The Crossing

by Winston Churchill

  CHAPTER XVII. THE SACRIFICE

  So far as the world knew, the Chief of the Long Knives slept peacefullyin his house. And such was his sense of power that not even a sentrypaced the street without. For by these things is the Indian mindimpressed. In the tiny kitchen a dozen men and a boy tried to hush theirbreathing, and sweltered. For it was very hot, and the pent-up odor ofpast cookings was stifling to men used to the open. In a corner, hoodedunder a box, was a lighted lantern, and Tom McChesney stood ready toseize it at the first alarm. On such occasions the current of time runssluggish. Thrice our muscles were startled into tenseness by the bayingof a hound, and once a cock crew out of all season. For the night wascloudy and pitchy black, and the dawn as far away as eternity.

  Suddenly I knew that every man in the room was on the alert, for theskilled frontiersman, when watchful, has a sixth sense. None of themmight have told you what he had heard. The next sound was the faintcreaking of Colonel Clark’s door as it opened. Wrapping a blanket aroundthe lantern, Tom led the way, and we massed ourselves behind the frontdoor. Another breathing space, and then the war-cry of the Puans brokehideously on the night, and children woke, crying, from their sleep. Intwo bounds our little detachment was in the street, the fire spoutingred from the Deckards, faint, shadowy forms fading along the line oftrees. After that an uproar of awakening, cries here and there, a drumbeating madly for the militia. The dozen flung themselves across thestream, I hot in their wake, through Mr. Brady’s gate, which wasopen; and there was a scene of sweet tranquillity under the lantern’srays,--the North Wind and his friends wrapped in their blankets andsleeping the sleep of the just.

  “Damn the sly varmints,” cried Tom, and he turned over the North Windwith his foot, as a log.

  With a grunt of fury the Indian shed his blanket and scrambled to hisfeet, and stood glaring at us through his paint. But suddenly he met thefixed sternness of Clark’s gaze, and his own shifted. By this time hisfollowers were up. The North Wind raised his hands to heaven in token ofhis innocence, and then spread his palms outward. Where was the proof?

  “Look!” I cried, quivering with excitement; “look, their leggings andmoccasins are wet!”

  “There’s no devil if they beant!” said Tom, and there was a murmur ofapproval from the other men.

  “The boy is right,” said the Colonel, and turned to Tom. “Sergeant, havethe chiefs put in irons.” He swung on his heel, and without more adowent back to his house to bed. The North Wind and two others wereeasily singled out as the leaders, and were straightway escorted to thegarrison house, their air of injured innocence availing them not a whit.The militia was dismissed, and the village was hushed once more.

  But all night long the chiefs went to and fro, taking counsel amongthemselves. What would the Chief of the Pale Faces do?

  The morning came with a cloudy, damp dawning. Within a decent time (forthe Indian is decorous) blanketed deputations filled the archways underthe trees and waited there as the minutes ran into hours. The Chief ofthe Long Knives surveyed the morning from his door-step, and his eyesrested on a solemn figure at the gate. It was the Hungry Wolf. Sorrowwas in his voice, and he bore messages from the twenty great chiefs whostood beyond. They were come to express their abhorrence of the night’sdoings, of which they were as innocent as the deer of the forest.

  “Let the Hungry Wolf tell the chiefs,” said Colonel Clark, briefly,“that the council is the place for talk.” And he went back into thehouse again.

  Then he bade me run to Captain Bowman with an order to bring the NorthWind and his confederates to the council field in irons.

  The day followed the promise of the dawn. The clouds hung low, and nowand again great drops struck the faces of the people in the field. Andlike the heavens, the assembly itself was charged with we knew notwhat. Was it peace or war? As before, a white man sat with supremeindifference at a table, and in front of him three most unhappy chiefssquatted in the grass, the shame of their irons hidden under the blanketfolds. Audacity is truly a part of the equipment of genius. To haverescued the North Wind and his friends would have been child’s play; tohave retired from the council with threats of war, as easy.

  And yet they craved pardon.

