The Prairie (50 page)

"The manner is indifferent," interrupted Inez, too anxious to await the
prolix explanations of the old man; "why is the visit made?"

"Therein shall the savage speak for himself. The daughters of the
Pale-faces wish to know why the Great Teton has come into his lodge?"

Mahtoree regarded his interrogator with a surprise, which showed how
extraordinary he deemed the question. Then placing himself in a posture
of condescension, after a moment's delay, he answered—

"Sing in the ears of the dark-eye. Tell her the lodge of Mahtoree is
very large, and that it is not full. She shall find room in it, and none
shall be greater than she. Tell the light-hair, that she too may stay in
the lodge of a brave, and eat of his venison. Mahtoree is a great chief.
His hand is never shut."

"Teton," returned the trapper, shaking his head in evidence of the
strong disapprobation with which he heard this language, "the tongue of
a Red-skin must be coloured white, before it can make music in the ears
of a Pale-face. Should your words be spoken, my daughters would shut
their ears, and Mahtoree would seem a trader to their eyes. Now listen
to what comes from a grey-head, and then speak accordingly. My people
is a mighty people. The sun rises on their eastern and sets on their
western border. The land is filled with bright-eyed and laughing girls,
like these you see—ay, Teton, I tell no lie," observing his auditor to
start with an air of distrust—"bright-eyed and pleasant to behold, as
these before you."

"Has my father a hundred wives!" interrupted the savage, laying his
finger on the shoulder of the trapper, with a look of curious interest
in the reply.

"No, Dahcotah. The Master of Life has said to me, Live alone; your lodge
shall be the forest; the roof of your wigwam, the clouds. But, though
never bound in the secret faith which, in my nation, ties one man to one
woman, often have I seen the workings of that kindness which brings
the two together. Go into the regions of my people; you will see the
daughters of the land, fluttering through the towns like many-coloured
and joyful birds in the season of blossoms. You will meet them, singing
and rejoicing, along the great paths of the country, and you will
hear the woods ringing with their laughter. They are very excellent to
behold, and the young men find pleasure in looking at them."

"Hugh," ejaculated the attentive Mahtoree.

"Ay, well may you put faith in what you hear, for it is no lie. But when
a youth has found a maiden to please him, he speaks to her in a voice
so soft, that none else can hear. He does not say, My lodge is empty and
there is room for another; but shall I build, and will the virgin show
me near what spring she would dwell? His voice is sweeter than honey
from the locust, and goes into the ear thrilling like the song of a
wren. Therefore, if my brother wishes his words to be heard, he must
speak with a white tongue."

Mahtoree pondered deeply, and in a wonder that he did not attempt to
conceal. It was reversing all the order of society, and, according to
his established opinions, endangering the dignity of a chief, for a
warrior thus to humble himself before a woman. But as Inez sat before
him, reserved and imposing in air, utterly unconscious of his object,
and least of all suspecting the true purport of so extraordinary
a visit, the savage felt the influence of a manner to which he was
unaccustomed. Bowing his head, in acknowledgment of his error, he
stepped a little back, and placing himself in an attitude of easy
dignity, he began to speak with the confidence of one who had been no
less distinguished for eloquence, than for deeds in arms. Keeping his
eyes riveted on the unconscious bride of Middleton, he proceeded in the
following words—

"I am a man with a red skin, but my eyes are dark. They have been open
since many snows. They have seen many things—they know a brave from a
coward. When a boy, I saw nothing but the bison and the deer. I went to
the hunts, and I saw the cougar and the bear. This made Mahtoree a man.
He talked with his mother no more. His ears were open to the wisdom of
the old men. They told him every thing—they told him of the Big-knives.
He went on the war-path. He was then the last; now, he is the first.
What Dahcotah dare say he will go before Mahtoree into the hunting
grounds of the Pawnees? The chiefs met him at their doors, and they
said, My son is without a home. They gave him their lodges, they gave
him their riches, and they gave him their daughters. Then Mahtoree
became a chief, as his fathers had been. He struck the warriors of
all the nations, and he could have chosen wives from the Pawnees, the
Omawhaws, and the Konzas; but he looked at the hunting grounds, and not
at his village. He thought a horse was pleasanter than a Dahcotah girl.
But he found a flower on the prairies, and he plucked it, and brought it
into his lodge. He forgets that he is the master of a single horse. He
gives them all to the stranger, for Mahtoree is not a thief; he will
only keep the flower he found on the prairie. Her feet are very tender.
She cannot walk to the door of her father; she will stay, in the lodge
of a valiant warrior for ever."

