Chapter XV: Part 15

“Ah-h!” she cried, her red lips showing her white teeth, her nodding head setting her golden hair to glimmering beneath the brown otter fur, her eyes shining with triumph, “it’s _him_ that didna say! He is the sodger-man to keep his plans in the sole o’ his boot.”

Her father pressed her head smotheringly against the folds of his great coat. “Whist, hinny, whist!” he exclaimed vacuously; “I surrender, Captain! I surrender! The bairn’s but a bairn when a’ is said! She kens na what she is sayin’; an’ I mak nae doubt, too, she is tellin’ lees.”

“I make no doubt that _you_ are telling lies!” said the captain in despair.

For with full ten hours’ start, the escaped prisoner, himself a military man of much experience, of tried courage, of crafty resource, and moreover singularly well acquainted with the conditions of the country, could set at defiance any pursuer who should enter upon the chase in darkness, in intense cold, in a furious snowstorm, and in absolute ignorance of the direction which the fugitive had taken. The passage of the night with the late wintry dawn would add some seven hours to the fair start she had contrived for him. The commandant was nettled by the consciousness that this advantage might have been somewhat abridged by a trifle more precaution; for although no supper was served the prisoner, he being expected to reserve such portion as he desired from his dinner for that purpose, as was the habit, for which an allowance was duly made, the cell had been visited by the officer of the day when making his rounds. The girl was still soundly sleeping, and doubtless did not hear the opening of the door as the officer of the day unlocked it and glanced in. It was already dark, and by the faint glimmerings of the lantern held outside for him by the corporal accompanying him upon his rounds, he saw the bare walls and floor, and in the single chair a muffled figure leaning upon the table, presumably asleep or plunged in deep dejection, the head bowed upon the arms. It never occurred to him that this shadowy presence in the bleak gloom could be other than the exhausted and travel-worn prisoner, whom he did not wish to rouse unnecessarily. The officer’s duties were many and pressing at this hour and called him elsewhere. Therefore, closing the door and turning the key, he thought no more of the captive till he saw the golden head of the changeling when the mystery was revealed.

Captain Howard, who had given the girl access to the cell, could ill accuse the subaltern of neglect of duty, and the commandant himself could hardly have been expected to guard against masterly strategy in the quarter whence it had emanated.

Messengers were presently ready to start out with the first intimation of a lull in the storm or the peep of day to warn all the Cherokee towns of reprisal should they dare to harbor the fugitive, for that Laroche would return to the friendly Cherokee strongholds hardly admitted of a doubt in the mind of Captain Howard. He had not sufficient troops at command to awe the Indians into surrendering the fugitive, but he hoped that the passive force of the treaty and its advantages, otherwise annulled, might avail.

Captain Howard was a man of magnanimity. Even with the cup of well-earned success dashed from his lips he had the good feeling to pity the father,--his own daughters were far away in England,--as Jock Lesly continually ejaculated, “_I_ surrender, Captain! The wean’s no responsible! _I_ surrender!”

“Jock,” he said, “you need not forswear yourself. We all know that you would not have jeopardized the fair interests of the Indian trade for all the Johnny Crapauds who ever passed the tongue of a buckle through a sword-belt,--not even if instead of your salt he had eaten your whole station! Miss Lilias Lesly here, for reasons seeming to herself good and fitting”--he cast upon her an acrid glance--“set the man free,--for which she is under arrest, and”--intercepting a wild bleat of paternal protest--“will remain so in your ain ha’ house under your watch and ward; and we have no doubt she will be produced when summoned, and you will give your faithful recognizance to that effect.”

He was reflecting that it would answer every purpose to detain the girl thus, for while her punishment might result should the matter continue of importance, it would otherwise hardly be contemplated by the colonial authorities in view of the unpopularity of such a step.

Jock Lesly was in such haste to sign and seal a paper betokening this clemency that he could hardly hold the sputtering quill; and during this solemn ceremony the irrepressible Lilias broke out laughing with hysterical glee, and requested Captain Howard to put into a wee corner o’ that paper the promise he had given her that she “suld hae a’ thae blankets that were ne’er brought to the fort, afore the sodgers suld steal them a’.”

“Thae bit duds were unco gude duds,” she remarked fleeringly of these immaterial comforts.

XXII

CALLUM MACILVESTY had been soon at Jock Lesly’s side to afford him such succor and countenance as was possible under the circumstances. He asked for leave to aid him in transporting Lilias, so stiff with the cold was she, back to the cave house, where she sat on the buffalo rug before the flaring fire, her glittering hair all tumbling about her shoulders, her eyes shining with triumph, and laughing with gay outbursts of flattered joy to learn how wretched they had all been because of her absence, and how wrong and wicked they esteemed her sudden arbitrary release of the prisoner.

