Noble Deeds Of American Women Part 6

In his history of the Conquest of Florida, Mr. Theodore Irving repeats, very interestingly, the story of Juan Ortiz who, with three other Spaniards, fell into the hands of the Indians by stratagem. The four captives were taken to the village of Hirrihigua, the cacique, who ordered them to be executed on a day of religious festival. Three were shot with arrows; and then "Juan Ortiz, a youth, scarce eighteen years of age, of a n.o.ble family of Seville, was the fourth victim. As they were leading him forth, his extreme youth touched with compa.s.sion the hearts of the wife and daughters of the cacique, who interceded in his favor.

"The cacique listened to their importunities, and granted for the present the life of Ortiz;--but a wretched life did he lead. From morning until evening he was employed in bringing wood and water, and was allowed but little sleep and scanty food. Not a day pa.s.sed that he was not beaten. On festivals he was an object of barbarous amus.e.m.e.nt to the cacique, who would oblige him to run, from sunrise until sunset, in the public square of the village, where his companions had met their untimely end, Indians being stationed with bows and arrows, to shoot him, should he halt one moment. When the day was spent, the unfortunate youth lay stretched on the hard floor of the hut, more dead than alive.

At such times the wife and daughters of the cacique would come to him privately with food and clothing, and by their kind treatment his life was preserved.

"At length the cacique, determining to put an end to his victim's existence, ordered that he should be bound down upon a wooden frame, in the form of a huge gridiron, placed in the public square, over a bed of live coals, and roasted alive.

"The cries and shrieks of the poor youth reached his female protectors, and their entreaties were once more successful with the cacique. They unbound Ortiz, dragged him from the fire, and took him to their dwelling, where they bathed him with the juice of herbs, and tended him with a.s.siduous care. After many days he recovered from his wounds, though marked with many a scar.

"His employment was now to guard the cemetery of the village. This was in a lonely field in the bosom of a forest. The bodies of the dead were deposited in wooden boxes, covered with boards, without any fastening except a stone or a log of wood laid upon the top; so that the bodies were often carried away by wild beasts.

"In this cemetery was Ortiz stationed, with a bow and arrows, to watch day and night, and was told that should a single body be carried away, he would be burnt alive. He returned thanks to G.o.d for having freed him from the dreaded presence of the cacique, hoping to lead a better life with the dead than he had done with the living.

"While watching thus one long wearisome night, sleep overpowered him towards morning. He was awakened by the falling lid of one of the chests, and running to it, found it empty. It had contained the body of an infant recently deceased, the child of an Indian of great note.

"Ortiz doubted not some animal had dragged it away, and immediately set out in pursuit. After wandering for some time, he heard, at a short distance within the woods, a noise like that of a dog gnawing bones.

Warily drawing near to the spot, he dimly perceived an animal among the bushes, and invoking succor from on high, let fly an arrow at it. The thick and tangled underwood prevented his seeing the effect of his shot, but as the animal did not stir, he flattered himself that it had been fatal: with this hope he waited until the day dawned, when he beheld his victim, a huge animal of the panther kind, lying dead, the arrow having pa.s.sed through his entrails and cleft his heart.

"Gathering together the mangled remains of the infant, and replacing them in the coffin, Ortiz dragged his victim in triumph to the village, with the arrow still in his body. The exploit gained him credit with the old hunters, and for some time softened even the ferocity of the cacique. The resentment of the latter, however, from the wrongs he had suffered from white men, was too bitter to be appeased. Some time after, his eldest daughter came to Ortiz, and warned him that her father had determined to sacrifice him at the next festival, which was just at hand, and that the influence of her mother, her sisters, and herself would no longer avail him. She wished him, therefore, to take refuge with a neighboring cacique named Mucozo, who loved her and sought her in marriage, and who, for her sake, would befriend him. 'This very night at midnight,' said the kind-hearted maiden, 'at the northern extremity of the village you will find a trusty friend who will guide you to a bridge, about two leagues hence; on arriving there, you must send him back, that he may reach home before the morning dawn, to avoid suspicion--for well he knows that this bold act, in daring to a.s.sist you, may bring down destruction upon us both. Six leagues further on, you will come to the village of Mucozo--tell him I have sent you, and expect him to befriend you in your extremity--I know he will do it--go, and may your G.o.d protect you!' Ortiz threw himself at the feet of his generous protectress, and poured out his acknowledgments for the kindness she had always shown him. The Indian guide was at the place appointed, and they left the village without alarming the warlike savages. When they came to the bridge, Ortiz sent back the guide, in obedience to the injunction of his mistress, and, continuing his flight, found himself, by break of day, on the banks of a small stream near the village of Mucozo.

