WE WERE passing through the territory of the Wyandots, who are in general hostile to the Six Nations, being allied with their principal foes, the Algonquins and Ottawas; but in the words of one of our warriors, by name Bear-Whose-Screams-Disturb-Sleep, the war-hatchet was ‘now buried under a few leaves and sticks, and though restless was not showing its edge to the light of the sun’. In other words, we could count upon passing safely through the territory unless we happened to encounter some Indian who had a private blood-feud against a member of our party. One afternoon, as we were gliding through a forest fifty miles to the south of Lake Erie, close to French Creek, Kiss Me told us: ‘I smell a camp-fire. Fish is frying. Let us go to it.’ So marvellously keen was his smell that we followed up the wind for a distance of five miles before we came to the encampment; which we approached, weapons in hand, with extreme caution in order to assure ourselves that the strangers were friendly.
We came upon a scene of great animation; two warriors were strutting about in the circle of the fire. They were making speeches and counter-speeches in a resentful tone, with a great amount of descriptive gesture of a very vivid and graceful variety. Though they were clearly incensed, one with another, the common forms of politeness were not outraged: each waited patiently without interruption, though with a mocking smile upon his lips, for the other to finish his say. They continually referred to a woman, the evident subject of their quarrel, who was seated before the fire, with her back turned to me, at a point equidistant from the two disputants. She was dressed in a soldier’s red jacket and her hair was tied with a coloured handkerchief. She appeared from her posture to be weeping.
I did not understand a word of their language, yet my heart swelled and shrank to the rhythm of their eloquence, and I had a strange sense that it was my fate, not the squaw’s, that was being debated. Suddenly one of the orator’s, who, to judge from the murmurs of the onlookers, appeared to be having the worst of the encounter, rolled his eyes, uttered an exclamation of defiance, and rushed at the woman with upraised tomahawk. It was as if to say in the plainest language: ‘Sir, if I do not win this prize from you, why, you shall not enjoy her, neither.’ The unfortunate creature would infallibly have perished, had not some one at my side uttered the ceremonious word in the Mohawk tongue which signifies ‘I am revenged’, and fired at point-blank range with his firelock. The Indian dropped with a bullet in his breast, his tomahawk flying high into the air and lodging in the branch of a tree; instantly, Strong Soup, who was the murderer, sprang into the circle, struck the dying man with his club (as symbolically claiming the victory) and began scalping him before the eyes of all. The assembly sat dumbfounded, but doubtless a fierce battle would have ensued a moment later had not Thayendanegea, with a shout to our party to hold their hand, darted forward, pipe in hand, and stood smiling in the friendliest manner imaginable at the company.
The pipe to the Indian is as the white flag to civilized people, and universally respected among them. They did not stir from their pacific postures, but listened to him attentively. It seems that these were a delegation of Ottawas passing through Wyandot territory on a visit to our American adversaries at Ticonderoga. The dead man was the very person who had killed Strong Soup’s brother in the previous year and initiated his run of ill luck: his name was Mad Dog, and the murder had been committed in wantonness and in a time of supposed peace. Thayendanegea assured the Ottawas that his own intentions to them were perfectly peaceful; let the nearest of kin to the murdered man charge himself with the continuance of the private feud, but let no new public war be set on foot.
The Indians, who were aware that they were surrounded and at our mercy, were glad to agree to Thayendanegea’s proposal. It so happened that no kinsman of Mad Dog was present in the delegation, and though any person might, if he cared, assume the burden of a feud by a public declaration to that effect, nobody loved the dead man well enough to risk avenging him. We all now came from behind our trees, pipe in hand, to join the gathering as guests. I had the curiosity, as I was passing, to glance at the face of the squaw who had so nearly played the Helen to a savage war of Trojans and Greeks – but started back with so profound a shock of astonishment that I was hardly sensible what I did or said in the succeeding moments. The woman was none other than Kate Harlowe. I caught her up in my arms and pressed her to my bosom with a thousand expressions of love, joy, anxiety, and amazement; nor did she resist these endearments, but clung close to me and muttered in a broken voice that she was happy at last.
Kate Harlowe had run from her husband at Fort Chippeway, which lay three miles above the Falls of Niagara, in a fit of vexation. If her account was true, as I have no reason to doubt, she had reproached him for infidelity with a half-breed Indian woman, and he had retaliated by calling her a name which, once spoken by a husband to a wife, is never either forgotten or forgiven. He had then named me as her paramour and she, while denying this, declared that she wished, nevertheless, that it had been so: that she had learned from Johnny Maguire the full story of what had happened at Saintfield. He had thought to cheat me into forging the marriage licence for them, she said, but I had already undertaken to do so in pure chivalry of spirit, etc., etc., and she now heartily regretted her infatuation for a cruel, treacherous, good-for-nothing, prating, Papistical, hedge-gentleman. ‘Ah, now!’ she said, ‘between the hedge-gentleman and the gentleman, what a great gulf is fixed – over that no horse can leap or bridge be thrown! Gerry Lamb is a true gentleman and the shame is on you. So good-bye, Hedge-gentleman Harlowe, and be damned to you, body and soul!’
