Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): Zechariah"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "Scenes and Characters"

Caesar - "Caesar's Commentaries [in Latin]"

Anatole France - "Sur la pierre blanche"

The Prairie

J >> J Fenimore Cooper >> The Prairie




"Have I not heard of them?" exclaimed the naturalist, dropping a piece
of jerked bison's meat, which he was rather roughly discussing, at the
moment. "I should be greatly ignorant not to have often dwelt with
delight on so beautiful a theory, and one which so triumphantly
establishes two positions, which I have often maintained are
unanswerable, even without such living testimony in their favour--viz.
that this continent can claim a more remote affinity with civilisation
than the time of Columbus, and that colour is the fruit of climate and
condition, and not a regulation of nature. Propound the latter
question to this Indian gentleman, venerable hunter; he is of a
reddish tint himself, and his opinion may be said to make us masters
of the two sides of the disputed point."

"Do you think a Pawnee is a reader of books, and a believer of printed
lies, like the idlers in the towns?" retorted the old man, laughing.
"But it may be as well to humour the likings of the man, which, after
all, it is quite possible are neither more nor less than his natural
gift, and therefore to be followed, although they may be pitied. What
does my brother think? all whom he sees here have pale skins, but the
Pawnee warriors are red; does he believe that man changes with the
season, and that the son is not like his father?"

The young warrior regarded his interrogator for a moment with a steady
and deliberating eye; then raising his finger upward, he answered with
dignity--

"The Wahcondah pours the rain from his clouds; when he speaks, he
shakes the lulls; and the fire, which scorches the trees, is the anger
of his eye; but he fashioned his children with care and thought. What
he has thus made, never alters!"

"Ay, 'tis in the reason of natur' that it should be so, Doctor,"
continued the trapper, when he had interpreted this answer to the
disappointed naturalist. "The Pawnees are a wise and a great people,
and I'll engage they abound in many a wholesome and honest tradition.
The hunters and trappers, that I sometimes see, speak of a great
warrior of your race."

"My tribe are not women. A brave is no stranger in my village."

"Ay; but he, they speak of most, is a chief far beyond the renown of
common warriors, and one that might have done credit to that once
mighty but now fallen people, the Delawares of the hills."

"Such a warrior should have a name?"

"They call him Hard-Heart, from the stoutness of his resolution; and
well is he named, if all I have heard of his deeds be true."

The stranger cast a glance, which seemed to read the guileless soul of
the old man, as he demanded--

"Has the Pale-face seen the partisan of my people?"

"Never. It is not with me now, as it used to be some forty years ago,
when warfare and bloodshed were my calling and my gifts!"

A loud shout from the reckless Paul interrupted his speech, and at the
next moment the bee-hunter appeared, leading an Indian war-horse from
the side of the thicket opposite to the one occupied by the party.

"Here is a beast for a Red-skin to straddle!" he cried, as he made the
animal go through some of its wild paces. "There's not a brigadier in
all Kentucky that can call himself master of so sleek and well-jointed
a nag! A Spanish saddle too, like a grandee of the Mexicos! and look
at the mane and tail, braided and platted down with little silver
balls, as if it were Ellen herself getting her shining hair ready for
a dance, or a husking frolic! Isn't this a real trotter, old trapper,
to eat out of the manger of a savage?"

"Softly, lad, softly. The Loups are famous for their horses, and it is
often that you see a warrior on the prairies far better mounted, than
a congress-man in the settlements. But this, indeed, is a beast that
none but a powerful chief should ride! The saddle, as you rightly
think, has been sit upon in its day by a great Spanish captain, who
has lost it and his life together, in some of the battles which this
people often fight against the southern provinces. I warrant me, I
warrant me, the youngster is the son of a great chief; may be of the
mighty Hard-Heart himself!"

During this rude interruption to the discourse, the young Pawnee
manifested neither impatience nor displeasure; but when he thought his
beast had been the subject of sufficient comment, he very coolly, and
with the air of one accustomed to have his will respected, relieved
Paul of the bridle, and throwing the reins on the neck of the animal,
he sprang upon his back, with the activity of a professor of the
equestrian art. Nothing could be finer or firmer than the seat of the
savage. The highly wrought and cumbrous saddle was evidently more for
show than use. Indeed it impeded rather than aided the action of
limbs, which disdained to seek assistance, or admit of restraint from
so womanish inventions as stirrups. The horse, which immediately began
to prance, was, like its rider, wild and untutored in all his motions,
but while there was so little of art, there was all the freedom and
grace of nature in the movements of both. The animal was probably
indebted to the blood of Araby for its excellence, through a long
pedigree, that embraced the steed of Mexico, the Spanish barb, and the
Moorish charger. The rider, in obtaining his steed from the provinces
of Central-America, had also obtained that spirit and grace in
controlling him, which unite to form the most intrepid and perhaps the
most skilful horseman in the world.

