Chambers Robert William
The Reckoning
About two o'clock a ranger of the advanced guard came running back to say that some two score Iroquois, stripped and painted for war, were making signs of amity from the edge of the forest in front of us.
I heard Mount grunt and Murphy swearing softly under his breath as I rode forward, with a nod to Elsin.
"Now you will see some friends of my boyhood," I said gaily, unlacing the front of my hunting-shirt as I rode, and laying it open to the wind.
"Carus!" she exclaimed, "what is that blue mark on your breast?"
"Only a wolf," I said, laughing. "Now you shall see how we Oneidas meet and greet after many years! Look, Elsin! See that Indian standing there with his gun laid on his blanket? The three rangers have taken to cover. There they stand, watching that Oneida like three tree-cats."
As I cantered up and drew bridle Elerson called out that there were twenty savages in the thicket ahead, and to be certain that I was not mistaken.
The tall Oneida looked calmly up at me; his glittering eyes fell upon my naked breast, and, as he looked, his dark face lighted, and he stretched out both hands.
"Onehda!" he ejaculated.
I leaned from my saddle, holding his powerful hands in a close clasp.
"Little Otter! Is it you, my younger brother? Is it really you?" I repeated again and again, while his brilliant eyes seemed to devour my face, and his sinewy grip tightened spasmodically.
"What happiness, Onehda!" he said, in his softly sonorous Oneida dialect. "What happiness for the young men—and the sachems—and the women and children, too, Onehda. It is well that you return to us—to the few of us who are left. Koue!"
And now the Oneidas were coming out of the willows, crowding up around my horse, and I heard everywhere my name pronounced, and everywhere outstretched hands sought mine, and painted faces were lifted to mine—even the blackened visage of the war-party's executioner relaxing into the merriest of smiles.
"Onehda," he said, "do you remember that feast when you were raised up?"
"Does an Oneida and a Wolf forget?" I said, smiling.
An emphatic "No!" broke from the painted throng about me.
Elsin, sitting her saddle at a little distance, watched us wide-eyed.
"Brothers," I said quietly, "a new rose has budded in Tryon County. The Oneidas will guard it for the honor of their nation, lest the northern frost come stealing south to blight the blossom."
Two score dark eyes flashed on Elsin. She started; then a smile broke out on her flushed face as a painted warrior stalked solemnly forward, bent like a king, and lifted the hem of her foot-mantle to his lips. One by one the Oneidas followed, performing the proud homage in silence, then stepping back to stand with folded arms as the head of the column appeared at the bend of the road.
I called Little Otter to me, questioning him; and he said that as far as they had gone there were no signs of Mohawk or Cayuga, but that the bush beyond should be traversed with caution. So I called in the flanking rangers, replacing them with Oneidas, and, sending the balance of the band forward on a trot, waited five minutes, then started on with a solid phalanx of riflemen behind to guard the rear.
As we rode, Elsin and I talking in low tones, mile after mile slipped away through the dim forest trail, and nothing to alarm us that I noted, save once when I saw another stone set upon a stone; but I knew my Oneidas had also seen and examined it, and it had not alarmed them sufficiently to send a warrior back to me.
It was an Oneida symbol; but, of course, my scouts had not set it up. Therefore it must have been placed there by an enemy, but for what purpose except to arrest the attention of an Oneida and prepare him for later signals, I could not yet determine. Mount had seen it, and spoken of it, but I shook my head, bidding him keep his eyes sharpened for further signs.
Signs came sooner than I expected. We passed stone after stone set on end, all emphasizing the desire of somebody to arrest the attention of an Oneida. Could it be I? A vague premonition had scarcely taken shape in my mind when, at a turn in the road, I came upon three of my Oneida scouts standing in the center of the road. The seven others must have gone on, for I saw nothing of them. The next moment I caught sight of something that instantly riveted and absorbed my attention.
From a huge pine towering ahead of us, and a little to the right, a great square of bark had been carefully removed about four feet from the ground. On this fresh white scar were painted three significant symbols—the first a red oblong, about eighteen inches by four, on which were designed two human figures, representing Indians, holding hands. Below that, drawn in dark blue, were a pair of stag's antlers, of five prongs; below the antlers—a long way below—was depicted in black a perfectly recognizable outline of a timber-wolf.
I rode up to the tree and examined the work. The paint was still soft and fresh on the raw wood. Flies swarmed about it. I looked at Little Otter, making a sign, and his scarcely perceptible nod told me that I had read the message aright.