“_I_ amna sorry,” she protested, “except for that the callant hae on my gude red rokelay, an’ my best puce-colored serge gownd, an’ my gude murrey screen, wi’ only ae wee tear in the weft o’ it,--an’ I’se warrant I’ll no see a’ that braw gear again!”

It was Callum who sought to impress her with the magnitude of the offense that she had committed, for Jock Lesly cared for naught else on earth save that she was safe and sat once more on the rug before the blazing fire of the ha’ house.

“An’ what care I how far ye went an’ how hard ye fared to tak him, Callum!” she cried indignantly. “Gin I hadna tauld you the callant was French, you wad ne’er hae kenned it. An’ ye tauld yon Captain Howard--that bluidy-minded chiel! I wuss he was in his ain cauld tolbooth to freeze stiff like my nainsell!”

“Whist, whist, hinny!” remonstrated Jock Lesly. “Callum wadna hae tauld the lad was French had he kenned you wad wuss to keep it secret; wad ye, Callum?”

With this direct appeal the Highland soldier, sitting in his armchair opposite Jock Lesly at the fire, with Lilias between them on the rug, gazed steadily into the glowing coals. He could not evade the question.

“Yes,” he answered, “I wad! I wad ha’ tauld e’en if Lilias had bid me keep a quiet sough aboot it!”

“Na, Callum! surely na!” exclaimed Jock Lesly irritably. “Ye wadna vex the bairn!” For Lilias had lifted her head with its wealth of flaring hair, and was gazing at Callum with intent, questioning, speculative eyes. “Ye care too muckle for Lilias for that!” Jock Lesly prompted him.

“I care more for my oath, for my duty, than for any lassie alive!” protested the blunt soldier.

There was a moment’s silence, while the fire roared and the smoke rushed up the chimney into the wild wintry storm without, of which they here heard naught. Jock Lesly, with a knitted brow, filled his pipe and said no more. Callum, his glass poised upon his knee, gazed steadfastly into the flames, and Lilias, with dewy, gleaming eyes fixed upon him, suddenly exclaimed, as if in delighted reminiscence, “Ou, ay, that was what Tam Wilson said! His oath, his honor aboon a’! No woman’s wile, no woman’s smile could win him awa’! Ah, the leal heart he had! That is what Tam Wilson aye said!”

“I care na for Tam Wilson, nor for what he said!” declared the dour Callum glumly.

“Not the ane you kenned!” cried Lilias. “_This_ Tam Wilson ye never saw!”

The Highland soldier thought the cold and excitement and anxiety had shaken her balance a trifle.

“But Callum,” she persisted, “suppose it wad gar me like you better if you had hid that the puir lad is French?”

“I wadna hae dune it! I wadna hae hid it!” He shook his head sadly, and her father stared at him in amazement. Inch by inch he teemed renouncing his chance for the girl’s good graces.

“A-weel, a-weel,” she said slowly. “But since a’s come an’ gane, an’ the march was for naething, an’ the prisoner is flitted, an’ I was frozen wi’ cauld an’ misery, an’ am like to be sent to Charlestoun to answer for my crimes, ye can say now, lad, that ye are verra sorry that ye disclosed my gossip to your officer, an’ ye wadna do it again if it were to be done anew! Ye will say that?” She looked at him with keen expectant eyes.

“I wad do it all the same,” he protested deliberately. Then, “Lilias, why wad ye torment me wi’ a’ these questions? They tear out my heart!”

“I sall ne’er forget it!” she cried. “Ye did it against my wull. An’ now ye say that if ye had the chance anew ye wad e’en do it agen, though I suld _hate_ ye for it!”

“It’s my oath, Lilias! My duty! I canna look to you instead o’ thae great obligations. I suld do it again an’ again, whate’er ye might say or feel, an’ keep my oath till death!”

She suddenly broke out laughing afresh, in shrill sweet ecstatic joy. “That Tam Wilson! Wha wad think! That Tam Wilson at last!”

She seemed enigmatic to them both, but they hardly had space to read the riddle, for Callum, recognising the passage of time, sprang up to return to the fort before his limited leave expired. He ran briskly up the ladder with Jock Lesly clambering after him to take down the barricade to let him out, and to secure the bars subsequent to his exit. There was still fire upon the hearth of the great trading-house, and a dull red glow suffused its dusky brown spaces. It was only as Lesly turned to close the door of the counter that he noticed that Lilias, agile enough despite the congealed condition she so graphically described, had followed also, and after the soldier had sprung down the front steps and strode off through the snow the two, father and daughter, stood for a moment gazing into the vast dark stormy wilderness, permeated by the sense of silent unseen motion in the whirling flakes, of which only the nearest were visible in the red glow of the dying fire from within.

