The Red Heart

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “Oh, yes, indeed!” Jonathan exclaimed. “I tell thee, Father, whoever he is, he certainly seems a kindly and intelligent fellow! He says he lodged a night in her camp. Suppose he’s an Indian agent, or a trapper, or trader, or something?”

  “So well-spoken, I doubt he’s a trapper …”

  “Imagine,” Harriet exclaimed, “having an aunt who lives in an Indian camp!”

  “Thee’s silly, Harriet,” said Sarah. “What I like is, ‘sober and respectable and without reproach.’ ”

  “Well,” snorted Joseph, “what else would thee expect of a Slocum?”

  “Son,” Sarah said, “on that map, see how far that place is from Sandusky. Or from Centerville, where Mary lives.”

  Jonathan rustled paper, scanned the sheet quickly, put his thumb on it one way and another, and said, “About two hundred miles—no more than that from either place.”

  “Well,” she said, “it would make sense for somebody that close to Indiana to go and investigate her, doesn’t thee think?”

  “Oh, I’m sure Isaac will want to go there from Sandusky as soon as he knows of this,” Joseph said. “But I could get there about as soon as mail would reach him. It’s not the same hard trek it used to be from here, with the canal boats and steamboats and all.” He paused and sighed deeply. He looked down at his hands, which were clasping each other firmly but still trembling. This had been such a giddy flurry of talking that he had hardly been able to take stock of his feelings.

  “Son,” he said to Jonathan, “I’ll see if Sam Bowman can learn why that letter was delayed two years. I do believe we should attempt to write to that kind gentleman Mr. Ewing and find out whether that feeble old woman has survived through all that delay. Before we go running off into the wilderness, we ought to know that. Now I … I think we need to let the nieces and nephews know a little about this.… If thee doesn’t mind, I think I could go meditate awhile … pray that she’s still alive. Oh, it’s a pity, isn’t it, that Giles and Judith, and Ebenezer and Benjamin, aren’t with us anymore, to hear this happy news?” They had all dropped away over the years, Benjamin most recently, passing just three years ago. Of the ten children of Jonathan and Ruth Slocum, only four were left—or, if the old woman in Indiana was Frances—and if she had survived since that Mr. Ewing wrote his letter—then there were five. He paused, leaning with one hand on the kitchen doorjamb. “And if only Mama knew!… Ah, well, I guess she does, doesn’t she, if all our religion’s true?”

  “Joseph,” Sarah said, “is thee well?”

  “Yes, I … I just need to be alone a little while … and let my heart catch up with my mind, or my mind with my heart, whichever it may be.”

  He looked back at the three of them, his wife, son, and daughter, each one’s face tinged with the emotions this moment had wrought. But not a one of them had ever seen Frances; they had known her only as a family legend.

  And even I, he thought, even I don’t really remember her … just through the story, same as they.… But she is my sister. And I promised Ma.

  WILKES-BARRE, PA. Aug. 8, 1837

  GEO. W. EWING, ESQ.,

  Dear Sir:

  At the suggestion of my father and other relations, I have taken the liberty to write to you, although an entire stranger.

  We have received, but a few days since, a letter written by you to a gentleman in Lancaster, of this State, upon a subject of deep and intense interest to our family. How the matter should have lain so long wrapped in obscurity we cannot conceive. An aunt of mine—sister of my father—was taken away when five years old, by the Indians, and since then we have only had vague and indistinct rumors upon the subject. Your letter we deem to have entirely revealed the whole matter, and set everything at rest. The description is so perfect, and the incidents (with the exception of her age) so correct, that we feel confident.

  Steps will be taken immediately to investigate the matter, and we will endeavor to do all in our power to restore a lost relative who has been sixty years in Indian bondage.

  Your friend and obedient servant,

  JON. J. SLOCUM

  Joseph’s lifetime of disappointments in this matter cautioned him to keep his excitement controlled, but his wife and daughters were in a tizzy. They were already rearranging the judge’s residence to accommodate an elderly woman. Presuming that Frances would be unaccustomed to stairs, and probably rheumatic at her age, they intended to make over a first-floor parlor into a sleeping room, close to the warmth of the kitchen and with a direct exit to the privy. “She will be accustomed to a fire, of course,” Hannah said, “though she shall have to get used to hard coal instead of sticks and twigs, I suppose.” Harriet anticipated evenings spent with the old Indian aunt, as she was already calling her, learning each other’s language and hearing tales of the Indian wars and secrets of Indian magic.

  “And won’t she be delighted to come into a Friends household where a woman’s word weighs as much as a man’s!” Harriet exclaimed. “She’s probably been aught but a beast of burden and a slave to menfolk out there.”

  “Hmph! Like most white women we know in this world,” Hannah remarked. Her husband was not a Quaker, and her life was a quiet struggle to keep her personal rights from being plowed under by her husband the assemblyman, who had simply not been raised to know better. Quaker dominance of the state government had faded after the Revolutionary War, which didn’t help Hannah in her determination to make herself heard. She wanted to go with her father if he went to Indiana to see the old woman, and knew after eleven years of marriage that if she were to get leave from her husband to go, she would have to begin persuading him now.

