Nattie Nesmith/Chapter 7

by Sophia Homespun

 

Chapter VII.

Travel.

HE Indians struck a straight line for their home in the wilderness, avoiding villages, and traveling with as few halts as possible. The distance was nearly three hundred miles. This they accomplished in six days.

Nattie was kept drugged, and either borne on the old Indian's back, or dragged on the sledge by the two boys, the whole distance. She was kept in this unconscious state lest she should retain some remembrance of the route, and make an at tempt to find her way back to her friends. But for this, they would have compelled her to walk, and bear her share of the burdens. The old squaw got rather jealous, seeing the pale-face so favored, and declared that she should do double work, to pay for this present ease, when they reached their own wigwam.

Nattie was unconscious of the fate in store for her, and unaware of the changes which she had undergone since she fell into the hands of her captors. The night of the Indians' arrival home, as they had no longer any reason for wishing to keep her asleep, the drug was not administered, and Nattie awoke. But so utterly wild and strange was the scene around her, that the poor child could not believe that she was really awake and in possession of her reason. She almost feared, for a moment, that she had passed through death and had awoke in the world of bad spirits, where, she had heard Biddy say, wicked children go when they die. That circle of swarthy figures, sitting on the dirt floor, around a smoking fire, laughing and jabbering over what seemed bowls of bread and milk, might be a company of fiends, for all Nattie knew. They were so intently occupied with each other that nonce of them so much as glanced in her direction; so the bewildered child thought that she might look about her, and, perhaps, hear what was being said, without attracting attention.

Such a low, black, smoky hut as she was in! There were raccoon skins stretched on the walls, stags' horns piled in the corners, no floor, and no windows but rough unshapely holes, cut in the timbers here and there, through which Nattie could feel a cold wind blowing. She was suddenly seized with a fit of sneczing. This caused the swarthy faces at the fire to be turned toward her, and directly the whole group were standing around the rude lounge on which she was lying.

"Then the daughter of the pale-face has awoke from sleep at last," said the old Indian, who was known at home as the chief, North Wind.

Nattie scanned the man with her quick, sharp eyes, and a vague recollection of the tremendous shape that seized her in its iron grasp on the night in which she ran away from home, passed through her mind. The tall Indian girl looked closely in her face, and, flaunting her red scarf disdainfully, said:

"The eyes of the pale daughter are not sky color; they are as black as my own. Torch Eye wants blue-eyed maiden. He no like this squaw you bring him, pappy."

"Hush, babbler," said the old Indian, sternly. "The better that the maiden's eyes be not blue; then might some foe exclaim, 'She is not of your race; now, with the dark stainings on her skin, she will seem to be, as I proclaim, a neighboring chieftain's daughter, that I have brought for my son."

Nattie, as she listened, began to grow alarmed. She lifted her hand,—it was of a brown color. She rubbed the palm on her face, and looked at it. The tall Indian girl laughed derisively.

"Ha, ha!" she said, "did you think that you could rub the brown off from your face and make it white again? No, you can't. You are just my color, from head to foot, a real little Indian papoose."

Nattie felt her temper rise at this insult, but she dared not show it.

"Why don't you get up?" continued the girl, giving the settle a rude kick with her moccasined foot; "you have slept enough to last a moon, and you have got to work the tougher now, to pay for it,—so mammy says. I mean that you shall milk the old, long-horned cow this summer, while I sit on my mat at the wigwam door and plait straw."

"Cease, Black-bird," said the old Indian, authoritatively. "Vex not too much the daughter of the pale-face whilst she is as a stranger amongst us, and understands not our ways. Before many moons have waned, she will become as one of us. She will see how much better is our mode of life than that of the white people that she once knew, and become a true child of the forest, fit for a warrior's bride."

Nattie, in her half bewildered state, but imperfectly comprehended the meaning of the old Indian's words, as he sat on the ground, near the fire, to which he had returned, muffled in his huge blanket, and puffing smoke from along, black pipe. The old squaw was asleep near him, her head drooping on her breast, and her straight, black hair hanging down over her swarthy face. The youngest papoose was lying across her lap. The two little boys sat beside her, on the dirt floor, laughing and chatting merrily together. Black-bird, the tall girl, had disappeared at the reprimand from her father.

Nattie looked toward the group at the fire.

"They are happy, while I am wretched," she said to herself. Then thought bore her away to her own home. How far away from her present abode that home now lay, she knew not. She seemed to see herself in her father's lap, telling him some merry tale, or making him laugh with her quaint humor. Then she saw her invalid mother lying on her couch, watching Tiny's baby enjoyment with her playthings, on the floor. Then honest Biddy passed before her, bustling around, broom in hand, "to swape up and sect things to rights," in her usual style.

Alas! the contrast between this picture and Nattie's present state was too painful. She be gan to cry, in her dismal, dark, cold corner. The two little boys looked around, but the old Indian seemed to have followed his wife to dreamland. His pipe had fallen to the ground, and he was snoring loudly from the depths of his blanket.

The larger of the two boys got up and went toward Nattie.

"What makes you snuff and cry?" he asked.

"Because I want to go home and see my father," Nattie said, sobbing away most bitterly.

"This is your home now, and my pappy, there in the corner, is going to be your pappy."

"This is not my home, and I won't have an Indian for my father," said Nattie, hotly.

It was well for her that the two old heads were nodding now.