"Looking cautiously around, he espied two Indians fis.h.i.+ng. As he was unacquainted with their language, and could not explain the cause of his coming, he was in dread lest they should take him for an enemy and kill him. He, therefore, ran to the place where they had deposited their weapons and seized upon them. The savages fled to the village without heeding his a.s.surances of friendly intention. The inhabitants sallied out with bows and arrows, as though they would attack him. Ortiz fixed an arrow in his bow, but cried out at the same moment, that he came not as an enemy but as an amba.s.sador from a female cacique to their chief.

Fortunately one present understood him, and interpreted his words. On this the Indians unbent their bows, and returning with him to their village, presented him to Mucozo. The latter, a youthful chieftain, of a graceful form and handsome countenance, received Ortiz kindly for the sake of her who had sent him; but, on further acquaintance, became attached to him for his own merits, treating him with the affection of a brother."

HUMANE SPIRIT OF A FOREST MAID.

"Beneath the gloom Of overshadowing forests, sweetly springs The unexpected flower."

Some of the n.o.blest attributes of humanity are sometimes exhibited by the wild children of the forest. These attributes, in such cases, seem, like trees in the remotest wilderness, to have gained, by their spontaneous growth, surprising height, symmetry and beauty.

A lovelier character than Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, king of the country where the first white settlement in Virginia was made, is rarely found among any people. She was lovely in the broadest as well as n.o.blest sense of that word--lovely in features, lovely in disposition, lovely in the highest adornments of Christian grace. She was, in 1607, "a girl of ten or twelve years of age, who, not only for feature, countenance and expression, much exceeded any of the rest of her people, but for wit and spirit was the only nonpareil of the country." Such was Pocahontas, as described by the first white man, probably, who ever saw her, and in whose behalf, at the above date, she displayed the tenderness and true grandeur of her nature.

The colonists, writes Mr. Hildreth, in his new History of the United States, "were specially instructed to seek for a pa.s.sage to the South Sea; and it was thought that possibly the Chickahoming might lead thither. Having ascended as high as he could in his barge, Captain Smith followed up the stream in a canoe, with two colonists and two Indians for companions; and when the canoe would float no longer, he left the two colonists to guard it, and struck inland with a single Indian as a guide. Set upon unexpectedly by a large party of natives, who had already surprised and killed the two men left to guard the canoe, Smith bound his Indian guide to his arm as a buckler, and made a vigorous defence, killing three of the a.s.sailants; but as he retreated backward, he presently sank into a miry swamp, and was taken prisoner. His captors would have killed him, but he amused them with a pocket compa.s.s. Carried in a sort of triumph through several villages, he was taken before Powhatan, the same chief whom he had visited in company with Newport. An attempt was made to engage his services--at least so Smith understood it--in surprising the colonists at Jamestown. Having failed in this, after much consultation, it was resolved to put him to death. He was dragged to the ground and his head placed upon a stone; Powhatan raised a club to dash out his brains"--and now view the highly dramatic scene which follows, as pictured by Mrs. Sigourney in a few lines of masterly coloring:

The sentenced captive see--his brow how white!

Stretched on the turf, his manly form lies low, The war club poises for its fatal blow, The death-mist swims before his darkened sight; Forth springs the child, in tearful pity bold, Her head on his reclines, her arms his neck enfold,

"The child! what madness fires her? Hence! Depart!

Fly, daughter, fly! before the death-stroke rings; Divide her, warriors! from that English heart."

In vain, for with convulsive grasp she clings: She claims a pardon from her frowning sire; Her pleading tones subdue his gathered ire, And so, uplifting high his feathery dart, That doting father gave the child her will, And bade the victim live and be his servant still.

After Smith had been an inmate of Powhatan's wigwam awhile, he was permitted to leave the Indians. Sometime after this the savages, becoming alarmed by witnessing Smith's wonderful feats, "laid a plan to get him into their power under the pretence of wis.h.i.+ng an interview with him in their territory. But Pocahontas, knowing the desire of the warriors, left the wigwam after her father had gone to sleep, and ran more than nine miles through the woods to inform her friend Captain Smith of the danger that awaited him, either by stratagem or attack."

Subsequently the colony at Jamestown was threatened with famine, when, accompanied by a few companions, she was accustomed to go to the fort every day or two with baskets of corn, and thus her

----"generous hand vouchsafed its tireless aid To guard a nation's germ."

At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Pocahontas married a pious young English officer, named Thomas Rolfe, and went with him to England, where she was baptized and called Rebecca, and where she soon died. Well may it be said of her, in the language of the poet, slightly altered,

It is not meet such names should moulder in the grave.

HANNAH DUSTIN.

Experience teaches us That resolution 's a sole help at need; And this, my lord, our honor teacheth us, That we be bold in every enterprise.

SHAKSPEARE.