  “Dear ones,” Joseph interjected with a smile, having overheard, “have I never told thee that in most of the Indian tribes I’ve met, the women have fully as much authority as the men, even in such matters as war and governing?”

  “They have?” Hannah cried. “Now that is a wondrous good thing! Maybe I ought to go out there and stay! They must be more civilized than Pennsylvanians!”

  While the family awaited a reply from the kind stranger George Ewing, the mystery of the long-delayed letter was solved by correspondence to Lancaster.

  The postmaster at Lancaster to whom the letter had been addressed was in actuality postmistress, one Mrs. Mary Dickson, who at that time had been also owner of the newspaper called the Intelligencer. Evidently finding the letter unworthy of publication, she had laid it aside, or perhaps lost it, among inconsequential papers at the newspaper office. Two years later the newspaper had been bought from Mrs. Dickson by an enterprising young editor named John Forney, who, discovering the letter, had deemed it important and published it, in that temperance edition that had caught the attention of Reverend Bowman.

  Hannah Bennett’s campaign for approval to go west, meanwhile, was failing, partly because there was as yet no indication that the “old Indian aunt” was still alive. And as the summer was growing long, the prospect of having to return in fall weather finally caused the family to agree that only Joseph would go—and perhaps Isaac and Mary from Ohio—and depending upon what was found, the younger woman might go in the next good season, perhaps with her sister to help bring the old woman home then. Joseph’s daughters thus resigned themselves to staying in Wilkes-Barre and making preparations. In the meantime, the Wilkes-Barre newspaper had got wind of the story and printed an account of it, evoking many yarns and recollections from longtime citizens who had nearly forgotten the tragic story in those sixty years since, but suddenly were gifted with total and vivid recall. Some remembered that the boy kidnapped with her, Wareham Kingsley, had been among captives repatriated after the war and had moved to Rhode Island. Such details added much poignancy to the story, and it was one of the main topics in the valley that summer.

  And it was in the midst of all that excitement that there arrived at the post office Mr. Ewing’s reply to Jonathan’s letter. A messenger came running to Joseph’s house with it.

  LOGANSPORT, IND., Aug.
26, 1837

  JON. J. SLOCUM, ESQ., WELKES-BARRE,

  Dear Sir:

  I have the pleasure of acknowledging the receipt of your letter of the 8th instant, and in answer can add, that the female I spoke of in January, 1835, is still alive; nor can I for a moment doubt but that she is the identical relative that has been so long lost to your family.

  I feel much gratified to think that I have been thus instrumental in disclosing to yourself and friends such facts in relation to her as will enable you to visit her and satisfy yourselves more fully. She recovered from the temporary illness by which she was afflicted about the time I spent the night there in January, 1835, and which was, no doubt, the cause that induced her to speak so freely of her early captivity.

  Although she is now, by long habit, an Indian, she will doubtless be happy to see any of you. Should you come out for that purpose, and should it so happen that I should be absent at the time, show this letter to James T. Miller, of Peru, a small town not far from this place. He knows her well. He speaks the Miami tongue and will accompany you if I should not be at home. Inquire for the old white woman, mother-in-law to Brouillette, living on the Mississinewa River, about ten miles above its mouth. There you will find the long lost sister of your father, and, as I before stated, you will not have to blush on her account. She is highly respectable, and her name as an Indian is without reproach. Her daughter, too, and her son-in-law, Brouillette, who is part French, are both very respectable and interesting people. As Indians they live well, and will be pleased to see you. I may be absent, as I propose starting for New York in a few days, and shall not be back until some time in October. But this need not stop you; for, although I should be gratified to see you, yet it will be sufficient to learn that I have furthered your wishes in this truly interesting matter.

  There are perhaps men who could have heard her story unmoved; but for me, I could not; and when I reflected that there was, perhaps, still lingering on this side of the grave some brother or sister of that ill-fated woman, to whom such information would be deeply interesting, I resolved upon the course which I adopted. In this it seems, at last, I have not been disappointed, although I had long since supposed it had failed. Like you, I regret that it should have been delayed so long.

  As to the age of this female, I think she herself is mistaken, and that she is not so old as she imagines herself to be. Indeed, I entertain no doubt but that she is the same person that your family have mourned after for more than half a century past.

  Your obedient humble servant,

  GEO. W. EWING

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  September 1837

  Deaf Man’s Village

  Maconakwa sat in a chair in her log cabin holding one hand in the other in her lap and looked at the gray-haired white man before her, and she was troubled and suspicious. His face was full of so much emotion that he seemed almost on the verge of tears. To her this made no sense, a visiting stranger acting like this.

  The interpreter, Miller, who sometimes came with the fur trader Ewing, had brought this stranger here. This white stranger was saying something in English and Miller was translating it into Miami, and what she was hearing she did not believe. Miller said in Miami:

  “This man says to tell you his name is Isaac and he is your brother. He came from over by the Sandusky to see you.”

  She held her hands firmly to keep them from trembling and kept her jaws clenched and stared at the stranger, determined to show nothing of her feelings, which at this moment were mostly fear. She said to Miller, “I have no brother by Sandusky.”