Notwithstanding this sudden occupation of his animal, the Pawnee
discovered no hasty wish to depart. More at his ease, and possibly
more independent, now he found himself secure of the means of retreat,
he rode back and forth, eyeing the different individuals of the party
with far greater freedom than before. But, at each extremity of his
ride, just as the sagacious trapper expected to see him profit by his
advantage and fly, he would turn his horse, and pass over the same
ground, sometimes with the rapidity of the flying deer, and at others
more slowly, and with greater dignity of mien and attitude. Anxious to
ascertain such facts as might have an influence on his future
movements, the old man determined to invite him to a renewal of their
conference. He therefore made a gesture expressive at the same time of
his wish to resume the interrupted discourse, and of his own pacific
intentions. The quick eye of the stranger was not slow to note the
action, but it was not until a sufficient time had passed to allow him
to debate the prudence of the measure in his own mind, that he seemed
willing to trust himself again, so near a party that was so much
superior to himself in physical power, and consequently one that was
able, at any instant, to command his life, or control his personal
liberty. When he did approach nigh enough to converse with facility,
it was with a singular mixture of haughtiness and of distrust.

"It is far to the village of the Loups," he said, stretching his arm
in a direction contrary to that in which, the trapper well knew, the
tribe dwelt, "and the road is crooked. What has the Big-knife to say?"

"Ay, crooked enough!" muttered the old man in English, "if you are to
set out on your journey by that path, but not half so winding as the
cunning of an Indian's mind. Say, my brother; do the chiefs of the
Pawnees love to see strange faces in their lodges?"

The young warrior bent his body gracefully, though but slightly, over
the saddle-bow, as he replied--

"When have my people forgotten to give food to the stranger?"

"If I lead my daughters to the doors of the Loups, will the women take
them by the hand; and will the warriors smoke with my young men?"

"The country of the Pale-faces is behind them. Why do they journey so
far towards the setting sun? Have they lost the path, or are these the
women of the white warriors, that I hear are wading up the river of
'the troubled waters?'"

"Neither. They, who wade the Missouri, are the warriors of my great
father, who has sent them on his message; but we are peace-runners.
The white men and the red are neighbours, and they wish to be friends.
--Do not the Omahaws visit the Loups, when the tomahawk is buried in
the path between the two nations?"

"The Omahaws are welcome."

"And the Yanktons, and the burnt-wood Tetons, who live in the elbow of
the river, 'with muddy water,' do they not come into the lodges of the
Loups and smoke?"

"The Tetons are liars!" exclaimed the other. "They dare not shut their
eyes in the night. No; they sleep in the sun. See," he added, pointing
with fierce triumph to the frightful ornaments of his leggings, "their
scalps are so plenty, that the Pawnees tread on them! Go; let a Sioux
live in banks of snow; the plains and buffaloes are for men!"

"Ah! the secret is out," said the trapper to Middleton, who was an
attentive, because a deeply interested, observer of what was passing.
"This good-looking young Indian is scouting on the track of the
Siouxes--you may see it by his arrow-heads, and his paint; ay, and by
his eye, too; for a Red-skin lets his natur' follow the business he is
on, be it for peace, or be it for war,--quiet, Hector, quiet. Have you
never scented a Pawnee afore, pup?--keep down, dog--keep down--my
brother is right. The Siouxes are thieves. Men of all colours and
nations say it of them, and say it truly. But the people from the
rising sun are not Siouxes, and they wish to visit the lodges of the
Loups."

"The head of my brother is white," returned the Pawnee, throwing one
of those glances at the trapper, which were so remarkably expressive
of distrust, intelligence, and pride, and then pointing, as he
continued, towards the eastern horizon, "and his eyes have looked on
many things--can he tell me the name of what he sees yonder--is it a
buffaloe?"

"It looks more like a cloud, peeping above the skirt of the plain with
the sunshine lighting its edges. It is the smoke of the heavens."

