In The Boyhood of Lincoln Part 12

A tall, lank, wiry boy came up to the door.

"Abe, I do declare!" said Aunt Olive. "Come in. I'm makin' doughnuts, and you sha'n't have one of them. I make Scriptur' doughnuts, and the Scriptur' says if a man spends his time porin' over books, of which there is no end, neither shall he eat, or somethin' like that--now don't it, elder?--But seein' it's you, Abe, and you are a pretty good boy, after all, when people are in trouble, and sick and such, I'll make you an elephant. There ain't any elephants in Injiany."

Aunt Olive cut a piece of doughnut dough in the shape of a picture-book elephant and tossed it into the fat. It swelled up to enormous proportions, and when she scooped it out with a ladle it was, for a doughnut, an elephant indeed.

"Now, Abe, there's your elephant.--And, elder, here's a whole pan full of twisted doughnuts. You said that you were goin' to meet Black Hawk.

Where does he live? Tell us all about him."

"I will do so, my good woman," said Jasper. "I want you to be interested in my Indian missions. When I come this way again, I shall be likely to bring with me an Indian guide, an uncommon boy, I am told. You shall hear my story."

CHAPTER VI.

JASPER GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF HIS VISIT TO BLACK HAWK.--AUNT INDIANA'S WIG.

Aunt Indiana, Jasper, John Hanks, and young Abraham Lincoln sat between the dying logs in the great fireplace and the open door. The company was after a little time increased for Thomas Lincoln came slowly into the clearing, and saying, "How-dy?" and "The top of the day to ye all," sat down in the suns.h.i.+ne on the log step; and soon after came Dennis Hanks and dropped down on a puncheon.

"I think that you are misled," said Jasper, "when you say that Black Hawk was born at Kaskaskia. If I remember rightly, he said to me: 'I was born in this Sac village. Here I spent my youth; my fathers' graves are here, and the graves of my children, and here where I was born I wish to die.' Rock Island, as the northern islands, rapids, and bluffs of the Mississippi are called, is a very beautiful place. Black Hawk clings to the spot as to his life. 'I love to look down,' he said, 'upon the big rivers, shady groves, and green prairies from the graves of my fathers,'

and I do not wonder at this feeling. His blood is the same and his rights are the same as any other king, and he loves Nature and has a heart.

"It is my calling to teach and preach among the Indians and new towns of Illinois. This call came to me in Pennsylvania. G.o.d willed it, and I had no will but to obey. I heard the Voice within, just as I heard it in Germany on the Rhine. _There_ it said, 'Go to America.' In Pennsylvania it said, 'Go to the Illinois.'

"I went. I have walked all the way, teaching and preaching in the log school-houses. I sowed the good seed, and left the harvest to the heavens. Why should I be anxious in regard to the result? I walk by faith, and I know what the result will be in G.o.d's good time, without seeking for it. Why should I stop to number the people? I know.

"I wanted an Indian guide and interpreter, and the inward Voice told me to go to Black Hawk and secure one from the chief himself. So I went to the bluffs of the Mississippi, and told Black Hawk all my heart, and he let me preach in his lodges, and I made some strong winter shoes for him, and tried to teach the children by signs. So I was fed by the ravens of the air. He had no interpreter or runner such as he would trust to go with me; but he told me if I would return in the May moon, he would provide me one. He said that it would be a boy by the name of Waubeno, whose father was a n.o.ble warrior and had had a strange and mysterious history. The boy was then traveling with an old uncle by the name of Main-Pogue. These names sound strange to German ears: Waubeno and Main-Pogue! I promised to return in May. I am on my way.

"If I get the boy Waubeno--and the Voice within tells me that I will--I intend to travel a circuit, round and round, round and round, teaching and preaching. I can see my circuit now in my mind. This is the map of it: From Rock Island to Fort Dearborn (Chicago); from Fort Dearborn to the Ohio, which will bring me here again; and from the Ohio to the Mississippi, and back to Rock Island, and so round and round, round and round. Do you see?"

The homely travels of Thomas Lincoln and the limited geography of Andrew Crawford had not prepared Jasper's audience to see even this small circuit very distinctly. Thomas Lincoln, like the dwellers in the Scandinavian valleys, doubtless believed that there "are people beyond the mountains, _also_" but he knew little of the world outside of Kentucky and Illinois. Mrs. Eastman was quite intelligent in regard to New England and the Middle States, but the West to her mind was simply land--"oceans of it," as she expressed herself--"where every one was at liberty to choose without infringin' upon anybody."

"Don't you ever stop to build up churches?" said Mrs. Eastman to Jasper.

"No."

"You just baptize 'em, and let 'em run. That's what I can't understand.

I can't get at it. What are you really doin'? Now, say?"

"I am the Voice in the wilderness, preparing the way."

"No family name?"

"No. What have I to do with a name?"

"No money?"

"Only what I earn."

