Wau-nan-gee or the Massacre at Chicago Part 21

Little remains to be added to our tale. Of the incidents that occurred to Wau-nan-gee and his charge, after their departure from the camp of the Pottowatomies, we might, and may, speak hereafter; but, as it is not essential to our present design, and would necessarily occupy far more s.p.a.ce than is consistent with the limits we have been compelled to prescribe to ourselves for the detail of the attack and partial ma.s.sacre of the garrison of Fort Dearborn, we forbear. We had always intended the facts connected with the historical events of that period to be divided into a series of three, like the Guardsmen, Mousquetaires, and Twenty Years After, of Dumas. Two of these, embracing different epochs and circ.u.mstances, we have completed in "Hardscrabble" and "Wau-nan-gee;" and whether the third, on a different topic than that of war, and which, as we have just observed, is not necessary to the others, ever finds embodiment in the glowing language and thought of Nature, nursed and strengthened in Nature's solitude, will much depend on the interest with which its predecessors shall have been received.

Yet, whether we do so or not, we trust the sweet, the gentle Maria Ronayne--the loadstone of attraction to all who knew her, will have excited sufficient interest in those of her own s.e.x who have followed her in her hitherto chequered fate to induce in them a desire to know more of the destiny to which she seemed to have been born.

Of the other characters, scarcely less interesting, we can speak with greater confidence. On the third day after the battle, the prisoners, including Mr. McKenzie and the members of his household, were removed from Chicago, and scattered about in small and separate parties, at various intervals of distance from Mackinaw, then in possession of the British. Here Mrs. Headley remained some time, in order that she might recover sufficiently from her troublesome wounds, when Winnebeg, in whose immediate charge she and her husband were, learning that his people manifested impatience at the indulgence shown to them, and with their usual fickleness and inconsistency, desired to have them given up to their own custody, paddled them, aided only by his squaw, from their village, a distance of three hundred miles along the sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan to the post of Mackinaw, whence the prisoners, who had been received with all the courtesy the knowledge of their position and the fame of their deeds could not fail to inspire, by the gentlemanly commander of that post, were subsequently transferred to the general then commanding at Detroit.

And great was the curiosity of the young British officers then in garrison at the latter post, to behold this n.o.ble and accomplished woman, the reputation of whose coolness and courage, under the most trying circ.u.mstances, had been widely circulated by her friend, Mrs. Elmsley, who, with her father and husband, had some weeks preceded her to the same quarter.

Little did we at the time, as we shared in the general and sincere homage to her magnificence of person and brilliancy of character, dream that a day would arrive when we should be the chronicler of Mrs. Headley's glory, or have the pleasing task imposed upon us of re-embodying, after death, the inimitable grace and fulness of contour that then fired the glowing heart of the unformed boy of fifteen for the ripened and heroic, although by no means bold or masculine woman of forty.

THE END.