XVII
WITH all its advantages civilization bears also its disadvantages to the postulant of culture. Perhaps no one has adequately appreciated the stress of that period to the mental and moral nature of the Indian when, detached from his ancien régime, its methods and manners, growing scornful of its sanctities and questioning its values, he was yet unaccustomed to the new order of things, unversed in its utilities, incompetent of its comprehension—alienated from the one and not acclimated to the other.
Many an Indian roamed about the little mart, beginning to gather under the guns of Fort Prince George, alike surly with contempt for the old and aversion for the new, unsettled, dissatisfied, dull, and dangerous. Now and again, with a dark, restless eye, one would pause and look out unallured to the forest and river—not the same, never again to be the same! Then he would turn his gaze, with loathing disgust, to the busy mercantile Europeans, with their quick trading talk, their bearded faces, their knee breeches, and the long woolen stockings on their stout, thick calves. A queer and odious presentment of humanity they seemed. Even the military did not impress the Indians as the soldiers whirled and ranged about to the sound of fife and drum in that close order so favorable to being mowed down by the very musket and ball with which they themselves were armed. A strange mental atmosphere it was—charged with the fumes from the embers of the burned-out past and the miasma exhaled from the poisonous present. No wonder their outlook was beclouded and drear.
All the conditions of life hitherto were reversed for many of them. Never had they met the representatives of certain tribes, immemorial enemies, save with weapons in their hands. Now, because of the intrusion of the white man and the diversion of interest that he had effected, a hollow peace or a simulated indifference had been patched up. Between many the semblance was fast growing into reality under the influence of that secret hope, nay, that earnest, triumphant, almost holy expectation of national independence that had been held in abeyance of late and which the colonists perceived without interpreting. It made for a universal friendship among them, and the traders chafed at its result, for intertribal war sold gunpowder, utilized the venomous activities of the savages against each other, and thus gave immunity to the white settlers. This almost visible bond in the unity of friendship of these hereditary enemies was a menace to all the English colonies from the mountains to the Atlantic, outnumbered by their negro slaves, and with the threatening Spaniard on the south and the inimical French on the west. The frontier traders scanned the horizon that showed so strange a portent, and muttered much together and shook their heads.
To Mingo Push-koosh this prospect of universal brotherhood among the tribes promised little. He wandered drearily about the world, a vagrant indeed, almost an outcast. There had been much ill blood between the Cherokees and Choctaws on his account, although no definite national war was inaugurated, since the French influence had been exerted to maintain intertribal peace and secure satisfaction. However, sundry individual reprisals for the iniquities that celebrated the congé of Mingo Push-koosh at Great Tellico had resulted in counter-reprisals till, when two braves of the respective factions chanced to meet in the settlement about Fort Prince George, nervous people instinctively dodged in expectation of the smartly sped arrow or the impulsively hurled tomahawk, and prudent people sought the nearest shelter. Indeed Mingo Push-koosh would not have ventured here within the borders of the Cherokee country but for the protection of the guns of the British fort. He was not safe inside the French boundaries, his wonted sphere, for he had been bereft of all the honors and privileges he had once enjoyed. In fact he had been sought with a view to condign punishment, a price being placed on his head when the authorities at New Orleans had learned of his betrayal of trust and desertion of Laroche, leaving him after the massacre in the hands of the Cherokees, which must have proved fatal to him and the interests he represented but for his own perseverance and address.
An exile thus, Mingo Push-koosh affected the English settlements, an avowed deserter to the British interest, protesting that his eyes were opened to the French wiles and that the French spoke with the tongue of a snake seente soolish, the mere sound of which made his heart weigh very heavy within him. These statements were received with a certain indifference, for by reason of his exile he could not bring any great personal following to the English flag; in fact, but for the hope that his presence might decoy others of his tribe to imitate his example, Mingo Push-koosh[11] would scarcely have been regarded at all. Proud and ambitious, he realized the necessity of pressing more efficaciously his own cause, and would have embraced the opportunity of any military service—but how? and whither?
Poor Push-koosh! Disregarded by the English, and in actual danger from the French, the pompous Prince Baby had now naught in hand of more import than the mercantile venture of selling a dozen or so fine horses, which he had caused to be driven from his old home at Yowanne, through the southern country, to Jock Lesly, who desired them for use in his pack-trains to Charlestown in the spring, laden with the skins from this winter’s hunt. The sale accomplished to-day, Mingo Push-koosh strolled about, forlorn, friendless, among the boxes and bales on the platform of Jock Lesly’s trading-house at Keowee Town. His thick long hair floated in the breeze; his silver arm-plates and headband were as bright as of yore, but a deep dejection showed in his large surly eyes, and he had the effect of a drooping crest, albeit the flamingo feathers still flaunted high.
