Pow-wow

“ Luck, his pulse thrilling at the once familiar gesture which his tribal "father," old chief Big Turkey, used to give when he came stalking up for his daily confab with his adopted son, gave back the sign with a hand that trembled noticeably. Whereupon the Indian on the farther rim turned and began dignifiedly to climb through a rift in the ledge down into the Frying-pan.
"He wants a pow-wow," Luck called back to the bunch. "You fellows stay where you're at—I'm going out there in the middle and talk to him." ”

“ When the pow-wow broke up it was well into the night, and taking leave of each other, we "folded our tents, like the Arab, and silently stole away" into the darkness.
Two of the party resolved to continue westward in the direction of Tennessee. The distance to the Union lines was greater but the country to be traveled was mountainous, and thought to be safer. One chose to go northward towards Virginia. Another started for Roanoke River, intending to follow it to the coast. ”

“ In vain, Ross called a council, and went from lodge to lodge, and urged, and ordered, and pleaded, and bribed. Not a man but Old Pierre, the Iroquois, would go to work to clear the road.
The nights were spent in gambling, the days in grumbling; and old Cadiac, a Half-breed, had made himself an Indian drum or tom-tom of buffalo skin stretched on bare hoops. John Grey, the rebel, had uncased his fiddle and was filing away all night to the Red River jig and native dances of Indian pow-wow. Ross proposed the camp should give a concert. A concert meant that a dram of liquor would go the rounds. ”

“ Masterson and Mr. Holiday, who were engaged in whispered converse over a monte table just across the room, showed full of decorous interest.
Not that Red Jack objected to Mr. Masterson and Mr. Holiday holding a conference on the premises. It was plain by the respectful softness of his eye that he dwelt in sympathy therewith, and was only restrained from making a third for the pow-wow by an experience which taught him never to volunteer advice or put a question. Patronage and curiosity are crimes in the West, and ones sophisticated will not risk their commissions. ”

“ These powwows are persons who are believed to have performed extraordinary cures, either by the application of roots and herbs or by incantations. When an Indian wishes to be initiated into the order of a powwow, in the first place he pays a large fee to the faculty. He is then taken into the woods, where he is taught the names and virtues of the various useful plants; next he is instructed how to chant the medicine song, and how to pray, which prayer is a vain repetition offered up to the Master of Life, or to some munedoo whom the afflicted imagine they have offended. ”

“ The office and duty of the Powah is to be exercised principally in calling upon the Devil, and curing diseases of the sick or wounded. The common people join with him in the exercise of invocation, but do but only assent, or as we term it, say ten to that he saith, yet sometime break out into a short musical note with him. The Powah is eager and free in speech, fierce in countenance, and joineth many antics and laborious gestures with the same over the party diseased. ”

“ Seattle, so named after old Chief Seattle, an Indian who was friendly to the whites, is built on a site where a handful of Indians once had their village, but it was an important place even then in virtue of its being a convenient point where every once in a while thousands of Indians would meet and hold their pow-wows. ”

“ Their powows, by their exorcisms, and necromantic charms, bring to pass strange things, if we may believe the Indians; who report of one Passaconaway, a great sagamore upon Merrimack river, and the most celebrated powow in the country, that he can make the water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, and metamorphize himself into a flaming man. In winter, when there are no green leaves to be got, he will burn an old one to ashes, and putting these into the water, produce a new green leaf, which you shall not only see, but substantially handle and carry away ”

“ To-day he only gave a great groan.
"We had such a good home!" said Mew-Mew.
"We had!" said Bow-Wow.
"There was food for us at all times."
"There was!"
"We had a fire all the year round to keep us warm."
"It got too warm sometimes."
"It never was too warm for me."
"There were the chicks in the yard, that we did not like."
"Yes, and the pigs."
"And the ducks, and the horse, and [84] the cow. Yet they did us no harm."
"Well, no! I cannot say they did; that is, if we left them alone."
Bow-Wow did not forget how the pigs trod on him in the sty. ”