  One chief after another rose with dignity in the ring and came to thetable to plead. An argument deserving mention was that the NorthWind had desired to test the friendship of the French for the BigKnives,--set forth without a smile. To all pleaders Colonel Clark shookhis head. He, being a warrior, cared little whether such people werefriends or foes. He held them in the hollow of his hand. And at lengththey came no more.

  The very clouds seemed to hang motionless when he rose to speak, and youwho will may read in his memoir what he said. The Hungry Wolf caught thespirit of it, and was eloquent in his own tongue, and no word of it waslost. First he told them of the causes of war, of the thirteen councilfires with the English, and in terms that the Indian mind might grasp,and how their old father, the French King, had joined the Big Knives inthis righteous fight.

  “Warriors,” said he, “here is a bloody belt and a white one; take whichyou choose. But behave like men. Should it be the bloody path, you mayleave this town in safety to join the English, and we shall then seewhich of us can stain our shirts with the most blood. But, should it bethe path of peace as brothers of the Big Knives and of their friends theFrench, and then you go to your homes and listen to the bad birds,you will then no longer deserve to be called men and warriors,--butcreatures of two tongues, which ought to be destroyed. Let us then partthis evening in the hope that the Great Spirit will bring us togetheragain with the sun as brothers.”

  So the council broke up. White man and red went trooping into town,staring curiously at the guard which was leading the North Wind and hisfriends to another night of meditation. What their fate would be no manknew. Many thought the tomahawk.

  That night the citizens of the little village of Pain Court, as St.Louis was called, might have seen the sky reddened in the eastward. Itwas the loom of many fires at Cahokia, and around them the chiefs ofthe forty tribes--all save the three in durance vile--were gathered insolemn talk. Would they take the bloody belt or the white one? No mancared so little as the Pale Face Chief. When their eyes were turned fromthe fitful blaze of the logs, the gala light of many candles greetedthem. And above the sound of their own speeches rose the merrier note ofthe fiddle. The garrison windows shone like lanterns, and behind theseCreole and backwoodsman swung the village ladies in the gay Frenchdances. The man at whose bidding this merrymaking was held stood in acorner watching with folded arms, and none to look at him might knowthat he was playing for a stake.

  The troubled fires of the Indians had died to embers long before thecandles were snuffed in the garrison house and the music ceased.

  The sun himself was pleased to hail that last morning of the greatcouncil, and beamed with torrid tolerance upon the ceremony of kindlingthe greatest of the fires. On this morning Colonel Clark did not sitalone, but was surrounded by men of weight,--by Monsieur Gratiot andother citizens, Captain Bowman and the Spanish officers. And when atlength the brush crackled and the flames caught the logs, three of themightiest chiefs arose. The greatest, victor in fifty tribal wars, heldin his hand the white belt of peace. The second bore a long-stemmed pipewith a huge bowl. And after him, with measured steps, a third camewith a smoking censer,--the sacred fire with which to kindle the pipe.Halting before Clark, he first swung the censer to the heavens, then tothe earth, then to all the spirits of the air,--calling these to witnessthat peace was come at last,--and finally to the Chief of the LongKnives and to the gentlemen of dignity about his person. Next the Indianturned, and spoke to his brethren in measured, sonorous tones. He badethem thank that Great Spirit who had cleared the sky and opened theirears and hearts that they might receive the truth,--who had laid bare totheir understanding the lies of the English. Even as these Englishhad served the Big Knives, so might they one day serve the Indians.Therefore he commanded them to cast the t
omahawk into the river, andwhen they should return to their land to drive the evil birds from it.And they must send their wise men to Kaskaskia to hear the words ofwisdom of the Great White Chief, Clark. He thanked the Great Spirit forthis council fire which He had kindled at Cahokia.

  Lifting the bowl of the censer, in the eyes of all the people he drewin a long whiff to bear witness of peace. After him the pipe went theinterminable rounds of the chiefs. Colonel Clark took it, and puffed;Captain Bowman puffed,--everybody puffed.

  “Davy must have a pull,” cried Tom; and even the chiefs smiled as Icoughed and sputtered, while my friends roared with laughter. It gaveme no great notion of the fragrance of tobacco. And then came such ahand-shaking and grunting as a man rarely sees in a lifetime.

