The Hidden Children

I said to the Mole in a low voice:

"Brother in Christ, do you find consolation and peace in your Testament when the whole land lies writhing under the talons and bloody beak of war?"

The Stockbridge warrior looked up quietly:

"I read the promise of the Prince of Peace, brother, who came to the world not bearing a sword."

"He came to fulfill, not to destroy," I said.

"So it is written, brother."

"And yet you and I, His followers, go forth armed to slay."

"To prepare a place for Him—His humble instruments—lest His hands be soiled with the justice of God's wrath. What is it that we wade in blood, so that He pass with feet unsoiled?"

"My brother has spoken."

The burning eyes of the calm fanatic were fastened on me, then they serenely reverted to the printed page on his knees; and he continued reading and nibbling at his parched and salted corn. If ever a convert broke bread with the Lord, this red disciple now sat supping in His presence, under the immemorial eaves of His leafy temple.

The Grey-Feather, who had been listening, said quietly:

"We Iroquois alone, among all Indians, have always acknowledged one Spirit. We call Him the Master of Life; you Christians call Him God. And does it truly avail anything with Tharon, O my brother Loskiel, if I wear the Turtle, or if my brother the Mole paints out the Beaver on his breast with a Christian cross?"

"So that your religion be good and you live up to it, sign and symbol avail nothing with God or with Tharon," said I.

"Men wear what they love best," said the Mole, lightly touching his cross.

"But under cross and clan ensign," said I, "lies a man's secret heart. Does the Master of Life judge any man by the colour of his skin or the paint he wears, or the clothing? Christ's friends were often beggars. Did Tharon ever ask of any man what moccasins he wore?"

The Sagamore said gravely:

"Uncas went naked to the Holder of the Heavens."

It was a wonderful speech for a Sagamore and an Algonquin, for he used the Iroquois term to designate the Holder of Heaven. The perfect courtesy of a Christian gentleman could go no further. And I thought of our trivial and petty and warring sects, and was silent and ashamed.

The Wyandotte wiped his powerful jaw with a handful of dead leaves, and looked coldly around at the little circle of men who differed with one another so profoundly in their religious beliefs.

"Is this then the hour and the place to discuss such matters, and irritate the Unseen?"

All eyes were instantly turned on the pagan; the Oneidas seemed troubled; the Sagamore serious. Only the Christian Indian remained placid and indifferent, his Testament suspended in his hand. But he also was listening.

As for me, I knew as well as did the others what the pagan and burly Wyandotte meant.

To every Indian—even to many who had been supposedly converted—air, earth, and water still remained thronged with demons. The vast and sunless wilderness was peopled with goblins and fairies. No natural phenomenon occurred except by their agency. Where the sun went after it had set, where the moon hid, the stars, the four great winds, the eight thunders—all remained mysteries to these red children of the forest. And to these mysteries demons held the keys. For no star fell, showering the night with incandescence, no comet blazed aloft, its streaming hair sweeping from zenith to horizon, no eclipse devoured sun or moon, no sunrise painted the Long House golden, no sunset stained its lodge-poles crimson, no waters ran, no winds blew, no clouds piled up quivering with lightning, no thunder rumbled, except that it was done by demons.

Fur, feather, and silver-scale also had souls, and slyly took council together when alone; the great trees talked to one another in forest depths; moonlit rocks conversed in secret; and peak whispered to peak above the flowing currents of the mist.

It was useless to dispute such matters with them, while every phenomenon of nature remained to them a mystery. For they had brains and a matchless imagination, and they were obliged to solve these things for themselves as best they knew how, each people according to its personal characteristics.

So, among the Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, evil demons were few, and good fairies many; among the Cayugas good and bad seemed fairly balanced; but among the sullen, brutal, and bestial Senecas, devils, witches, demons, and goblins were in the vast majority. And their perverted Erie priesthood, which had debauched some of their own Sachems, was a stench in the nostrils of any orthodox Sachem, and, to an ordained Sagamore, an offense and sacrilege unspeakable.

I sat looking hard at the Wyandotte, inclined to speak, yet unwilling to meddle where intervention must be useless.

His small, unwinking eyes met mine.

"There are demons," he said in a low voice.

"Demons in human form," I nodded. "Some were at Cherry Valley a year ago."

"There are witches," he said.

I shook my head: "None."

"And Giants of Stone, and Flying Heads, and the Dead Hunter, and the Lake Serpent," he persisted sullenly.

"There never were either giants or witches," I replied.

The Mole looked up from his Testament in surprise, but said nothing. Yet, by his expression I knew he was thinking of the Witch of Endor, and the Dukes of Edom, and the giants of the scriptures. But it seemed hopeless to modify his religious teachings by any self-developed theories of mine.

All I desired to do was to keep this pagan Huron from tampering with my warriors' nerves. And it required but little of the supernatural to accomplish this.

No Indian, however brave and faithful and wise in battle, however cunning and tireless and unerring on forest trail or on uncharted waters, could remain entirely undisturbed by any menace of invisible evil. For they were an impulsive race, ever curbing their impulses and blindly seeking for reason. But what appealed to their emotions and their imagination still affected them most profoundly, and hampered the slow, gradual, but steady development of a noble race emerging by its own efforts from absolute and utter ignorance.

I said quietly: "After all, the Master of Life stands sentry while the guiltless sleep!"

"Amen," said the Mole, lifting his calm eyes to the roof of leaves above.

An owl began to hoot—one of those great, fierce cat-owls of the North. Every Indian listened.

The Sagamore said pleasantly to the Wyandotte:

"It is as though he were calling the lynxes together—as Amochol the Accursed summons his Cat-People to the sacrifice."

"I know nothing of Amochol and his sacrifices," said the Wyandotte carelessly.

"Yet you Wyandottes border the Western Gate."

The Huron shrugged.

"Hear the Eared One squall," said Grey-Feather, as the great owl yelled through the darkening forest.

"One would think to hear an Erie speaking," said the Sagamore, looking steadily at the Black-Snake. But the latter seemed totally unaware of what amounted now to a persistent baiting.

"They say," continued the Sagamore, "that the Erie priesthood learned from the Nez Perces a strange and barbarous fashion."

"What fashion?" asked Grey-Feather, so innocently that I could not determine whether he was playing into the Sagamore's hands.

"The fashion of wearing the hair in a short, stiff ridge," said the Mohican. "Has the Black-Snake ever seen it worn that way?"