The boy stared at her in silence for a moment, and then said:

"My mammy, there, will maul you, if you talk like that. What used to be your name when you was a white girl?"

"I am a white girl now," said Nattie.

"No, you is no such thing," said the boy; "you is just my color."

"As soon as I can get some water I shall wash that off, and go away from this horrid place, to my own home."

"You can't wash it off; my pappy has painted you clear through, so it won't never fade out, and you can't never go home. It is so far you couldn't walk, and if you could walk, you could not find the way. So you'll have to stay here as long as we want you."

"Why, how far is it?" asked Nattie, beginning to be alarmed by the boy's words, for she had not supposed that she was a very long distance from her native village. Having slept during all her journey, she was not aware of its length.

"Oh, it is farther than I can tell," he answered. "We traveled six days and nights to get here, but you was asleep, and rode on pa's back, or else on our little sled, so you didn't know what a ways it was."

"Oh, dear!" said Nattie, feeling hopeless; "I wish I could see my own father."

"He would think you was an Indian Squaw," said the boy, "if he should see you, with your dark brown face, long gown, and leather moccasins."

As Nattie viewed herself, she felt a misgiving lest it would be even as the Indian boy said. She turned her head and went on with her crying, resolving, in her old spirit of desperation, that she would neither eat, drink, nor sleep, but just lie there, in the smoke and filth of that disgusting Indian wigwam, and cry herself to death.

Instead of this, she only cried herself to sleep. Poor Nattie! your sorrows are only just begun.

The old squaw started up from her nap, after a while, and began to make preparations for retiring, by spreading mats and blankets un the ground around the fire. The old Indian got up and went to Nattie's corner.

"Arise, Tulip," he said;—"this is the name which I give you, because of your red lips; arise, and come into the midst of your new brethren. The squaw shall bring you a bowl of broth, and then you shall lie down after the fashion of our people, and sleep."

The first sound of his deep voice above her head, caused Nattie to awake. She stared in his dark face, and, though dreading to approach the circle by the fire, dared not disobey his command. There was an iron pot in the corner, into which the squaw dipped a ladle, and handed a wooden bowl of the smoking contents to Nattie. The little girl took it, because she feared to do otherwise. It seemed to be corn boiled in the broth of meat. It had a savory smell, which made Nattie wish to taste it, but she waited to see if any of her companions were to be served with a similar dish.

"Come, eat your mess," said the squaw, scowling at the girl. "We all supped while you was asleep, yonder; and I sha'n't keep the pot hot another time."

"Yes, drink your broth," said the old Indian, North Wind. "It will keep your cheek full, your eye keen and your heart strong. No better is made in any of our wigwams."

Still, Nattie hesitated. There was no spoon in her bowl, and she didn't see how she could eat without one.

"Why don't you eat your supper?" asked the squaw.

"I have nothing to eat it with," was the answer.

"You have got a mouth, and teeth in it?"

"Yes."

"What hinders you from using them?"

This was said in such a savage manner that Nattie, with trembling hands, lifted the bowl to her lips and took a mouthful of its contents. All eyes were watching her movements, and, after a few more trials on her part, one of the little boys came up, and plunging his hand in the bowl, brought it out full of the yellow corn, with which he quickly filled his mouth.

"Fox Heart will show you how to eat yom supper," said the old squaw, looking admiringly on the dirty, little papoose who stood munching the corn filched from Nattie's bowl.

"Now do as you saw him do."

"I don't want any more," said Nattie, who was both indignant and sickened, by seeing that dirty, little Indian paw in her dish.

"So the haughty pale-face disdains to eat after the red child's hand," cried the squaw, in a loud, shrill tone; "but no well-made broth, like that, is to be wasted here. Let her drain the bottom of the bowl before I look in her eyes again."

The squaw turned toward the fire, and Nattie sat trembling, but still the bowl was not raised to her lips. The old Indian now arose, and, lifting a glistening tomahawk which lay on the ground by his side, he swung it wildly in the air above his head, and sent it flying in Nattie's direction. It did not hit her, nor did he wish it to do so; but it struck, with a ringing sound, on the beams in the rear of the wigwam, and fell to the ground.

"Tulip," he cried, in a tone of thunder, "drink your broth, and bring that hatchet to me."

Almost beside herself with terror, the poor girl obeyed, expecting, as she stood before the fear ful savage, with the dread weapon in her hand, that her last hour had come. She trembled from head to foot.

"Indian treats well those that treat him well," said the man, taking the tomahawk. "White girl belong to Indian now, she got to mind him, mind equaw, mind papoose, then all well; but if she no mind, then Indian take her scalp and hang it in the door of the wigwam."

He then grasped her tightly by the arm and said:

"Lie down."

Nattie tumbled on to the mat at his feet.

"Put blanket on her," he said to the squaw, who approached to do his bidding.

"White squaw knows her place now," he said; "no more trouble."

The two little Indian boys were put by Nattie's side; and all, save the wretched girl, were soon locked in slumber. She was thinking of her sad condition, and whether there might be any means of escape. As yet, she did not know how far she might be from her old home, but feared, from what the little Indian boy had said, that the distance was very great. She knew not what direction to take, either; but she thought that anything,—death from starvation, oc wild beasts,—would be preferable to life among these barbarous Indians. She did not know that she would be too closely watched to find any opportunity of making her escape from the clutches of her captors.

Nattie had fallen among fues whose cunning excceded her own. But at last she drew some comfort from the thought:

"My father will surely find me and take me home."