The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757
“With what tongue does the prisoner speak to the Manitou?” demanded
the patriarch, without unclosing his eyes.
“With what tongue does the prisoner speak to the Manitou?”
“Like his fathers,” Uncas replied; “with the tongue of a
Delaware.”
At this sudden and unexpected annunciation, a low, fierce yell ran through the
multitude, that might not inaptly be compared to the growl of the lion, as his
choler is first awakened—a fearful omen of the weight of his future
anger. The effect was equally strong on the sage, though differently exhibited.
He passed a hand before his eyes, as if to exclude the least evidence of so
shameful a spectacle, while he repeated, in his low, guttural tones, the words
he had just heard.
“A Delaware! I have lived to see the tribes of the Lenape driven from
their council-fires, and scattered, like broken herds of deer, among the hills
of the Iroquois! I have seen the hatchets of a strong people sweep woods from
the valleys, that the winds of heaven have spared! The beasts that run on the
mountains, and the birds that fly above the trees, have I seen living in the
wigwams of men; but never before have I found a Delaware so base as to creep,
like a poisonous serpent, into the camps of his nation.”
“The singing-birds have opened their bills,” returned Uncas, in the
softest notes of his own musical voice; “and Tamenund has heard their
song.”
The sage started, and bent his head aside, as if to catch the fleeting sounds
of some passing melody.
“Does Tamenund dream!” he exclaimed. “What voice is at his
ear! Have the winters gone backward! Will summer come again to the children of
the Lenape!”
A solemn and respectful silence succeeded this incoherent burst from the lips
of the Delaware prophet. His people readily constructed his unintelligible
language into one of those mysterious conferences he was believed to hold so
frequently with a superior intelligence and they awaited the issue of the
revelation in awe. After a patient pause, however, one of the aged men,
perceiving that the sage had lost the recollection of the subject before them,
ventured to remind him again of the presence of the prisoner.
“The false Delaware trembles lest he should hear the words of
Tamenund,” he said. “’Tis a hound that howls, when the
Yengeese show him a trail.”
“And ye,” returned Uncas, looking sternly around him, “are
dogs that whine, when the Frenchman casts ye the offals of his deer!”
Twenty knives gleamed in the air, and as many warriors sprang to their feet, at
this biting, and perhaps merited retort; but a motion from one of the chiefs
suppressed the outbreaking of their tempers, and restored the appearance of
quiet. The task might probably have been more difficult, had not a movement
made by Tamenund indicated that he was again about to speak.
“Delaware!” resumed the sage, “little art thou worthy of thy
name. My people have not seen a bright sun in many winters; and the warrior who
deserts his tribe when hid in clouds is doubly a traitor. The law of the
Manitou is just. It is so; while the rivers run and the mountains stand, while
the blossoms come and go on the trees, it must be so. He is thine, my children;
deal justly by him.”
Not a limb was moved, nor was a breath drawn louder and longer than common,
until the closing syllable of this final decree had passed the lips of
Tamenund. Then a cry of vengeance burst at once, as it might be, from the
united lips of the nation; a frightful augury of their ruthless intentions. In
the midst of these prolonged and savage yells, a chief proclaimed, in a high
voice, that the captive was condemned to endure the dreadful trial of torture
by fire. The circle broke its order, and screams of delight mingled with the
bustle and tumult of preparation. Heyward struggled madly with his captors; the
anxious eye of Hawkeye began to look around him, with an expression of peculiar
earnestness; and Cora again threw herself at the feet of the patriarch, once
more a suppliant for mercy.
Throughout the whole of these trying moments, Uncas had alone preserved his
serenity. He looked on the preparations with a steady eye, and when the
tormentors came to seize him, he met them with a firm and upright attitude. One
among them, if possible more fierce and savage than his fellows, seized the
hunting-shirt of the young warrior, and at a single effort tore it from his
body. Then, with a yell of frantic pleasure, he leaped toward his unresisting
victim and prepared to lead him to the stake. But, at that moment, when he
appeared most a stranger to the feelings of humanity, the purpose of the savage
was arrested as suddenly as if a supernatural agency had interposed in the
behalf of Uncas. The eyeballs of the Delaware seemed to start from their
sockets; his mouth opened and his whole form became frozen in an attitude of
amazement. Raising his hand with a slow and regulated motion, he pointed with a
finger to the bosom of the captive. His companions crowded about him in wonder
and every eye was like his own, fastened intently on the figure of a small
tortoise, beautifully tattooed on the breast of the prisoner, in a bright blue
tint.
For a single instant Uncas enjoyed his triumph, smiling calmly on the scene.
Then motioning the crowd away with a high and haughty sweep of his arm, he
advanced in front of the nation with the air of a king, and spoke in a voice
louder than the murmur of admiration that ran through the multitude.
“Men of the Lenni Lenape!” he said, “my race upholds the
earth! Your feeble tribe stands on my shell! What fire that a Delaware can
light would burn the child of my fathers,” he added, pointing proudly to
the simple blazonry on his skin; “the blood that came from such a stock
would smother your flames! My race is the grandfather of nations!”
