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Two Revenges

Tis no more IT possible to predicate the conduct of an Indian than that of a woman. In Detroit lived Wasson, one of the warriors of the dreaded Pontiac, who had felt some tender movings of the spirit toward a girl of his tribe. The keeper of the old red mill that stood at the foot of Twentyfourth Street adopted her, with the consent of her people, and did his best to civilize her. But Wasson kept watch. He presently discovered that whenever the miller was away a candle shone in the window until a figure wrapped in a military cloak emerged from the shadows, knocked, and was admitted. On the night that Wasson identified his rival as Colonel Campbell, an English officer, he stole into the girl's room through the window and cut her down with his hatchet. Colonel Campbell, likewise, he slew after Pontiac had made prisoners of the garrison.

The mill was shunned, after that, for the figure of a girl, with a candle in her hand, frightened so many people by moving about the place that it was torn down in 1795.

But the red man was not always hostile. Kenen, a Huron, loved a half-breed girl, whom he could never persuade into a betrothal. One day he accidentally wounded a white man in the wood, and lifting him on his shoulder he hurried with him to camp. It was not long before he found that the soft glances of the half-breed girl were doing more to cure his victim than the incantations of the medicine-man, and in a fit of anger, one day, he plucked forth his knife and fell upon the couple.

Her look of innocent surprise shamed him. He rushed away, with an expression of self-contempt, and flung his weapon far into the river. Soon after, The Central States and Great Lakes the white man was captured by the Iroquois. They were preparing to put him to the torture when a tall Indian leaped in among them, with the cry, "I am Kenen. Let the pale face go, for a Huron chief will take his place." And, as the bonds fell from the prisoner's wrists and ankles, he added, "Go and comfort the White Fawn." The white man was allowed to enter a canoe and row away, but as he did so his heart misgave him: the words of a deathsong and the crackling of flames had reached his ears. THE HIAWATHA HE story of Hiawatha-known about the lakes as Manabozho and in the East as Glooskapis the most widely disseminated of the Indian legends. He came to earth on a Messianic mission, teaching justice, fortitude, and forbearance to the red men, showing them how to improve their handicraft, ridding the woods and hills of monsters, and finally going up to heaven amid cries of wonder from those on whose behalf he had worked and counselled. He was brought up as a child among them, took to wife the Dakota girl, Minnehaha ("Laughing Water"), hunted, fought, and lived as a warrior; yet, when need came, he could change his form to any shape of bird, fish, or plant that he wished. He spoke to friends in the voice of a woman and to enemies in tones like thunder. A giant in form, few dared to resist him in battle, yet he suffered the common pains and adversities of his kind, and while fishing in one of the great lakes in his white stone canoe, that moved whither he willed it, he and his boat were swallowed by the king of fishes. He killed the creature by beating at its heart with a stone club, and when the gulls had preyed on its flesh, as it lay floating on the surface, until he could see daylight, he clambered through the opening they had made and returned to his lodge.