The Warriors Stalked Sedately Among The Lodges, Or Along The Margin
Of The Streams, Or Walked Out To Visit The Bands Of Horses That Were
Feeding Over The Prairie.
Half the village population deserted the
close and heated lodges and betook themselves to the water; and here
you might see boys and girls and young squaws splashing, swimming,
and diving beneath the afternoon sun, with merry laughter and
screaming.
But when the sun was just resting above the broken peaks,
and the purple mountains threw their prolonged shadows for miles over
the prairie; when our grim old tree, lighted by the horizontal rays,
assumed an aspect of peaceful repose, such as one loves after scenes
of tumult and excitement; and when the whole landscape of swelling
plains and scattered groves was softened into a tranquil beauty, then
our encampment presented a striking spectacle. Could Salvator Rosa
have transferred it to his canvas, it would have added new renown to
his pencil. Savage figures surrounded our tent, with quivers at
their backs, and guns, lances, or tomahawks in their hands. Some sat
on horseback, motionless as equestrian statues, their arms crossed on
their breasts, their eyes fixed in a steady unwavering gaze upon us.
Some stood erect, wrapped from head to foot in their long white robes
of buffalo hide. Some sat together on the grass, holding their
shaggy horses by a rope, with their broad dark busts exposed to view
as they suffered their robes to fall from their shoulders. Others
again stood carelessly among the throng, with nothing to conceal the
matchless symmetry of their forms; and I do not exaggerate when I say
that only on the prairie and in the Vatican have I seen such
faultless models of the human figure. See that warrior standing by
the tree, towering six feet and a half in stature. Your eyes may
trace the whole of his graceful and majestic height, and discover no
defect or blemish. With his free and noble attitude, with the bow in
his hand, and the quiver at his back, he might seem, but for his
face, the Pythian Apollo himself. Such a figure rose before the
imagination of West, when on first seeing the Belvidere in the
Vatican, he exclaimed, "By God, a Mohawk!"
When the sky darkened and the stars began to appear; when the prairie
was involved in gloom and the horses were driven in and secured
around the camp, the crowd began to melt away. Fires gleamed around,
duskily revealing the rough trappers and the graceful Indians. One
of the families near us would always be gathered about a bright
blaze, that displayed the shadowy dimensions of their lodge, and sent
its lights far up among the masses of foliage above, gilding the dead
and ragged branches. Withered witchlike hags flitted around the
blaze, and here for hour after hour sat a circle of children and
young girls, laughing and talking, their round merry faces glowing in
the ruddy light. We could hear the monotonous notes of the drum from
the Indian village, with the chant of the war song, deadened in the
distance, and the long chorus of quavering yells, where the war dance
was going on in the largest lodge. For several nights, too, we could
hear wild and mournful cries, rising and dying away like the
melancholy voice of a wolf. They came from the sisters and female
relatives of Mahto-Tatonka, who were gashing their limbs with knives,
and bewailing the death of Henry Chatillon's squaw. The hour would
grow late before all retired to rest in the camp. Then the embers of
the fires would be glowing dimly, the men would be stretched in their
blankets on the ground, and nothing could be heard but the restless
motions of the crowded horses.
I recall these scenes with a mixed feeling of pleasure and pain. At
this time I was so reduced by illness that I could seldom walk
without reeling like a drunken man, and when I rose from my seat upon
the ground the landscape suddenly grew dim before my eyes, the trees
and lodges seemed to sway to and fro, and the prairie to rise and
fall like the swells of the ocean. Such a state of things is by no
means enviable anywhere. In a country where a man's life may at any
moment depend on the strength of his arm, or it may be on the
activity of his legs, it is more particularly inconvenient. Medical
assistance of course there was none; neither had I the means of
pursuing a system of diet; and sleeping on a damp ground, with an
occasional drenching from a shower, would hardly be recommended as
beneficial. I sometimes suffered the extremity of languor and
exhaustion, and though at the time I felt no apprehensions of the
final result, I have since learned that my situation was a critical
one.
Besides other formidable inconveniences I owe it in a great measure
to the remote effects of that unlucky disorder that from deficient
eyesight I am compelled to employ the pen of another in taking down
this narrative from my lips; and I have learned very effectually that
a violent attack of dysentery on the prairie is a thing too serious
for a joke. I tried repose and a very sparing diet. For a long
time, with exemplary patience, I lounged about the camp, or at the
utmost staggered over to the Indian village, and walked faint and
dizzy among the lodges. It would not do, and I bethought me of
starvation. During five days I sustained life on one small biscuit a
day. At the end of that time I was weaker than before, but the
disorder seemed shaken in its stronghold and very gradually I began
to resume a less rigid diet. No sooner had I done so than the same
detested symptoms revisited me; my old enemy resumed his pertinacious
assaults, yet not with his former violence or constancy, and though
before I regained any fair portion of my ordinary strength weeks had
elapsed, and months passed before the disorder left me, yet thanks to
old habits of activity, and a merciful Providence, I was able to
sustain myself against it.
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