When he had finished this extraordinary address, the Teton awaited to
have it translated, with the air of a suitor who entertained no very
disheartening doubts of his success. The trapper had not lost a syllable
of the speech, and he now prepared himself to render it into English in
such a manner as should leave its principal idea even more obscure than
in the original. But as his reluctant lips were in the act of parting,
Ellen lifted a finger, and with a keen glance from her quick eye, at the
still attentive Inez, she interrupted him.

"Spare your breath," she said, "all that a savage says is not to be
repeated before a Christian lady."

Inez started, blushed, and bowed with an air of reserve, as she coldly
thanked the old man for his intentions, and observed that she could now
wish to be alone.

"My daughters have no need of ears to understand what a great Dahcotah
says," returned the trapper, addressing himself to the expecting
Mahtoree. "The look he has given, and the signs he has made, are enough.
They understand him; they wish to think of his words; for the children
of great braves, such as their fathers are, do nothing with out much
thought."

With this explanation, so flattering to the energy of his eloquence, and
so promising to his future hopes, the Teton was every way content.
He made the customary ejaculation of assent, and prepared to retire.
Saluting the females, in the cold but dignified manner of his people,
he drew his robe about him, and moved from the spot where he had stood,
with an air of ill-concealed triumph.

But there had been a stricken, though a motionless and unobserved
auditor of the foregoing scene. Not a syllable had fallen from the lips
of the long and anxiously expected husband, that had not gone directly
to the heart of his unoffending wife. In this manner had he wooed her
from the lodge of her father, and it was to listen to similar pictures
of the renown and deeds of the greatest brave in her tribe, that she had
shut her ears to the tender tales of so many of the Sioux youths.

As the Teton turned to leave his lodge, in the manner just mentioned, he
found this unexpected and half-forgotten object before him. She stood,
in the humble guise and with the shrinking air of an Indian girl,
holding the pledge of their former love in her arms, directly in his
path. Starting, the chief regained the marble-like indifference
of countenance, which distinguished in so remarkable a degree the
restrained or more artificial expression of his features, and signed to
her, with an air of authority to give place.

"Is not Tachechana the daughter of a chief?" demanded a subdued voice,
in which pride struggled with anguish: "were not her brothers braves?"

"Go; the men are calling their partisan. He has no ears for a woman."

"No," replied the supplicant; "it is not the voice of Tachechana that
you hear, but this boy, speaking with the tongue of his mother. He
is the son of a chief, and his words will go up to his father's ears.
Listen to what he says. When was Mahtoree hungry and Tachechana had
not food for him? When did he go on the path of the Pawnees and find it
empty, that my mother did not weep? When did he come back with the marks
of their blows, that she did not sing? What Sioux girl has given a brave
a son like me? Look at me well, that you may know me. My eyes are the
eagle's. I look at the sun and laugh. In a little time the Dahcotahs
will follow me to the hunts and on the war-path. Why does my father turn
his eyes from the woman that gives me milk? Why has he so soon forgotten
the daughter of a mighty Sioux?"

There was a single instant, as the exulting father suffered his cold eye
to wander to the face of the laughing boy, that the stern nature of the
Teton seemed touched. But shaking off the grateful sentiment, like one
who would gladly be rid of any painful, because reproachful, emotion,
he laid his hand calmly on the arm of his wife, and led her directly in
front of Inez. Pointing to the sweet countenance that was beaming on her
own, with a look of tenderness and commiseration, he paused, to allow
his wife to contemplate a loveliness, which was quite as excellent to
her ingenuous mind as it had proved dangerous to the character of her
faithless husband. When he thought abundant time had passed to make the
contrast sufficiently striking, he suddenly raised a small mirror, that
dangled at her breast, an ornament he had himself bestowed, in an hour
of fondness, as a compliment to her beauty, and placed her own dark
image in its place. Wrapping his robe again about him, the Teton
motioned to the trapper to follow, and stalked haughtily from the lodge,
muttering, as he went—

"Mahtoree is very wise! What nation has so great a chief as the
Dahcotahs?"