The message was for me, personally and exclusively; and the red man who had traced it there not an hour since was an Iroquois, either Canienga, Onondaga, Cayuga, or Seneca—I know not which. Roughly, the translation of the message was this: The Wolf meant me because about it were traced the antlers, symbol of chieftainship, and below, on the ground, the symbol of the Oneida Nation, a long, narrow stone, upright, embedded in the moss. The red oblong smear represented a red-wampum belt; the figures on it indicated that, although the belt was red, meaning war, the clasped hands modified the menace, so that I read the entire sign as follows:
"An Iroquois desires to see you in order to converse upon a subject concerning wars and treaties."
"Turn over that stone, Little Otter," I said.
"I have already done so," he replied quietly.
"At what hour does this embassy desire to see me?"
He held up four fingers in silence.
"Is this Canienga work?"
"Mohawk!" he said bitterly.
The two terms were synonymous, yet mine was respectful, his a contemptuous insult to the Canienga Nation. No Indian uses the term Mohawk in speaking to or of a Mohawk unless they mean an insult. Canienga is the proper term.
"Is it safe for me to linger here while all go forward?" I asked Little Otter, lowering my voice so that none except he could hear me.
He smiled and pointed at the tree. The tree was enormous, a giant pine, dwarfing the tallest tree within range of my vision from where I sat my horse. I understood. The choice of this great tree for the inscription was no accident; it now symbolized the sacred tree of the Six Nations—the tree of heaven. Beneath it any Iroquois was as safe as though he stood at the eternal council-fire at Onondaga in the presence of the sachems of the Long House. But why had this unseen embassy refused to trust himself to this sanctuary? Because of the rangers, to whom no redskin is sacred.
"Jack Mount," I said, "take command and march your men forward half a mile. Then halt and await me."
He obeyed without a word. Elsin hesitated, gave me one anxious, backward glance, but my smile seemed to reassure her, and she walked her black mare forward. Past me marched the little column. I watched it drawing away northward, until a turn in the forest road hid the wagon and the brown-clad rear-guard. Then I dismounted and sat down, my back to the giant pine, my rifle across my knees, to wait for the red ambassador whom I knew would come.
Minute after minute slipped away. So still it grew that the shy forest creatures came back to this forest runway, made by dreaded man; and because it is the work of a creature they dread and suspect, their curiosity ever draws them to man-made roads. A cock-grouse first stepped out of the thicket, crest erect, ruff spread; then a hare loped by, halting to sniff in the herbage. I watched them for a long while, listening intently. Suddenly the partridge wheeled, crest flattened, and ran into the thicket, like a great rat; the hare sat erect, flanks palpitating, then leaped twice, and was gone as shadows go.
I saw the roadside bushes stir, part, and, as I rose, an Indian leaped lightly into the road and strode straight toward me. He was curiously painted with green and orange, and he was stark naked, except that he wore ankle-moccasins, clout, and a fringed pouch, like a quiver, covered with scarlet beads in zigzag pattern.
He did not seem to notice that I was armed, for he carried his own rifle most carelessly in the hollow of his left arm, and when he had halted before me he coolly laid the weapon across his moccasins.
The dignified silence that always precedes a formal meeting of strange Iroquois was broken at length by a low, guttural exclamation as his narrow-slitted eyes fell upon the tattoo on my bared breast: "Salute, Roy-a-neh!"
"Welcome, O Keeper of the Gate," I said calmly.
"Does my younger brother know to which gate-warden he speaks?" asked the savage warily.
"When a Wolf barks, the Eastern Gate-Keepers of the Long House listen," I replied. "It was so in the beginning. What has my elder brother of the Canienga to say to me?"
His cunning glance changed instantly to an absolutely expressionless mask. My white skin no longer made any difference to him. We were now two Iroquois.
"It is the truth," he said. "This is the message sent to my younger brother, Onehda, chief ensign of the Wolf Clan of the Oneida nation. I am a belt-bearer. Witness the truth of what I say to you—by this belt. Now read the will of the Iroquois."
He drew from his beaded pouch a black and white belt of seven rows. I took it, and, holding it in both hands, gazed attentively into his face.
"The Three Wolves listen," I said briefly.
"Then listen, noble of the noble clan. The council-fire is covered at Onondaga; but it shall burn again at Thendara. This was so from the first, as all know. The council therefore summons their brother, Onehda, as ensign of his clan. The will of the council is the will of the confederacy. Hiro! I have spoken."
"Does a single coal from Onondaga still burn under the great tree, my elder brother?" I asked cautiously.
"The great tree is at Onondaga," he answered sullenly; "the fire is covered."
