Indian Legends of Minnesota Part 4

One joy alone was left to bring The heart-swept thrill of other days, When to her baby she would sing Her lullaby of love and praise; And this, even this, renewed the thought Of joyous hopes that came to naught.

Betrayed by faith, yet faithful to the last, She murmured not; but patiently she pa.s.sed Each day in kindly service, given As if her heart were all unriven, Until at length heroic strength Could bear no more.

Upon the sh.o.r.e Of wild Messipi's plunging flood, Where they were camped so long before, They camped again; again their blood Marched to the music of its roar.

'Tis morning: every bird its matin sings And beats the air with throbbing wings, The air so sweet and quick; the glistening dew Hangs crystal beauty on all verdant things,-- Each trembling drop reflecting true The overspread, unclouded blue; While from the east the cohorts of the sun With dazzling spears begin to strew The morning vapors, damp and dun, Whose melting ranks are closed anew To vanish where the rapid waters run.

Anpetusapa hides her woe Until her husband and her foe Have left the lodge and gone from sight.

Then with a tearless eye and bright, She gazes madly round the place Where every comfort bears the trace Of wifely labor wrought with pain, Of woman's love that lives in vain.

Here moccasins lie with bead-work gay; Here on the wall the breezes sway The music-breathing flute, Whose lips are dry and mute, While she who once inspired its tone Now sits despairing and alone.

The very curls of smoke that rise And mingle with the morning skies, Are tokens of the duties done Beneath the red eye of the rising sun.

Awhile she sits in cruel thought, Till, with her anguish overwrought, She flies to him who sweetly bears The image of her faithless G.o.d, And on each infant feature wears The smiling hopes on which he trod.

Convulsively she clasps her child, Whose love, alone left undefiled, Is not enough to nerve her soul Beneath its crus.h.i.+ng weight of dole.

She listens to the roaring water, Whose voice she heard in music grand When she was but the old chief's daughter, When love such wondrous fortunes planned; And ruthless phantoms of the past Across her mind are flitting fast, Each with a keen, envenomed dart That poisons brain and tortures heart.

With breath too quick to lift a sigh, With marble firmness on her brow, With gla.s.sy wildness in her eye, She seeks the river's margin now.

She springs into a birch canoe, All beaded with the morning dew, And clasping close her mother's pride, Soon gains the middle of the tide.

O hark! thou selfish one who gave Embrace more treacherous than the wave: Does not her song which mounts the air Reproach thee with its grand despair?

Why dost thou hurry to the river?

Why dost thou call, why dost thou s.h.i.+ver, While she whom thou hast driven away Is bold amidst the chilly spray?

What good is all thy vain remorse?

Thinkst thou from jaws of death to force A sacrifice so lightly thrust Upon the altar of thy l.u.s.t?

A host like thee could nothing urge To meet one tone of her sad dirge:

_My heart cannot live without loving; My heart cannot give up its own; No more will I linger with sorrow, But follow the joys that have flown; With Death I will rest me to-morrow On a kind, dreamless bed of stone.

I fear not the rush of the water, For me all its terrors are vain; It cannot bring less than gladness, For it banishes all my pain; I will sink with my burden of sadness And mix with the earth again.

My baby, my darling, my blossom, Nor anguish nor falsehood shall know; Together we cleave the wild billow-- Unfaltering together we go To rest on the same rocky pillow, To slumber and mingle below._

Plunging on the sunlit stream, The frail canoe, with trembling leaps, Hurries toward the mists that gleam To veil the awful steeps.

What need has she for any veil?

Despairing eyes will never quail!

See, now upon the glowing crest, Where clouds of spray beneath her lie, She clasps her boy upon her breast, She gazes on the cloudless sky, And in its blue depth seems to see Death, robed in peaceful purity; Then down into the boiling tomb That makes for her the happiest doom.

How strange that peace should thus be found Amid such tumult-breathing sound!

To leap from life and light, and find A darkness sweeter to the mind!

Long shall the mists of morning show The spirit of her who long ago Wrapped them round her wearily-- A victim of love and treachery.

Long shall her mournful death-song find An echo in the moaning wind; Long shall Dahkota legend bind That echo with the roaring falls, The ancient, foam-crowned, giant falls, Whose voice so oft hath given The welcome of its watery halls, That lead the soul, when the Great Spirit calls, To the hunting-grounds of heaven.

And though a child of the forest dark Weary of life would here embark, As to a portal hither comes,-- And yet who may not pa.s.s this way Into eternal joy and day,-- The water hides and soon benumbs The sorrow, and the cadence deep Becomes a lullaby to hush The spirit to its endless sleep Beneath the surging rush, Beneath the shrouding spray, Where the tireless waters sweep To their wild, unpausing leap-- Then fly to the South away!

The flood is cold, but the heart is bold When the future that lives new sorrow gives; And within the chamber halls Of the grand and solemn falls May be found a sleep so sweet and deep That its darkness never palls, While ages pa.s.s with silent creep.

Time hath no tooth to tear The heart whose pulse is dead, And sorrow may live in the air But not in the river-bed!

I ween all peacefully there Is pillowed forever the head Of a woman whose heart was fair, Though her cheeks were dusky red.

Winona.

PART I.

Winona,[1] first-born daughter, was the name Of a Dakota girl who, long ago, Dwelt with her people here unknown to fame.

