Chapter XX: The Circle in the Lodge.—wakan'

IN this wayward world, it is easier to lose the right path than to recover it. Indeed, each subsequent step is apt to lead the wanderer more widely astray. This is true in creed and deed, intellectually, morally.

The dwarf found it true, also, geographically. Theoretically, it was a simple thing for him to preserve a sufficiently straight line from the Norwegian log shanty, and thus return on his own path. And the end would be the grocer's shop at L—. Such was the Hunchback's logic. But the logical conclusion and the practical result do not always tally.

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating," and not in the formula. Nor even in the eating, permit us to add, but in the digesting. Please write that on the fly-leaf of your cook-book, madam, and your children, saved from many a cruel colic, shall "rise up and call you blessed."

All that weary day, our hero breasted the billowy blossoms of the prairie solitudes. At the onset, his deep, large orbs, clear, penetrating, reflective, were undaunted, for his faith in his course was unwavering. Behind was the sod-thatched roof, in the blue canopy glowed the sun, and the wind steady: with these guide-posts, what cause to fear? The music of the birds resounded in his heart—he was not distrustful of them,—blithe and beautiful though they were,—as he was of his fellows. This toil, though wearing, was for his precious kindred in the home-cabin. To them, too, he was the courier of good news, which he longed to tell.

Alas, that our brightest anticipations are so often illusions! Sad was it for the limp-limbed dwarf to find at last the awful fear haunting him that he was again lost.

Behold how bravely he battles with the horrid misgiving, and with his fearful fate. Level with the waving grass of the upper land, his big head moves slowly forward, as you may see the spent swimmer striking for the dimly discerned shore. Will he gain it? If not, too well he comprehends the fatal alternative. And the little Hunchback, should he not touch a familiar trail, or meet timely aid, would not the naked prairie, glorious as it was in its living verdure, be as fatal to him as ocean depths to the sinking mariner?

Till evening twilight, he was alone on that wide sea of vegetation—walking, resting, hoping, fearing, despairing, searching the remotest horizon for cabin or traveller. In vain. The west grew golden. The stars came out. The moon hung its silver crescent. The night-birds flitted. The wolves barked. Chilled, faint, and at last frightened, the dwarf tottered on, or, sitting on the cold, damp earth, nodded and watched by turns.

Lost and benighted on the uninhabited prairie, what utter helplessness and desolateness are in those words! The forest shuts your gaze in a narrow circle. You hope that just through yonder vista is the old cart-path, or the well-known pasture. But the prairie, swept by your sight from sky to sky, gives ocular evidence that indeed you are lost.

Statisticians say that at about two or three o'clock in the night more deaths occur than at any other of the twenty-four hours, the sun has so long been absent then, and the accumulated chills and vapors are so powerful in their action on the enfeebled system.

The blood circulated inadequately in the little Hunchback's shrunken extremities. His respiration was also weak, as his weak voice betrayed, and the small vitality he possessed, drawn upon too exhaustively by the over-mastering brain, yielded readily to the cold night air. He shivered as with an ague. And later, neuralgic pains tortured face, arms, and legs. Glad was he when the beams of day warmed his aching frame.

The Hunchback journeyed that day for the most part in irregular circles, having not the least conception of his whereabouts. Late, however, in the afternoon, he descried trees ahead. Any change was welcome to him after the discouraging sameness of the wild wastes, and with reviving hope, he sought to mend his pace.

But a half dozen miles' view on level land, and in a transparent atmosphere, agreeably deceives the eye. The distance "holds out" "Quaker measure," come to walk it—especially if you are already overtired. And evening had far advanced when the wanderer neared the forest. Then, to his consternation, a line of light burst upon his gaze—he was in close proximity to an Indian encampment.

Here was an unforeseen difficulty. To retreat far enough from the place to escape the keen-eared, sharp-sighted, swift-footed savages, in his used-up condition, was impossible. He had terribly overtasked his powers of endurance, and positively "could" not journey farther. To go forward was capture, and he dared not contemplate what else. What could he do?