“Hegh, come, bairnie, we’se e’en steek the door,” Lesly said.

The lantern in his hand showed her face to be all sweetly smiling. She was looking into the blank voids of the snowy gloom and carrying first one hand and then the other to her lips with an engaging free curve and tossing each toward the wilderness.

“And what now?” he demanded, staring owlishly down at her in amaze.

“Just throwing a wheen kisses to Tam Wilson,--oh puir Tam Wilson! Wha wad hae thought he wad e’er win hame agen!”

“Wow!” said her father glumly. “Tam Wilson!--drat Tam Wilson, I say! We hae had an unco pother ower Tam Wilson, now!”

But she ran in ahead of him laughing in great glee, and he overheard her in her little chamber while she disrobed for bed talking about Tam Wilson and Tam Wilson to Luckie Meg, who answered acquiescently to whatever she said, “Ou,--ay! I’se warrant!” and apparently gave scant heed, even if she heard at all.

For some weeks Callum MacIlvesty felt anew that he was admitted into a sort of Paradise in frequenting the ha’ house, albeit his heart was sore. The rescue that she had planned and achieved for the prisoner at such risk and suffering to herself argued much for the strength of her attachment to Laroche, and this forbade hope even when hope seemed most possible. She herself was so gay, so whimsically cheery, so blithe about the hearth, where the Highlander loved to sit as of yore with her father. She noted Callum’s depressed mien, and ascribing it to the fruitless result of the long laborious march and triumphant capture, argued that he had done all that he could and more than any other man would, his whole duty, and the sequence was the affair of Captain Howard,--and then remarked most pertinently that if she were that officer and had no better a tassel to a nightcap than that frayed thing he sported in public at the guard-house, she would resign from the army!

In order to prove that Captain Howard had himself sustained no damage in the loss of his notable prisoner, she cited the fact that the war with France was now over, cessation of hostilities had been announced on the 21st of January, and since the treaty had been signed in February, it had become known that the French forts, Toulouse, Tombecbé, Condé, were to be surrendered as early as English officers could be detailed to receive the transfer. All prisoners were to be released,--among those specially demanded she had seen in the Gazette the name of Lieutenant de Laroche,--already escaped though he was!

But all this, though so prettily urged, did not suffice to lift the gloom that weighed on Callum’s mind. He was soon to say farewell, to rejoin the Forty-Second, to go he knew not whither, nor when to return!

It was one day when he was thus a-mope, as Lilias was wont to describe his state of mind, that Callum discovered her secret, if so candid an emotion can be so called. The ha’ house had fallen into its ancient habitudes cannily enough, as if sorrows had never menaced it, and Lilias in her brilliant blue gown with roses scattered adown its white stripes sat at her wheel spinning as heedfully and dexterously as if she had never fashioned toils of more significance. Callum on the settle, his arms folded, his head a little bent, gazed into the red coals. All that he had once hoped, nay expected, was annulled by the sentiments implied in her release of Laroche, and the resentment she had expressed toward himself for revealing aught that she had told him, albeit she had not bespoken secrecy. Therefore he experienced a revulsion of feeling so complete, so acute, as almost to resemble pain in its breathless keenness. He had suddenly lifted his eyes and caught hers fixed upon him with an expression he had never seen in them before, wistful, smiling, yet serious, and deeply tender. His heart gave a great plunge and every nerve was tense. He rose, and still looking at her, as if he feared she might vanish like some lovely dream, advanced across the hearth. He sat down beside her in her father’s chair, still seeking to read--the dullard!--the obvious mystery of the sapphire light in her eyes.

“Lilias,” he said clumsily and all tremulous, “have you something to tell me?”

“I trow not!” she exclaimed, her face roseate with smiles and blushes, but giving a lofty nod of her golden head. “I was thinking, man, you may hae something to tell to me!”

“Ah, Lilias, I hae tauld it sae often!” he cried bewildered.

“An’ sae you are tired o’ telling it?” she retorted. “Eh, sirs, to be tired sae early!”

“I can never be tired of telling it, Lilias, if only you will listen to it,--how I love you more and more day by day!”

“It’s just as weel, then,”--she cast a radiant smile upon him as she bent anew to her wheel,--“for I expect to listen to it--that is--whiles--at orra times--when I hae naething better to do--as lang as I live.”

