An Algonquin Maiden A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada by Adam, G. Mercer (Graeme Mercer), 1830-1912, Wetherald, A. Ethelwyn, 1857-1940

CHAPTER IV.

INDIAN ANNALS AND LEGENDS.

The last flame of sunset had gone out on a horizon of ashy paleness, as the light bark of the Indian girl swept up the beach, and its occupant, after making it secure, loitered idly home. Here, undismayed by observation, she was as gracefully at ease as a fawn in its leafy covert, and as quickly startled into flight at the tread of a stranger.

So lightly did her moccasined feet press the underbrush that no sound preceded her coming, until she reached the blanketed opening of a wigwam where sat an aged Algonquin chief, very grave, very dignified, very far from being immaculately clean. The young girl was not intimidated by this picturesque combination of dignity and dirt. Perhaps it was the absence of these qualities in the young cadet that caused her sudden flight from him. Seating herself on a bearskin, not far from her foster-father, she interchanged with him mellow syllables of greeting. The chief placed a finger upon her moist brow, and inquired the cause of her haste.

"It was the young kinsman of the Wild Rose who followed me. His head is beautiful as the sun, but he moves, alas, yes, he moves more slowly."

"Then, why this haste?" queried the Indian, who, though he could boast all the keen and subtle instincts of his race, was apparently in some matters as obtuse as a white man.

The girl bowed her face upon her slim brown hands.

"I do not like the glances of his eye," she said. "They are strong and dazzling as sunbeams on the water."

The chief smoked in meditative silence. "You go too often to the dwelling of the Wild Rose, my daughter."

"Ah, yes; but to-night her pink face is dewy wet, I know, and she is alone. The Moon-in-a-black-cloud has gone to the home of her people."

"Then let her seek consolation in the slow moving sun. The pale-faced nation are not fit associates for an Algonquin maiden. Mother Earth has no love for them; they are quick to wash away her lightest finger-touch upon them. They are pale and lifeless as a rock over which the stream washes continually. Their men are afraid of the rain; their women of the sunshine."

"It is even so. The Wild Rose covers her head, and even her hands, when she leaves the house."

At this mournful assent the chief warmed to his task of depreciation.

"They are degraded, these pale faces, they are poor-spirited, mean, contemptible; unable to cope with the wild beasts of the forest, they settle down in weak resignation to grow vegetables; nothing stirs them from their state of ignoble content except the call to battle, and that is responded to not in defence of the lives of their fathers, their wives and children, but merely to settle some petty quarrel between the chiefs of their nations.

"Ah, they are a strange, servile race! They work with their hands." The Indian paused and looked down at the wrinkled yet shapely members that lay before him. "They look upon the grand forest as their natural enemy, burning, cutting, mutilating, until they have made that odious thing 'a clearing,' when a house is built with the dead bodies of the beautiful trees that have fallen by their hand."