As Jasper ascended the high bluffs of the lodge where Black Hawk dwelt, he was followed by a number of Indians who came out of their houses of poles and bark, and greeted him in a kindly way. The dark chief met him at the door of the lodge.
"You are welcome, my father. The new moon has bent her bow over the waters, and you have come back. You have kept your promise. I have kept mine. There is the boy."
An Indian boy of lithe and graceful form came out of the lodge, followed by an old man, who was his uncle. The boy's name was Waubeno, and his uncle's was Main-Pogue. The latter had been an Indian runner in Canada, and an interpreter to the English there. He spoke English well. The boy Waubeno had been his companion in his long journeys, and, now that the interpreter was growing old, remained true to him. The three stood there, looking down on the long mirror of the Mississippi—Black Hawk, Main-Pogue, and Waubeno—and waiting for Jasper to speak.
"I have come to bring you peace," said Jasper—"not the silence of the hawk or the bow-string, but peace here."
He laid his hand on his breast, and all the Indians did the same.
"I am a man of peace," continued Jasper. "If any one should seek to slay me, I would not do him any harm. I would forgive him, and pray that his blindness might go from his soul, and that he might see a better life. You welcome me, you are true to me, and, whatever may happen, I will be true to your race."
The black chief bowed, Main-Pogue, and the boy Waubeno.
"I believe you," said Black Hawk. "Your face says 'yes' to your words. The Indian's heart is always true to a friend. Sit down; eat, smoke the peace-pipe, and let us talk. Sit down. The sky is clear, and the night-bird cries for joy on her wing. Let us all sit down and talk. The river rolls on forever by the graves of the braves of old. Let us sit down."
The squaws brought Jasper some cakes and fish, and Black Hawk lighted some long pipes and gave them to Main-Pogue and Waubeno.
"I have brought the boy here for you," said Black Hawk. "He comes of the blood of the brave. Let me tell you his story. It will shame the pale-face, but let me tell you the story. You will say that the Indian can be great, like the pale-face, when I tell you his story. It will smite your heart. Listen."
A silence followed, during which a few puffs of smoke curled into the air from the black chief's pipe. He broke his narrative by such silences, designed to be impressive, and to offer an opportunity for thought on what had been said.
Strange as it may seem to the reader, the story that follows is substantially true, and yet nothing in classic history or modern heroism can surpass in moral grandeur the tale that Black Hawk was always proud to tell:
"Father, that is the boy. He knows all the ways from the Great Lakes to the long river, from the great hills to Kaskaskia. You can trust him; he knows the ways. Main-Pogue knows all the ways. Main-Pogue was a runner for the pale-face. He has taught him the ways. Their hearts are like one heart, Main-Pogue's and Waubeno's.
"His father is dead, Waubeno's. Main-Pogue has been a father to him. They would die for each other. Main-Pogue says that Waubeno may run with you, if I say that he may run. I say so. Main-Pogue and Waubeno are true to me.
"The boy's father is dead, I said. Who was the father of that boy?—Waubeno, stand up."
The boy arose, like a tall shadow. There was a silence, and Black Hawk puffed his pipe, then laid it beside his blanket.
"Who was the father of Waubeno? He was a brave, a warrior. He wore the gray plume, and honor to him was more than life. He would not lie, and they put him to death. He was true as the stars, and they killed him."
There followed another silence.
"Father, you teach. You teach the head; you teach the heart: to live a true life, is the thing to teach—the thing you call conscience, soul, those are the right things to teach. What are books to the head, if the soul is not taught to be true?
"Father, the father of Waubeno could teach the pale-face. In the head? No, in the heart? No, in the soul, which is the true book of the Great Spirit that you call God. You came to us to teach us God. It is good. You are a brother, but God came to us before. He has written the law of right in the soul of every man. The right will find the light. You teach the way—you bring the Word of him who died for mankind. It is good. I've got you a runner to run with you. It is good. You help the right to find the light.
"Father, listen. I am about to speak. Before the great war with the British brother (1812) that boy's father struck down to the earth a pale-face who had done him wrong. The white man died. He who wrongs another does not deserve the sun. He died, and his soul went to the shadows. The British took the red warrior prisoner for killing this man who had wronged him. Waubeno was a little one then, when they took his father prisoner.
"The British told the old warrior that they had condemned him to die.
"'I am not afraid to die,' said the warrior. 'Let me go to the Ouisconsin (Wisconsin) and see my family once more, and whisper my last wish in the ear of my boy, and I will return to you and die. I will return at the sunrise.'
"'You would never return,' said the commander of the stockade.
"The warrior strode before him.
"'Can a true man lie?'
"The commander looked into his face, and saw his soul.
"'Well, go,' said he. 'I would like to see an Indian who would come back to die.'