It was not in Callum’s scheme of love-making to suggest the suddenness of this acceptability of a suit so long urged. Luckie Meg herself could not have assented more acquiescently than he in every detail that Lilias chose to propound. It was only once, in the course of those long sunless afternoons in the cavern, with the red glow of the fire about them and the impenetrable walls to fend off the alien world so far away from their consciousness, when all their talk was of their mutual experience of the sentiment that swayed them, what each had felt and thought, that Callum showed symptoms of rebellion--being informed that she looked upon him and he might consider himself as “Tam Wilson.”

“But I will not!” cried Callum, ready to put the question to the torture at once. Jealousy is not so easily vanquished. Indeed it hardly dies even under the heel of victory!

“Not the ane that you knew,” she stipulated. “Just ane auld love o’ my ain! He wad put his oath before all. An’ he loved a woman well, but honor mair! an’ he had no deceit nor guile in his heart (though I hinna forgot about your report to Captain Howard, neither, an’ I’ll sort ye weel for it some day), an’ he had no false nations nor false tongues (he had mickle ado to speak his ain), an’ no false names (‘Tam Wilson’ bein’ laid to him because he was sae like ‘Tam Wilson’). An’ I suld hae kenned ye earlier for him,--though your hair hae aye got a place that is streakit wi’ brown an’ lighter brown an’ I think it wadna show gin it were brushed backward,--but I aye loved the look o’ ye, only I never saw ye put to the test, and sae I thought ye were just plain ‘Callum McIlvesty.’ But now I ken ye are Tam Wilson!”

And smiling at him with lips so joyous, so red and sweet, Callum yielded the point and assumed in this wise the sobriquet which personified her girlish ideal.

Still it nettled him grievously. She might have called her ideal “Callum.”

“Whist, lad, whist,” said her father to him one day, “an’ I’se tell ye something ye will ne’er find out frae her.”

Then with much solemnity, with circumspection, he pulled out a paper from his wallet, to which he could not have paid more respectful and close attention if it had been a schedule of prices current. It was a letter from Laroche, dated on the French man-of-war L’Aigle, and was addressed jointly to Jock Lesly and his daughter. It was an offer of marriage to Lilias, and begged that they would fix a date to meet him in Charlestown, where the ceremony might be performed by both Catholic and Protestant clergy. It set forth his rank, means, and expectations, which were very considerable, and gave references which were both accessible and unimpeachable.

“An’, lad,” said Jock Lesly, looking owlishly at Callum while leaning over the counter at the trading-house where he had driven so many bargains, “seeing that she is my only child, and that ensigncy of yours is gey far to seek, and this man is a sure enough lieutenant, not o’ red Injuns but of the French army, and is a chevalier or a sieur,--there’s no rebate on that,--and has lands an’ a château and some income, and the lassie seemed fond o’ him on the Tennessee, and here she set him free when they had him by the heels at the fort,--why I downa say, but I advised her--weel, to marry the fallow, when we go down this spring, an’ gae to live in France. It’s far awa’, is France, but they hae gude glimmerings o’ sense about their weaving there. I hae seen some gude camlets frae France, an’ ye ken there’s no place like Lyons for silk--though that’s na for my trade neither.”

Callum’s heart sank for the mere consciousness that his happiness had trembled in such jeopardy. “And what did she say?”

“Lilias?--why, she said ae sentence, ‘He isna Tam Wilson!’ Sae, lad, if ye will be advised by me, ye’ll be Tam Wilson as near as ye can find out how!”

About this time an ensigncy was secured for Callum through his family’s influence, and when he returned shortly to Charlestown he met there Everard, who was in a state of exuberant and facetious triumph in the manner of the escape of Captain Howard’s prisoner, having earlier eluded him also, and who was the first to congratulate the young Highlander upon the attainment of his commission and the near approach of his wedding day. For in the early summer Callum and Lilias were married in Charlestown and sailed away, leaving auld Jock still deeply immersed in the problems of the Indian trade. These problems became much simplified by the withdrawal of the French from the country, and soon the Cherokees began to present those curious symptoms of degeneracy which seem the inevitable incident of the first stages of civilization, an interregnum, so to speak, which ensues upon the last vestiges of the ancient status. Thereafter they were only formidable locally and in small predatory bands, and represented no more a definitely organized menace to the British provinces. In the course of some years a great happiness and source of pride fell to the lot of Jock Lesly. The reversal of the attainder had restored the chief of the ancient house of MacIlvesty to his pristine position with others of his kinsmen of minor rank. By reason of several deaths Callum MacIlvesty succeeded to a baronetcy, and Jock Lesly, despite his quondam bluff expressions of scorn of a title, found its taste exceedingly sweet as applied to his daughter; he was proud too of Callum’s rise in the army through successive promotions for gallant conduct in the field.