"It is a hill of the earth, and on its top are the lodges of Pale-
faces! Let the women of my brother wash their feet among the people of
their own colour."

"The eyes of a Pawnee are good, if he can see a white-skin so far."

The Indian turned slowly towards the speaker, and after a pause of a
moment he sternly demanded--

"Can my brother hunt?"

"Alas! I claim to be no better than a miserable trapper!"

"When the plain is covered with the buffaloes, can he see them?"

"No doubt, no doubt--it is far easier to see than to take a scampering
bull."

"And when the birds are flying from the cold, and the clouds are black
with their feathers, can he see them too?"

"Ay, ay, it is not hard to find a duck, or a goose, when millions are
darkening the heavens."

"When the snow falls, and covers the lodges of the Long-knives, can
the stranger see flakes in the air?"

"My eyes are none of the best now," returned the old man a little
resentfully, "but the time has been when I had a name for my sight!"

"The Red-skins find the Big-knives as easily as the strangers see the
buffaloe, or the travelling birds, or the falling snow. Your warriors
think the Master of Life has made the whole earth white. They are
mistaken. They are pale, and it is their own faces that they see. Go!
a Pawnee is not blind, that he need look long for your people!"

The warrior suddenly paused, and bent his face aside, like one who
listened with all his faculties absorbed in the act. Then turning the
head of his horse, he rode to the nearest angle of the thicket, and
looked intently across the bleak prairie, in a direction opposite to
the side on which the party stood. Returning slowly from this
unaccountable, and to his observers, startling procedure, he riveted
his eyes on Inez, and paced back and forth several times, with the air
of one who maintained a warm struggle on some difficult point, in the
recesses of his own thoughts. He had drawn the reins of his impatient
steed, and was seemingly about to speak, when his head again sunk on
his chest, and he resumed his former attitude of attention. Galloping
like a deer, to the place of his former observations, he rode for a
moment swiftly, in short and rapid circles, as if still uncertain of
his course, and then darted away, like a bird that had been fluttering
around its nest before it takes a distant flight. After scouring the
plain for a minute, he was lost to the eye behind a swell of the land.

The hounds, who had also manifested great uneasiness for some time,
followed him for a little distance, and then terminated their chase by
seating themselves on the ground, and raising their usual low,
whining, and warning howls.



CHAPTER XIX

How if he will not stand?
--Shakspeare.

The several movements, related in the close of the preceding chapter,
had passed in so short a space of time, that the old man, while he
neglected not to note the smallest incident, had no opportunity of
expressing his opinion concerning the stranger's motives. After the
Pawnee had disappeared, however, he shook his head and muttered, while
he walked slowly to the angle of the thicket that the Indian had just
quitted--

"There are both scents and sounds in the air, though my miserable
senses are not good enough to hear the one, or to catch the taint of
the other."

"There is nothing to be seen," cried Middleton, who kept close at his
side. "My eyes and my ears are good, and yet I can assure you that I
neither hear nor see any thing."

"Your eyes are good! and you are not deaf!" returned the other with a
slight air of contempt; "no, lad, no; they may be good to see across a
church, or to hear a town-bell, but afore you had passed a year in
these prairies you would find yourself taking a turkey for a buffaloe,
or conceiting, fifty times, that the roar of a buffaloe bull was the
thunder of the Lord! There is a deception of natur' in these naked
plains, in which the air throws up the images like water, and then it
is hard to tell the prairies from a sea. But yonder is a sign that a
hunter never fails to know!"

The trapper pointed to a flight of vultures, that were sailing over
the plain at no great distance, and apparently in the direction in
which the Pawnee had riveted his eye. At first Middleton could not
distinguish the small dark objects, that were dotting the dusky
clouds, but as they came swiftly onward, first their forms, and then
their heavy waving wings, became distinctly visible.

"Listen," said the trapper, when he had succeeded in making Middleton
see the moving column of birds. "Now you hear the buffaloes, or
bisons, as your knowing Doctor sees fit to call them, though buffaloes
is their name among all the hunters of these regions. And, I conclude,
that a hunter is a better judge of a beast and of its name," he added,
winking to the young soldier, "than any man who has turned over the
leaves of a book, instead of travelling over the face of the 'arth, in
order to find out the natur's of its inhabitants."

"Of their habits, I will grant you," cried the naturalist, who rarely
missed an opportunity to agitate any disputed point in his favourite
studies. "That is, provided always, deference is had to the proper use
of definitions, and that they are contemplated with scientific eyes."

