James Cooper - LEATHERSTOCKING TALES – Complete Collection

“Skunk of the pale-faces,” commenced this exasperated and semi-poetic fury, shaking her fist under the nose of the impassable hunter, “you are not even a woman. Your friends the Delawares are only women, and you are their sheep. Your own people will not own you, and no tribe of redmen would have you in their wigwams; you skulk among petticoated warriors. You slay our brave friend who has left us?— No — his great soul scorned to fight you, and left his body rather than have the shame of slaying you! But the blood that you spilt when the spirit was not looking on, has not sunk into the ground. It must be buried in your groans. What music do I hear? Those are not the wailings of a red man!— no red warrior groans so much like a hog. They come from a pale-face throat — a Yengeese bosom, and sound as pleasant as girls singing — Dog — skunk — woodchuck-mink — hedgehog — pig — toad — spider — yengee —”

Here the old woman, having expended her breath and exhausted her epithets, was fain to pause a moment, though both her fists were shaken in the prisoner’s face, and the whole of her wrinkled countenance was filled with fierce resentment. Deerslayer looked upon these impotent attempts to arouse him as indifferently as a gentleman in our own state of society regards the vituperative terms of a blackguard: the one party feeling that the tongue of an old woman could never injure a warrior, and the other knowing that mendacity and vulgarity can only permanently affect those who resort to their use; but he was spared any further attack at present, by the interposition of Rivenoak, who shoved aside the hag, bidding her quit the spot, and prepared to take his seat at the side of his prisoner. The old woman withdrew, but the hunter well understood that he was to be the subject of all her means of annoyance, if not of positive injury, so long as he remained in the power of his enemies, for nothing rankles so deeply as the consciousness that an attempt to irritate has been met by contempt, a feeling that is usually the most passive of any that is harbored in the human breast. Rivenoak quietly took the seat we have mentioned, and, after a short pause, he commenced a dialogue, which we translate as usual, for the benefit of those readers who have not studied the North American languages.

“My pale-face friend is very welcome,” said the Indian, with a familiar nod, and a smile so covert that it required all Deerslayer’s vigilance to detect, and not a little of his philosophy to detect unmoved; “he is welcome. The Hurons keep a hot fire to dry the white man’s clothes by.”

“I thank you, Huron — or Mingo, as I most like to call you,” returned the other, “I thank you for the welcome, and I thank you for the fire. Each is good in its way, and the last is very good, when one has been in a spring as cold as the Glimmerglass. Even Huron warmth may be pleasant, at such a time, to a man with a Delaware heart.”

“The pale-face — but my brother has a name? So great a warrior would not have lived without a name?”

“Mingo,” said the hunter, a little of the weakness of human nature exhibiting itself in the glance of his eye, and the colour on his cheek —“Mingo, your brave called me Hawkeye, I suppose on account of a quick and sartain aim, when he was lying with his head in my lap, afore his spirit started for the Happy Hunting Grounds.”

“’Tis a good name! The hawk is sure of his blow. Hawkeye is not a woman; why does he live with the Delawares?”

“I understand you, Mingo, but we look on all that as a sarcumvention of some of your subtle devils, and deny the charge. Providence placed me among the Delawares young, and, ‘bating what Christian usages demand of my colour and gifts, I hope to live and die in their tribe. Still I do not mean to throw away altogether my natyve rights, and shall strive to do a pale-face’s duty, in red-skin society.”

“Good; a Huron is a red-skin, as well as a Delaware. Hawkeye is more of a Huron than of a woman.”

“I suppose you know, Mingo, your own meaning; if you don’t I make no question ’tis well known to Satan. But if you wish to get any thing out of me, speak plainer, for bargains can not be made blindfolded, or tongue tied.”

“Good; Hawkeye has not a forked tongue, and he likes to say what he thinks. He is an acquaintance of the Muskrat,” this was the name by which all the Indians designated Hutter —“and has lived in his wigwam. But he is not a friend. He wants no scalps, like a miserable Indian, but fights like a stout-hearted pale-face. The Muskrat is neither white, nor red. Neither a beast nor a fish. He is a water snake; sometimes in the spring and sometimes on the land. He looks for scalps, like an outcast. Hawkeye can go back and tell him how he has outwitted the Hurons, how he has escaped, and when his eyes are in a fog, when he can’t see as far as from his cabin to the shore, then Hawkeye can open the door for the Hurons. And how will the plunder be divided? Why, Hawkeye, will carry away the most, and the Hurons will take what he may choose to leave behind him. The scalps can go to Canada, for a pale-face has no satisfaction in them.”

“Well, well, Rivenoak — for so I hear ’em tarm you — This is plain English, enough, though spoken in Iroquois. I understand all you mean, now, and must say it out-devils even Mingo deviltry! No doubt, ‘twould be easy enough to go back and tell the Muskrat that I had got away from you, and gain some credit, too, by the expl’ite.”

“Good. That is what I want the pale-face to do.”

“Yes — yes — That’s plain enough. I know what you want me to do, without more words. When inside the house, and eating the Muskrat’s bread, and laughing and talking with his pretty darters, I might put his eyes into so thick a fog, that he couldn’t even see the door, much less the land.”

“Good! Hawkeye should have been born a Huron! His blood is not more than half white!”

“There you’re out, Huron; yes, there you’re as much out, as if you mistook a wolf for a catamount. I’m white in blood, heart, natur’ and gifts, though a little red-skin in feelin’s and habits. But when old Hutter’s eyes are well befogged, and his pretty darters perhaps in a deep sleep, and Hurry Harry, the Great Pine as you Indians tarm him, is dreaming of any thing but mischief, and all suppose Hawkeye is acting as a faithful sentinel, all I have to do is set a torch somewhere in sight for a signal, open the door, and let in the Hurons, to knock ’em all on the head.”

“Surely my brother is mistaken. He cannot be white! He is worthy to be a great chief among the Hurons!”

“That is true enough, I dares to say, if he could do all this. Now, harkee, Huron, and for once hear a few honest words from the mouth of a plain man. I am Christian born, and them that come of such a stock, and that listen to the words that were spoken to their fathers and will be spoken to their children, until ‘arth and all it holds perishes, can never lend themselves to such wickedness. Sarcumventions in war, may be, and are, lawful; but sarcumventions, and deceit, and treachery among fri’inds are fit only for the pale-face devils. I know that there are white men enough to give you this wrong idee of our natur’, but such be ontrue to their blood and gifts, and ought to be, if they are not, outcasts and vagabonds. No upright pale-face could do what you wish, and to be as plain with you as I wish to be, in my judgment no upright Delaware either. With a Mingo it may be different.”

The Huron listened to this rebuke with obvious disgust, but he had his ends in view, and was too wily to lose all chance of effecting them by a precipitate avowal of resentment. Affecting to smile, he seemed to listen eagerly, and he then pondered on what he had heard.