Early Candlelight by Maud Lovelace

Author:Maud Lovelace [Lovelace, Maud]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-87351-759-1
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2009-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

IV

WHEN the sun swam above the Mississippi bluffs to warm a shivering world, Narcisse and Amable were gone.

The last of the dancers had called out their farewells an hour earlier. They had taken to canoes, to muleback, and to their own sore feet, through a chill nebulous dawn. The children had dropped down and were sleeping soundly upon the warm hearth. Only Hypolite, Dee, George, Lafe and the father and mother took a cup of tea with the travelers and walked with them to the water’s edge.

The valley was wrapped in mist. The spangled trees, like dancing girls in scanty finery, drew vaporous scarves about themselves against the cold. A thin fog clung to the river, almost obscuring the loaded canoe drawn up on the shore. The brothers were to join their outfit at the Entry, and they paddled into the haze singing the voyageur’s song of embarkation, “Et en revenant du boulanger.” They sang with full-throated sadness. There was no disguising that they disliked this departure.

It had been different when they left their dear ones beneath the paternal walls of the fort. Now the home was set down in a wilderness, looking very small and frail among the tall tamaracks. Old Parrant’s nearness was no reassurance, although he had come to the ball and beamed with his one serviceable eye upon the company. Nor was the surly tempered Phalan a neighbor to give comfort. Moreover, the Indians were in a bad humor. It was not only that whiskey, now available, had had its usual effect. The nearby tribes were sullen from a recent affair at the fort.

In the spring, Hole in the Day, the young Chippewa chieftain, had accepted hospitality at a Sioux camp, and when all lay sleeping about the fire he had risen up and killed and scalped a number of his hosts. Ignoring the episode, in August he came cheerfully down to the Falls. The reservation was considered sanctuary, and relying upon that and upon his exchange of headdress with a follower, he sauntered forth to visit a squatter who was married to a Chippewa squaw. Three Sioux braves—sons of the woman, Toka—discovered him and sent an avenging volley. One Chippewa was killed—not Hole in the Day, to Sioux disgruntlement—and in the answering fire one of Toka’s sons fell also. The military was incensed. For almost twenty years it had tried to teach the Sioux that the fort was sacred ground. While Hole in the Day scurried back to his northern forest home, Major Taliaferro regretfully asked the guilty Sioux to present themselves to himself and the fort commandant.

Toka herself led the party, which, singing the death song, brought the two braves to his door. She came, she said, to plead with her father. She had borne seven sons and only these were left, and they had done nothing but kill a Chippewa. Hole in the Day’s unquestioned culpability tempered the commandant’s wrath. He granted the lives of the Sioux on the condition that their own people chasten them.

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