"The warrior went home, under the stars. He told his squaw all. He had six little children, and he hugged them all. Waubeno was the oldest boy. He told him all, and pressed him to his heart. He whispered in his ear.—What was it he said, Waubeno?"
The shadowy form of the boy swayed in the dim light, as he answered. He said:
"'Avenge my death! Honor my memory. The Great Spirit will teach you how.' That is what my father said to me, and I felt the beating of his heart."
There was a deep silence. Then Black Hawk said:
"The warrior looked down on the Ouisconsin under the stars. He looked up to heaven, and cried, 'Lead thou my boy!' Then he set his face toward the stockades of Prairie du Chien.
"He strode across the prairie as the sun was rising; he arrived in time, and—Father, listen!"
There was another silence, so deep that one might almost hear the puffing smoke as it rose on the air.
"They shot him! That is his boy, Waubeno."
Jasper stood silent; he thought of Johnnie Kongapod's story, and the night-scene at Pigeon Creek.
"I shall teach him a better way," said Jasper, at last. "I will lead him to honor the memory of his great father in a way that he does not now know. The Great Spirit will guide us both. His father was a great man. I will lead him to become a greater."
"Father," said the boy, coming forward, "I will always be true to you, but I have sworn by the stars."
Jasper stood like one in a dream. Could such a tale as this be true among savages? Honor like this only needed the gospel teaching to do great deeds. Jasper saw his opportunity, and his love of mankind never glowed before as it did then. He folded his hands, closed his eyes, and his silent thoughts winged upward to the skies.
Jasper and Waubeno crossed the prairies to Lake Michigan. It was June, the high tide of the year. The long days poured their sunlight over the seas of flowers. The prairie winds were cool, and the new vegetation was alive with insects and birds.
The first influence that Jasper tried to exert on Waubeno was to induce him to forego the fixed resolution to avenge his father's death.
"The first thing in education," he used to say, "is conscience, the second is the heart, and the third is the head."
He had planned to teach Waubeno while the Indian boy should be teaching him, and he wished to follow his own theory that a new pupil should first learn to be governed by his moral sense.
"Waubeno," he said, in their long walk over the prairie, "I wish to teach you and make you wise, but before I can do you justice you must make a promise. Will you, Waubeno?"
"I will. You would not ask me to do what is wrong."
"It may be a hard thing, but, Waubeno, I wish you to promise me that you will never seek to avenge your father. Will you, Waubeno?"
"Parable, I will promise you any right thing but that. I have made another promise about that thing—it must hold."
"Waubeno, I can not teach you as I would while you carry malice in your heart. The soul does not see clearly that is dark with evil. Do you see? I wish it for your good."
"The white man punishes his enemies, does he not? Why should not I avenge a wrong? The white fathers at Malden" (the trade-post on Lake Erie) "avenge every wrong that is done them by the Indians, do they not?"
"Christ died for his enemies. He forgave them, dying. You have heard."
"Then why do his followers not do the same?"
"They do."
"I have never seen one who did."
"Not one?"
"No, not one."
"Then they are false to the cross. Waubeno, I love you. I am seeking your good. Trust me. I would make you any promise that I could. Make me this promise, and then we will be brothers. Your vow rises between us like a cloud."
"Parable, listen. I will promise, on one condition."
"What, Waubeno?"
"You say that right is might, Parable?"
"Yes."
"When I find a single white man who defends an Indian to his own hurt because it is right, I will promise. I have known many white men who defended the Indian because they thought that it was good for them to do it—good for their pockets, good for their church, good for their souls in another world—but never one to his own harm, because it was right; listen, Parable—never one to his own harm because it was right. When I meet one—such a one—I will promise you what you ask. Parable, my folks did right because it was right."
"Waubeno, I once knew a boy who defended a turtle to his own harm, because it was right. The boys laughed at him, but his soul was true to the turtle."
"I would like to meet that boy," Waubeno said. "He and I would be brothers. But I have never seen such a boy, Parable. I have never seen any man who had the worth of my own father, and, till I do, I shall hold to my vow to him! God heard that vow, and he shall see that I prove true to a man who died for the truth!"
The two came in sight of blue Lake Michigan, where the old Jesuit explorer had had a vision of a great city; and where Point au Sable, the San Domingo negro, for a time settled, hoping to be made an Indian king. Here he found the hospitable roofs of John Kinzie, the pioneer of Chicago, the Romulus of the great mid-continent city, where storehouses abounded with peltries and furs.
John Kinzie (the father of the famous John H. Kinzie) was a grand pioneer, like the Pilgrim Fathers of the elder day. He dealt honestly with the Indians, and won the hearts of the several tribes. He settled in Chicago in 1804, at which time a block-house was built by the Government as a frontier house or garrison. This frontier house stood near the present Rush Street Bridge. Mr. Kinzie's house stood on the north side of the Chicago River, opposite the fort. The storm-beaten block-house was to be seen in Chicago as late as 1857, and the place of Mr. Kinzie's home will ever be held as sacred ground. The frontier house was known as Fort Dearborn. A little settlement grew around the fort and the hospitable doors of Mr. Kinzie, until in 1830 it numbered twelve houses. Twelve houses in Chicago in 1830! Pass the bridge of sixty years, and lo! the rival city of the Western world, with its more than a million people—more than fulfilling the old missionary's dream!
