[Canadian Crusoes by Catherine Parr Traill]@TWC D-Link bookCanadian Crusoes CHAPTER VIII 10/11
They brought her to the tents of their women, and clothed and fed her, and bade her be comforted; but her young heart burned within her, and she refused consolation.
She could not forget the wrongs of her people: she was the only living creature left of the Mohawks on that island.
The young girl was Indiana, the same whom Hector Maxwell had found, wounded and bound, to perish with hunger and thirst on Bare-hill. Brooding with revenge in her heart, the young girl told them that she had stolen unperceived into the tent of the Bald Eagle, and aimed a knife at his throat, but the fatal blow was arrested by one of the young men, who had watched her enter the old chiefs tent.
A council was called, and she was taken to Bare-hill, bound, and left in the sad state already described. It was with feelings of horror and terror that the Christian children listened to this fearful tale, and Indiana read in their averted eyes and pale faces the feelings with which the recital of the tale of blood had inspired them.
And then it was that as they sat beneath the shade of the trees, in the soft misty light of an Indian summer moon, that Catharine, with simple earnestness, taught her young disciple those heavenly lessons of mercy and forgiveness which her Redeemer had set forth by his life, his doctrines, and his death. And she told her, that if she would see that Saviour's face in Heaven, and dwell with him in joy and peace for ever, she must learn to pray for those dreadful men who had made her fatherless and motherless, and her home a desolation; that the fire of revenge must be quenched within her heart, and the spirit of love alone find place within it, or she could not become the child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven. How hard were these conditions to the young heathen,--how contrary to her nature, to all that she had been taught in the tents of her fathers, where revenge was virtue, and to take the scalp of an enemy a glorious thing! Yet when she contrasted the gentle, kind, and dovelike characters of her Christian friends, with the fierce bloody people of her tribe and of her Ojebwa enemies, she could not but own they were more worthy of love and admiration: had they not found her a poor miserable trembling captive, unbound her, fed and cherished her, pouring the balm of consolation into her wounded heart, and leading her in bands of tenderest love to forsake those wild and fearful passions that warred in her soul, and bringing her to the feet of the Saviour, to become his meek and holy child, a lamb of his "extended fold ?"* _[*Footnote: The Indian who related this narrative to me was a son of a Rice Lake chief, Mosang Poudash by name, who vouched for its truth as an historic fact remembered by his father, whose grandsire had been one of the actors in the massacre.
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