“Ish la chu, angona?” (Are you come, friend?) A Chickasaw who passed offered the conventional salutation, knowing of the Choctaw’s defection from the French interest, for the sub-tribes (including the Choccomaw) of the ancient Chicimecas have almost a common language.
“Arahre-O angona!” (I am come indeed, friend!) Push-koosh replied, although he could hardly refrain from springing upon the Chickasaw as he passed and tearing the scalp from his head with his teeth, if need were.
The incident concluded, he continued to idle about the trading-house, standing on the platform and gazing at the gray river under a gray sky. The water was dark—all the light in the landscape seemed concentrated in the icy flicker in the leafless forests near the Indian town of Keowee which lay on both banks. Then he shifted his position and stood on the other end of the platform and gazed silently at the bastions of the fort. Whenever he saw the British flag he could not refrain from spitting his disdain openly, obviously, on the ground. Fearing lest this demonstration be observed, as the flag flaunted from the fort, he once more turned impatiently and changed his position to the other end of the platform, as before. He was absorbed in the reflection that the great coalition of Indian tribes would at last become a triumphant fact and that he would have no share in it. This fair prospect he had forfeited, with the favor of the French; as for the English, they would have none of him, would trust him with no opportunity of value.
So long he stood there that the under-trader grew a trifle solicitous as to his designs. The degenerate among the Indians had become most expert thieves, and it is recorded that while engaged in conversation with the merchant they could abstract what articles they would from under his eyes. Alas, poor Push-koosh—whose thoughts were of empire!
Dougal Micklin, the under-trader, a pursy, unimaginative man, all of whose mental processes could be discerned in his round face and his merry dark eyes, with his round, burly body encased in buckskins and wearing a coonskin cap set rather far back from his placid brow, was loath to take his eyes from the Choctaw, visible through the wide barn-like door, and therefore mentioned his identity to Captain Howard, the commandant of the fort, who chanced to be in the house purchasing some buttons for his own personal use.
“Aye, sir, three and sax the dozen, sir,” Dougal Micklin said, as he glanced again out of the door; then, as if to excuse his evidently wandering attention, he continued, “That Choctaw buck is an unco gret prince, Captain,” his red lips curling with good-natured sarcasm at the idea. “He used to be in high favor wi’ the French, but he fell out wi’ the mounseers at Tellico Gret, and now seems to have his finger in his mouth.”
Captain Howard turned suddenly and surveyed the figure of the Indian, as Push-koosh, unconscious of this keen scrutiny, stood sullen and dreary on the platform. The fringes of his saffron-hued buckskin shirt and leggings were all borne backward in the breeze, his stiff scarlet flamingo feathers and his long black hair were aslant also without other stir, as if he might have been pictured thus on a canvas. His heavily embroidered belt, shot pouch, and tobacco bag, his silver headband and bracelets, his necklace of pearls and many strings of “roanoke,” the fine silver-mounted pistols at his side, all seemed to confirm the truth of the trader’s representations as to his high rank.
“’Tis Mingo Push-koosh!” the trader added.
“Call him in,” said Captain Howard. Then with an afterthought, “No, I’ll speak to him myself!”
The officer striding out confronted the Choctaw just as again, catching a glimpse of the British flag, Mingo Push-koosh was about to spit his disaffection upon the ground.
“How?” said Captain Howard, smiling agreeably.
Push-koosh was visibly surprised, but looked inconceivably haughty.
“How?” he returned with half covert, scornful disapprobation, and waited in doubt.
Now Captain Howard’s education was lamentably defective as far as the Choctaw, practically the Chickasaw language was concerned, although the latter Indians were those with whom he had had most dealings, as they had repeatedly served in the campaigns in this region with the British troops. Nevertheless, in the delicate and tentative bit of business which he had in contemplation, he did not desire the offices of an interpreter lest a bird of the air carry the matter.
Lending himself to the effort to compass speech as it were without words, he smiled again blandly with a distinctly mollifying effect.
“Big Mingo!” he said, waving his hand with a free gesture to impart added grace to his compliment.
He was a tall, bony, angular man of forty-five, and the demonstration ill suited the stiff military dignity of his habitual carriage and the impressive effect of his scarlet uniform.
“Capteny Humma Echeto!” (Great red captain!) responded the Mingo, complimentary in turn.
Then they both paused and stared hard at each other.
“Mingo love British?” demanded the captain at length.
Nothing could have been more sardonic than the languishing smile with which Push-koosh laid his hand upon his true heart.
“Mingo hate French?” the political catechism proceeded.
The face of Push-koosh suddenly darkened. He spat his contempt on the ground.
“Hottuk ookproose!” (The accursed people!)
“Why hate French?” the inquisitor proceeded.
The heart of Push-koosh swelled. His eyes burned hot in their sockets. The veins of his throat were distended and tense as cords. He could hardly speak even fragmentarily, and but for the straining of every sense to hear, to distinguish, to interpret, Captain Howard might have made but little of the jargon of broken English that the Choctaw hissed out in the intervals between his gasps of rage.
