THE CAPTIVE

A sudden, far-off cry broke the stillness that had brooded over the long, low Indian lodges on the hill. Instantly the whole village awoke to intense excitement. Women dropped their work by the fireside; old men put away their long-stemmed pipes and leaped like young braves to the doors of the lodges; while in the fields young girls stood straight to listen. Again came the cry, but nearer now and as of many voices. From every lodge by the side of the river and on the hill came pouring the red-skinned villagers, their straight, black hair glistening in the sunlight. From the fields of corn and squashes and out from among the bean-vines came lithe maidens and sturdy Indian women; and from their play by the riverside naked children tumbled breathlessly into the open space before the lodges.

In the distance, with wild, triumphant cries, came the war party for which the women and old men of the village had waited so long. Now they could see the gay feathers that decorated the heads and the red paint that smeared the bodies of the returning braves. Now they caught sight of scalp-locks waved in the air; and in the midst of the throng of warriors they saw the figure of a strange Indian lad plodding along between two tall braves. “Scalps and a captive” went up the cry from the waiting villagers, and out into the open with shouts of welcome they poured to meet the home-coming band.

It was an occasion long to be remembered. The women of the tribe gathered in the open, and with weird songs and wild music, with arms flung high and feet shuffling and leaping, and with bodies twisting and bending, danced the scalp dance.

The captive was only a boy, who did not speak the language of the Illinois into whose triumphant hands he had fallen. He was a stranger in the midst of enemies. Sometimes, as he well knew, in the camps of the Peoria tribe, when darkness had fallen after a day of battle, captives were burned alive. Such a scene his terrified mind now pictured. He imagined himself bound at the foot of a stake in the midst of a clearing. He could see flames reach out hungrily and consume the dried sticks and underbrush. Each second they mounted higher, throwing a circle of light on a close-packed crowd of heartless and rejoicing Indians, who watched the growing flames leap up and lick at the limbs of the helpless captive tied to the stake.

Perhaps, if he had been an Iroquois, burning would have been the young boy’s fate. But on this particular occasion the Iowa River, which ran past the Peoria village, witnessed no such barbaric torturings, for the wife of the chief claimed the captive and took him to her own lodge, where in due time and with proper ceremony he was adopted as a member of the chief’s family.

It was in some such train of events that this captive Indian boy came, with strange words upon his lips and fear in his heart, to live with the Peoria tribe of Illinois Indians. He had many forebodings, but with all his Indian imagination he could not foresee that from this village of his adoption he would set out upon a series of adventures such as no boy or man of his tribe had yet experienced—that he would pass through countries and among people like none he had ever known and come upon dangers that would make his capture in battle seem as tame as a day’s fishing.