For twenty years John Kinzie was the only white man not connected with the garrison and trading-post who lived in northern Illinois. He was a witness of the Indian massacre of the troops in 1812, when he himself was driven from his home by the lake.
He saw another and different scene in August, 1821—a scene worthy of a poet or painter—the Great Treaty, in which the Indian chiefs gave up most of their empire east of the Mississippi. There came to this decisive convocation the plumes of the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawattamies. General Cass was there, and the old Indian agents. The chiefs brought with them their great warriors, their wives and children. There the prairie Indians made their last stand but one against the march of emigration to the Mississippi.
Me-te-nay, the young orator of the Pottawattamies, was there, to make a poetic appeal for his race. But the counsels of the white chiefs were too persuasive and powerful. A treaty was concluded, which virtually gave up the Indian empire east of the Mississippi.
Then the chiefs and the warriors departed, their red plumes disappearing over the prairie in the sunset light. Before them rolled the Mississippi. Behind them lay the blue seas of the lakes. It was a sorrowful procession that slowly faded away. Some twelve years after, in August, 1835, another treaty was concluded with the remaining tribes, and there occurred the last dance of the Pottawattamies on the grounds where the city of Chicago now stands.
Five thousand Indians were present, and nearly one thousand joined in the dance. The latter assembled at the council-house, on the place where now is the northeast corner of North Water and Rush Streets, and where the Lake House stands. Their faces were painted in black and vermilion; their hair was gathered in scalp-locks on the tops of their heads, and was decorated with Indian plumes. They were led by drums and rattles. They marched in a dancing movement along the river, and stopped before each house to perform the grotesque figures of their ancient traditions.
They seemed to be aware that this was their last gathering on the lake. The thought fired them. Says one who saw them:
"Their eyes were wild and bloodshot. Their muscles stood out in great, hard knots, as if wrought to a tension that must burst them. Their tomahawks and clubs were thrown and brandished in every direction."
The dance was carried on in a procession through the peaceful streets, and was concluded at Fort Dearborn in presence of the officers and soldiers of the garrison. It was the last great Indian gathering on the lake.
A new civilization began in the vast empire of the inland seas with the signing of the Treaty of Chicago and these concluding rites. Around the home of pastoral John Kinzie were to gather the new emigrations of the nations of the world, and the Queen City of the Lakes was to rise, and Progress to make the seat of her empire here. Never in the history of mankind did a city leap into life like this, which is now setting on her brow the crown of the Columbus domes.
On the arrival of Jasper and Waubeno at Fort Dearborn, an incident occurred which affords a picture of the vanished days of the prairie chiefs and kings. There came riding up to the trading-houses a middle-aged chief named Shaubena.
This chief may be said to have been the guardian spirit of the infant city of Chicago. He hovered around her for her good for a half-century, and was faithful to her interests from the first to the end of his long life. If ever an Indian merited a statue or an imperishable memorial in a great city, it is Shaubena.
He was born about the year 1775, on the Kankakee River. His home was on a prairie island, as a growth of timber surrounded by a prairie used to be called. It was near the head-waters of Big Indian Creek, now in De Kalb County. This grove, or prairie island, still bears his name.
Here were his corn-fields, his sugar-camps, his lodges, and his happy people. In his youth he had been employed by two Ottawa priests, or prophets, to instruct the people in the principles of their religion, and so he had traveled extensively in the land of the lakes, and spoke English well. The old Methodist circuit-riders used to visit him on his prairie island, and his family was brought under their influence and accepted their faith. When, in 1812, Indian runners from Tecumseh visited the tribal towns of the Illinois River to tell the warriors that war had been declared between the United States and England, and to counsel them to unite with the English, Shaubena endeavored to restrain his people from such a course, and to prevent a union of the tribes against the American settlers. When he found that the Indians were marching against Chicago, he followed them on his pony.
He arrived too late. A scene of blood met his eyes. Along the lake, where the blue waves rolled in the sun, lay forty-two dead bodies, the remains of white soldiers, women, and children. These bodies lay on the prairie for four years, until the rebuilding of Fort Dearborn in 1816, with the exception of the mutilated remains of Captain Wells, which Black Partridge buried.
John Kinzie and his family had been saved, largely by the influence of Shaubena. Black Partridge summoned his warriors to protect the house. Shaubena rushed up to the porch-steps and set his rifle across the doorway. The rooms were occupied by Mrs. Kinzie, her children, and Mrs. Helm. A party of excited Indians rushed upon the place and forced their way into the house, to kill the women. The intended massacre was delayed by the friendly Indians.