  I wish Brouillette were here, she thought. I wish Palonswah were here. His advice is always good. I do not trust this. It is another white man trick. They are trying to get the last of my land. That’s what they always want and they will tell you any lie to get it. She could remember that some twenty summers ago an American general named Cass had made a land-taking treaty with old Peshewa Richardville, which promised that the Miami People could keep lands on both banks of the Wabash Sipu from the mouth of the Salamonie to the mouth of the Eel River, south of the Potawatomi lands; for that the white government built the Miami People a mill southwest of the town of Wabash. That treaty had promised the Miamis they could stay there forever. Forever had lasted eight more summers, until Cass and another general named Tipton made another treaty that took all the Miami lands in Indiana north and west of the Wabash Sipu.

  After that followed fourteen more treaties that had eaten away the Potawatomi lands farther north and west. Everything Tecumseh had predicted had come true. Now the Miamis had nothing left but a square tract south of the Wabash Sipu, and now here was a white man she had never seen before, who seemed to be lying and was very eager, and so this was probably the beginning of another trick to take more land. He had used the name Slocum, and that was a very clever trick. She had told that name only to Ewing, whom she had been foolish enough to trust. She now wished she had never been sick enough to tell him that name, but she had, and now they were using it as a confusing trick and she could really understand now why all her People, both Lenapeh and Miami, had advised her never to let her wapsi name slip out to any white people.

  “He is trying to tell you, Grandmother,” said young Miller, “that he is your brother, named Isaac Slocum. He wonders why you do not seem pleased to see him, now that he finds you after so long. He wishes you would answer.” The white man was nodding eagerly as Miller translated.

  Do I remember somebody named that? she thought. She had heard the white man name Isaac now and then, around the trading posts. But if she had had a brother named Isaac, he was too far back in the mists of old memory for her to remember the name or the person.

  That is cunning, she thought, pretending to be someone from so long ago that one could not know his face.

  It was a hot and damp day, and the September daylight was bright where it fell through the trees. Here in her log house it was gloomy and close, the only light coming from the door in the middle of the riverside wall and the two windows with their shutters open. She would have liked to go outside where a breeze moved, but she did not choose to suggest that because if she did go out, this white man might just take over her house. She said to Miller, “I do not want to talk to this white man without my son-in-law Autumn Brouillette here, or Palonswah Godfroy.”

  Miller did not translate that, although the white stranger looked to him expectantly. This stranger seemed to have much patience but no ability to see that he was not welcome. Maconakwa did not like to be inhospitable, and she always welcomed and fed travelers who came by, Indian or white, for her home was on a well-used trail that led from Ohio to the Wabash trading posts. White man Conner’s trading store was a few miles up the river, and on the Wabash Sipu near its mouth was the largest trading post of them all, the one owned by Palonswah. Down near the Seven Pillars bluff were the Stinking Springs, whose waters were medicine. So Maconakwa and Deaf Man had built this solid log house here, with a peaked shake roof of the white men’s style, a big enough house to feed travelers and let them sleep if they had no other place, and had never charged their visitors, as the white men did in their inns—they sell even their hospitality! she thought.

  Even after the death of her beloved husband some six summers ago, Maconakwa had continued to welcome his old acquaintances, Indian or white, as well as strangers. She had even given food and drink to old soldiers who, she knew, had long ago been among those who burned the towns and killed horses and captured the women and children of the villages, back in those wars. Those wars had been long ago finished, and white men who came in peace were entitled to food and drink and rest, if they needed them. Only a few truly bitter and angry people, like Minnow, had remained hard-eyed and inhospitable to whites. Minnow had once cut a trader’s cheek with a knife. And then her daughter had gone off with a white man, one of the canal builders, and since then old Minnow had grown so hateful that she would not go within speaking distance of wapsituk.

 
There were simply so many white people around now that it was hard to live many days at a time without encountering them. There were far more of them along the Wabash Sipu now than there were Indians; probably there had never been as many Miamis along here as there were whites now. The little reservation was like an island of Miami families in a sea of white people. One could hardly live anymore without some of what they called “dollars.”

  No, this was not the way she usually treated white people, and Maconakwa could see that young Miller was puzzled to see her so cold and hard. But this man had just put her on her guard at once. He was not just a passing-through white man, but someone who had come here earnestly wanting something of her and apparently willing to make the most outrageous lies to get it. She was sure all her brothers and sisters were dead, back in the East, and this man did not in any way resemble any Slocum person she remembered. Her memories were very cloudy, but she believed that if she were to see a Slocum now, something familiar would touch up pictures in her memory.

  The only man she had ever seen in her Slocum family as old as this man had been a grandfather. She could not remember clearly the appearance of that grandfather, but it was not like this tall gray-hair standing nervous before her almost shining with his eagerness. This man just did not touch her memory at all.

  Impatient, Maconakwa thought of offering coffee and corn bread with maple syrup, as she would have to any visitor, in hopes that after such refreshment he would be ready to go away. She unclasped her hands and slapped them softly twice on her knees, leaned forward to get up—then saw that the man was staring at her hands with wide eyes.