He replied briefly and scornfully that it was a good riddance for him, since Marie Jeanne (the Canadian woman) was worth fifty of her sort of woman; and that the faster she went, the better he would be pleased.
It was her intention to take her life by throwing herself into the river above the Falls aforementioned. We had lately passed by this prodigious cascade and I now shuddered to think of the death to which she had so nearly consigned herself. The pitch which the stupendous volume of water acquired was horrific beyond any previous idea that could be entertained of it. A stupefaction seized me when I beheld an entire furious river, half a mile wide, precipitating itself into so dreadful a chasm. The huge hollow roar of descending waters could be heard at a distance of twenty miles on all sides, and more than forty miles in the current of a favouring wind. From the shock occasioned by it a tremulous motion was communicated to the earth for several rods around, and a constant mist beclouded the horizon, in which rainbows appeared from the shining of the sun. The foliage of the neighbouring pines was besprinkled with the spray, which depended upon the branches in thousands of little icicles. Below this terrible cataract were always to be found the bruised and lacerated bodies of fishes and land animals which had been arrested by the suction of the voracious waves, as also shattered beams and timbers. Yet so strange is the mind of woman that (as Kate assured me), the reason that she did not plunge in and allow herself to be drawn down to death in the Falls was that the water, in which large masses of ice were whirling, appeared to her too cold by far!
As she was hesitating on the bank she was approached by a womanish person who, from Kate’s description, can have been none other than the bardash Sweet Yellow Head – though what his business in those parts could have been, I have no guess – and spoke very sympathetically with her, evidently divining the circumstances in which she was placed. He told her in broken English, mixed with French, that he was often unfortunate too, that unrequited passion and the cruelty of men made him long for suicide; but that he always refrained, in the confidence that his luck would change if he preserved his equanimity. Kate laughed to be sister in distress to so extraordinary a person, who undertook to help her, if she wished. He would use his influence with a friend among the Ottawas, who was crossing the river that day, to take her with him into the State of New York, where she would no doubt find a new lover among the white settlers of the border, where women were scarce, and there initiate a new and happy life. Sweet Yellow Head assured Kate that her virtue would not be assailed against her will. The Indians were never a lecherous people, as are the negroes, and there is no record of a white woman being violated by one of them, though many have lost their lives and scalps.
The man-woman was as good as his word. Kate returned to Fort Chippeway, where she provided herself with money and clothing suitable for a long journey through the wintry forest, and was soon under the protection of this Ottawa delegation, consisting of twenty persons. Two young chiefs of the party fell in love with her, for white women exercise a certain fascination for tawny men, and each had in turn pressed his suit. She had no liking for either of them and was obliged to adopt the character of a coquette, for fear of offending both. At last it was decreed by the leader of the party that since she had not said plainly, as she should have done, that she would have neither, to avoid dissension in the camp she must plainly declare for one, and be his. So began the dispute which ended in the death of the unsuccessful suitor.
It thus remained to settle with the other chief, to whom Kate now by decree belonged; but that was an easy matter. The Indian, being guilefully informed by Thayendanegea that I was her husband and that perfect love existed between herself and me, was content to relinquish his claim. He was highly gratified when I gave him, in quittance of my obligation to him, the map which had excited so much interest among my companions. The spot where we were now standing I marked upon the map with an allegorical scene in lead pencil: Feathered Turtle (for that was his name) shaking hands with, or rather presenting a flipper to, myself. I was represented as a lamb holding a firelock in the Make Ready position. He shook hands very warmly with me, and wished me long life and many sons.
We spent the evening very pleasantly in the company of these Ottawas, and Kate and I slept together that night, with her blanket beneath and my buffalo-skin above, in the character of man and wife. The ecclesiastical forms of marriage seemed so remote from us here in the wilderness that the invidious word ‘adultery’ never sounded in the conscience of either. Harlowe had repudiated her, and she him; she and I were now living Indian-fashion, and in Indian-fashion I had won her by purchase. Our reciprocal desires smothered all consideration of the future, for both of us, having been in the company of savages for so many weeks and obliged to conform exactly to their ways, dwelt like them carelessly in the present. But in order to justify myself formally, I permitted myself to be enrolled as a member of the Mohican nation.