The ugly French “beloved man” had betrayed him, had ruined his prospects! He had slandered him to the headmen of Great Tellico! And because he had quitted the Cherokee country on account of their ill usage, and left the French ugly “beloved man” there,—who had sustained no harm whatever!—the indescribably ugly French governor in New Orleans was angry.
Captain Howard had caught so eagerly at the words “Great Tellico” that although his ears were not of such a conformation and flexibility that they could be described as “pricked up,” his countenance had that vivid accession of intelligence that seems concomitant.
“Mingo go Tellico?”
Push-koosh’s face, gradually brightening in the expectation of a commission of some important sort, fell suddenly. He remembered that fierce onset upon the unoffending Cherokee tribesmen, that bloody massacre! No, not to Tellico, as he valued his life! Never again to Tellico, never again!
“Capteny much wants Mingo go Tellico!” urged Captain Howard persuasively.
The passionate mobile countenance of Push-koosh, with naught firm in its lines save the determination to go no more to Tellico, was turned toward the river, the wind blowing backward his long loose hair, so odd of effect here among the Cherokees, whose heads were all polled, his great eyes absent and anxious, his earnest hope of employment in the British interest slipping beyond his reach. But not to Tellico—never again!
“Capteny much wants French ‘beloved man’!” Captain Howard murmured plaintively.
Push-koosh brought his small even teeth together with so sudden a snap and gasp that the officer instinctively drew back a step.
“Does the beast bite?” he said to himself.
“Fort Prince George? Bring ‘beloved man’? Capteny wants?” Push-koosh asked, the words coming one after another, one upon another, in the joyous turbulence of sudden comprehension.
Push-koosh could do this for the Capteny Humma Echeto without the necessity to repair to Great Tellico. In that secret knowledge of the scheme of the now almost united tribes, many details, seeming of but scant significance, were obvious to those who had with them but little concern. For instance, the gossip brought by the tribesmen who had driven hither his horses had not till now seemed of moment to Push-koosh. A conference was in contemplation, to be held at O-tel-who-yau-nau (Hurricane Town), in the country of the Lower Muscogees, and several noted chiefs were to be present, especially certain disaffected spirits who desired to lay their views before the French governor through the medium of his “beloved man,” Lieutenant de Laroche, who with an escort of Cherokees was to come down expressly from Great Tellico. The choice of Hurricane Town had been in honor and placation of Padgee (the Pigeon), its mico, for he was well known to have hesitated and to be grievously ill at ease at the renunciation of British favor and British trade. The journey of the “beloved man” Laroche would lie, it is true, through a country especially friendly to him and his plans, but Push-koosh knew when the fleet of canoes and pettiaugres would be expected on Flint River, and it might be—lurking near—some opportunity—
His deft fingers trembled upon the trigger of his fine pistol.
Captain Howard touched his arm.
“No!” the officer said with the ringing tones of authority. “Alive!”
“Alive?—the French ‘beloved man’?” Push-koosh faltered.
Captain Howard was thinking very fast. In those days when rewards were offered for the scalps of various nationalities of Indians and white men one could hardly be more certain of the genuineness of a head of hair than if it were a wig. Captain Howard had some knowledge of a flaxen scalp riven from the head of an unoffending German colonist and of the effort to make it pass current for a Spaniard’s jetty hair by an Indian more disingenuous than discerning. The astute Push-koosh would never so far disregard the probabilities, but Captain Howard wanted no cheap English auburn locks from the nearest convenient British station. He must needs be sure of that subtle brain beneath the thatch. The man in person—naught else would satisfy him. “Alive—well—the ‘beloved man’ all in one piece!” he declared slowly, definitely.
He took his netted silk purse from his pocket and began to significantly count the golden guineas from one hand to the other. Push-koosh seemed scarcely to notice. For a moment he was as if in a daze. The breath came quick from between his parted lips; his teeth showed slightly, giving him a strange savagery of aspect; his eyes glanced hither, thither restlessly, as if he were seeking to gauge the various points of difficulty in the undertaking. He had not moved, but the wind still fluttered in the fringes of his saffron buckskin suit and in the crest of scarlet flamingo feathers, and the light of the dull day gleamed with a white metallic glister upon the silver headband above his dark flat forehead.
His eyes seemed suddenly afire when Captain Howard, eager that there should be no mistake in identity, asked abruptly, “Are you sure that you would know this French ‘beloved man’ of Tellico if you should see him again?”
Push-koosh stared for a moment motionless. Then he bent himself suddenly backward as if struck by a flaw of wind. He caught both hands to his lips as if to intercept the cry that escaped,—a fierce, shrill, tremendous note expanding through all the heavy silence of the gray day, and seeming to strike with the clamors of its savage joy against the gates of heaven.