  There was but one disquieting question left: What was to become of theNorth Wind and his friends? None dared mention the matter at such atime. But at length, as the day wore on to afternoon, the Colonel wasseen to speak quietly to Captain Bowman, and several backwoodsmen wentoff toward the town. And presently a silence fell on the company as theybeheld the dejected three crossing the field with a guard. They were ledbefore Clark, and when he saw them his face hardened to sternness.

  “It is only women who watch to catch a bear sleeping,” he said. “The BigKnives do not kill women. I shall give you meat for your journey home,for women cannot hunt. If you remain here, you shall be treated assquaws. Set the women free.”

  Tom McChesney cast off their irons. As for Clark, he began to talkimmediately with Monsieur Gratiot, as though he had dismissed them fromhis mind. And their agitation was a pitiful thing to see. In vain theypressed about him, in vain they even pulled the fringe of his shirt togain his attention. And then they went about among the other chiefs, butthese dared not intercede. Uneasiness was written on every man’s face,and the talk went haltingly. But Clark was serenity itself. At lengthwith a supreme effort they plucked up courage to come again to thetable, one holding out the belt of peace, and the other the stillsmouldering pipe.

  Clark paused in his talk. He took the belt, and flung it away over theheads of those around him. He seized the pipe, and taking up his swordfrom the table drew it, and with one blow clave the stem in half. Therewas no anger in either act, but much deliberation.

  “The Big Knives,” he said scornfully, “do not treat with women.”

  The pleading began again, the Hungry Wolf interpreting with tremors ofearnestness. Their lives were spared, but to what purpose, since theWhite Chief looked with disfavor upon them? Let him know that bad menfrom Michilimackinac put the deed into their hearts.

  “When the Big Knives come upon such people in the wilderness,” Clarkanswered, “they shoot them down that they may not eat the deer. But theyhave never talked of it.”

  He turned from them once more; they went away in a dejection to wringour compassion, and we thought the matter ended at last. The sunwas falling low, the people beginning to move away, when, to theastonishment of all, the culprits were seen coming back again. With themwere two young men of their own nation. The Indians opened up a path forthem to pass through, and they came as men go to the grave. So mournful,so impressive withal, that the crowd fell into silence again, and theColonel turned his eyes. The two young men sank down on the groundbefore him and shrouded their heads in their blankets.

  “What is this?” Clark demanded.

  The North Wind spoke in a voice of sorrow:--

  “An atonement to the Great White Chief for the sins of our nation.Perchance the Great Chief will deign to strike a tomahawk into theirheads, that our nation may be saved in war by the Big Knives.” And theNorth Wind held forth the pipe once more.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” said Clark.

  Still they stood irresolute, their minds now bereft of expedients. Andthe young men sat motionless on the ground. As Clark talked they peeredout from under their blankets, once, twice, thrice. He was still talkingto the wondering Monsieur Gratiot. But no other voice was heard, and theeyes of all were turned on him in amazement. But at last, when the dramahad risen to the pitch of unbearable suspense, he looked down uponthe two miserable pyramids at his feet, and touched them. The blanketsquivered.

  “Stand up,” said the Colonel, “and uncover.”

  They rose, cast the blankets from them, and stood with a stoic dignityawaiting his pleasure. Wonderful, fine-limbed men they were, and for thefirst time Clark’s eyes were seen to kindle.

  “I thank the Great Spirit,” said he, in a loud voice, “that I have foundmen among your nation. That I have at last discovered the real chiefs ofyour people. Had they sent such as you to treat with me in the beginningall might have been well. Go back to your people as their chiefs, andtell them that through you the Big Knives have granted peace to yournation.”

  Stepping forward, he grasped them each by the hand, and, despitetraining, joy shone in their faces, while a long-drawn murmur arosefrom the assemblage. But Clark did not stop there. He presented them toCaptain Bowman and to the French and Spanish gentlemen present, and theywere hailed by their own kind as chiefs of their nation. To cap it allour troops, backwoodsmen and Creole militia, paraded in line on thecommon, and fired a salute in their honor.

  Thus did Clark gain the friendship of the forty tribes in the Northwestcountry.