"That's queerer yet. Well, you are just the man to preach to the uninhabited places of the earth. Tell us more about Black Hawk. I want to hear of him, although we all are wastin' a pile of time when we all ought to be to work. Tell us about Black Hawk, and then we'll all up and be doin'. My fire is goin' out now."

"He's a revengeful critter, that Black Hawk," said Thomas Lincoln, "and you had better be pretty wary of him. You don't know Indians. He's a flint full of fire, so people say that come to the smithy. You look out."

"He has had his wrongs," said Jasper, "and he has been led by his animal nature to try to avenge them. Had he listened to the higher teachings of the soul, it might have been different. We should teach him."

"What was it that set him against white folks?" asked Mrs. Eastman.

"He told me the whole story," said Jasper, "and it made my heart bleed for him. He's a child of Nature, and has a great soul, but it needs a teacher. The Indians need teachers. I am sent to teach in the wilderness, and to be fed by the birds of the air. I am sent from over the sea. But listen to the tale of Black Hawk. You complain of your wrongs, don't you? Why should not he?

"Years ago Black Hawk had an old friend whom he dearly loved, for the friends.h.i.+ps of Indians are ardent and n.o.ble. That friend had a boy, and Black Hawk loved this boy and adopted him as his own, and became as a father to him, and taught him to hunt and to go to war. When Black Hawk joined the British he wished to take this boy with him to Canada; but his own father said that he needed him to care for him in his old age, to fish and to hunt for him. He said, moreover, that he did not like his boy to fight against the Americans, who had always treated him kindly. So Black Hawk left the boy with his old father.

"On his return to Rock River and the bluffs of the Mississippi, after the war on the lakes, and as he was approaching his own town in the sunset, he chanced to notice a column of white smoke curling from a hollow in one of the bluffs. He stepped aside to see what was there. As he looked over the bluff he saw a fire, and an aged Indian sitting alone on a prayer-mat before it, as though humbling himself before the Great Spirit. He went down to the place and found that the man was his old friend.

"'How came you here?' asked Black Hawk. But, although the old Indian's lip moved, he received no answer.

"'What has happened?' asked Black Hawk.

"There was a pitiful look in the old man's eyes, but this was his only reply. The old Indian seemed scarcely alive. Black Hawk brought some water to him. It revived him. His consciousness and memory seemed to return. He looked up. With staring eyes he said, suddenly:

"'Thou art Black Hawk! O Black Hawk, Black Hawk, my old friend, he is gone!'

"'Who has gone?'

"'The life of my heart is gone, he whom you used to love. Gone, like a maple-leaf. Gone! Listen, O Black Hawk, listen.

"'After you went away to fight for the British, I came down the river at the request of the pale-faces to winter there. When I arrived I found that the white people had built a fort there. I went to the fort with my son to tell the people that we were friendly."

"'The white war-chief received me kindly, and told us that we might hunt on this side of the Mississippi, and that he would protect us. So we made our camp there. We lived happy, and we loved to talk of you, O Black Hawk!

"'We were there two moons, when my boy went to hunt one day, unsuspicious of any danger. We thought the white man spoke true. Night came, and he did not return. I could not sleep that night. In the morning I sent out the old woman to the near lodges to give an alarm, and say that my boy must be sought.

"'There was a band formed to hunt for him. Snow was on the ground, and they found his tracks--my boy's tracks. They followed them, and saw that he had been pursuing a deer to the river. They came upon the deer, which he had killed and left hanging on the branch of a tree. It was as he had left it.

"'But here they found the tracks of the white man. The pale-faces had been there, and had taken our boy prisoner. They followed the tracks and they found him. O Black Hawk! he was dead--my boy! The white men had murdered him for killing the deer near the fort; and the land was ours.

His face was all shot to pieces. His body was stabbed through and through, and they had torn the hair from his head. They had tied his hands behind him before they murdered him. Black Hawk, my heart is dead.

What do the hawks in the sky say?'

"The old Indian fell into a stupor, from which he soon expired. Black Hawk watched over his body during the night, and the next day he buried it upon the bluff. It was at that grave that Black Hawk listened to the hawks in the sky, and vowed vengeance against the white people forever, and summoned his warriors for slaughter."

"He's a hard Indian," said Thomas Lincoln. "Don't you trust Black Hawk.

You don't know him."

"Hard? Yes, but did not your brother Mordecai make the same vow and follow the same course after the murder of your father by the Indians? A slayer of man is a slayer of man whoever and wherever he may be. May the gospel bring the day when the shedding of human blood will cease! But the times are still evil. The world waits still for the manifestation of the sons of G.o.d; as of old it waits. I have given all I am to the teaching of the gospel of peace. The Indians need it; you need it, all of you. You do the same things that the savages do."

"Just hear him!" said Aunt Indiana.--"Who are you preachin' to, elder?

Callin' us savages! I'm an exhorter myself, I'd like to have you know. I could exhort _you_. Savages? We know Indians here better than you do.

You wait."