On the fifteenth of March, 1697, a band of Indian prowlers broke into the house of Mr. Dustin, of Haverhill, Ma.s.sachusetts, and captured his wife, her nurse,[16] and a babe about one week old. The last was killed before leaving the town. The other two were marched through the wilderness for several days till they came to a halt on an island in the Merrimac river about six miles above Concord, New Hamps.h.i.+re. There they were placed in a wigwam occupied by two men, three women, seven children of theirs, and an English boy who had been captured about a year previous at Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts. The captives remained there till the thirtieth of that month before they planned escape. On that day the boy was requested by Mrs. Dustin to ask his master where to strike "to kill instantly;" and the savage was simple enough to tell, and also instructed him in the art of scalping. "At night," to use the concise language of Mr. Bancroft, "while the household slumbers, the captives, each with a tomahawk, strike vigorously, and fleetly, and with division of labor,--and of the twelve sleepers, ten lie dead; of one squaw the wound was not mortal; one child was spared from design. The love of glory next a.s.serted its power; and the gun and tomahawk of the murderer of her infant, and a bag heaped full of scalps were choicely kept as trophies of the heroine.--The streams are the guides which G.o.d has set for the stranger in the wilderness: in a bark canoe, the three descend the Merrimac to the English settlements, astonis.h.i.+ng their friends by their escape, and filling the land with wonder at their successful daring."

[16] Mrs. Mary Neff.

Mrs. Dustin had the happiness of meeting her husband and seven children, who had escaped from the house before the savages entered, and the honor of a very handsome present from Colonel Nicholson, governor of Maryland, as a reward for her heroism.[17]

[17] Eleven years after the capture of Mrs. Dustin, a party of French and Indians from Canada made an attack upon the inhabitants of Haverhill, and killed and captured about forty persons. Several women exhibited on the occasion a remarkable degree of sagacity, courage and presence of mind. We condense from Mirick's History of Haverhill.

Ann Whittaker escaped the tomahawk by hiding in an apple chest under the stairs.--A negro servant, named Hagar, covered a couple of children with tubs in the cellar and then concealed herself behind some meat barrels.

The Indians trod on a foot of one of the children and took meat from the barrel behind which Hagar had hidden, without discovering any of them.--The wife of Thomas Hartshorn, took all her children except the babe--which she was afraid would cry--through a trap-door into the cellar. The enemy entered and plundered the house, but did not find the way into the cellar. They took the infant from its bed in the garret and threw it out of the window. Strange to say, though stunned, it lived and grew to rugged manhood.--The wife of Captain Simon Wainwright, after the enemy had killed her husband, let them into the house and treated them kindly. They at length demanded money, when she went out, as she pretended, to get it. They soon ascertained--though too late to find her--that she had fled with all her children but one, who was taken captive.

THE HEROINES OF BRYANT'S STATION.

The brave example cannot perish Of courage.

HOSMER.

Nor could the boldest of our youth have dared To pa.s.s our outworks.

POPE'S HOMER.

At the siege of Bryant's station near Lexington, Kentucky, in August, 1782, the water in the fort was exhausted; and as the nearest place to obtain a supply was a spring several rods off, it would require no small risk and, consequently, no common intrepidity to undertake to bring it.

A body of Indians in plain sight, were trying to entice the soldiers to attack them without the walls, while another party was concealed near the spring, waiting, it was supposed, to storm one of the gates, should the besieged venture out. It was thought probable that the Indians in ambush would remain so until they saw indications that the other party had succeeded in enticing the soldiers to open engagement.

The position of things was explained to the women, and they were invited to each take a bucket and march to the spring in a body. "Some, as was natural, had no relish for the undertaking, and asked why the men could not bring water as well as themselves, observing that they were not bullet-proof, and the Indians made no distinction between male and female scalps. To this it was answered, that the women were in the habit of bringing water every morning to the fort; and that if the Indians saw them engaged as usual, it would induce them to think that their ambuscade was undiscovered; and that they would not unmask themselves for the sake of firing at a few women, when they hoped, by remaining concealed a few moments longer, to obtain complete possession of the fort: that if men should go down to the spring, the Indians would immediately suspect something was wrong, would despair of succeeding by ambuscade, and would instantly rush upon them, follow them into the fort, or shoot them down at the spring.

"The decision was soon made. A few of the boldest declared their readiness to brave the danger, and the younger and more timid rallying in the rear of these veterans, they all marched down in a body to the spring, within point blank shot of more than five hundred Indian warriors! Some of the girls could not help betraying symptoms of terror; but the married women, in general, moved with a steadiness and composure that completely deceived the Indians. Not a shot was fired. The party were permitted to fill their buckets, one after another, without interruption; and although their steps became quicker and quicker, on their return, and when near the fort, degenerated into a rather unmilitary celerity, with some little crowding in pa.s.sing the gate, yet not more than one-fifth of the water was spilled, and the eyes of the youngest had not dilated to more than double their ordinary size."[18]

[18] M'Clung's Sketches of Western Adventure.