“He smacks his lips ower ‘Captain Sir Callum an’ Leddy MacIlvesty’ as if the words were fitten to eat,” Dougal commented dourly, “an’ somehow he says ’em fifty times a day!”

There was another who heartily rejoiced in this advance of fortune when it came to his ears, for Lady MacIlvesty’s beauty and what were called her “eccentricities” made her of some social note in her day. Laroche had loved the girl very truly for herself, and although he had sought to look upon her rejection of his suit as in a certain sense an escape for himself, in view of her humble station, her plebeian father, her simple education and limited experience, and their incongruity with his objects of ambition and the sphere of his association, he could not entertain the reminiscence without a keen sentimental regret, albeit blended with tender pleasure to know that the world had gone well with her. He too had reached, as he deserved, promotion, and at no small danger, as the sabre slashes received in the hand-to-hand warfare of that day, and which disfigured his bland handsome face, might betoken. He lived several years after his retirement from active service. One who had known him in those halcyon days on the Tennessee River might hardly have recognized him later, so scarred, gray-haired, wrinkled, and very thin he had become,--a mere rack on which to hang his decorations and the ribbons of his orders. He had always been esteemed a man of unique ability, and his conversation was long valued by the judicious in the cafés and salons of Paris which he frequented. When he reached the discursive and reminiscent stage of advancing age, often, as the night would wear on in a choice company, he would discourse of high themes of national possibilities, and regretfully rehearse disastrous phases of the country’s past that had fallen within his personal knowledge,--of the great territories that France had developed and forfeited; plans of empire that she had failed to utilize; strange peoples of martial values who had sought her protectorate in vain. Then he would revert to his own life among them,--reciting details of their curious customs and mysterious antiquity; telling thrilling stories of personal adventure, now of an escape from the menace of the torture and the stake, and now of his release from the trebly guarded stronghold of a British fort by the aid of a beautiful English lady of rank who loved him and whom he adored.

And although as he grew older and his audiences younger they believed this unnamed English lady of rank to be entirely apocryphal, the tear was obviously genuine with which he sweetened his glass as he told that she was dead now,--years ago--ah yes--dead!

“_Il y a une autre vie! C’est une belle espérance!_” he would sigh, for he was always deeply religious. “But alas, that the sweets of this life are transitory!”

And presently he would be talking of the triumphs of engineering possible in that vast America. Sometimes he would trace out on the tablecloth with the aid of the scroll-like pattern of the damask the outline of the great bend of a river which he affirmed had singly saved that country to the English and reft it from the French, as its extraordinary obstructions to navigation prevented all adequate conveyance of munitions of war to the Cherokees, who held the balance of power. He would mark off the canal which he had purposed to build in the fullness of time, and the site he had selected for the barrier towns to guard the region of the portages, necessary to evade the obstructions, as a temporary substitute. The technical terms of the oft-told tale, the abstruse calculations of the elaborately demonstrated problem, would finally wear out the interest of his auditors; they would slip away one by one, and leave him bending over the table, gloating upon the symmetrical possibilities of his plan, bewailing its untimely frustration, seeing, instead of the blank cloth, that rich new land with its gigantic growths of primeval forests and those dizzy whirls of turbulent waters, that stretch out miles and miles impassably, where even now, despite the advance of modern science and the exorcising appropriations of Congress, the devils, _hottuk ookproose_, still dance in the riotous rapids and sing tumultuously as of yore.

NOTES

NOTES

[Footnote 1: Page 4. A detail of the incidents of this visit to the king in London and the consequent impressions made upon the minds of the Indians would be of much interest to the student of civilization. It is to be regretted that Lieutenant Henry Timberlake of Virginia, who accompanied the Cherokees to England, should have devoted so great a space in his “Memoirs” of that event (published in London in 1765) to plaintive accounts of his wrangling with governmental officials concerning his reimbursement for sundry expenses on their account, with which it seems he burdened himself without sufficient warrant, and to the effort to repel the insinuation that he undertook the enterprise of conducting them thither for his own personal profit, as impresario so to speak; for the people of that city pressed in hordes to see them, many of the nobility as well as citizens of lower rank, and some, evidently without the knowledge of Lieutenant Timberlake, paid for the privilege. Beyond the strange dirge-like chant which Ostenaco sang on landing; their indifference to the architecture of the Cathedral of Exeter; their terror of the statue of Hercules with uplifted club which they saw at Wilton (they begged to be taken away immediately); their relish of the entertainments at Ranelegh, Vauxhall, and especially of the pantomimes at Sadler’s Wells; their admiration of the youth, personal beauty, and affability of the king, there is naught to indicate their attitude of mind. A contemporary account, however, in the “Annual Register” for 1762 gives a personal glimpse of them.