Which was as much as to say that there was no sanctuary guaranteed an Oneida, even at a federal council.
"Tell them," I said deliberately, "that a belt requires a belt; and, when the Wolves talk to the Oneidas, they at Thendara shall be answered. I have spoken."
"Do the Three Wolves take counsel with the Six Bears and Turtles?" he asked, with a crafty smile.
"The trapped wolf has no choice; his howls appeal to the wilderness entire," I replied emphatically.
"But—a trapped wolf never howls, my younger brother; a lone wolf in a pit is always silent."
I flushed, realizing that my metaphor had been at fault. Yet now there was to be nothing between this red ambassador and me except the subtlest and finest shades of metaphor.
"It is true that a trapped wolf never howls," I said; "because a pitted wolf is as good as a dead wolf, and a dead wolf's tongue hangs out sideways. But it is not so when the pack is trapped. Then the prisoners may call upon the Wilderness for aid, lest a whole people suffer extermination."
"Will my younger brother take counsel with Oneidas?" he asked curiously.
"Surely as the rocks of Tryon point to the Dancers, naming the Oneida nation since the Great Peace began, so surely, my elder brother, shall Onehda talk to the three ensigns, brother to brother, clan to clan, lest we be utterly destroyed and the Oneida nation perish from the earth."
"My younger brother will not come to Thendara?" he inquired without emotion.
"Does a chief answer as squirrels answer one to another?—as crow replies to crow?" I asked sternly. "Go teach the Canienga how to listen and how to wait!"
His glowing eyes, fastened on mine, were lowered to the symbol on my breast, then his shaved head bent, and he folded his powerful arms.
"Onehda has spoken," he said respectfully. "Even a Delaware may claim his day of grace. My ears are open, O my younger brother."
"Then bear this message to the council: I accept the belt; my answer shall be the answer of the Oneida nation; and with my reply shall go three strings. Depart in peace, Bearer of Belts!"
Lightly, gracefully as a tree-lynx, he stooped and seized his rifle, wheeled, passed noiselessly across the road, turned, and buried himself in the tufted bushes. For an instant the green tops swayed, then not a ripple of the foliage, not a sound marked the swift course of the naked belt-bearer through the uncharted sea of trees.
Mounting my roan, I wheeled him north at a slow walk, preoccupied, morose, sadly absorbed in this new order of things where an Oneida now must needs answer a Mohawk as an Iroquois should once have answered an Erie or an Algonquin. Alas for the great League! alas for the mighty dead! Hiawatha! Atotarho! Where were they? Where now was our own Odasete; and Kanyadario, and the mighty wisdom of Dekanawidah? The end of the Red League was already in sight; the Great Peace was broken; the downfall of the Confederacy was at hand.
At that northern tryst at Thendara, the nine sachems allotted to the Canienga, the fourteen sachems of the Onondaga, the eight Senecas, the Cayuga ten must look in vain for nine Oneidas. And without them the Great Peace breaks like a rotten arrow where the war-head drops and the feathers fall from the unbound nock.
Strange, strange, that I, a white man of blood untainted, must answer for this final tragic catastrophe! Without me, perhaps, the sachems of the three clans might submit to the will of the League, for even the surly Onondagas had now heeded the League-Call—yes, even the Tuscaroras, too. And as for those Delaware dogs, they had come, belly-dragging, cringing to the lash of the stricken Confederacy, though now was their one chance in a hundred years to disobey and defy. But the Lenape were ever women.
Strange, strange, that I, a white man of unmixed blood, should stand in League-Council for the noblest clan of the Oneida nation!
That I had been adopted satisfied the hereditary law of chieftainship; that I had been selected satisfied the elective law of the sachems. Rank follows the female line; the son of a chief never succeeded to rank. It is the matron—the chief woman of the family—who chooses a dead chief's successor from the female line in descent; and thus Cloud on the Sun chose me, her adopted; and, dying, heard the loud, imperious challenge from the council-fire as the solemn rite ended with:
"Now show me the man!"
And so, knowing that the antlers were lifted and the quiver slung across my thigh, she died contented, and I, a lad, stood a chief of the Oneida nation. Never since time began, since the Caniengas adopted Hiawatha, had a white councilor been chosen who had been accepted by family, clan, and national council, and ratified by the federal senate, excepting only Sir William Johnson and myself. That Algonquin word "sachem," so seldom used, so difficult of pronunciation by the Iroquois, was never employed to designate a councilor in council; there they used the title, Roy-a-neh, and to that title had I answered the belt of the Iroquois, in the name of Kayanehenh-Kowa, the Great Peace.