“ We will only look on afar off while the others eat.”—“If ye will bring together forty forties of your sables and martens a dinner shall be got ready for the whole lot of you. But a couple of you all alone would not even be admitted into the courtyard.” The next day the sables and the martens came together, and the fox led them to Tsar Ogon, made obeisance to him on behalf of his future son-in-law, and presented him with the forty forties of sables and martens. ”

“ He rules over the wild beasts, and takes his pleasure with them.”—“So that’s the sort of bridegroom you present us with! Well, go back to him and say that he must send us forty forties of gray wolves, and then we’ll accept him as the bridegroom.” Then the little fox ran to the meadows which lay beneath this very wood [88] and began rolling about in these meadows. A wolf came running up and said: “I see, gossip, that you’ve had a good feed somewhere or you would not roll about like that.”—“I wish I wasn’t so full; I’ve been at a banquet with the Tsar and the Tsaritsa. ”

“ Povy's to discourse about getting of his money, wherein I am concerned in hopes of the L50 my Lord hath promised me, but I dare not reckon myself sure of it till I have it in my main,— [hand.] —for these Lords are hard to be trusted. Though I well deserve it. I staid at Povy's for his coming in, and there looked over his stables and every thing, but notwithstanding all the times I have been there I do yet find many fine things to look on. Thence to White Hall a little, to hear how the King do, he not having been well these three days. I find that he is pretty well again. ”

“ The stranger, though at first somewhat puzzled by Woof's violent efforts to wag a non-existent tail, apparently found her big wooer sympathetic. For the next few weeks, all through the golden, dreamy autumn of the New Brunswick woods, the two roamed together; and for the time Woof forgot the farm, his master, Jinny, and even Mrs. Jabe's impetuous broom.
But about the time of the first sharp frosts, when the ground was crisp with the new-fallen leaves, Woof and his mate began to lose [Pg 14] interest in each other. ”

“ So he took the bird home, placed it in the window-sill, and waited and waited. ’Twas not very long before the bird laid its head beneath its wing and began to doze. Then the marksman raised his right hand and stroked it, quite lightly, the wrong side down. The dove instantly fell to the ground and became a maiden-soul, and so beautiful that the like of it can only be told in tales, but is neither to be imagined nor guessed at. And she spoke to the good youth who was the royal archer, and said: “Thou hast had wit enough to win me, have also wit enough to live with me. ”

“ Having dined myself I rose to go to a Committee of Tangier, and did come thither time enough to meet Povy and Creed and none else. The Court being empty, the King being gone to Tunbridge, and the Duke of Yorke a-hunting. I had some discourse with Povy, who is mightily discontented, I find, about his disappointments at Court; and says, of all places, if there be hell, it is here. No faith, no truth, no love, nor any agreement between man and wife, nor friends. ”

“ Storm looked up, and the sullen resentment seemed to vanish from his face.
"Sitting Wolf, as chief," said the old man, "speaks to your father's son. I as priest speak to your mother's son. She gave you strength and staying power. The work you do should kill the strongest of our young men. She gave you also a quick mind, a straight tongue, a good heart. For these, not for your skill as a hunter or warrior, we make you a member of our tribe, and subject to our laws." ”

“ At this flagrant interference with his own lawful kill, it flared to fury. His assailant was bigger than he, better nourished, and [Pg 18] far stronger; but for some minutes he put up a fight which, for swift ferocity, almost daunted the hitherto unawakened spirit of Woof. A glancing blow of the stranger's, however, on the side of Woof's snout—only the remnant of a spent stroke, but enough to produce an effect on that most sensitive center of a bear's dignity—and there was a sudden change in the conditions of the duel. Woof, for the first time in his life, saw red. ”