“Three Cherokee chiefs, lately arrived from South Carolina, in order to settle a lasting peace with the English, had their first audience of his majesty. The head chief called Outacite or Man-killer, on account of his many gallant actions, was introduced by Lord Eglinton, and conducted by Sir Clement Cottrell, master of ceremonies. They were upwards of an hour and a half with his majesty, who received them with great goodness, and they behaved in his presence with remarkable decency and mildness. The man who assisted as interpreter on this occasion, instead of one who set out with them, but died on his passage, was so confused that the king could ask but few questions.

“These chiefs are well-made men, near six feet high, their faces and necks coarsely painted of a copper colour, and they seem to have no hair on their heads. They came over in the dress of their country, consisting of a shirt, trowzers, and mantle, their heads covered with skull-caps and adorned with shells, feathers, earrings, and other trifling ornaments. On their arrival in London they were conducted to a house taken for them in Suffolk street, and habited more in the English manner. When introduced to his majesty the head chief wore a blue mantle covered with lace, and had his head richly ornamented. On his breast hung a silver gorget with his majesty’s arms engraved. The other two chiefs were in scarlet, richly adorned with gold lace, and gorgets of plate on their breasts. During their stay in England of about two months they were invited to the tables of several of the nobility, and were shown by a gentleman, appointed for that purpose, the tower, the camps, and everything else that could serve to impress them with proper ideas of the power and grandeur of the nation; but it is hard to say what impression these sights made upon them, as they had no other way of communicating their sentiments but by their gestures. They were likewise conducted every day to one or another of the places of amusement, in and about London, where they constantly drew after them innumerable crowds of spectators, to the no small emolument of the owners of these places, some of which raised their prices to make the most of such unusual guests. Here they behaved in general with great familiarity, shaking hands very freely with all those who thought proper to accept that honour. They carried home with them articles of peace between his majesty and their nation, with a handsome present of warlike instruments and such other things as they seemed to place the greatest value on.”]

[Footnote 2: Page 5. The Indian phrases given in this volume are studied from sources as nearly contemporaneous as may be with the events herein narrated, both for the sake of verisimilitude and because of the multitudinous changes to which the aboriginal languages have since been subjected, for the purpose of classification in view of the diverse orthography of the earlier philologists, which varied, of course, according to nationality, French, German, or English.

It is interesting to note the differing estimate of the value which the learned place on this singular jetsam and flotsam of the seas of Time. The study of the aboriginal languages, apart from historical considerations, possesses great interest in the revelation of “new plans of ideas,” as Monsieur Maupertuis felicitously phrases methods of grammatical construction. “The Greek is admired for its compounds, yet what are they to those of the Indians!” exclaims the eminent philologist, Mr. Duponceau. “What would Tibullus or Sappho have given to have had at their command a word at once so tender and so expressive--_wulamalessohalian_, ‘thou who makest me happy’? How delighted would be Moore, the poet of the loves and graces, if his language, instead of five or six tedious words, had furnished him with an expression like this in which the lover, the object beloved, and the delicious sentiment are blended and fused together in one comprehensive and appellative term. And is it in the language of savages that these beautiful forms are found!”

And yet in the learned work on America by Mr. Edward John Payne of University College, Oxford, still in course of publication, it is stated that “the majority of these languages, if not absolutely the lowest in the glossological scale, are as near the bottom as the student of the origin of speech could well desire.” Of their polysynthetic features, which Mr. Duponceau so much admires, Mr. Payne speaks as of merely bunched words, regarding the holophrase as the primitive and simplest form of ignorant language, which in the development and weight of meaning is broken finally, producing in its disintegration parts of speech.

Lord Monboddo, in his “Origin and Progress of Language,” founding his opinion partly on the testimony of Father Sagard’s work, “Le Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons,” says of the Huron language, “It is the most imperfect of any that has ever been discovered;” whereas Mr. Duponceau finds it “rich in grammatical forms,” and permits himself the expression “pompous ignorance” in alluding to the conclusions of his learned confrère.

The fact that Dr. Adam Smith as well as Lord Monboddo perceived in the tendency to incorporate in one word the meaning of a whole sentence an evidence of barbarism induces Mr. Duponceau to support the contrary opinion with “a lively example from Suetonius, _Ave Imperator, morituri_ (those-who-are-going-to-die) _te salutant_. Since it has been discovered that the barbarous dialects of savage nations are formed on the same principles with classical idioms, it has been found easier to ascribe the beautiful organization of these languages to stupidity and barbarism than to acknowledge our ignorance of the manner in which it has been produced.”