"Eyes of a mole! as if man's eyes were not as good for names as the
eyes of any other creatur'! Who named the works of His hand? can you
tell me that, with your books and college wisdom? Was it not the first
man in the Garden, and is it not a plain consequence that his children
inherit his gifts?"

"That is certainly the Mosaic account of the event," said the Doctor;
"though your reading is by far too literal!"

"My reading! nay, if you suppose, that I have wasted my time in
schools, you do such a wrong to my knowledge, as one mortal should
never lay to the door of another without sufficient reason. If I have
ever craved the art of reading, it has been that I might better know
the sayings of the book you name, for it is a book which speaks, in
every line, according to human feelings, and therein according to
reason."

"And do you then believe," said the Doctor a little provoked by the
dogmatism of his stubborn adversary, and perhaps, secretly, too
confident in his own more liberal, though scarcely as profitable,
attainments,--"do you then believe that all these beasts were
literally collected in a garden, to be enrolled in the nomenclature of
the first man?"

"Why not? I understand your meaning; for it is not needful to live in
towns to hear all the devilish devices, that the conceit of man can
invent to upset his own happiness. What does it prove, except indeed
it may be said to prove that the garden He made was not after the
miserable fashions of our times, thereby directly giving the lie to
what the world calls its civilising? No, no, the garden of the Lord
was the forest then, and is the forest now, where the fruits do grow,
and the birds do sing, according to his own wise ordering. Now, lady,
you may see the mystery of the vultures! There come the buffaloes
themselves, and a noble herd it is! I warrant me, that Pawnee has a
troop of his people in some of the hollows, nigh by; and as he has
gone scampering after them, you are about to see a glorious chase. It
will serve to keep the squatter and his brood under cover, and for
ourselves there is little reason to fear. A Pawnee is not apt to be a
malicious savage."

Every eye was now drawn to the striking spectacle that succeeded. Even
the timid Inez hastened to the side of Middleton to gaze at the sight,
and Paul summoned Ellen from her culinary labours, to become a witness
of the lively scene.

Throughout the whole of those moving events, which it has been our
duty to record, the prairies had lain in the majesty of perfect
solitude. The heavens had been blackened with the passage of the
migratory birds, it is true, but the dogs of the party, and the ass of
the doctor, were the only quadrupeds that had enlivened the broad
surface of the waste beneath. There was now a sudden exhibition of
animal life, which changed the scene, as it were, by magic, to the
very opposite extreme.

A few enormous bison bulls were first observed, scouring along the
most distant roll of the prairie, and then succeeded long files of
single beasts, which, in their turns, were followed by a dark mass of
bodies, until the dun-coloured herbage of the plain was entirely lost,
in the deeper hue of their shaggy coats. The herd, as the column
spread and thickened, was like the endless flocks of the smaller
birds, whose extended flanks are so often seen to heave up out of the
abyss of the heavens, until they appear as countless as the leaves in
those forests, over which they wing their endless flight. Clouds of
dust shot up in little columns from the centre of the mass, as some
animal, more furious than the rest, ploughed the plain with his horns,
and, from time to time, a deep hollow bellowing was borne along on the
wind, as if a thousand throats vented their plaints in a discordant
murmuring.

A long and musing silence reigned in the party, as they gazed on this
spectacle of wild and peculiar grandeur. It was at length broken by
the trapper, who, having been long accustomed to similar sights, felt
less of its influence, or, rather, felt it in a less thrilling and
absorbing manner, than those to whom the scene was more novel.

"There go ten thousand oxen in one drove, without keeper or master,
except Him who made them, and gave them these open plains for their
pasture! Ay, it is here that man may see the proofs of his wantonness
and folly! Can the proudest governor in all the States go into his
fields, and slaughter a nobler bullock than is here offered to the
meanest hand; and when he has gotten his sirloin, or his steak, can he
eat it with as good a relish as he who has sweetened his food with
wholesome toil, and earned it according to the law of natur', by
honestly mastering that which the Lord hath put before him?"

"If the prairie platter is smoking with a buffaloe's hump, I answer,
No," interrupted the luxurious bee-hunter.

"Ay, boy, you have tasted, and you feel the genuine reasoning of the
thing! But the herd is heading a little this-a-way, and it behoves us
to make ready for their visit. If we hide ourselves, altogether, the
horned brutes will break through the place and trample us beneath
their feet, like so many creeping worms; so we will just put the weak
ones apart, and take post, as becomes men and hunters, in the van."