Thayendanegea performed the ceremony in the presence of my fellow warriors. He bade me strip myself naked, and with the bone of a wolf, the knuckle-end of which was cut to tooth-like points, he scratched me from the palm of one hand along the upper part of the fore-arm, across the breast and across the other arm to the palm again. In like manner he scratched me from my heels upward to the shoulders, and from the shoulders again to the feet over the breast, and again up the reverse part of my arms and across the back. The lines drew blood from me along their entire extent, but I knew better than to flinch or cry out. He told me then, ‘I have made you dreadful,’ and desired me roll in the snow; which I did. Then he washed my wounds with a decoction of medicinal herbs and bade me keep apart from my wife for the space of seven days. He also set before me a spruce-partridge roasted in bear’s grease. This food was symbolical of the qualities of a warrior; for the spruce-partridge makes a thunderous noise with its wings when in flight, and when hiding from a foe is remarkably difficult to discover. Thus I was to be endued with fury for the onset of battle; with patient cunning for the ambush; and with the strength and courage of a bear at bay. In conclusion, Thayendanegea presented me with a small stick whittled in the shape of a war-club, as a talisman.
Other white men have been adopted into the tribe as a mark of honour, notably Lord Percy and the American General, Charles Lee; but none, I believe, with the full native ceremony which made me a Mohawk in fact, not merely in name. Thayendanegea then took me in his arms and embraced me tenderly. While my wounds still smarted I allowed myself to suffer another operation, for which I have ever since had every reason to be thankful. Hair on the face is considered very unsightly by the Indians, and they remove it, roots and all, with the help of a small pliable worm made of flattened brass wire. Though I would not, merely to please them, allow them to remove my eyebrows and lashes, I suffered them to pluck out my beard. The instrument was closely applied in its flat state to my chin, where the hair was already growing luxuriantly, and compressed between finger and thumb; a number of hairs caught in the spirals were then drawn out with a sudden twitch. The operation, though exquisitely painful, was not a lengthy one; and when I consider how much fatigue and pain is caused in a lifetime by the daily operation of shaving, I wonder that more people, soldiers especially, do not summon up resolution and submit patiently to depilation in this manner.
Of the feasts that we attended in our journey the greatest was given to us by the Cayugas, who were the most violent in their desire for a war against the Americans. The festivities were attended by hundreds of persons. In this religious ceremony – it was this rather than a social occasion – each warrior appeared dressed and painted in simulation of the animal sacred to his family: for the tribes are divided into families named the Bears, Buffaloes, Stags, Pigeons, Eagles, Frogs, and so forth. Some therefore were covered with a buffalo’s or a stag’s hide, having the horns extended; others wore dresses of feathers in a variety of grotesque devices; the Frogs’ bodies were entirely naked, but painted with green and yellow. I had been adopted by Thayendanegea into his family, the Wolves, and dressed accordingly with a wolf’s mask and his bushy tail. All our faces were daubed with vermilion and black, since this was a war-dance, laid upon a coating of bear’s grease. In his preparations for the masquerade each warrior was most sedulous to make the ferocity of his face the most ghastly and glaring possible; for this he used a small looking-glass, which enabled him to apply the colours with great nicety, but, frequently growing impatient with the result, he would wipe off the whole picture with a cloth and recommence from his natural skin.
When all was ready, we sat down on our hams in a circle around a great fire, near which a large stake was fixed. After a while the war-chief of the Cayugas arose, as the person of greatest respectability present and, placing himself in the centre, by the stake, began rehearsing all the gallant exploits of his life. He dwelt upon the number of enemies he had killed, describing with gestures how he stalked them, struck them down, scalped them – how he stole horses, ripped open enemies’ lodges as an insult, did this and that atrocious deed. His recital, which was spoken with great fluency and dramatic earnestness, cannot have lasted less than three hours. He was greeted with great acclamation and cries of Etow! Etow! He continually knocked against the stake with his war-club, making it the witness to the truth of his boasts. I could follow the whole tale by his pantomime gestures. Especially I enjoyed his stealing of the horses of the Wyandots: how after much waiting and watching he had crept up to the horses, stooped down to cut their hopples, mounted the finest, seized another by the forelock and galloped off with both. He rode his tomahawk during this account, as children do broomsticks, making use of an imaginary whip to indicate the necessity of rapid movement, and glancing continuously over his shoulder at the pursuing foe. When he had done, we all arose and joined in a hopping dance, leaping about and brandishing our weapons; I should have preferred a fiddle to the monotonous beating of the drums, but the exercise after so long waiting in the cold was grateful. The Indian war-drum was a piece of hollow tree over which a skin was stretched, with kettles formed of dried gourds filled with peas. We passed around the fire in a circle with our bodies bent uncouthly forward, and uttered the same low dismal sounds, without variation, being the words ‘blood, blood’, ‘kill, kill’; and ever and again raised the famous Indian war-whoop. This ferocious cry consisted in the sound whoo-oo-oop! which was continued so long as the breath lasted, and then broken off with a sudden lifting of the voice. A few modulated the cry with howling notes, placing the hand before the mouth to effect this. In either case, the whoop carried for an immense distance.
