Adventures Among the Red Indians. Sidney Harry Wright
pointed to the man whom he had knocked down. “Take away his knife,” he said, addressing his 54 boatswain, a burly Yankee. “Now—you have attempted to kill an Englishman, and you shall die.” Don Pedro felt the edge of the knife and gave it a final “strop” on his palm. “I’m going to cut his head off, as a warning to the rest of you,” he said, so sternly that the Indians and even the cacique uttered little cries of terror.
Ascencion began to think that Englishmen were no more merciful than other people; for, as the Indian crouched whimpering at Don Pedro’s feet, he stooped and brandished the knife with all the coolness of a butcher. But, to her amazement, when he stood up again, the head was still in its normal position, while, in his left hand, Campbell held the braided pigtail of hair, full five feet long, which had proudly adorned the head of the would-be assassin; and he, still doubting his good fortune in having got off so cheaply, sprang up and made headlong for the woods.
This is but one of the scores of anecdotes told of the celebrated soldier of fortune, Peter Campbell, who, whatever may have been his faults, was never known to show fear, to be disloyal to his employers or unjust to the Indians; indeed, by his unfailing good nature and sense of fairness and fun, he succeeded in adjusting many a tribal or political grievance which in the hands of most men, however well-meaning, would probably have ended in bloodshed.
The Portuguese girl was taken up the river, and when she returned to her parents she was accompanied by a husband, for she married an Irish settler in Corrientes.
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CHAPTER IV
THE IROQUOIS OF THE CANADIAN BOUNDARY
The Iroquoian branch of the red race is considered by the best authorities to be far superior, mentally and physically, to any other. Before British rule was definitely established in Canada, they were a power (known as “The Six Nations”) duly recognised by English and French alike; and to-day, though less numerous than the Algonquins, they show fewer signs of dying out than the other families. Ontario is, and has ever been, a favourite district of theirs, and it was while living in this province that Dr. John Bigsby, who died in 1881, jotted down the notes concerning them which one often sees quoted in works dealing with the study of races.
Surgeon-Major Bigsby had the good fortune, as a young man, to be appointed geologist and medical officer to the Canadian Boundary Commission, a post decidedly congenial to a zealous student of ethnology, since it brought him in constant touch with the Cherokees, who, with the Hurons, Mohawks, etc., constitute the Iroquoian family. The inspection of military and native hospitals, together with his 56 geological researches, necessitated frequent journeys north, south, and west from Montreal; and it was on one such journey, in the year 1822, that he met with a string of adventures both comical and exciting.
From Montreal he set out in a light waggon for Kingston, where he fell in with an acquaintance, Jules Rocheblanc, a fur-trader who, like himself, had various calls to make on the shores of Lake Ontario. Rocheblanc had already arranged to travel with Father Tabeau, the diocesan inspector of missions, and the doctor very willingly joined their party. The mission boat, unlike the birch canoes, was a well-built, roomy craft paddled by eight or ten Indians—Cherokees and Hurons—all of whom spoke Canadian-French fluently. The weather, though cool, was far from severe, and as all three travellers had frequent engagements ashore, these made welcome breaks in the journey.
After Toronto was passed, the white stations became scarcer, and villages inhabited by Indians more frequent; and, at the first of these, the young army surgeon began to fear that the treachery so often justly imputed to the redskins was going to betray itself.
Three of the Indians had asked leave to go ashore for a day’s hunting, and, as the meat supply had run short, Père Tabeau was glad to let them go, on the understanding that they were to await him that evening at a spot below the next Indian village, at which he was to halt for a few hours. Owing to some minor accident, it was well on in the afternoon before the boat came in sight of the village, which stood at the foot of a hill, immediately on the lake shore.
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Two or three dozen Indians could be seen on a grassy space, engaged in their national ball-play—a mixture of tennis, lacrosse, and Rugby football, which will be more closely described in the next chapter. By the goal nearest the water, the absent canoemen were standing, a goodly heap of game piled at their feet. The moment they caught sight of their boat they drew the attention of the players to it; these immediately abandoned the game and, running to the farther goal, picked up muskets and hastened with them towards the quay.
“This is something new,” said Bigsby, “and I don’t like the look of it. For whom do they take us?” He took a pistol from his bag, and Rocheblanc did the same; then, looking towards the bank again, they saw that every redskin had pointed his gun-muzzle on the boat.
“I think it is only a salute,” said the priest, “though I must confess I have never been so honoured before. They are harmless, hard-working men, and all know me perfectly well.”
He had scarcely finished speaking when the guns began to go off in twos and threes and sixes, anyhow, in fact. Then the surgeon put away his pistol and laughed, for there was not a splash on the water anywhere.
“The Father was right; it’s only a salute. Do they often do this?” he asked of the nearest of the canoemen. “I’ve not seen it before.”
The Indian looked very knowing and mysterious, and, after a pause, answered:
“It is a royal salute. They only fire like this for a 58 great Iroquois chief, or for a messenger from the white king.”
Very soon another succession of reports came, the guns all the while trained so accurately on the boat that even Bigsby, fresh from three years’ constant active service at the Cape, began earnestly to hope that no one had, in the excitement of the moment, dropped a bullet into a gun-muzzle by mistake. Before the muskets could be loaded a third time the travellers were safely at the landing-stage.
At other Indian villages the doctor had noticed that the priest was always subjected to lengthy greetings, speechifyings, and very elaborate homage. The homage and the greetings were not absent to-day, but they were of the hurried and perfunctory sort, for everyone, after a word and an obeisance to his reverend fellow-traveller, turned to Bigsby himself; and the old chief, coming forward with tremulous respect, began to address a long oration to him, calling him the lord of lakes and forests, the father of the red man, the slayer of beasts, and a score of other titles; in short, “describing him ever so much better than he knew himself,” as John Ridd says. While he was stammering out a suitable acknowledgment in French, the parish priest came hurrying to greet his superior, and then the mystery was explained, for Père Tabeau introduced the lord of lakes, etc., to him as plain “Surgeon Bigsby.”
The old curé laughed heartily.
“I understand. Your uniform is responsible for all this, monsieur. Your boatmen had told us that an ambassador from the king was coming with the Père 59 Supérieur.” He pointed at the doctor’s regimental coat.
“Then that is why all the canoemen have been so distant and servile with me to-day,” said the young surgeon. “I’ve not been able to get a word out of them.”
Usually he wore a perfectly plain, blue relief-jacket, but on this particular morning he had donned a very old scarlet tunic, of the dragoon regiment to which he belonged, merely because the day happened to be too chilly for the thin serge jacket, and not cold enough for him to trouble about unpacking a winter coat; and if this had raised him in the canoemen’s estimation, he had been quite unconscious of it. As a matter of fact, when the Indians left the boat that morning, they had already