In the mean time a half-breed girl, who had been employed by good John Kinzie, and who was devoted to his family, had stolen across the prairie to Sauganash, or Billy Caldwell, the friendly chief. This warrior seized his canoe and came paddling down the waters, plumed with eagle-feathers, with a rifle in his hand. He rose up in his canoe, in the dark, as he came to the shore.
"Who are you?" asked Black Partridge.
"I am Sauganash."
"Then save your white friends. You only can save them."
The chief came to the house.
"Go!" he said to the Indians. "I am Sauganash!"
John Kinzie was not only ever after grateful to Sauganash and the half-breed girl for what they had done to save him and his family, but he saw that he had found a faithful heart in Shaubena. So when, to-day, Shaubena came riding up to his door from his prairie island on his little pony, he said, heartily:
"Shaubena, thou art welcome!"
Jasper and Waubeno joined John Kinzie and the prairie chief.
"Thou, too art welcome," said John Kinzie. "Whence do you come?"
Jasper told again his simple story: how that he was a Tunker, traveling to preach to every one, and to hold schools among the Indians; how that he had been to Black Hawk for an interpreter and guide, and how Black Hawk had sent out Waubeno as his companion.
Jasper and Waubeno built a cabin of logs, bark, and bushes, in view of the lake, a little distance above the fort. They spent several days on the rude structure.
"There are many Indian children who come to the trading-post," said Jasper, "and I may be able to begin here my first Indian school. You will do all you can for me, will you not, Waubeno?"
"Parable, listen! You love my people, and I will do all that this arm, this heart, and this head can do for you. Whatever may happen, I will be true to you. If it costs my life, I will be true to you! You may have my life. Do you not believe Waubeno?"
"Yes, I believe you, Waubeno. You hold honor dearer than life. You say that I love your people. You know that I would do right by your people, to my own harm. Then why will you not make to me the promise I sought from you on the prairie?"
"I have not seen you tried. We know not any one until he is tried. My father was tried. He was true. I would talk with the boy that was laughed at for defending the turtle. He was tried. He did right because it was right. We will know each other better by and by. But Waubeno will always be true to you while you are true to Waubeno."
The school opened in the new cabin about the time that the troops were withdrawn from the fort and the place left in the charge of the Indian agent. Waubeno was the teacher, and Jasper his only pupil. After a time Jasper secured a few pupils from the post-trading Indians. But these remained but for a short time. They did not like the confinement of instruction.
One day a striking event occurred. The Indian agent came to visit the school. He was interested in the Indian boys, and especially in the progress of Waubeno, who was quick to learn. Before leaving, he said:
"I have a medal in my hand. It was given to me by the general of Michigan. On one side of it is the Father of his Country—see him with his sword—Washington, the immortal Washington."
He held up the medal and paused.
"On the other side is an Indian chief. He is burying his hatchet. I was given the medal as a reward, and I will give it at the end of three weeks to the boy in this school who best learns his lessons. Jasper shall decide who it shall be."
"I am glad you have said that," said Jasper. "That is the education of good-will. I am glad."
The Indian boys studied well, but Waubeno excelled them all. At the end of three weeks the Indian agent again appeared, and Jasper hoped to gain the heart of Waubeno by the award of the medal.
"To whom shall I give the medal?" asked the agent, at the end of the visit.
Jasper looked at his boy.
"It has been won by Waubeno," said Jasper. "I would be unjust not to say that all have been faithful, but Waubeno has been the most faithful of all."
Waubeno sat like a statue. He did not lift his eyes.
"Waubeno," said the agent, "you have heard what your teacher has said. The medal is yours. Here it is. You have reason to be proud of it. Waubeno, arise."
Waubeno arose. The agent held out the medal to him.
"Will you let me look at the medal?" said the boy.
The medal was handed to him. He examined it. He did not smile, or show any emotion. His look was indifferent and stoical. What was passing in his mind?
"The Indian chief is burying his hatchet, in the picture on this side of the medal," he said, slowly.
"Yes," said the Indian agent, "he is a good chief."
"The picture on this side represents Washington, you say?"
"Yes—Washington, the Father of his Country."
"He has a sword by his side, general, has he not? See."
"Yes, Waubeno, he has a sword by his side."
"He is a good chief, too?"
"Yes, Waubeno."
"Then why does he not bury his sword? I do not want the medal. What is good for the red chief should be as good for the white chief. I would be unlike my father to take a mean thing like that."
He stood like a statue, with curled lip and a fiery eye. The agent looked queerly at Jasper. He had nothing more to say. He took back the medal and went away. When he had gone, Waubeno said to Jasper:
"Pardon, brother; he is not the man—my promise to my father holds. They teach well, but they do not do well: it is the doing that speaks to the heart. The chief that buried his hatchet is a plumb fool, else the white chief would do so too. I have spoken!"