Tachechana stood frozen into a statue of humility. Her mild and usually
joyous countenance worked, as if the struggle within was about to
dissolve the connection between her soul and that more material part,
whose deformity was becoming so loathsome. Inez and Ellen were utterly
ignorant of the nature of her interview with her husband, though the
quick and sharpened wits of the latter led her to suspect a truth, to
which the entire innocence of the former furnished no clue. They were
both, however, about to tender those sympathies, which are so natural
to, and so graceful in the sex, when their necessity seemed suddenly to
cease. The convulsions in the features of the young Sioux disappeared,
and her countenance became cold and rigid, like chiselled stone. A
single expression of subdued anguish, which had made its impression on
a brow that had rarely before contracted with sorrow, alone remained. It
was never removed, in all the changes of seasons, fortunes, and years,
which, in the vicissitudes of a suffering, female, savage life, she was
subsequently doomed to endure. As in the case of a premature blight, let
the plant quicken and revive as it may, the effects of that withering
touch were always present.

Tachechana first stripped her person of every vestige of those rude but
highly prized ornaments, which the liberality of her husband had been
wont to lavish on her, and she tendered them meekly, and without a
murmur, as an offering to the superiority of Inez. The bracelets
were forced from her wrists, the complicated mazes of beads from her
leggings, and the broad silver band from her brow. Then she paused,
long and painfully. But it would seem, that the resolution, she had
once adopted, was not to be conquered by the lingering emotions of any
affection, however natural. The boy himself was next laid at the feet
of her supposed rival, and well might the self-abased wife of the Teton
believe that the burden of her sacrifice was now full.

While Inez and Ellen stood regarding these several strange movements
with eyes of wonder, a low soft musical voice was heard saying in a
language, that to them was unintelligible—

"A strange tongue will tell my boy the manner to become a man. He will
hear sounds that are new, but he will learn them, and forget the voice
of his mother. It is the will of the Wahcondah, and a Sioux girl should
not complain. Speak to him softly, for his ears are very little; when he
is big, your words may be louder. Let him not be a girl, for very sad is
the life of a woman. Teach him to keep his eyes on the men. Show him
how to strike them that do him wrong, and let him never forget to return
blow for blow. When he goes to hunt, the flower of the Pale-faces," she
concluded, using in bitterness the metaphor which had been supplied by
the imagination of her truant husband, "will whisper softly in his ears
that the skin of his mother was red, and that she was once the Fawn of
the Dahcotahs."

Tachechana pressed a kiss on the lips of her son, and withdrew to the
farther side of the lodge. Here she drew her light calico robe over her
head, and took her seat, in token of humility, on the naked earth. All
efforts, to attract her attention, were fruitless. She neither heard
remonstrances, nor felt the touch. Once or twice her voice rose, in a
sort of wailing song, from beneath her quivering mantle, but it never
mounted into the wildness of savage music. In this manner she remained
unseen for hours, while events were occurring without the lodge, which
not only materially changed the complexion of her own fortunes, but left
a lasting and deep impression on the future movements of the wandering
Sioux.

I'll no swaggerers: I am in good name and fame with the very best:
—shut the door;—there come no swaggerers here: I have not lived
all this while, to have swaggering now: shut the door, I pray you.
—Shakespeare.

Mahtoree encountered, at the door of his lodge, Ishmael, Abiram,
and Esther. The first glance of his eye, at the countenance of the
heavy-moulded squatter, served to tell the cunning Teton, that the
treacherous truce he had made, with these dupes of his superior
sagacity, was in some danger of a violent termination.