As there was but little time to make the necessary arrangements, the
whole party set about them in good earnest. Inez and Ellen were placed
in the edge of the thicket on the side farthest from the approaching
herd. Asinus was posted in the centre, in consideration of his nerves,
and then the old man, with his three male companions, divided
themselves in such a manner as they thought would enable them to turn
the head of the rushing column, should it chance to approach too nigh
their position. By the vacillating movements of some fifty or a
hundred bulls, that led the advance, it remained questionable, for
many moments, what course they intended to pursue. But a tremendous
and painful roar, which came from behind the cloud of dust that rose
in the centre of the herd, and which was horridly answered by the
screams of the carrion birds, that were greedily sailing directly
above the flying drove, appeared to give a new impulse to their
flight, and at once to remove every symptom of indecision. As if glad
to seek the smallest signs of the forest, the whole of the affrighted
herd became steady in its direction, rushing in a straight line toward
the little cover of bushes, which has already been so often named.

The appearance of danger was now, in reality, of a character to try
the stoutest nerves. The flanks of the dark, moving mass, were
advanced in such a manner as to make a concave line of the front, and
every fierce eye, that was glaring from the shaggy wilderness of hair
in which the entire heads of the males were enveloped, was riveted
with mad anxiety on the thicket. It seemed as if each beast strove to
outstrip his neighbour, in gaining this desired cover; and as
thousands in the rear pressed blindly on those in front, there was the
appearance of an imminent risk that the leaders of the herd would be
precipitated on the concealed party, in which case the destruction of
every one of them was certain. Each of our adventurers felt the danger
of his situation in a manner peculiar to his individual character and
circumstances.

Middleton wavered. At times he felt inclined to rush through the
bushes, and, seizing Inez, attempt to fly. Then recollecting the
impossibility of outstripping the furious speed of an alarmed bison,
he felt for his arms, determined to make head against the countless
drove. The faculties of Dr. Battius were quickly wrought up to the
very summit of mental delusion. The dark forms of the herd lost their
distinctness, and then the naturalist began to fancy he beheld a wild
collection of all the creatures of the world, rushing upon him in a
body, as if to revenge the various injuries, which in the course of a
life of indefatigable labour in behalf of the natural sciences, he had
inflicted on their several genera. The paralysis it occasioned in his
system, was like the effect of the incubus. Equally unable to fly or
to advance, he stood riveted to the spot, until the infatuation became
so complete, that the worthy naturalist was beginning, by a desperate
effort of scientific resolution, even to class the different
specimens. On the other hand, Paul shouted, and called on Ellen to
come and assist him in shouting, but his voice was lost in the
bellowings and trampling of the herd. Furious, and yet strangely
excited by the obstinacy of the brutes and the wildness of the sight,
and nearly maddened by sympathy and a species of unconscious
apprehension, in which the claims of nature were singularly mingled
with concern for his mistress, he nearly split his throat in exhorting
his aged friend to interfere.

"Come forth, old trapper," he shouted, "with your prairie inventions!
or we shall be all smothered under a mountain of buffaloe humps!"

The old man, who had stood all this while leaning on his rifle, and
regarding the movements of the herd with a steady eye, now deemed it
time to strike his blow. Levelling his piece at the foremost bull,
with an agility that would have done credit to his youth, he fired.
The animal received the bullet on the matted hair between his horns,
and fell to his knees: but shaking his head he instantly arose, the
very shock seeming to increase his exertions. There was now no longer
time to hesitate. Throwing down his rifle, the trapper stretched forth
his arms, and advanced from the cover with naked hands, directly
towards the rushing column of the beasts.

The figure of a man, when sustained by the firmness and steadiness
that intellect can only impart, rarely fails of commanding respect
from all the inferior animals of the creation. The leading bulls
recoiled, and for a single instant there was a sudden stop to their
speed, a dense mass of bodies rolling up in front, until hundreds were
seen floundering and tumbling on the plain. Then came another of those
hollow bellowings from the rear, and set the herd again in motion. The
head of the column, however, divided. The immovable form of the
trapper, cutting it, as it were, into two gliding streams of life.
Middleton and Paul instantly profited by his example, and extended the
feeble barrier by a similar exhibition of their own persons.

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