Evelyn Raymond - The Sun Maid - A Story of Fort Dearborn

As garment after garment was spread out before the astonished gaze of the squaws their exclamations of surprise came loud and fast. A group of white mothers over a fashionable outfit for a modern child could not have been more enthusiastic or excited.

Yet through all this she who had brought it remained stolid and silent; till at length her manner impressed the others, and they remembered that she had said: “It is a ceremony.” Then Wahneenah motioned the squaws to be silent, and demanded quietly:

“What is this that the One-Who-Knows sees good to be done at the lodge of her chief’s daughter?”

“Take the papoose. Set her before me. Watch and see.”

Wide-eyed and smiling, and quite unafraid, the little orphan from the Fort stood, as she was directed, close beside the aged squaw while she was silently disrobed. Her baby eyes had caught the glitter of beads on the new garments, and there was never a girl-child born who did not like new clothes. When she was quite undressed, and her white body shone like a marble statue in contrast to their dusky forms, the hushed voices of the Indians burst forth again in a torrent of admiration.

But Kitty was too young to understand this, and deemed it some new game in which she played the principal part.

The prophetess held up her hand and the women ceased chattering. Then she pointed toward the brook and, herself comprehending what was meant by this gesture, the Sun Maid ran lightly to the bank and leaped in. With a scream of fear, that was very human and mother-like, Wahneenah followed swiftly. For the instant she had forgotten that the merry little one was a “spirit,” and could not drown.

Fortunately, the stream was not deep, and was delightfully sun-warmed. Besides, the Fort children had all been as much at home in the water as on the land and a daily plunge had been a matter of course. So Kitty laughed and clapped her hands as she ducked again and again into the deepest of the shallow pools, splashing and gurgling in glee, till another signal from the aged crone bade the foster-mother bring the bather back.

“No, no! Kitty likes the water. Kitty did make the Feather-lady wash the necklace. Now the old Feather-lady makes Kitty wash Kitty. No, I do not want to go. I want to stay right here in the brook.”

“But – the beautiful tunic! What about that, papoose?”

It was not at all a “spiritual” argument, yet it sufficed; and with a spring the little one was out of the water and clinging to Wahneenah’s breast.

As she was set down, dewy and glistening, she pranced and tossed her dripping hair about till the drops it scattered touched some faces that had not known the feel of water in many a day. With an “Ugh!” of disgust the squaws withdrew to a safe distance from this unsolicited bath, though remaining keenly watchful of what the One-Who-Knows might do. This was, first, the anointing of the child’s body with some unctuous substance that the old woman had brought, wrapped in a pawpaw leaf.

Since towels were a luxury unknown in the wilderness, as soon as this anointing was finished Katasha clothed the child in her new costume and laid her hand upon the sunny head, while she muttered a charm to “preserve it from all evil and all enemies.” Then, apparently exhausted by her own efforts, the prophetess directed Lahnowenah, the Giver, to put on the antique White Necklace.

This was so long that it went twice about the Sun Maid’s throat and would have been promptly pulled off by her own fingers, as an adornment quite too warm for the season had not the fastening been one she could not undo and the string, which held the ornaments, of strong sinew.

Then Wahneenah took the prophetess into her wigwam, and prepared a meal of dried venison meat, hulled corn, and the juice of wild berries pressed out and sweetened. Katasha’s visits were of rare occurrence, and it had been long since the Woman-Who-Mourns had played the hostess, save in this late matter of her foster-child; so for a time she forgot all save the necessity of doing honor to her guest. When she did remember the Sun Maid and went in anxious haste to the doorway, the child had vanished.

“She is gone! The Great Spirit has recalled her!” cried Wahneenah, in distress.

“Fear not, the White Papoose is safe. She will live long and her hands will be full. As they fill they will overflow. She is a river that enriches yet suffers no loss. Patience. Patience. You have taken joy into your home, but you have also taken sorrow. Accept both, and wait what will come.”

Even Wahneenah, to whom many deferred, felt that she herself must pay deference to this venerable prophetess, and so remained quiet in her wigwam as long as her guest chose to rest there. This was until the sun was near its setting and till the foster-mother’s heart had grown sick with anxiety. So, no sooner had Katasha’s figure disappeared among the trees than Wahneenah set out at frantic speed to find the little one.

“Have you seen the Sun Maid?” she demanded of the few she met; and at last one set her on the right track.

“Yes. She chased a gray squirrel that had been wounded. It was still so swift it could just outstrip her, and she followed beyond the village, away along the bank. Osceolo passed near, and saw the squirrel seek refuge in the lodge of Spotted Adder. The Sun Maid also entered.”

“The lodge of Spotted Adder!” repeated Wahneenah, slowly. “Then only the Great Spirit can preserve her!”

Wahneenah had lived so entirely within the seclusion of her own lodge that she had become almost a stranger in the village. It was long since she had travelled so far as the isolated hut into which the youth, Osceolo, had seen the Sun Maid disappear, and as she approached it her womanly heart smote her with pain and self-reproach, while she reflected thus:

“Has it come to this? Spotted Adder, the Mighty, whose wigwam was once the richest of all my father’s tribe. I remember that its curtains of fine skins were painted by the Man-Of-Visions himself, and told the history of the Pottawatomies since the beginning of the world. Many a heap of furs and peltries went in payment for their adornment, but – where are they now! While I have sat in darkness with my sorrow new things have become old. Yet he is accursed. Else the trouble would not have befallen him. I have heard the women talking, through my dreams. He has lain down and cannot again arise. And the White Papoose is with him! Will she be accursed, too? Fool! Why do I fear? Is she not a child of the sky, and forever safe, as Katasha said? But the touch of her arms was warm, like the clasp of the son I bore, and – ”

The mother’s reverie ended in a very human distress. There was a rumor among her people that whoever came near the Spotted Adder would instantly be infected by whatever was the dread disease from which he suffered. That the Sun Maid’s wonderful loveliness should receive a blemish seemed a thing intolerable and, in another instant, regardless of her own danger, Wahneenah had crept beneath the broken flap of bark, into a scene of squalor indescribable. Even this squaw, who knew quite well how wretched the tepees of her poorer tribesmen often were, was appalled now; and though the torn skins and strips of bark which covered the hut admitted plenty of light and air, she gasped for breath before she could speak.

“My Girl-Child! My Sun Maid! Come away. Wrong, wrong to have entered here, to have made me so anxious. Come.”

“No, no, Other Mother! Kitty cannot come. Kitty must stay. See the poor gray squirrel? It has broked its leg. It went so – hoppety-pat, hoppety-pat, as fast as fast. I thought it was playing and just running away. So Kitty runned too. Kitty always runs away when Kitty can.”