The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn

The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn
Evelyn Raymond

Raymond Evelyn

The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn

PREFACE

In some measure, the story of the Sun Maid is an allegory.

Both the heroine and the city of her love grew from insignificant beginnings; the one into a type of broadest womanhood, the other into a grandeur which has made it unique among the cities of the world.

Discouragements, sorrows, and seeming ruin but developed in each the same high attributes of courage, indomitable will power, and far-reaching sympathy. The story of the youth of either would be a tale unfinished; and those who have followed, with any degree of interest, the fortunes of either during any period will keep that interest to the end.

There are things which never age. Such was the heart of the Maid who remained glad as a girl to the end of her century, and such the marvellous Chicago with a century rounded glory which is still the glory of a youth whose future magnificence no man can estimate.

E. R., Baltimore, January, 1900.

CHAPTER I.

AS THE SUN WENT DOWN

With gloom in his heart, Black Partridge strode homeward along the beach path.

The glory of a brilliant August sunset crimsoned the tops of the sandhills on the west and the waters of the broad lake on the east; but if the preoccupied Indian observed this at all, it was to see in it an omen of impending tragedy. Red was the color of blood, and he foresaw that blood must flow, and freely.

“They are all fools. All. They know that Black Partridge cannot lie, yet they believe not his words. The white man lies, and works his own destruction. His doom be on his head!”

As his thought took this line the chief’s brow grew still more stern, and an expression of contempt curled the corners of his wide, thin lips. A savage though he was, at that moment he felt himself immeasurably superior to the pale-faces whom he had known; and in the consciousness of his integrity he held his tall form even more erect, while he turned his face toward the sky in gratitude to that Great Spirit who had made him what he was.

Then again he remembered the past, and again his feather-adorned head drooped beneath its burden of regret, while his brown fingers clasped and unclasped themselves about a glittering medal which decorated his necklace, and was the most cherished of his few possessions.

“I have worn it for long, and it has rested lightly upon my heart; but now it becomes a knife that pierces. Therefore I must return it whence it came.”

Yet something like a sigh escaped him, and his hands fell down straight at his sides. Also, his narrow eyes gazed forward upon the horizon, absently, as if their inward visions were much clearer than anything external. In this manner he went onward for a little distance, till his moccasined foot struck sharply against something lying in his path, and so roused him from his reverie.

“Ugh! Ugh! So. When the squaw dies the papoose must suffer.”

The soft obstruction was a little child, curled into a rounded heap, and fast asleep upon this primitive public highway. The touch of the red man’s foot had partially wakened the sleeper, and when he bent and laid his hand upon her shoulder, she sprang up lightly, at once beginning to laugh and chatter with a gayety that infected even the stolid Indian.

“Ugh! The Little-One-Who-Laughs. Why are you here alone, so far from the Fort, Kitty Briscoe?”

“I runned away. Bunny rabbit runned away. I did catch him two times. I did find some posies, all yellow and round and – posies runned away, too. Ain’t that funny? Kitty go seek them.”

Her laughter trilled out, bird clear, and a mischievous twinkle lighted her big blue eyes.

“I runned away. Bunny rabbit runned to catch me. I runned to catch bunny. I caught the posies. Yellow posies gone – I go find them, too.”

As if it were the best joke in the world, the little creature still laughed over her own conceit of so many runnings till, in whirling about, she discovered the remnants of the flowers she had lost upon the heat-hardened path behind her. Indeed, when she had dropped down to sleep, overcome by sudden weariness, it had been with the cool leaves and blossoms for a couch. Now the love of all green and growing things was an inborn passion with this child, and her face sobered to a keen distress as she gazed upon her ruined treasures. But almost at once the cloud passed, and she laughed again.

“Poor posies, tired posies, sleepy, too. Kitty sorry. Put them in the water trough and wake them up. Then they hold their eyes open, just like Kitty’s.”

“Ugh! Where the papoose sleeps the blossoms wither,” remarked Black Partridge, regarding the bruised and faded plants with more attention. They were wild orchids, and he knew that the child must have wandered far afield to obtain them. At that time of year such blooms were extremely rare, and only to be found in the moist shadows of some tree-bordered stream quite remote from this sandy beach.

“Oh, dear! Something aches my feet. I will go home to my little bed. Pick up the posies, Feather-man, and take poor Kitty.”

With entire confidence that the Indian would do as she wished, the small maid clasped his buckskin-covered knee and leaned her dimpled cheek against it. It proved a comfortable support, and with a babyish yawn she promptly fell asleep again.