Lying in the grass, long he pondered the perplexing question. He had subsisted, since leaving the Norwegians, on the corn-cake his haggish hostess gave him at parting, and he was now half famished. There were a few figs in his pocket that he had got at the grocer's, and had treasured for his much-loved mother. He ate those.

The osiers at the wood's edge betokened the presence of water. Crawling there, he drank great draughts from the gurgling brooklet, and softly bathed his hot and fevered forehead.

Refreshed by the food, and drink, and bath, he could think more collectedly.

"Let me see," he soliloquized. "I can't find my way home, or to the village. That's settled. If I attempt it, I shall die on the prairies, for I should have nothing to eat, nor perhaps a drop of water to quench my thirst. So to go back is death. And the savages can only kill me. But it is better that it be me than Ferdie or Georgie. I'm so ugly-formed, and they are so handsome and strong!"

But the big, sad eyes swam in tears, and he pressed his hand to his jutting brow as if the thought-pain was there.

"Perhaps it will be best not to wait here and let them capture me; it might anger them worse. I will deliver myself into their hands, and appeal to their pity—if they have any," he added, shaking his head negatively. "But I can't do it yet. I'll delay as long as I can; after all, life is sweet even to me, deformed and despised as I am."

And he glanced shudderingly at the ruddy gleam, and the dusky figures moving to and fro.

"Wonder if every Indian is a demon?" he asked himself, weighing his chance of being murdered at a blow, or tortured. And the blood-congealing accounts he had heard and read of the barbarities perpetrated by redmen came trooping to his mind with heightened vividness.

"The Bible declares, however, that God made of one blood all the nations," he recalled. "'One' blood;' that means, I suppose, that they are naturally alike in the main. If this is so, Indians differ in disposition, like other people." His face brightened at this idea.

But his countenance fell as he added,—

"Yet there are those who denounce the Bible as untrue. If these are correct, then I can't depend on the Indians resembling the whites. They may every one be perfectly fiendish. But whether the Bible is God's book or not," he continued, "I wish these savages went according to its rules. Some state the heathen better not be Christianized; but I guess if such folks were where I am,—" and again, he shrinkingly surveyed the flaming lights,—"they'd be very willing to have these savages converted.

"Suppose, now, they obeyed the Scriptures; how would I fare among them? There's the commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill.' I wish they'd mind that! 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;' they wouldn't burn me if that was in their hearts. The beatitude also, 'Blessed are the merciful;' wouldn't it be nice if that governed them? And, too, Christ's words, 'Love your enemies.' Well, I've no doubt but that they consider the whites their enemies, and no wonder, when their splendid hunting-grounds are taken from them."

How clearly and actively the intellect works in some dire crisis, when its owner crouches at the foot of impending doom! Thus does reason assert its superiority over nature and brute terror. The phenomenon is not unusual, and therefore the more instructive. The soul cannot be trodden into inactivity by material agents.

And there lay the dwarf, despicable externally, puny, panting, physically powerless; but thinking, reasoning, remembering precepts, discussing, in the sanctuary of his own spirit, the mightiest questions, conscious all the while, O, so profoundly, that but a brief moment and his fate was fixed for weal or woe.

But the dwarf's cogitations were instantly arrested, as a mournful human howl floated out from the encampment on the calm evening air. With that sound also the light was suddenly extinguished. How wild, weird, awful the wailing. Better the cry of the gray wolf than that! What did it mean? He had read Indian history, and it occurred to him that a barbarous ceremony was being celebrated.

The din would favor his approach; so he cautiously crept along, a thorny thicket relieving him of his cap, which he did not try to recover; for what need had he of it, when so soon to be tomahawked?

The redskins were assembled in a large lodge, from which a smothered light issued through various crevices. In the centre was a smouldering fire, from which the dying smoke arose to find its way out at the cracks.

Should he move still nearer? He could hear his heart thump against his contorted ribs; would some quick-eared savage hear it too? He waited a moment, that the throbbing might lessen.

