She broke through the throng,
and rushing up, threw her arms around him and wept aloud.
He kept
up the spirit and demeanor of a warrior to the last, but expired
shortly after he had reached his home.
The village was now a scene of the utmost festivity and triumph.
The banners, and trophies, and scalps, and painted shields were
elevated on poles near the lodges. There were warfeasts, and
scalp-dances, with warlike songs and savage music; all the
inhabitants were arrayed in their festal dresses; while the old
heralds went round from lodge to lodge, promulgating with loud
voices the events of the battle and the exploits of the various
warriors.
Such was the boisterous revelry of the village; but sounds of
another kind were heard on the surrounding hills; piteous
wailings of the women, who had retired thither to mourn in
darkness and solitude for those who had fallen in battle. There
the poor mother of the youthful warrior who had returned home in
triumph but to die, gave full vent to the anguish of a mother's
heart. How much does this custom among the Indian woman of
repairing to the hilltops in the night, and pouring forth their
wailings for the dead, call to mind the beautiful and affecting
passage of Scripture, "In Rama was there a voice heard,
lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for
her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. "
CHAPTER XXII.
Wilderness of the Far West.- Great American Desert- Parched
Seasons. -Black Hills.- Rocky Mountains.- Wandering and Predatory
Hordes. -Speculations on What May Be the Future Population.-
Apprehended Dangers.-A Plot to Desert.-Rose the Interpreter.- His
Sinister Character- Departure From the Arickara Village.
WHILE Mr. Hunt was diligently preparing for his arduous journey,
some of his men began to lose heart at the perilous prospect
before them; but before we accuse them of want of spirit, it is
proper to consider the nature of the wilderness into which they
were about to adventure. It was a region almost as vast and
trackless as the ocean, and, at the time of which we treat, but
little known, excepting through the vague accounts of Indian
hunters. A part of their route would lay across an immense tract,
stretching north and south for hundreds of miles along the foot
of the Rocky Mountains, and drained by the tributary streams of
the Missouri and the Mississippi. This region, which resembles
one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been
termed "the great American desert." It spreads forth into
undulating and treeless plains, and desolate sandy wastes
wearisome to the eye from their extent and monotony, and which
are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of
the ocean, countless ages since, when its primeval waves beat
against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains.
It is a land where no man permanently abides; for, in certain
seasons of the year there is no food either for the hunter or his
steed. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and
streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have
wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring
verdure, and leaving behind them a vast uninhabited solitude,
seamed by ravines, the beds of former torrents, but now serving
only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveller.
Occasionally the monotony of this vast wilderness is interrupted
by mountainous belts of sand and limestone, broken into confused
masses; with precipitous cliffs and yawning ravines, looking like
the ruins of a world; or is traversed by lofty and barren ridges
of rock, almost impassable, like those denominated the Black
Hills. Beyond these rise the stern barriers of the Rocky
Mountains, the limits, as it were, of the Atlantic world. The
rugged defiles and deep valleys of this vast chain form
sheltering places for restless and ferocious bands of savages,
many of them the remnants of tribes, once inhabitants of the
prairies, but broken up by war and violence, and who carry into
their mountain haunts the fierce passions and reckless habits of
desperadoes.
Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far West;
which apparently defies cultivation, and the habitation of
civilized life. Some portions of it along the rivers may
partially be subdued by agriculture, others may form vast
pastoral tracts, like those of the East; but it is to be feared
that a great part of it will form a lawless interval between the
abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the ocean or the
deserts of Arabia; and, like them, be subject to the depredations
of the marauder. Here may spring up new and mongrel races, like
new formations in geology, the amalgamation of the "debris" and
"abrasions" of former races, civilized and savage; the remains of
broken and almost extinguished tribes; the descendants of
wandering hunters and trappers; of fugitives from the Spanish and
American frontiers; of adventurers and desperadoes of every class
and country, yearly ejected from the bosom of society into the
wilderness. We are contributing incessantly to swell this
singular and heterogeneous cloud of wild population that is to
hang about our frontier, by the transfer of whole tribes from the
east of the Mississippi to the great wastes of the far West. Many
of these bear with them the smart of real or fancied injuries;
many consider themselves expatriated beings, wrongfully exiled
from their hereditary homes, and the sepulchres of their fathers,
and cherish a deep and abiding animosity against the race that
has dispossessed them. Some may gradually become pastoral hordes,
like those rude and migratory people, half shepherd, half
warrior, who, with their flocks and herds, roam the plains of
upper Asia; but others, it is to be apprehended, will become
predatory bands, mounted on the fleet steeds of the prairies,
with the open plains for their marauding grounds, and the
mountains for their retreats and lurking-places.
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