“ All the afternoon till late hard at the office. Then to supper and to bed. This night William Hewer is returned from Harwich, where he hath been paying off of some ships this fortnight, and went to sea a good way with the fleete, which was 96 in company then, men of warr, besides some come in, and following them since, which makes now above 100, whom God bless!
28th Up by 5 o'clock, and by appointment with Creed by 6 at his chamber, expecting Povy, who come not. Thence he and I out to Sir Philip Warwicke's, but being not up we took a turn in the garden hard by, and thither comes Povy to us. ”

“ But the peasant stood there, and moved his arms about, and shrugged his shoulders, and shook his head, as if he could not believe his own eyes. “Why dost thou keep standing there?” said the old woman. “Go up the tree, rather, and take the pike; ’twill do for supper.” So the peasant took the pike, and then they went on further. They passed by the stream, and the peasant stopped his horse. But his wife began screeching at him, and said, “What art gaping at now? let us make haste and go on.”—“Nay, but look! I see something struggling about all [146] round my fish-basket. ”

“ Before the end of this long ritual the sun had gone down behind the westward heights, the hearth fire burned low, and the Indians were huddled in their robes of elk or bison while Storm, with only his deer-skin hunting dress, felt chilled to the bones. With the covering of the pipe, Sitting Wolf ceased to be priest celebrant and was the chief, jealous, envious, with something in his leathery dark face sinister, boding. ”

“ Mr Powys is neither a windy romancer nor a reporter of actualities; in his spiritual groping he has felt deeply and hated bitterly; he has thrown a scorching light on the stingy souls of the Dorset villagers, and has produced a shocking book—shocking, that is, in the aesthetic sense. ”

“ Povy (from White Hall) about evening reckonings between him and me, on our Tangier business, and at it hard till toward eight o'clock, and he then carried me in his chariot to White Hall, where by and by my fellow officers met me, and we had a meeting before the Duke. Thence with my Lord Bruncker towards London, and in our way called in Covent Garden, and took in Sir John (formerly Dr.) Baber; who hath this humour that he will not enter into discourse while any stranger is in company, till he be told who he is that seems a stranger to him. ”

“ It was very dark and the scene was desolate in the extreme. A solitary light twinkled out here and there from some window in the little village that lay beneath him in the valley, and farther off the pale radiance in the sky denoted the position of the town of Watford. There was a thick shrubbery encircling the house, and the masses of foliage took weird shapes in the darkness, and from a clump of gaunt fir-trees came the dismal note of an owl.
Edward Povey shivered a little, and, quietly closing the door, crept to his bed. ”

“ She amiably forgot him and wandered off by herself, intent on nothing so much as satisfying her appetite, which had increased amazingly. It was necessary that she should load her ribs with fat to last her through her long winter's sleep in some cave or hollow tree. And as for Woof, once more he thought of Jabe Smith and Jinny, and the kind, familiar farmyard, and the delectable scraps from the kitchen, and the comforting smell of fried pancakes. What was the chill and lonely wilderness to him, a dog? He turned from grubbing up an ant stump and headed straight back for home. ”

“ But I having business to stay, he went away, and Povy and Creed and I to do some business upon Povy's accounts all the afternoon till late at night, where, God help him! never man was so confounded, and all his people about him in this world as he and his are. ”

“ It was in one of the earliest of these melancholy visits that Woof first encountered a male of his own species, and showed how far he was from any consciousness of kinship. A yearling heifer of Jabe Smith's, which had escaped from the fire and fled far into the wilderness, chanced to find her way back. For several weeks she had managed to keep alive on such dead grass as she could paw down to through the snow, and on such twigs of birch and poplar as she could manage to chew. Now, a mere ragged bag of bones, she stood in the snow behind the ruins, her eyes wild with hunger and despair. ”

“ From a strange freak of nature, not unusual in these Virginian mountains, his knotty wool was of a pale tan-color. It is a mistake to think that the little negro perpetually grins. Nothing absolutely could have been more full of woe and resignation than the expression of the young Popo as he watched with Pokeberry the ceaseless flood that swept over hill and valley. ”