-ta-le-?-wah soon discovered that all was not right in the tent of his father. Kaf-ne-wah-go was not abroad, as usual, with his net in the stream. O-ken-?h-ga was not seen among the hunters with his bow, nor among the wrestlers on the green. No smoke was seen curling among the branches of the old tree that overshadowed his mother's tent. All was still as the house of the dead.

"Why sleep the brave so long, when the light of day is already on the hill-top, and coming down upon the valley. Has the snake crept into the tent of Kaf-ne-wah-go, and charmed the father with the children? I must go and see."

The loud and piercing yell of Ish-ta-le-?-wah, as he looked in upon that desolate wigwam, roused the whole village, like the blast of a trumpet. The counsellors and braves of the nation were soon on the spot. The whole scene was understood in a moment, as clearly as if a written record of the whole had been left behind. Pursuit, and the recovery of the captive Tula and her child, were instantly resolved; and, ere the sun had surmounted the eastern barrier of their beautiful valley, Ish-ta-le-?-wah, with a band of chosen braves, was on the trail of the foe.

With the keen eye and quick scent of a blood-hound, they followed the almost obliterated track, through forest and brake, through swamp and dingle, over hill and prairie, till it was lost on the border of the Athabasca lake. Though the party in retreat was large, so well were they all trained in the Indian tactics of flight and concealment, that it required a most experienced eye to keep on their track. They had marched, according to custom, in Indian file, each carefully walking in the steps of the other, so that, to an unpractised observer, there would appear to have been but one wayfarer in the path. Wherever it was practicable, the path was carried over rocks, or the soft elastic mosses, or through the bed of a running brook, with the hope of eluding the pursuer. But no artifice of the Athapuscow could elude the well-trained eye of the Chippeway. He would instantly detect the slightest trace of a footstep on the ground, or the passage of a human body through the thicket. In one place, the edges of the moss had been torn, or a blade of grass trampled in upon it; in another, the small stones of the surface had been displaced, showing sometimes the fresh earth, and sometimes the hole of a worm uncovered, with half the length of its astonished occupant protruded to the light, as if investigating the cause of the sudden unroofing of his cell. Here some dry stick broken, or the bark of a protruding root peeled off, would betray the step of the fugitive; and there a shrub slightly bent, or a leaf turned up and lapped over upon another, or a few petals of a wild flower torn off and scattered upon the ground, would reveal the rude touch of his foot, or arm, or the trailing of his blanket, as he passed. Even on the bare rock, if a few grains of earth had been carried forward, or a pebble, a leaf, a dry stick, or a bit of moss, adhering to the foot had been deposited there, it was instantly noticed and understood. The rushing of the waters in the brook did not always replace, in a moment, every stone that had been disturbed in its bed, nor restore the broken limb, nor the bent weed, to its place. So quick and intuitive were these observations, that the march of the pursuer was as rapid and direct as that of the pursued. The one would seldom lose more time in hunting for the track, than the other had consumed in his various artifices of concealment.

On arriving at the lake, it was evident that a considerable number of the enemy had been encamped, and that they had just embarked. Their fires were still smoking, and the rocks were not yet dry, from which they had pushed off their canoes, in the haste of their departure.

The Chippeway was not easily diverted from his purpose. With the speed of a chamois, he climbed a tall cliff, which, jutting boldly out into the lake, concealed its great eastern basin from his view. Arrived at the summit, he discerned, dimly relieved in the distant horizon, a number of moving specks, which he knew to be the canoes of the retreating foe. In the double hope of avenging the dead, and recovering the living from captivity, he continued his course along the shores of the lake, and, early the next morning, fell once more upon the trail of his enemy. Pursuing it a short distance into the forest, it suddenly divided, one part continuing on to the east, and one striking off toward the south. In neither of them could he discover the track of his sister. Her captors had placed her, with their own women, in the middle of the march, so that the large and heavy track of the warriors who came after, should cover and obliterate the lighter traces of her foot.

Tula was treated with kindness by the Athapuscow chief, who claimed her as his own. Every means was tried to reconcile her to her new lot, and to make her content to be the wife of her enemy. But her heart was bound up with the memories of the dead. Her parents, her husband, her child, filled all her thoughts. And the idea of being for ever bound to those whose hands were stained with the blood of these precious lost ones, was not to be endured for a moment. She was inconsolable, and her captors, for a time, respected her grief. Day after day, they travelled on, with long and weary marches, till the face of the country was changed, and the green forest gave way to the barren and rocky waste, that skirts the northern borders of the great valley of prairies. As they advanced, they grew more and more secure against pursuit, and less watchful of their captive. At length, she suddenly disappeared from their view.

They had pitched for the night, on the bank of the north branch of the Sascatchawan. The night was dark and tempestuous. The lightnings flashed vividly from the dark cloud, and threatened to "melt the very elements with fervent heat." The hoarse thunders roared among the wildly careering clouds, and reverberated along the shores of the stream, and the cliffs of the distant mountains, as if those everlasting barriers were rent asunder, and nature were groaning from her utmost depths. The Indian feared not death, in whatever shape it might come. But he feared the angry voice of the Great Spirit. He shrunk with terror to the covert of his tent, and covered his eyes from the fearful glare of those incessant flashes, and prayed inwardly to his gods.

The poor disconsolate captive lay trembling under the side of the tent. She thought of the storm that had swept over her beautiful home, and desolated her heart in the spring time of its love. She looked at her savage captors, now writhing in the agonies of superstitious fear, which her more absorbing private grief alone prevented her from sharing to the full. They heeded her not. They scarcely remembered that she was among them. Something whispered to her heart--"No eye but that of the Great Spirit sees you. He bids you escape from your enemies."

In the ten-fold darkness that follows the all-revealing flash from the storm-cloud, Tula slipped noiselessly under the edge of the robe that sheltered her from the beating rain, and plunging into the stream, swam with the current a few rods, till she was arrested by a thick covert of overhanging shrubs, which grew to the water's edge. Thinking she might be able to cover her head with these bushes, while her body was hid by the water, she crept cautiously under, close to the bank, when, to her surprise and joy, she found that this shrubbery covered and curiously concealed a crevice in the jutting rock, sufficiently large to admit a free entrance to an ample cave within. Having carefully adjusted every limb and leaf without, and replaced with instinctive sagacity, the mosses that had been disturbed by her feet, she devoutly thanked the good spirit for her hope of deliverance, and anxiously watched for the morning.

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