The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn

“No, Kitty must stay. Poor sick man needs Kitty. I did give him a nice drink. Berries, too. Kitty putted them in his mouth all the time. Poor man!”

Wahneenah’s anger rose. Was she, a chief’s daughter, to be thus flouted by a baby, a pale-face at that? Surely, there was nothing whatever spiritual now about this self-willed, spoiled creature, whom an unkind fate had imposed upon her. She stooped to lift the little one and compel obedience, but was met by a smile so fearless and happy that her arms fell to her sides.

“That’s a good Other Mother. Poor sick man has wanted to turn him over, and he couldn’t. Kitty tried and tried, and Kitty couldn’t. Now my Other Mother’s come. She can. She is so beau’ful strong and kind!”

There was a grunt, which might have been a groan, from the corner of the hut where the Spotted Adder lay; and a convulsive movement of the contorted limbs as he vainly strove to change his uncomfortable position. Wahneenah watched him, with the contempt which the women of her race feel for any masculine weakness, and did not offer to assist. His poverty she pitied, and would have relieved, though his physical infirmity was repugnant to her. She would not touch him.

But the Sun Maid was on her feet at once, tenderly laying upon the ground the wounded squirrel which she had held upon her lap. The wild thing had, apparently, lost all its timidity and now fully trusted the child who had caressed its fur and murmured soft, pitying sounds, in that low voice of hers, which the Fort people had sometimes felt was an unknown language. Certainly, she had had a strange power, always, over any animal that came near her and this case was no exception. Her white friends would not have been surprised by the incident, but Wahneenah was, and it brought back her belief that this was a child of supernatural gifts. She even began to feel ashamed of her treatment of Spotted Adder, though she waited to see what his small nurse would do.

“Poor sick Feather-man! Is you hurted now? Does your face ache you to make it screw itself all this way?” and she made a comical grimace, imitative of the sufferer’s expression.

“Ugh! Ugh!”

“Yes; Kitty hears. Other Mother, that is all the word he says. All the time it is just ‘Ugh! Ugh!’ I wish he would talk Kitty’s talk. Make him do it, Other Mother. Please!”

“That I cannot do. He knows it not. But he has a speech I understand. What need you, Spotted Adder?” she concluded, in his own dialect.

“Ugh! It is the voice of Wahneenah, the Happy. What does she here, in the lodge of the outcast? It is many a moon since the footfall of a woman sounded on my floor. Why does one come now?”

“In pursuit of this child, the adopted daughter of our tribe, whom the Black Partridge himself has given me. It was ill of you, accursed, to wile her hither with your unholy spells.”

“I wiled her not. It was the gray squirrel. Broken in his life, as am I, the once Mighty. Many wounded creatures seek shelter here. It is a sanctuary. They alone fear not the miserable one.”

“Does not the tribe see to it that you have food and drink set within your wigwam, once during each journey of the sun? I have so heard.”

“Ugh! Food and drink. Sometimes I cannot reach them. They are not even pushed beyond the door flap, or what is left of it. They are all afraid. All. Yet they are fools. That which has befallen me may happen to each when his time comes. It is the sickness of the bones. There is no contagion in it. But it twists the straight limbs into torturing curves and it rends the body with agony. One would be glad to die, but death – like friendship – holds itself aloof. Ugh! The drink! The drink!”

The Sun Maid could understand the language of the eyes, if not the lips, and she followed their wistful gaze toward the clay bowl from which she had before given him the water. But it was empty now, and seizing it with all her strength, for it was heavy and awkward in shape, she sped out of the wigwam toward a spring she had discovered.

“Four, ten, lots of times Kitty has broughted the nice water, and every time the poor, sick Feather-man has drinked it up. He must be terrible thirsty, and so is Kitty. I guess I will drink first, this time.”

Filling the utensil, she struggled to lift it to her own lips, but it was rudely pushed away.

“Papoose! Would you drink to your own death? The thing is accursed, I tell you!”

“Why, Other Mother! It is just as clean as clean. Kitty did wash and wash it long ago. It was all dirty, worse than my new necklace, but it is clean now. Do you want a drink, Other Mother? Is you thirsty, too, like the sick one and Kitty?”

“If I were, it would be long before I touched my lips to that cup.”

“Would it? Now I will fill it again. Then you must take it, Other Mother, and quick, quick, back to that raggedy house. Kitty is tired, she has come here and there so many, many times.”

“Is it here you have spent this long day, papoose?”

“I did come here when the gray squirrel runned away. I did stay ever since.”

Wahneenah’s heart sank. But to her credit it was that, for the time being, she forgot the stories she had heard, and remembered only that there was suffering which she must relieve. It might be that already the soul of Spotted Adder was winged for its long flight, and could carry for her to that wide Unknown, where her own dead tarried, some message from her, the bereft. As this thought flashed through her brain she seized the bowl and hastened with it to the lodge.

This time, also, she forgot everything but the possibility that had come to her, and kneeling beside the old Indian she held the dish to his mouth.

“It is the fever, the fever! A little while and the awful chill will come again. The racking pain, the thirst! Ugh! Wahneenah, the Happy, is braver than her sisters. Her courage shall prove her blessing. The lips of the dying speak truth.”