For what Magna Charta is to the Englishman, what the Constitution is to us, is the Great Peace to an Iroquois; and their gratitude, their intense reverence and love for its founder, Hiawatha, is like no sentiment we have conceived even for the beloved name of Washington.
Now that the Revolution had split the Great Peace, which is the Iroquois League, the larger portion of the nation had followed Brant to Canada—all the Caniengas, the greater part of the Onondaga nation, all the Cayugas, the one hundred and fifty of our own Oneidas. And though the Senecas did not desert their western post as keepers of the shattered gate in a house divided against itself, they acted with the Mohawks; the Onondagas had brought their wampum from Onondaga, and a new council-fire was kindled in Canada as rallying-place of a great people in process of final disintegration.
It was sad to me who loved them, who knew them first as firm allies of New York province, who understood them, their true character, their history and tradition, their intimate social and family life.
And though I stood with those whom they struck heavily, and who in turn struck them hip and thigh, I bear witness before God that they were not by nature the fiends and demons our historians have painted, not by instinct the violent and ferocious scourges that the painted Tories made of these children of the forest, who for five hundred years had formed a confederacy whose sole object was peace.
I speak not of the brutal and degraded gens de prairie—the horse-riding savages of the West, whose primal instincts are to torture the helpless and to violate women—a crime no Iroquois, no Huron, no Algonquin, no Lenni-Lenape can be charged with. But I speak for the gens de bois—the forest Indians of the East, and of those who maintained the Great League, which was but a powerful tribunal imposing peace upon half a continent.
Left alone to themselves, unharassed by men of my blood and color, they are a kindly and affectionate people, full of sympathy for their friends in distress, considerate of their women, tender to their children, generous to strangers, anxious for peace, and profoundly reverent where their League or its founders were concerned.
Centuries of warfare for self-preservation have made them efficient in the arts of war. Ferocity, craft, and deception, practised on them by French, Dutch, and English, have taught them to reply in kind. Yet these somber, engrafted qualities which we have recorded as their distinguishing traits, no more indicate their genuine character than war-paint and shaven head display the customary costume they appear in among their own people. The cruelties of war are not peculiar to any one people; and God knows that in all the Iroquois confederacy no savage could be found to match the British Provost, Cunningham, or Major Bromfield—no atrocities could obscure the atrocities in the prisons and prison-ships of New York, the deeds of the Butlers, of Crysler, of Beacraft, and of Bettys.
For, among the Iroquois, I can remember only two who were the peers in cruelty of Walter Butler and the Tory Beacraft, and these were the Indian called Seth Henry, and the half-breed hag, Catrine Montour.
Pondering on these things, perplexed and greatly depressed, I presently emerged from the forest-belt through which I had been riding, and found our little column halted in the open country, within a few minutes' march of the Schenectady highway.
The rangers looked up at me curiously as I passed, doubtless having an inkling of what had been going on from questioning the Oneida scouts, for Murphy broke out impulsively, "Sure, Captain, we was that onaisy, alanna, that Elerson an' me matched apple-pipps f'r to inthrojuce wan another to that powwow forninst the big pine."
"Had you appeared yonder while I was talking to that belt-bearer it might have gone hard with me, Tim," I said gravely.
Riding on past the spot where Jack Mount stood, his brief authority ended, I heard him grumbling about the rashness of officers and the market value of a good scalp in Quebec; and I only said: "Scold as much as you like, Jack, only obey." And so cantered forward to where Elsin sat her black mare, watching my approach. Her steady eyes welcomed, mine responded; in silence we wheeled our horses north once more, riding stirrup to stirrup through the dust. On either side stretched abandoned fields, growing up in weeds and thistles, for now we were almost on the Mohawk River, the great highway of the border war down which the tides of destruction and death had rolled for four terrible years.
There was nothing to show for it save meadows abandoned to willow scrub, fallow fields deep in milk-weed, goldenrod, and asters; and here and there a charred rail or two of some gate or fence long since destroyed.
Far away across the sand-flats we could see a ruined barn outlined against the sunset sky, but no house remained standing to the westward far as the eye could reach. However, as we entered the highway, which I knew well, because now we were approaching a country familiar to me, I, leading, caught sight of a few Dutch roofs to the east, and presently came into plain view of the stockade and blockhouses of Schenectady, above which rose the lovely St. George's church and the heavy walls and four demi-bastions of the citadel which is called the Queen's Fort.