Thayendanegea was next, and he went through the same performance, though in a somewhat different manner. He told of his martial exploits, but also of his travels across the Great Water and threw a rich humour into his tale with imitations of the strutting lords, fashionable ladies, snuff-taking bishops and other London notables he had encountered, to the infinite delight of the gathering. He concluded with a passionate invective against the rebellious Yankees who had taken up arms against their long-suffering father, King George. He finished, and we all danced again. Two fat bucks had been put to roast at the great fire and whenever a man felt so disposed he would glide to the nearest carcass and cut off a great slice of meat for his own use. So the performance continued, Mohicans and Cayugans taking the floor alternately, until I thought it would never end. There was a person appointed to stand outside the circle and rouse any member of the audience who showed the least signs of sleep.
The celebration went on for no less than four whole days and nights. The speeches and dances persisted with unabated energy, fresh meat was continually put upon the spit, and the fire ever and again replenished. On the second day I was called upon to recount my own deeds of valour. I had not much to relate; but not wishing to lower myself in the estimation of my hosts and comrades I told resounding tales in English of the exploits of my regiment at the Battle of the Boyne and the assault of Athlone, and its service in many important fights in Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession, concluding with a dramatic recitation from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which I had by heart, in the course of which, in the character of the mad Prince, I was able to exhibit my skull at lunging and parrying with a small-sword, in contest with an imaginary foe. My performance was greeted with prolonged applause and Thayendanegea was good enough not to betray the cheat to the company.
It was February before we approached Montreal once more, and at each step I took my heart grew heavier. I had been living with Kate in a fantastic fairyland in which I would willingly have continued for the remainder of my life, so much did forest-life please me; but that the small insistent voice of Duty began to speak in my ear and to remind me of my service to my Sovereign. The parting from my new but well-tried friends would not have been so painful had it not meant equally a separation from my squaw (as I had affectionately named her); and my squaw, to judge from certain infallible signs, would before the summer was out seal her union with me by the birth of a child. We were at a loss what course to take. Kate could not return in my company to The Ninth, where she was well known, nor go to The Eighth without me, bringing her husband the gift of a bastard. We both felt with bitterness the irony of fate in condemning our separation, who loved each other so tenderly. And why must this be? Because I was but a sergeant, and she a soldier’s wife. That General Howe and General Burgoyne each openly consorted with the wife of one of his commissaries, was condoned as a fashionable peccadillo, but the same fault in us would be regarded as heinous and vulgar. We shed tears when we perceived to what a strait our thoughtlessness had brought us. Indian women have certain simples, such as the sumach flower, which they use to procure abortion, but Kate would have none of them, saying that she wished to abide by what she had done, nor add the crime of murder to what had but been loving folly.
Thayendanegea, seeing me sitting very pensively apart one day, asked me gently what trouble was eating at me, and I told him the whole story. He continued thoughtful for a while and then begged me not to despair: he would arrange the matter for us both without scandal. And so in the event he did.
I will never forget our last discourse together. Kate was not fretful or passionate, but spoke reasonably with me. I had the chance, she said, to remain with her and with the fruit of our love, either wandering through the forests in the company of these good friends of ours – whose ways, though savage, were gentlemanly and considerate – or settling in a cote which we might build for ourselves in the wilderness under their protection. Surely that was in every way better than to return alone to my military life? Did I choose the former case, she promised me as faithful duty in the capacity of wife as if the ceremony performed at Newton Breda had been between herself and me, and not between herself and Richard Harlowe. In the latter case, she would harbour no ill feelings against me; but I must clearly understand that, saying good-bye to her now, I would say a perpetual good-bye. If ever afterwards we happened to meet she would feign not to know me, and would not address a single affectionate word to me; and, as for the child, I must renounce my paternity of it – what became of it need not interest me. She would take full responsibility for its birth and upbringing.
What can I say? What could I say then to her? As we spoke together in the snow, under the shadow of a tall white-pine behind which the sunset shed a glorious dying glow over the wide St Lawrence valley, I heard the music of the bugles from the British camp and the boom of the evening gun, and I knew that I could never choose as she wished me to choose. My skin was white, not tawny; my weapon of assault the bayonet, not the tomahawk; my birth British, not Mohican. As I kissed Kate adieu, my heart was heavy as a stone and I told her that I could not ask her forgiveness, since I did not deserve it. But I begged her to accept, as a token to tie around the neck of the child, a pierced silver groat of King Charles II that my father had given me in my boyhood and that had ever since hung about my neck on a string. She accepted it; then, taking me solemnly by the hand, she made me swear, by the name of God, never so long as she lived to divulge to a soul what had passed between us. She went back to the camp-fire of the Indians without another word.