Humboldt says: “It is acknowledged that almost everywhere the Indian idioms display greater richness and more delicate gradations than might be supposed from the uncultivated state of the people by whom they are spoken.” Adair, who had forty years’ personal experience among them, writing in 1775, claims that their languages give evidence of culture and scope of expression impossible to have originated with uncivilized tribes such as they were found. A singular circumstance concerning the “syllabic alphabet,” presumed to have been invented by the Cherokee Sequoyah (John Guest) about 1820, would imply an origin at a far more ancient date. A stone engraved with this character was found by an agent of the Bureau of Ethnology in 1889 lying under the skull of a skeleton buried in an Indian mound, with every evidence of antiquity, on the north side of the Tennessee River, in the immediate vicinity of one of the old Cherokee towns. This is of more special interest as Adair and also Buttrick, in his “Antiquities,” record that the Indians always claim to have once had scriptures, or a book, which for their sins they had lost to the white race. May not these quaint characters bear some relation to this tradition?

The “particular plural” for “we,” which it seems occurs in all these languages, even found in the extinct Taensa dialect,--concerning the genuineness of the grammar of which so much interest was elicited some years ago on its publication, edited by Messieurs Adam and Parisot,--seems hardly worth the discussion bestowed upon it, as parallels exist in so many modern European languages,--_noi altri_, _nous autres_, _nosotros_,--and even the vernacular may offer a counterpart in “we-all” and “we-uns.”

Lord Monboddo’s idea, first presented to his attention by the blind poet, the Reverend Thomas Blacklock, “that the first language among men was music,” has an interesting suggestion of confirmation in the speech of the Cherokees as described by Timberlake. “Their language is vastly aspirated, and the accents so many and various you would often imagine them to be singing in their common discourse.” Bartram says of the sound of the Muscogulge (Muscogee) language, “The women in particular speak so fine and musical as to represent the singing of birds.” Gayarre states that the word “Choctaw” means “charming voice,” and was hence applied to the tribe.]

[Footnote 3: Page 8. A letter from General Sir Jeffrey Amherst dated Albany, August 13, 1761, gives a particularized account of these destructive measures. “The country would have been impenetrable had it been well defended. Fifteen towns and all the plantations have been burned; above 1400 acres of corn, beans, and pease, etc., destroyed; about 5000 people, men, women, and children, driven into the woods and mountains, where having nothing to subsist upon they must either starve or sue for peace.”

The fury of these measures after resistance had ceased is partly to be explained as retaliation for the Cherokees’ breach of faith during the preceding year, in the massacre of the garrison of Fort Loudon after its capitulation, while on the march to Fort Prince George under the safe conduct and escort of the principal chiefs. All the officers, including the commandant, the unfortunate Captain Paul Demeré, fell in this indiscriminate slaughter except one, Captain John Stuart, who escaped and was afterward rewarded by a crown office for his courage and constancy in the siege. He was of the family of Stuart of Kincardine, Strathspey, Scotland, married into a South Carolina family, and previous to the American Revolution lived in Charlestown, where was born his son, who became an officer in the British army, General Sir John Stuart, Count of Maida, winning the signal victory of Maida over the French general Reynier, in Calabria in 1806. The garrison of Fort Loudon has a special interest as the first military force of civilization giving battle on the soil which is now Tennessee, its earliest sacrifice in the cause of human progress.]

[Footnote 4: Page 13. Several of the elder writers describe such clever pastimes among the Indians. Timberlake records that while in the Cherokee country he witnessed this favorite pantomime, as well as another equally diverting, called “Taking the pigeons at roost.”]

[Footnote 5: Page 31. It is said that the Indians when discovered had among them no methods of ascertaining weight, and bought and sold exclusively by measure. Hence the incongruity of this locution in their speech has furnished an additional argument to the supporters of the theory of their Hebraic origin, suggesting an idiomatic survival of forgotten customs.]