As we approached in full view of the ramparts there was a flash, a ball of white smoke; and no doubt a sentry had fired his musket, such was evidently their present state of alarm, for I saw the Stars and Stripes run up on the citadel, and, far away, I heard the conch-horn blowing, and the startled music of the light-infantry horns. Evidently the sight of our Oneidas, spread far forward in a semicircle, aroused distrust. I sent Murphy forward with a flag, then advanced very deliberately, recalling the Oneidas by whistle-signal.
And, as we rode under the red rays of the westering sun, I pointed out St. George's to Elsin and the Queen's Fort, and where were formerly the town gates by which the French and Indians had entered on that dreadful winter night when they burned Schenectady, leaving but four or five houses, and the snowy streets all wet and crimsoned with the blood of women and children.
"But that was many, many years ago, sweetheart," I added, already sorry that I had spoken of such things. "It was in 1690 that Monsieur De Mantet and his Frenchmen and Praying Indians did this."
"But people do such things now, Carus," she said, serious eyes raised to mine.
"Oh, no–"
"They did at Wyoming, at Cherry Valley, at Minnisink. You told me so in New York—before you ever dreamed that you and I would be here together."
"Ah, Elsin, but things have changed now that Colonel Willett is in the Valley. His Excellency has sent here the one man capable of holding the frontier; and he will do it, dear, and there will be no more Cherry Valleys, no more Minnisinks, no more Wyomings now."
"Why were they moving out of the houses in Albany, Carus?"
I did not reply.
Presently up the road I saw Murphy wave his white flag; and, a moment later, the Orange Gate, which was built like a drawbridge, fell with a muffled report, raising a cloud of dust. Over it, presently, our horses' feet drummed hollow as we spurred forward.
"Pass, you Tryon County men!" shouted the sentinels; and the dusty column entered. We were in Schenectady at last.
As we wheeled up the main street of the town, marching in close column between double lines of anxious townsfolk, a staff-officer, wearing the uniform of the New York line, came clattering down the street from the Queen's Fort, and drew bridle in front of me with a sharp, precise salute.
"Captain Renault?" he asked.
I nodded, returning his salute.
"Colonel Gansvoort's compliments, and you are directed to report to Colonel Willett at Butlersbury without losing an hour."
"That means an all-night march," I said bluntly.
"Yes, sir." He lowered his voice: "The enemy are on the Sacandaga."
I stiffened in my stirrups. "Tell Colonel Gansvoort it shall be done, sir." And I wheeled my horse, raising my rifle: "Attention!—to the left—dress! Right about face! By sections of four—to the right—wheel—March! … Halt! Front—dress! Trail—arms! March!"
The veterans of Morgan, like trained troop-horses, had executed the maneuvers before they realized what was happening. They were the first formal orders I had given. I myself did not know how the orders might be obeyed until all was over and we were marching out of the Orange Gate once more, and swinging northward, wagons, bat-horses, and men in splendid alignment, and the Oneidas trotting ahead like a pack of foxhounds under master and whip. But I had to do with irregulars; I understood that. Already astonished and inquiring glances shot upward at me as I rode with Elsin; already I heard a low whispering among the men. But I waited. Then, as we turned the hill, a cannon on the Queen's Fort boomed good-by and Godspeed!—and our conch-horn sounded a long, melancholy farewell.
It was then that I halted the column, facing them, rifle resting across my saddle-bow.
"Men of New York," I said, "the enemy are on the Sacandaga."
Intense silence fell over the ranks.
"If there be one rifleman here who is too weary to enter Johnstown before daylight, let him fall out."
Not a man stirred.
"Very well," I said, laughing; "if you Tryon County men are so keen for battle, there's a dish o' glory to be served up, hot as sugar and soupaan, among the Mayfield hills. Come on, Men of New York!"
And I think they must have wondered there in Schenectady at the fierce cheering of Morgan's men as our column wheeled northwest once more, into the coming night.
We entered Johnstown an hour before dawn, not a man limping, nor a horse either, for that matter. An officer from Colonel Willett met us, directing the men and the baggage to the fort which was formerly the stone jail, the Oneidas to huts erected on the old camping-ground west of Johnson Hall, and Elsin and me to quarters at Jimmy Burke's Tavern. She was already half-asleep in her saddle, yet ever ready to rouse herself for a new effort; and now she raised her drowsy head with a confused smile as I lifted her from the horse to the porch of Burke's celebrated frontier inn.
"Colonel Willett's compliments, and he will breakfast with you at ten," whispered the young officer. "Good night, sir."
"Good night," I nodded, and entered the tavern, bearing Elsin in my arms, now fast asleep as a worn-out child.
