Owindia | Page 8

a dozen yards removed, although a little further back from the edge of the bank. When the first man entered the lodge it could not have been more than a few seconds after the firing of the fatal shot, for Michel was still standing, gun in hand, and his poor wife sighing forth the last few breathings of her sad and troubled life. She had kept her word, and met her death without one cry or expostulation! It might have been heard from far, that groan of horror and dismay which sprung spontaneous from the one first witnessing the ghastly scene, and then from the whole of the assembled Indians.
"Se tue! Se tue!" "My sister, my sister!" cried the women, as one by one they gazed upon the face of the departed; then kneeling down, they took hold of the poor still warm hand, or raised the head to see if life were indeed extinct; then as they found that it was truly so, there arose within that lodge the loud, heart-piercing Indian wail, which, once heard, can never be forgotten. Far, far through the tangled wood it spread, and across the swift river; there is nothing like that wail for pathos, for strange succession of unusual tones, for expression of deep need--of the heart-sorrow of suffering humanity!
In the meantime the chief actor in that sad tragedy had let the instrument of his cruelty fall from his hand; it was immediately seized by one of the Indians and flung into the river. Michel made no resistance to this, albeit even at that moment it might have occurred to him that being deprived of his gun, he was shorn of well nigh his only means of subsistence. He turned to leave his tent, and with a scared, wild look, slowly raised the blanket which hung at its entrance; but he was not suffered to escape so easily: the men of the surrounding camps were gathered close outside, and as with one consent, they laid hold of the miserable culprit and pinned him to the spot; then ensued a fierce Babel of tongues, each one urging his own opinion as to the course of treatment befitting the occasion. The din of these many voices, mingled with the sad wail of the women in the tent, made an uproar and confusion which it would be hard to describe. It ended, however, by one of the Indians producing a long coil of babiche, and to this another added some pieces of rope, and with these they proceeded to bind their prisoner hand and foot, and then again to bind him to one of the nearest trees. Having succeeded in doing this effectually, but one thought seemed to seize the whole community,--to flee from the spot. But one other duty remained to be performed, and this they now prepared to carry out.
The funeral rites of the North American Indian, it need hardly be remarked, are of the very simplest description; indeed, it is only of late years, and since Christianity has spread among them, that they have been persuaded to adopt the rites and ceremonies of Christian burial. Formerly, in many instances, the body of the deceased would be wrapped in its blanket, and then hoisted up on a wooden stage erected for the purpose; after which the friends of the departed would make off with the utmost speed imaginable. Sometimes even this tribute to a lost friend would not be forthcoming; the Indian has an unspeakable dread of death, and of the dead; from the moment that the heart of his best beloved has ceased to beat, he turns from the lifeless form, nor cares to look upon it again. The new blanket which, perhaps, was only worn a day or two by the departed, will now, with scrupulous care, be wrapped around his dead body; for although he were blanketless himself, no Indian could be persuaded to use that which had once been a dead man's property. Then, it may be, the corpse would be left lying in the leather lodge or tent, which would afterwards be closely fastened up; and it has sometimes devolved upon the Missionaries to spend the night outside, watching the camp and keeping a fire burning in order to ward off dogs or wolves, which would otherwise undoubtedly have broken into the tent and made short work of the lifeless body deserted by all its friends and neighbours and dearest connexions.
In the case of the wife of Michel, however, there arose a feeling among her people in the camp, which appeared to be unanimous, not to leave her poor mangled body deserted in the lodge, but at once to commit it to the earth. Accordingly the women ceased their wailing, there was a call for action, and each