He sat down in silence and looked out upon the lake, on which the waves were breaking into foam in the purple distances. His face had an injured look, and his eyes glowed.
He arose at last and raised his hand, and said:
"I will pay them all some day!—"
Then he turned to Jasper and marked his disappointed face, and added:
"I will be true to you. Waubeno will be true to you."
One morning, as Jasper threw aside the curtain of skins that answered for a door to his cabin, a strange sight met his eyes. In the clearing between the cabin and the lake stood the tall form of an Indian. It was the most noble and beautiful form that he had ever seen, and the Indian's face and hands were white.
Jasper stood silent. The white Indian bent his eyes upon him, and the two looked in surprise at each other.
The Indian's eyes were dark, and like the eyes of the native races; but his nose was Roman, and his skin English, with a slight brown tinge. His hair was long and curly, and tinged with brown.
"Waubeno," said Jasper, "who is that?"
Waubeno came to the entrance of the cabin, and said:
"The white Indian. They bring good. Speak to him. It is a good sign."
"They?" said Jasper. "I never knew that there were white Indians, Waubeno. Where do they live? Where do they come from?"
"From the Great River. They come and go, and come and go, and they are unlike other Indians. They know things that other Indians do not know. They have a book that talks to them. It came from heaven."
Jasper stepped out on to the clearing, and Waubeno followed him. The white Indian awaited their approach.
"Welcome, stranger," said Jasper. "Where are you journeying from?"
"From the Great River (Mississippi) to the land of the lakes. They are coming, coming, my brothers from over the sea, as the prophet said. I have not seen you here before. I am glad that you have come."
"Where do you live?" asked Jasper.
"My tribe is few, and they wander. They wander till the brothers come. We are not like other people here, though all the tribes treat us well and give us food and shelter. We are wanderers. We have lived in the country many years, and we have often visited Kaskaskia. You will hear of us there. When the French came, we thought they were brothers. Then the English came, and we felt that they were brothers. The white people are our brothers."
"Come in," said Jasper, "and breakfast with us. You are strange to me. I never heard of you. You seem like a visitant from another world. Tell me, my brother, how came you to be white?"
"I beg your pardon, stranger, but I ask you the same question, How came you to be white? The same Power that made your face like the cloud and the snow, made mine the same. There is kindred blood in our veins, but I know not how it is—we do not know. Our ancestors had a book that told us of God, but it was lost when the French raised the cross at Kaskaskia. We had a legend of the cross, and of armies marching under the cross, and when the bell began to ring over the praise house there, we found that we, too, had ancient tales of the bell. More I can not tell. All the tribes welcome us, and we belong to all the tribes, and we have wandered for years and years. Our fathers wandered."
"This is all very strange," said Jasper. "Tell us more."
"I expected your coming," said the white Indian. "I was not surprised to see you here. I expected you. I knew it. There are more white brothers to come—many. Let me tell you about it all.
"We had a prophet once. He said that we came from over the sea, and that we would never return, but that we must wander and wander, and that one day our white brothers would come from over the sea to us. They are coming; their white wagons are crossing the plains. Every day they are coming. I love to see them come and pass. The prophet spoke true.
"The French say that we came from a far-away land called Wales. The French say that a voyager, whose name was Modoc, set sail for the West eight hundred years ago, and was never heard of again in his own land; that his ships drifted West, and brought our fathers here. That is what the French say. I do not know, but I think that you and I are brothers. I feel it in my heart. You have treated me like a brother, and I kiss you in my heart. I love the English. They are my friends. I am going to Malden. There will be more white faces here when I come again."
He took breakfast in the cabin, and went away. Jasper hardly comprehended the visit. He sought the Indian agent, and described to him the appearance of the wandering stranger, and related the story that the man had told.
"There are white crows, white blackbirds, white squirrels, and white Indians," said the agent, "strange as it may seem. I know nothing about the origin of any of them—only that they do exist. Ever since the French and Indians came to the lakes white Indians have been seen. So have white crows and blackbirds. The French claim that these white Indians are of Welsh origin, and are the descendants of a body of mariners who were driven to our shores in the twelfth century by some accident of navigation or of weather. If so, the Welsh are the second discoverers of America, following the Northmen. But I put no faith in these traditions. I only know that from time to time a white-faced Indian is seen in the Mississippi Valley. There are many tales and traditions of them. It is simply a mystery that will never be solved."
"But what am I to think of the white Indian's story?"
"Simply that he had been taught by the French romancers, and that he believed it himself. Black faces have strangely appeared among white peoples, and Nature alone, could she speak, could explain her laws in these cases. The Indians have various traditions of the white Indian's appearance in the regions about Chicago; they regard him as a medicine-man, or a prophet, or a kind of good ghost. It is thought to be good fortune to meet him."