“Who art thou?” demanded Tamenund, rising at the startling tones he
heard, more than at any meaning conveyed by the language of the prisoner.
“Uncas, the son of Chingachgook,” answered the captive modestly,
turning from the nation, and bending his head in reverence to the other’s
character and years; “a son of the great Unamis.”[1]
[1]
Turtle.
“The hour of Tamenund is nigh!” exclaimed the sage; “the day
is come, at last, to the night! I thank the Manitou, that one is here to fill
my place at the council-fire. Uncas, the child of Uncas, is found! Let the eyes
of a dying eagle gaze on the rising sun.”
The youth stepped lightly, but proudly on the platform, where he became visible
to the whole agitated and wondering multitude. Tamenund held him long at the
length of his arm and read every turn in the fine lineaments of his
countenance, with the untiring gaze of one who recalled days of happiness.
“Is Tamenund a boy?” at length the bewildered prophet exclaimed.
“Have I dreamed of so many snows—that my people were scattered like
floating sands—of Yengeese, more plenty than the leaves on the trees! The
arrow of Tamenund would not frighten the fawn; his arm is withered like the
branch of a dead oak; the snail would be swifter in the race; yet is Uncas
before him as they went to battle against the pale faces! Uncas, the panther of
his tribe, the eldest son of the Lenape, the wisest Sagamore of the Mohicans!
Tell me, ye Delawares, has Tamenund been a sleeper for a hundred
winters?”
The calm and deep silence which succeeded these words sufficiently announced
the awful reverence with which his people received the communication of the
patriarch. None dared to answer, though all listened in breathless expectation
of what might follow. Uncas, however, looking in his face with the fondness and
veneration of a favored child, presumed on his own high and acknowledged rank,
to reply.
“Four warriors of his race have lived and died,” he said,
“since the friend of Tamenund led his people in battle. The blood of the
turtle has been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth from
whence they came, except Chingachgook and his son.”
“It is true—it is true,” returned the sage, a flash of
recollection destroying all his pleasing fancies, and restoring him at once to
a consciousness of the true history of his nation. “Our wise men have
often said that two warriors of the unchanged race were in the hills of the
Yengeese; why have their seats at the council-fires of the Delawares been so
long empty?”
At these words the young man raised his head, which he had still kept bowed a
little, in reverence; and lifting his voice so as to be heard by the multitude,
as if to explain at once and forever the policy of his family, he said aloud:
“Once we slept where we could hear the salt lake speak in its anger. Then
we were rulers and Sagamores over the land. But when a pale face was seen on
every brook, we followed the deer back to the river of our nation. The
Delawares were gone. Few warriors of them all stayed to drink of the stream
they loved. Then said my fathers, ‘Here will we hunt. The waters of the
river go into the salt lake. If we go toward the setting sun, we shall find
streams that run into the great lakes of sweet water; there would a Mohican
die, like fishes of the sea, in the clear springs. When the Manitou is ready
and shall say “Come,” we will follow the river to the sea, and take
our own again.’ Such, Delawares, is the belief of the children of the
Turtle. Our eyes are on the rising and not toward the setting sun. We know
whence he comes, but we know not whither he goes. It is enough.”
The men of the Lenape listened to his words with all the respect that
superstition could lend, finding a secret charm even in the figurative language
with which the young Sagamore imparted his ideas. Uncas himself watched the
effect of his brief explanation with intelligent eyes, and gradually dropped
the air of authority he had assumed, as he perceived that his auditors were
content. Then, permitting his looks to wander over the silent throng that
crowded around the elevated seat of Tamenund, he first perceived Hawkeye in his
bonds. Stepping eagerly from his stand, he made way for himself to the side of
his friend; and cutting his thongs with a quick and angry stroke of his own
knife, he motioned to the crowd to divide. The Indians silently obeyed, and
once more they stood ranged in their circle, as before his appearance among
them. Uncas took the scout by the hand, and led him to the feet of the
patriarch.
“Father,” he said, “look at this pale face; a just man, and
the friend of the Delawares.”
“Is he a son of Minquon?”
“Not so; a warrior known to the Yengeese, and feared by the
Maquas.”
“What name has he gained by his deeds?”
“We call him Hawkeye,” Uncas replied, using the Delaware phrase;
“for his sight never fails. The Mingoes know him better by the death he
gives their warriors; with them he is ‘The Long Rifle’.”
“La Longue Carabine!” exclaimed Tamenund, opening his eyes, and
regarding the scout sternly. “My son has not done well to call him
friend.”
“I call him so who proves himself such,” returned the young chief,
with great calmness, but with a steady mien. “If Uncas is welcome among
the Delawares, then is Hawkeye with his friends.”
“The pale face has slain my young men; his name is great for the blows he
has struck the Lenape.”
“If a Mingo has whispered that much in the ear of the Delaware, he has
only shown that he is a singing-bird,” said the scout, who now believed
that it was time to vindicate himself from such offensive charges, and who
spoke as the man he addressed, modifying his Indian figures, however, with his
own peculiar notions. “That I have slain the Maquas I am not the man to
deny, even at their own council-fires; but that, knowingly, my hand has never
harmed a Delaware, is opposed to the reason of my gifts, which is friendly to