London, April to September 1822
M. VIOLET offered me his credentials for the Onondagas, the last remnant of one of the six Iroquois nations. I first arrived at the lake that bears the Onondagas’ name. There, the Dutchman searched out a suitable spot to set up camp: a river flowed from the lake, and at a bend in this river we pitched our shelter. We hammered two stakes into the ground, six feet apart, and hung a long pole horizontally in the forks of these stakes. Strips of birch bark, one end resting on the ground, the other draped over the transversal pole, formed the slanted roof of our palace. Our saddles had to do for pillows and our cloaks for blankets. We fastened bells to our horses’ necks and turned them loose in the woods near our camp. They did not wander far.
When, fifteen years later, I bivouacked in the desert sands of Saba, a few paces from the Jordan, on the banks of the Dead Sea, our horses, those swift sons of Arabia, appeared to be listening to the tales of the sheik, as if they were partaking in the stories of Antar and the horse in Job.[4]
It was no more than four hours past midday when we finished making camp, and I took up my gun and went wandering in the vicinity. There were few birds. Only a solitary couple flew before me, like those birds that I had followed in my father’s woods. By the male’s color, I recognized the white sparrow, the passer nivalis of the ornithologists. I also heard the osprey, so well characterized by its cry. The flight of this screamer had guided me through the woods to a narrow valley that lay between bare and rocky heights. Halfway up stood a lowly cabin; a rawboned cow grazed in a meager meadow below.
I like small shelters. A chico pajarillo chico nidillo, as the Spanish say: “For a little bird, a little nest.” I sat down on the slope across from the hut, which was planted on the hillside opposite.
After a few minutes, I heard voices in the valley. Three men were driving five or six fat cows. They put them to pasture and drove the skinny cow away with a switch. Then a savage woman came out of the hut and went after the frightened animal, calling to it. The cow ran to her, stretching out its neck and lowing softly. The settlers threatened the Indian woman from a distance until she returned to her cabin. The cow followed behind her.
I stood up, walked down the slope of the hillside, crossed the valley, and climbed the far hill until I came to the hut.
I pronounced the greeting that I had been taught: “Siegoh! I have come.” But the Indian woman, instead of responding to my greeting with the usual reply, “You have come,” said nothing. I stroked the cow. The Indian woman’s gloomy yellow face softened ever so slightly, and I was moved by the mysterious relations of the unfortunate. There is a sweetness in grieving over wrongs over which no one else will grieve.
My hostess looked at me for a long time with lingering doubt before she came toward me and placed her hand on the brow of her companion in misery and solitude.
Encouraged by this mark of confidence, I said, in English, for I had exhausted my Indian, “She is very thin!”
The Indian replied in halting English, “She eats very little.”
“They chased her away very roughly,” I said.
And the woman replied, “We’re used to it, both of us.”
“Is this meadow then not yours?” I asked.
“This meadow was my husband’s,” she said. “He is dead. I have no children, and the paleskins drive their cattle through my fields.”
I had nothing to offer this child of God. We took our leave of each other. My hostess had said many things to me that I did not understand at all. They were no doubt wishes for my prosperity. If they were not heard in heaven, it was not the fault of the one who prayed but of the infirmity of the one for whom those prayers were offered. Not all souls have an equal aptitude for happiness, just as not all lands bear an equal harvest.
I returned to my ajoupa, where a collation of potatoes and corn awaited me. The evening was breathtaking. The lake, as smooth as an unsilvered looking-glass, had not a single wrinkle. The murmuring river lapped against our peninsula, and the calycanthuses perfumed the air with the scent of apples. Again and again, the whippoorwill sang its song. We heard it, now nearer, now farther, as the bird changed the location of its love calls. No one called for me. Weep, poor William! Weep, poor Will!