"Why does he come here?" said Jasper.
"To see the white people. He believes that the white people are his kindred, and that they are coming, 'coming,' and one day that they will flock here in multitudes. The French have told him this. He is a mythical character. Somehow he has white blood in his veins. I can not tell how. The Welsh tradition may be true, but it is hardly probable."
Years passed. The white Indian appeared again. The fort had become a town. The Indian races were disappearing. He saw the white wagons crossing the prairies, and the reluctant Pottawattomies making their way toward the Great River and the lands of the sunset. He went away, solitary as when he came, and was never seen again.
Who may have been these mysterious persons whose white faces for generations haunted the lakes and the plains? They appeared at Kaskaskia, their canoes glided mysteriously along the Mississippi, and they were often seen at the hunting-camps of the North. They sought the French and the English as soon as these races began to make settlements, and they seemed to be strangely familiar with English tones, sounds, and words.
Jasper loved to look out from his cabin on the blue lake, and to dream of the old scenes of the Prussian war, of Körner, Von Weber, of Pestalozzi, and his friend Froebel, and contrast them with the rude new life around him. The past was there, but the future was here, and here was his work for the future. It is not what a man has that makes him happy, but what he is; not his present state, but the horizon of the future around him that imparts glow to life, and Jasper was at peace with himself in the sense of doing his duty. Heaven to him was bright with the smile of God, and he longed no more for the rose-gardens of Marienthal or the castles of the Rhine.
The appearance of the white Indian filled the mind of Waubeno with pride and hope.
"We will be happy now," he said. "You will be happy now; nothing happens to them who see the white Indian; all goes well. I know that you are good within, else he would not come; only they whose beings within are good see the white Indian, and he brings bright suns and moons and calumets of peace, and so the days go on forever. I now know that you speak true. And Waubeno has seen him; he will do well; he has seen the white crow among the black crows, and he will do well. Happy moons await Waubeno."
The lake was glorious in these midsummer days. The prairie roses hung from the old trees in the groves, and the air rang with the joyful notes of the lark and plover. Indians came to the fort and went away. Pottawattomies encamped near the place and visited the agency, and white traders occasionally appeared here from Malden and Fort Wayne.
But these were uneventful days of Fort Dearborn. The stories of Mrs. John Kinzie are among the most interesting memories of these days of general silence and monotony. The old Kinzie house was situated where is now the junction of Pine and North Water Streets. The grounds sloped toward the banks of the river. It had a broad piazza looking south, and before it lay a green lawn shaded by Lombardy poplars and a cottonwood tree. Across the river rose Fort Dearborn, amid groves of locust trees, the national flag blooming, as it were, above it.
The cottonwood tree in the yard was planted by John Kinzie, and lived until Chicago became a great city, in Long John Wentworth's day.
The old residents of Chicago will ever recall the beauty of the outlook from the south piazza. At the dull period of the agency, only an Indian canoe, perhaps from Mackinaw, disturbed the peace of the river.
It was on this piazza that on a June morning was heard the chorus of Moore's Canadian Boat Song on the Chicago River, and here General Lewis Cass presently appeared. The great men of the New West often gathered here after that. Here the best stories of the lake used to be told by voyagers, and Mark Beaubien, we may well suppose, often played his violin.
The scene of the lake and river from the place was changed by moonlight into romance.
Amid such scenes the old Chief Shaubena related the legends of the tribes, and Mrs. Kinzie the thrilling episodes of the massacre of 1812. Jasper, we may imagine, joined the company, with the beautiful spiritual tales of the Rhine, and Waubeno added his delightful wonder-tale of the white Indian, whose feet brought good fortune. No one then dreamed that John Kinzie's home stood for two millions of people who would come there before the century should close, or that the cool cottonwood tree would throw its shade over some of the grandest scenes in the march of the world.
Jasper made the best use of the story-telling method of influence in his school in the little cabin on the lake near Chicago River. He sought to impart moral ideas by the old Roman fables and German folk-lore stories. He often told the tale of the poor girl who went out for a few drops of water for her dying mother, in the water famine, and how her dipper was changed into silver, gold, and diamonds, as she shared the water with the sufferers on her return. But neither Æsop nor fairy lore so influenced the Indian boys as his story of the Indiana boy who defended the turtles and pitied the turtle with the broken shell.
"I would like to meet him," said Waubeno, one day when the story had been told. "What is his name, Parable? What do you call him by?"
"Lincoln," said Jasper, "Abraham Lincoln."
"Where does he live, Parable?"
"On Pigeon Creek, in Indiana."
"Is the place far away?"
"Yes, very far away by water, and a hard journey by land. Pigeon Creek is far away, near the Ohio River; south, Waubeno—far away to the south."
"Will you ever go there again?"