“And the ears of the dying? Can they still hear and remember? Will the Spotted Adder take my message to the men I have lost? Sire and son, there was no Pottawatomie ever born so brave as they. Tell them I have been faithful. I have been the Woman-Who-Mourns. I have kept to my darkened wigwam and remembered only them, till she came, this child you have seen. She is a gift from the sky. She has come to comfort and sustain. She was born a pale-face, but she has a red man’s heart. She is all brave and true and dauntless. None fear her, and she fears none. I believe that they have sent her to me. I believe that in her they both live. Ask them if this is so.”

“There is no need to ask, Wahneenah, the Happy. Happy, indeed, who has been blessed with a gift so gracious. She is the Merciful. The Unafraid. She will pass in safety through many perils. All day she has sat beside me whom all others shun. She has moistened my lips, she has kept the gnats from stinging, she has sung in her unknown tongue of that land whither I go, and soon, – the land of the sky from whence she came. The light of the morning is on her hair and the dusk of evening in her eyes. As she has ministered to me, the deserted, the solitary, so she will minister unto multitudes. I can see them crowding, crowding; the generations yet unborn. The vision of the dying is true.”

On the floor beside them the Sun Maid sat, caressing the wounded squirrel. Through the torn curtains the waning sunlight slanted and lighted the bleak interior. It seemed to rest most brilliantly upon the child, and in the eyes of the Spotted Adder she was like a lamp set to illumine his path through the dark valley, an unexpected messenger from the Great Father, showing him beforehand a glimpse of the beauty and tenderness of the Land Beyond. Yet even if a spirit, she wore a human shape, and she would have human needs. She would be often in danger against which she must be guarded.

“Wahneenah, fetch me the bow and quiver.”

“Which?” she asked, in surprise, though in reality she knew.

“Is there one that should be named with mine? The White Bow from the land of eternal snow; the arrows winged with feathers from the white eagle’s wing, – light as thistle down, strong as love, invincible as death.”

The Spotted Adder had been the orator of his tribe. Men had listened to his words in admiration, wondering whence he obtained the eloquence which moved them; and at that moment it was as if all the power of his earlier manhood had returned.

The White Bow was well known among all the Pottawatomie tribes. Even the Sacs and Foxes had heard of it and feared it. It was older than the Giver’s historic necklace, and tradition said that it had been hurled to earth on the breath of a mighty snowstorm. It had fallen before the wigwam of the Spotted Adder’s ancestor and had been handed down from father to son, as fair and sound as on the day of its first bestowal. None knew the wood of which it was fashioned, which many could bend and twist but none could break. The string which first bound it had never worn nor wasted, and not a feather had ever fallen from the arrows in the quiver, nor had their number ever diminished, no matter how often sped. It was the one possession left to the neglected warrior and had been protected by its own reputed origin. There were daring thieves in many a tribe, but never a thief so bold he would risk his soul in the seizure of the White Bow.

Wahneenah felt no choice but to comply with the Indian’s command. She took the bow and its accoutrements from the sheltered niche in the tepee where it hung; the only spot, it seemed, that had not been subjected to the destruction of the elements. She had never held it in her hand before, and she wondered at its lightness as she carried it to its owner, and placed it in the gnarled fingers which would never string it again.

“Good! Call the child to stand here.”

With awe, Wahneenah motioned the little one within the red man’s reach. The last vestige of fear or repulsion had vanished from her own mind before the majesty of this hour.

“Does the poor, sick Feather-man want another drink? Shall Kitty fetch it now?”

“Hush, papoose!”

He would have opened the small white hand and clasped it about the bow, which reached full three times the height of the child, and along whose beautiful length she gazed in wonder, but he could not.

“Take it, Girl-Child. It is a gift. It is more magical than the necklace. Take it, hold it tight – that will please him – and say what is in your heart.”

“Oh, the beau’ful bow! Is it for Kitty? To keep, forever and ever? Why, it is bigger than that one of the Sauganash, and far prettier than Winnemeg’s. It cannot be for Kitty, just little Kitty girl.”

“Yes; it is.”

Then the Sun Maid laid it reverently down, and catching hold her scant tunic made the old-fashioned curtsey which her Fort friends had taught her.

“Thank you, poor Feather-man. I will take care of it very nice. I won’t break it, not once.”

“Ugh!” grunted the Indian, with satisfaction. Then he closed his eyes as if he would sleep.

“Good-night, Spotted Adder, the Mighty. I thank you, also, on the child’s behalf. It is the second gift this day of talismans that must protect. Surely, she will be clothed in safety. Hearken to me. I must go home. The Sun Maid must be fed and put to sleep. But I will return. I am no longer afraid. You were my father’s friend. All that a woman’s hand can now do for your comfort shall be done.”

But the Spotted Adder made no sign, and whether he did or did not hear her, Wahneenah never knew. She walked swiftly homeward, bearing the White Papoose upon one strong arm and the White Bow upon the other. Yet she noticed, with a smile, that the child still clung tenderly to her own burden of the injured squirrel, and that she was infinitely more careful of it and its suffering than of the wonderful gift she had received.

Long before her own tepee was reached the Sun Maid was fast asleep; and as the small head rested more and more heavily upon Wahneenah’s shoulder, and the soft breath of childhood fanned her throat, the woman again doubted the spiritual origin of the foundling, and felt fresh gratitude for its simple humanity.

“Well, whoever and whatever she is, she is already thrice protected. By her Indian dress, by her White Bow, and by Lahnowenah’s White Necklace. She is quite safe from every enemy now.”