Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Previous Page
–
Next Page
OCR
oe,
-
MALAESKA RETURNS TO HER TRIBE, 5}
she
dL:
CHAPTER VIL
Alone in the forest, alone,
When the night is dark and late—
Alone on the waters, alone,
She drifts to her woman’s fate.
AGAIN Malaeska took to her boat and, all alone, began her mourn+
ful: journey to the forest. After the fight at Catskill, her brethren
had retreated into the interior. The great tribe, which gave its
‘name to the richest intervale in New York State, was always munifi-
cent in its hospitality to less fortunate brethren, to whom its hunting-
grounds were ever open... Malaeska knew that her people were mus-
tered somewhere near the amber-colored falls cf Genesee, and she
began her mournful voyage with vague longings to sce them’ again,
now that she had nothing but memories to live upon.
With a blanket in the bow of her boat, a few loaves of bread, and .
‘some meal in a coarse linen bag, she’ started up the river. © The boat
was battered and beginning to look old — half the .gorgeous paint
was worn from its sides, and the interior had been. often washed. by
the tempest that beat over the little cove near her lodge where she
had kept it moored. She made no attempt to remedy its desolate
look. ‘The tiger-skin_was left’ behind in her lodge. . No crimson
cushions rendered the single seat tempting to situpon. | These fanci-
ful comforts were intended for the boy — motherly love alone provided
them;-but now she had: no care for things of this kind. A poor
lone Indian woman, trampled on by the whites, deserted by. her own
‘child, was going back: to her kinsfolk ‘for shelter. Why should she
attempt to-appear less desolate than she was ?.
~~ Thus, dreary and’ abandoned, Malacska sat in her boat, heavily —
urging it up the stream. She had-few wants, but pulled at the oars
~ all day long, keeping time to the slow movement with her voice, from
‘which a low funereal chant swelled continually. . ae
'- Sometimes she went. asliore, and buildings fire in the loneliness,
cooked the’ fish she had ‘speared or the bird her arrow had_ brought
down; but these meals always reminded: her of the few happy days
- Spent, after: the sylvan fashion; with ‘her. boy, and she would sit —
moaning over the untasted food till the very birds that hovered near
would pause in their singing to look askance at her. So she relaxed
in her monotonous toil but. seldom, and ‘generally slept in her little
craft, with the current rippling around her, and wrapped only ina
Coarse, gray blafiket. - ' .
“No one cared about her movements, and no one attempted to bring
her back, or she might have been traced at intervals by some rock
close to the shore, blackened with embers, where she had baked her