"Yes—I hope to go there again, and to take you along with me," said Jasper. "I have planned to go down the Illinois in the spring, in a canoe, to the Mississippi, and down the Mississippi to the Ohio, and visit Kaskaskia, and thence along the Ohio to the Wabash, and to the home where the boy lives who defended the turtles. It will be a long journey, and I expect to stop at many places, and preach and teach and form schools. I want you to go with me and guide my canoe. All these rivers are beautiful in summer. They are shaded by trees, and run through prairies of flowers. The waters are calm, and the skies are bright, and the birds sing continually. O Waubeno, this is a beautiful world to those who use it rightly—a beautiful, beautiful world!"
"Me will go," said Waubeno. "Me would see that boy. I want to see a story boy, as you say."
The attempt to establish an Indian school on the Chicago was not wholly successful. The pupils did not remain long enough to receive the intended influence. They came from encampments that were never stable. The Indian village was there one season, and gone the next. The Indians who came in canoes to the agency soon went away again. Jasper, in the spring of 1825, resolved to carry out the journey that he had described to Waubeno, and with the first warm winds he and the Indian boy set out for Kaskaskia by the way of the Illinois to the Mississippi, and by the Mississippi to the Kaskaskia.
It was a long journey. Jasper stopped often at the Indian encampments and the new settlements. Waubeno was a faithful friend, and he came to love him for true-heartedness, sympathy, and native worth of soul. He often tried to teach him by stories, but as often as he said, "Now, Waubeno, we will talk," he would say, "Tell me the one with broken shell"—meaning the story. There was some meaning behind this story of the turtle with the broken shell that had completely won the heart of Waubeno. The boy Abraham Lincoln was his hero. Again and again, after he had listened to the simple narrative, he asked:
"Is the story boy alive?"
"Yes, Waubeno."
"And we will meet him?"
"Yes."
"That is good. I feel for him here," and he would lay his hand on his heart. "I love the story boy."
They traveled slowly. After a long journey down the Illinois, the Mississippi rolled before them in the full tides of early spring. They passed St. Louis, and one late April evening found them before the once royal town of Kaskaskia.
The bell was ringing as they landed, the bell that had been cast in fair Rochelle, and that was the first bell to ring between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi. Most of the black-robed missionaries were gone, as had the high-born French officers, with their horses, sabers, and banner-plumes, who once sought treasure and fame in this grand town of the Mississippi Valley. The Bourbon lilies had fallen from old Fort Chartres a generation ago, and the British cross had come down, and to-day all the houses, new and old, were decked with the stars and stripes. It was not a holiday. What did it mean?
Jasper and Waubeno entered the old French town, and gazed at the brick buildings, the antique roofs, the high dormer windows, and the faded houses of by-gone priest and nun. The tavern was covered with flags, French and American, as were the grand house of William Morrison and the beautiful Edgar mansion. The house once occupied by the French commandant was wrapped in the national colors. It had been the first State House of Illinois. A hundred years before—just one hundred years—Kaskaskia Commons had received its grand name from his most Christian Majesty Louis XV, and it then seemed likely to become the capital of the French mid-continent empire in the New World. The Jesuits flocked here, zealous for the conversion of the Indian races. Here came men of rank and military glory, and Fort Chartres rose near it, grand and powerful as if to awe the world. But there was a foe in the fort of the French heart, and the boundless empire faded, and the old French town went to the American pioneer, and the fort became a ruin, like Louisburg at Cape Breton.
As Jasper and Waubeno passed along the broad streets they noticed that the town was filled with country people, and that there were Indians among them.
One of these Indians approached Waubeno, and said:
"She—yonder—see—Mary Panisciowa—daughter of the Great Chief—Mary Panisciowa."
Waubeno followed with his eye the daughter of the Chief of the Six Nations. He went forward with the crowd and came to the house that she was making her home, and asked to meet her. Jasper had followed him.
They turned aside from the street, which was full of excited people—excited Jasper knew not why. The door of the house where Mary Panisciowa was visiting stood open, and they were asked to enter.
She looked a queen, yet she had the graces of the English and French people. She was a most accomplished woman. She spoke both English and French readily, her education having been conducted by an American agent to whom she had been commended by her father.
"This is good news," she said.
"What?" said Jasper. "Good news comes from God. Yet all events are news from heaven. The people seem greatly exercised. What has happened?"
"Lafayette, the great Lafayette—have you not heard?—the marquis—he is on his way to Kaskaskia, and that is why I am here. My father fought under him, and the general sent him a letter thanking him for his services in the American cause. It was written forty years ago. I have brought it. I hope to meet him. Would you like to see it?—a letter from the great Lafayette."
Mary Panisciowa took from her bosom a faded letter, and said:
"My father fought for the new people, and I have taken up their religion and customs. I suppose that you have done the same," she said to Waubeno.
"No; that can not be, for me."
"Why? I supposed that you were a Christian, as you travel with the Tunker."