"Aunt Esther said she'd pray for me," came to memory just then. "Perhaps," he thought, "she's doing so now. God, who made these Indians, can hear prayer, and hold these Indians from harming me, if He sees best;" and strengthened by trust in the Infinite Defender, he crept close to the capacious wigwam.

Frankie, since that memorable first night on the prairie, when the "stars" enlightened him, had been under a controlling persuasion that on him depended important interests connected with the experiment of the family in immigrating. The loss of his father, too, had thrown on him a sense of responsibility that otherwise he could not have experienced.

When he undertook any difficult duty, like that, for instance, concerning the outlaw Simmons, he uttered a presentiment in affirming as to his aunt, "It's put upon me to do it." This whisper within had sustained him while tracking the trackless prairies; and now, in the shadow of the savage lodge, he had not entirely lost its inspiration, nor forgotten prayer.

The dwarf peeped through a crevice at the strange scene. The lodge was packed with savages of all ages and both sexes, sitting cross-legged in a variety of attitudes and postures, each with a blanket drawn over the head, singing in unison in a low key, the dirge-like notes rising and falling in guttural monotony.

"They are mourning for their dead," he concluded; "now is my opportunity. Better discover myself to them when thus engaged, than when them revengeful feelings are stirred."

And after mentally preparing a short speech declarative of friendliness, and claiming their protection, he passed into the wigwam. His ingress was not at once perceived, such was the din, and so absorbed the performers. But when it was, the issue was as remarkable as unexpected. With a terrified yell, the nearest copper-face scrambled from the lodge, his companions, men, women, and children, tumbling after.

If, as the dwarf had conjectured, he had stumbled upon an Indian powwow, and by the dismal ceremony the soul of a dead brave was being wafted across the dark waters into the Indian's Paradise, what the influence the dwarf's entrance must have been on said spirit, I can scarcely trust myself to contemplate. With what an inglorious flop the defunct warrior must have dropped earthward when the survivors dropped their vocal discordances! And as the powwow was not resumed, of course the tawny decease did not go to hunt the brown deer, with silver bow and arrows like darts of summer lightning, in the blue forests of the happy hunting-ground.

But the dwarf was not wholly right in his conjecture concerning the nature of their convocation. They were not singing a dead brave into the Indian Paradise, but were invoking the spirits of the departed. The Dakotas are "spiritualists"—as we call those among us of the same faith and practice.

One of their sacred performances is the noted jugglery of rope-tying. A lodge is cleared of everything in it, and one of their copper-colored "mediums" produces ropes and thongs, requesting some of the stronger savages to tie him tightly. This is usually done by disinterested parties who state that they have tied the arms, elbows, and feet so tightly as to break the skin, and then bound the feet and hands together, and wound up the whole body in knots and twists of the most formidable kind. The person thus secured is left in the empty lodge by himself, and the door secured from without. No one is allowed to touch or go near the lodge, and the Indian, thus bound, remains alone singing for a few minutes, when he cries out, the door is opened, and he walks forth free.

These Indians also believe that some possess the power to call up and converse with departed spirits. They often make feasts to the spirits, and seek from them information concerning deceased relatives and acquaintances. They assemble in the lodge, smoke, put out the fire, wrap their heads in their blankets, and sing, till the spirits make for them a picture; and many queer tales are told by them of the occurrences at their "sittings."

The cause of the abrupt ending of the savage "circle" the dwarf partly divined. The painted barbarians were dealing, as they believed, with the dead, and his coming into such a ceremony had created a superstitious panic—something as if when you, imaginative reader, were consulting Planchette, a veritable ghost should glide into the parlor.

"They are afraid I'm a 'spiritual manifestation,'" thought the dwarf; and he resolved to favor the error.

Altogether, their mistake was not so singular, when the circumstances are considered.

"Ignorance" is "not" "the mother of devotion," but delusion. The sleight-of-hand tricks of dexterous impostors easily impose on the untaught and the credulous, and natural phenomena are readily construed to be the works of supernatural agents.