Had she been a child of his own village, even of his own wigwam, Black Partridge would have shaken her roughly aside, feeling his dignity affronted by her familiarity; but in her case he could not do this and on this night least of all.

The little estray was the orphan of Fort Dearborn; whose soldier father had met a soldier’s common fate, and whose mother had quickly followed him with her broken heart. Then the babe of a few weeks became the charge of the kind women at the Fort, and the pet of the garrison in general.

But now far graver matters than the pranks of a mischievous child filled the minds of all her friends. The peaceful, monotonous life of the past few years was over, and the order had gone forth that the post should be evacuated. Preparations had already begun for the long and hazardous journey which confronted that isolated band of white people, and the mothers of a score of other restless young folk had been too busy and anxious to notice when this child slipped away to wander on the prairie.

For a brief time the weary baby slumbered against the red man’s knee, while he considered the course he would best pursue; whether to return her at once to the family of the commandant, or to carry her southward to the Pottawatomie lodge whither he was bound. Then, his decision made, he lifted the child to his breast and resumed his homeward way.

But the bright head pillowed so near his eyes seemed to dazzle him, and its floating golden locks to catch and hold, in a peculiar fashion, the rays of the sunset. From this, with his race instinct of poetic imagery, which finds in nature a type for everything, he caught a quaint suggestion.

“She is like the sun himself. She is all warmth and brightness. She is his child, now that her pale-faced parents sleep the long sleep, and none other claims her. None? Yes, one. I, Black Partridge, the Man-Who-Lies-Not. In my village, Muck-otey-pokee, lives my sister, the daughter of a chief, her whose one son died of the fever on that same dark night when the arrow of a Sioux warrior killed a brave, his sire. In her closed tepee there will again be light. The Sun Maid shall make it. So shall she escape the fate of the doomed pale-faces, and so shall the daughter of my house again be glad.”

Thus, bearing her new name, and all unconsciously, the little Sun Maid was carried southward and still southward till the twilight fell and her new guardian reached the Pottawatomie village, on the Illinois prairie, where he dwelt.

Sultry as the night was, there was yet a great council fire blazing in the midst of the settlement, and around this were grouped many young braves of the tribe. Before the arrival of their chief there had been a babel of tongues in the council, but all discussion ceased as he joined the circle in the firelight.

The sudden silence was ominous, and the wise leader understood it; but it was not his purpose then to quarrel with any man. Ignoring the scowling glances bestowed upon him, he gave the customary evening salutation and, advancing directly to the fire, plucked a blazing fagot from it. This he lifted high and purposely held so that its brightness illuminated the face and figure of the child upon his breast.

A guttural exclamation of astonishment ran from brave to brave. The action of their chief was significant, but its meaning not clearly comprehended. Had he brought the white baby as a hostage from the distant garrison, in pledge that the compact of its commandant would surely be kept? Or had some other tribe anticipated their own in obtaining the gifts to be distributed?

Shut-Hand, one of the older warriors, whose name suggested his character, rose swiftly to his feet, and demanded menacingly:

“What means our father, thus bringing hither the white papoose?”

“That which the Black Partridge does – he does.”

Rebuked, but unsatisfied, the miserly inquirer sat down. Then, with a gesture of protection, the chief raised the sleeping little one, that all within the circle might better see her wonderful, glowing beauty, intensified as it was by the flare of the flames as well as by contrast to the dusky faces round about.

“Who suffers harm to her shall himself suffer. She is the Sun Maid, the new daughter of our tribe.”

Having said this, and still carrying the burning fagot, he walked to the closed tepee of his widowed sister and lifted its door flap. Stooping his tall head till its feathered crest swept the floor he entered the spacious lodge. But he sniffed with contempt at the stifling atmosphere within, and laying down his torch raised the other half of the entrance curtain.

At the back of the wigwam, crouching in the attitude she had sustained almost constantly since her bereavement, sat the Woman-Who-Mourns. She did not lift her head, or give any sign of welcome till the chief had crossed to her side, and in a tone of command bade her:

“Arise and listen, my sister, for I bring you joy.”

“There is no joy,” answered the woman, obediently lifting her tall figure to a rigidly erect posture; by long habit compelled to outward respect, though her heart remained indifferent.

“Put back the hair from your eyes. Behold. For the dead son I give you the living daughter. In that land to which both have gone will her lost mother care for your lost child as you now care for her.”

Slowly, a pair of lean, brown hands came out from the swathing blanket and parted the long locks that served as a veil to hide a haggard, sorrowful face. After the deep gloom the sudden firelight dazzled the woman’s sight, and she blinked curiously toward the burden upon her brother’s breast. Then the small eyes began to see more clearly and to evince the amazement that filled her.