"Mary Panisciowa knows how my father died. I am his son. I swore to be true to his name. The Tunker says that I must forswear myself to become a Christian. That I shall never do. I respect the teachings of your new religion, and I love the Tunker and shall always be true to him, but I shall be true to the memory of my father. Mary Panisciowa, think how he died, and of the men who killed him. They claimed to be Christians. Think of that! I am not a Christian. Mary Panisciowa, there is a spot that burns in my heart. I do not dissemble. I do not deceive. But that fire will burn there till I have kept my vow, and I shall do it."
"Waubeno," said the woman, "listen to better counsels. Revenge only spreads the fires of evil. Forgiveness quenches them.—That is a noble letter," she said to Jasper.
"Yes, a noble letter, and the marquis is an apostle of human liberty, a friend of all men everywhere. What brings him here?"
"The old French and new English families. His visit is unexpected. The people can not receive him as they ought to, but he is to dine at the tavern, and there are to be two grand receptions at the great houses, one at Mr. Edgar's. I wish I could see him and show him this letter. I shall try. But they have not invited me. They are proud people, and they will not invite me; but I shall try to see him. It would be the happiest hour of my life if I could take the hand of the great Lafayette."
Mary Panisciowa was thrilled with her desire to meet General Lafayette.
Cannons boomed, drums and fifes played, and all the people hurried toward the landing. The marquis came in the steamer Natchez from St. Louis. When Mary Panisciowa heard the old bell ringing she knew that the marquis was coming, and she hid the faded old letter in her bosom and wept. She sent a messenger to the tavern, who asked Lafayette if he would meet the daughter of Panisciowa, and receive a message from her.
Just at night she looked out of the door, and saw an officer in uniform and a party of her own people coming toward the house. The officer appeared before the door, touched his head and bowed, and said:
"Mary Panisciowa, I am told."
"My father was Panisciowa."
"He fought under General Lafayette?"
"Yes, he fought under Lafayette, and I have a letter from the general here, written to him more than forty years ago. Will you read it?"
The officer took the letter, read it, and said:
"You should meet the general."
"You are very kind, sir. I want to meet him; but how? There is to be a reception at the Morrisons, but I am not invited. The Governor is to be there. But they would not invite me."
"Come to the reception at the Morrisons. I will be responsible. The marquis will welcome you. He is a gentleman. To say that a man is a gentleman, is to cover all right conduct. Bring your letter, and he will receive you. I will speak to Governor Coles about you. You will come?"
"May my friend Waubeno come with me? I am the daughter of a chief, and he is the son of a warrior. It would be befitting that we should come together. I wish that he might see the great Lafayette."
"As you like," said the officer, hurrying away with uncovered head.
Mary Panisciowa prepared to go to the grand reception. Early in the evening she and Waubeno, followed by Jasper, came up to the Morrison mansion, where a kind of court reception was to be held.
The streets were full of people. The houses were everywhere illuminated, and people were hurrying to and fro, or listening to the music in the hall.
Lafayette was now nearly threescore and ten years of age, the beloved hero of France and America, and the leader of human liberty in all lands. He had left Havre on July 12th, 1824, and had arrived in New York on the 15th of August. He was accompanied by his son, George Washington Lafayette, and his private secretary, M. Levasseur. His passage through the country had been a triumphal procession, under continuous arches of flags, evergreens, and flowers, bearing the words, "Welcome, Lafayette." Forty years had passed since he was last in America. The thirteen States had become twenty-four. He had visited Joseph Bonaparte, the grave of Washington, and the battle-field of Yorktown. His reception in the South had been an outpouring of hearts. And now he had turned aside from the great Mississippi to see Kaskaskia, the romantic town of the vanished French empire of the Mississippi.
Mary and Waubeno waited outside of the door. The Indian woman listened for a time to the gay music, and watched the bright uniforms as they passed to and fro under the glittering astrals. At last an American officer came down the steps, lifted his hat, and said to the two Indians and to Jasper:
"Follow me."
Lafayette had already received the public men of the place. Airy music arose, and the officials and their wives and guests were going through the form of the old court minuet.
The music of Mozart's Don Giovanni minuet has been heard in a thousand halls of state and at the festivals of many lands. We may imagine the charm that such music had here, in this oaken room of the forest and prairie. At the head of the plumed ladies and men in glittering uniforms stood the Marquis of France, whom the world delighted to honor, and led the stately obeisances to the picturesque movement of the music under the flags and astrals. A remnant of the old romantic French families were there, soldiers of the Revolution, the leaders of the new order of American life, Governor Coles and his officers, and rich traders of St. Louis. As the music swayed these stately forms backward and forward with the fascinating poetry of motion that can hardly be called a dance, the two Indian faces caught the spirit of the scene. Waubeno had never heard the music of the minuet before, and the strains entranced him as they rose and fell.