[Footnote 6: Page 56. So extreme and well founded was the prevalent terror of the torture by the Indians that once captured no immediate sacrifice was too great to evade the grimmer possibility. General David Stewart of Garth gives an instance in this region among the British troops at this time. “Montgomerie’s Highlanders were often employed in small detached expeditions. In these marches they had numberless skirmishes with the Indians and with the irregular troops of the enemy. Several soldiers of this and other regiments fell into the hands of the Indians, being taken in an ambush. Allan Macpherson, one of these soldiers, witnessing the miserable fate of several of his fellow prisoners, who had been tortured to death by the Indians, and seeing them preparing to commence the same operations upon himself, made signs that he had something to communicate. An interpreter was brought. Macpherson told them that provided his life was spared for a few minutes he would communicate the secret of an extraordinary medicine which, if applied to the skin, would cause it to resist the strongest blow of a tomahawk or sword, and if they would allow him to go to the woods with a guard to collect the plants proper for this medicine, he would prepare it and allow the experiment to be tried on his own neck by the strongest and most expert warrior among them. This story easily gained upon the superstitious credulity of the Indians, and the request of the Highlander was instantly complied with. Being sent into the woods he soon returned with such plants as he chose to pick up. Having boiled these herbs, he rubbed his neck with their juice, and laying his head upon a log of wood desired the strongest man among them to strike at his neck with his tomahawk, when he would find that he could not make the slightest impression. An Indian, leveling a blow with all his might, cut with such force that the head flew off to the distance of several yards. The Indians were fixed in amazement at their own credulity and the address with which the prisoner had escaped the lingering death prepared for him; but instead of being enraged at the escape of their victim, they were so pleased with his ingenuity that they refrained from inflicting further cruelties on their remaining prisoners.”]

[Footnote 7: Page 84. The disposition to compete for the Cherokee trade had earlier been the occasion of much remonstrance from Governor Glen of South Carolina to Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia during their respective incumbency. The vexed question then seeming set at rest was revived later by Lieutenant-Governor Fauquier of Virginia. In his allusion to the subject, Jock Lesly possibly included Lieutenant Henry Timberlake of Byrd’s Virginia Regiment, who had recently been on a visit to the Cherokee country, quitting it in the early spring, on March 10, 1762. But it is only fair to Lieutenant Timberlake to say that the Indians were pressing him to induce Virginia to open a trade with the Cherokees.]

[Footnote 8: Page 182. Timberlake uses the spelling “Kanagatucko;” the name appears otherwise signed to the Articles of Capitulation of Fort Loudon, but of course in each instance the spelling is phonetic.]

[Footnote 9: Page 244. This incantation is an extract from one of the most singular of the ancient Sacred Formulæ of the Cherokees collected by Mr. James Mooney for the Smithsonian Institution.]

[Footnote 10: Page 282. The title of Emperor of the Cherokee Nation was conferred by British authority on Moy Toy through Sir Alexander Cuming in 1730, but this proved no hindrance to the chief’s acceptance of the same high title under the authority of the French government in 1736 through its emissary among the tribe, Christian Priber, a German Jesuit. Adair recounts some details of the latter’s efforts to materialize Iberville’s old scheme of unifying the Indian tribes, which were similar to the experiences in the same emprise of the earlier emissaries, and the futile ventures of Baron Dejean, Louis Latinac, and Laroche a score of years later.]

[Footnote 11: Page 336. The history of the Indians is not a little complicated by the repetition of their names from one generation to another and of their war-titles, sometimes to be differentiated only by the names of their respective towns as a suffix, as Outacite (the Man-killer), of Citico, or Quorinnah (the Raven), of Huwhassee. Even their sobriquets are not to be relied upon for further identification. Another Mingo Push-koosh flourished among the Choctaws a generation earlier, and was the half brother of the celebrated Shulashummashtabe (Red Shoes), who is himself often confounded with the chief of the Coosawdas, also known as “Red Shoes,” long afterward, being active in Indian politics as late as 1789. The Choctaw “Red Shoes” enjoyed great esteem among the British, as did also the Cherokee “Little Carpenter” (more accurately translated as “Superlative Wood-carver”), in whose honor, indeed, an English ship was named and a British stronghold, before the Cherokee War, Fort Atta-Kulla-Kulla.]

[Footnote 12: Page 368. The climate of this southern region at this period seems to have won some renown for its extremes. An officer’s letter from Fort Prince George, dated January 9, 1761, says: “I have been several winters in the north of Scotland and do not think I have ever felt it colder there than here at this time; the snow is in general three quarters of a yard deep, attended with very sharp frosts.” As to the summer temperature, Governor Ellis has left it of record in a letter to John Ellis, Esq., F.R.S., dated Georgia, July 17, 1758, that he thought the inhabitants of this section “breathed hotter air than any other people upon earth.” He takes pains to state that he made his observations with the same thermometer that he had had with him in the equatorial parts of Africa and in the Leeward Islands. Hewatt, the historian, ventures to protest, albeit deferring to the accuracy and learning of the erudite and traveled governor, and says that the mercury never so far exceeded the bounds of reason in South Carolina, and implies that he believed that these eccentricities were very rare in Georgia.]

The Riverside Press
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=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

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