Now, the great object of Dakota worship is the "TA'-KOO WAKAN'," the "supernatural," the "mysterious." The "wakan'" includes all mystery, secret power, divinity. And to the untutored savage, all around is to him "wakan'." Without the illuminations of revelation and science, he understands little. Forests, streams, lakes, prairies, hills, rain, thunder, lightning, sickness, life, death, are to him, in all respects, awful mysteries. Sun, moon, and stars are gods and goddesses. Multitudes of questions arise in his dark mind, simple to us, to him unanswerable; and with his hand on his mouth, he exclaims with awe, "'Wakan'! A-tay, on'-she-ma-da!'" "Mystery! Father, have mercy upon me!"

To his apprehensions, heaven and earth are peopled with invisible demons, monsters of hate and evil, to propitiate whom he waves his pipe, tortures his flesh, offers sacrifices, and by silly and horrid rites invokes. "Wakan'"—mystery, dead, slavish, whimsical, unearthly mystery, wraps him in fear from childhood to death.

Probably these Indians had never seen a hunchback till the dwarf disturbed their devotions. And—we will not disguise it—he was a "lusus naturæ," though I doubt if the Dakotas understand what that means. His prodigious chest and back, baby legs, thin, dangling arms, large, long face, cadaverous, and—by reason of years of gloom, dejection, and ill temper affecting the liver—biliously yellow, a deeper shade being laid on by prairie exposures, his immense head out of all harmony with his height, surmounted by the wonderful "ridge" of coarse hair, which, when he was angered or deeply excited, seemed to stand more stiffly—picture such an apparition stealing in on a group of "wild" savages, in their own haunts, far from civilized neighbors, while engaged at their midnight orgies, connected with ghostly and demon consultations. And not the most alert of the assembled copper-faces had seen a trail or heard a footfall. Moreover, their unearthly-shaped visitor called voluntarily. He was not dragged there a protesting prisoner. He came unarmed. His expression grave, resolute, intelligent, his eyes large, spiritual, piercing—looking as if able to read their inmost thoughts.

How perfectly his advent, looks, bearing, time of his ingress, chimed in with their superstitions and the character of their ceremonies. Ah, he was "wakan'!"

The curiosity of the copper-faces, however, brought them back again peeping through the cracks, crawling cautiously a few paces into the lodge, grunting, calling out, yelling, drawing nearer and nearer.

In vain did the discreet dwarf preserve a majestic silence, and glance ineffable things. His power rapidly waned. He went heavenward as a rocket, in their estimation, and he came down liked a stick. Morning found them wholly undeceived—he "was" flesh and blood, for they had pinched him. So do ghostly mysteries fade before a matter-of-fact handling.

His make-up, however, amused them exceedingly. And his voice contributed no little to the entertainment. To this mood, even when degenerating to ridicule, the dwarf was, for a wonder, submissive; for, he reasoned, while I make fun for them, they will not be likely to scalp me.

A savage might be seen "on all fours" squealing like a pig, to imitate his voice; another, rolling himself into a heap, would act the hedge-hog, to caricature his bristles; a third squat like a tortoise, to take off his hunched back.

"Hands off!" the dwarf would pipe, when his hair was pulled.

"Look out, I tell you," as an Indian boy tried to trip him.

"Take care, there," as a squaw stuck a thorn in his arm.

His thin tones and puerile strength, contrasted with his ominous scowls and commanding head, excited roars of laughter.

But harmless mirth was fast changing to offensive and dangerous treatment. A tomahawk thrown at his head was narrowly dodged, and the Hunchback, beset by the clamorous crowd, saw that his risks were fearfully increasing, when from a fine large tent there looked forth a beautiful Indian girl. And instantly after, an aged chief came to him, and dispersing the savages, led him to his wigwam.

The dwarf, overcome by the unexpected interposition, would have fallen at the feet of the chief's daughter, and poured forth his gratitude, and begged her to complete the kindness by sending him to the white settlements. But she appeared now scarcely aware of his presence, and her silence compelled his.