Sweet word, Winona, how my heart and lips Cling to that name (my mother's was the same Ere her form faded into death's eclipse), Cling lovingly, and loth to let it go.

All arts that unto savage life belong She knew, made moccasins, and dressed the game.

From crippling fas.h.i.+ons free, her well-knit frame At fifteen summers was mature and strong.

She pitched the tipi,[2] dug the tipsin[3] roots, Gathered wild rice and store of savage fruits.

Fearless and self-reliant, she could go Across the prairie on a starless night; She speared the fish while in his wildest flight, And almost like a warrior drew the bow.

Yet she was not all hardness: the keen glance, Lighting the darkness of her eyes, perchance Betrayed no softness, but her voice, that rose O'er the weird circle of the midnight dance, Through all the gamut ran of human woes,

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAIDEN ROCK, LAKE PEPIN.]

Pa.s.sion, and joy. A woman's love she had For ornament; on gala days was clad In garments of the softest doeskin fine, With sh.e.l.ls about her neck; moccasins neat Were drawn, like gloves, upon her little feet, Adorned with scarlet quills of porcupine.

Innocent of the niceties refined That to the toilet her pale sisters bind, Yet much the same beneath the outer rind, She was, though all unskilled in bookish lore, A sound, sweet woman to the very core.

Winona's uncle, and step-father too, Was all the father that she ever knew; By the Absarakas[4] her own was slain Before her memory could his face retain.

Two bitter years his widow mourned him dead, And then his elder brother she had wed.

None loved Winona's uncle; he was stern And harsh in manner, cold and taciturn, And none might see, without a secret fear, Those thin lips ever curling to a sneer.

And yet he was of note and influence Among the chieftains; true he rarely lent More than his presence in the council tent, And when he rose to speak disdained pretence Of arts rhetoric, but his few words went Straight and incisive to the question's core, And rarely was his counsel overborne.

The Raven was the fitting name he bore; And though his winters well-nigh reached three-score, Few of his tribe excelled him in the chase.

A warrior of renown, but never wore The dancing eagle plumes, and seemed to scorn The vanities and follies of his race.

I said the Raven was beloved by none; But no, among the elders there was one Who often sought him, and the two would walk Apart for hours, and converse alone.

The gossips, marveling much what this might mean, Whispered that they at midnight had been seen Far from the village, wrapped in secret talk.

They seemed in truth an ill-a.s.sorted brace, But Nature oft in Siamese bond unites, By some strange tie, the farthest opposites.

Gray Cloud was oily, plausible, and vain, A conjurer with subtle scheming brain; Too corpulent and clumsy for the chase, His lodge was still provided with the best, And though sometimes but a half welcome guest, He took his dish and spoon to every feast.[5]

Priestcraft and leechcraft were combined in him, Two trades occult upon which knaves have thriven, Almost since man from Paradise was driven; Padding with pompous phrases worn and old Their scanty esoteric science dim, And gravely selling, at their weight in gold, Placebos colored to their patients' whim.

Man's n.o.blest mission here too oft is made, In heathen as in Christian lands, a trade.

Holy the task to comfort and console The tortured body and the sin-sick soul, But pain and sorrow, even prayer and creed, Are turned too oft to instruments of greed.

The conjurer claimed to bear a mission high: Mysterious omens of the earth and sky He knew to read; his medicine could find In time of need the buffalo, and bind In sleep the senses of the enemy.

Perhaps not wholly a deliberate cheat, And yet dissimulation and deceit Oozed from his form obese at every pore.

Skilled by long practice in the priestly art, To chill with superst.i.tious fear the heart, And versed in all the legendary lore, He knew each herb and root that healing bore; But lest his flock might grow as wise as he, Disguised their use with solemn mummery.

When all the village wrapped in slumber lay, His midnight incantations often fell, His chant now weirdly rose, now sank away, As o'er some dying child he cast his spell.

And sometimes through his frame strange tremors ran-- Magnetic waves, swept from the unknown pole Linking the body to the wavering soul; And swifter came his breath, as if to fan The feeble life spark, and his finger tips Were to the brow of pain like angel lips.

No wonder if in moments such as these He half believed in his own deities, And thought his sacred rattle could compel The swarming powers unseen to serve him well.

The Raven lay one evening in his tent With his accustomed crony at his side; Around their heads a graceful aureole Of smoke curled upward from the scarlet bowl Of Gray Cloud's pipe with willow bark supplied.

Winona's thrifty mother came and went, Her form with household cares and burdens bent, Fresh fuel adds, and stirs the boiling pot.

Meanwhile the young Winona, half reclined, Plies her swift needle, that resource refined For woman's leisure, whatsoe'er her lot, The kingly palace or the savage cot.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The cronies smoked without a sign or word, Pa.s.sing the pipe sedately to and fro; Only a distant wail of hopeless woe, A mother mourning for her child, was heard, And Gray Cloud moved, as though the sound had stirred Some dusty memory; still that bitter wail, Rachel's despairing cry without avail, That beats the brazen firmament in vain, Since the first mother wept o'er Abel slain.

At length the conjurer's lips the silence broke, Softly at first as to himself he spoke, Till warmed by his own swarming fancies' brood He poured the strain almost in numbers rude.