The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort DearbornRaymond, Evelyn
History
The Sun Maid: A Story of Fort Dearborn
Raymond, Evelyn
Chicago (Ill.) -- History -- To 1875 -- Fiction; Fort Dearborn (Ill.) -- Fiction; Indian captivities -- Illinois -- Fiction
The Sun Maid could understand the language of the eyes, if not the
lips, and she followed their wistful gaze toward the clay bowl from
which she had before given him the water. But it was empty now, and
seizing it with all her strength, for it was heavy and awkward in
shape, she sped out of the wigwam toward a spring she had discovered.
"Four, ten, lots of times Kitty has broughted the nice water, and
every time the poor, sick Feather-man has drinked it up. He must be
terrible thirsty, and so is Kitty. I guess I will drink first, this
time."
Filling the utensil, she struggled to lift it to her own lips, but it
was rudely pushed away.
"Papoose! Would you drink to your own death? The thing is accursed, I
tell you!"
"Why, Other Mother! It is just as clean as clean. Kitty did wash and
wash it long ago. It was all dirty, worse than my new necklace, but it
is clean now. Do you want a drink, Other Mother? Is you thirsty, too,
like the sick one and Kitty?"
"If I were, it would be long before I touched my lips to that cup."
"Would it? Now I will fill it again. Then you must take it, Other
Mother, and quick, quick, back to that raggedy house. Kitty is tired,
she has come here and there so many, many times."
"Is it here you have spent this long day, papoose?"
"I did come here when the gray squirrel runned away. I did stay ever
since."
Wahneenah's heart sank. But to her credit it was that, for the time
being, she forgot the stories she had heard, and remembered only that
there was suffering which she must relieve. It might be that already
the soul of Spotted Adder was winged for its long flight, and could
carry for her to that wide Unknown, where her own dead tarried, some
message from her, the bereft. As this thought flashed through her
brain she seized the bowl and hastened with it to the lodge.
This time, also, she forgot everything but the possibility that had
come to her, and kneeling beside the old Indian she held the dish to
his mouth.
"It is the fever, the fever! A little while and the awful chill will
come again. The racking pain, the thirst! Ugh! Wahneenah, the Happy,
is braver than her sisters. Her courage shall prove her blessing. The
lips of the dying speak truth."
"And the ears of the dying? Can they still hear and remember? Will the
Spotted Adder take my message to the men I have lost? Sire and son,
there was no Pottawatomie ever born so brave as they. Tell them I have
been faithful. I have been the Woman-Who-Mourns. I have kept to my
darkened wigwam and remembered only them, till she came, this child
you have seen. She is a gift from the sky. She has come to comfort
and sustain. She was born a pale-face, but she has a red man's heart.
She is all brave and true and dauntless. None fear her, and she fears
none. I believe that they have sent her to me. I believe that in her
they both live. Ask them if this is so."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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