class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 7]"/> In a wood near by, on the brow of a ravine, there is a row of hollow corn-pits where the Caughnawaga people stored their charred corn. Low down in the fertile river-flats, southward from the ancient village site, a sunburned farmer, owner of both hill and valley, still works with horses and with iron implements the very corn-fields that the squaws hoed with clumsy bone-tools. This once castled height breaks abruptly on its eastern side to let the Cayudutta Creek wind through. It hurries by on its way to meet the Mohawk, and then lags through the flat, lost to sight just long enough to pass round the skirts of the Ta-berg, or Tea Mountain. This in a grassy cone topped with pines, and so named by Dutch settlers who there in wartimes made a tea from a wild plant. It partly blocks the entrance to the pretty Cayudutta valley, and separates it from the modern town of Fonda; but the farmers' daughters and the village people who now live in sight of Fonda Court House know well the little valley of the Cayudutta. Any one of them can point out its brightest gem, the never failing spring that issues from a set-back in the hill and so regular in shape as to suggest an amphitheatre. This spring wells out from under an old stump hidden in a clump of trees, whose topmost branches are below the level of the castle site. Its waters rest a moment in a little shady pool, a round forest mirror; then brimming over, break away and wander down the steep descent to the creek. The path to the spring leads downward from the higher ground above it, known as the Sand Flats. The field where the castle stood is now often planted thick with grain; but when this has been cut and the ground again ploughed, the Indian relics are readily found. At any season of the year, however, the limpid spring that has not ceased to flow for centuries will serve to indicate the spot.

THE MOHAWK VALLEY FROM FONDA, N. Y.
(Tekakwitha's Birthplace in the Distance.)

Standing then, at the brink of this spring in the Mohawk Valley, let the reader cast a look backward, and over the intervening space of two hundred years, to the days of Tekakwitha. Let it be understood, however, that while the imaginative faculty is thus to be called into play, it is not for the contemplation of an imaginative but of a real character. For whatever side lights may color the narrative, they are used to bring out, not to impair, the picture. Many details of time and place, of manners and customs, of dress and the arts of industry, will be woven into an actual scene, rather than given in a tedious enumeration.

The scene about to be described and others which follow depicting the early life of Tekakwitha are not to be found actually recorded in so many words in the history of her life and times, yet they must have occurred; for they are based on the known facts of her life as related in various official and private documents, together with such inferences only as may fairly and reasonably be drawn from those facts when brought under the strong light of contemporaneous records.

Above the spring at Fonda, on the high plateau where is now the well-tilled farm, stood, two centuries ago, the log-built palisades of ancient Caughnawaga. In tall and close-set ranks they serve to hide from view and shield from ambush the long, low Indian houses, twenty-four in number. "Double stockadoed round, with four ports," as when the traveller Greenhalgh saw the place in 1677, "and a bow-shot from the river," stands the strong Mohawk castle. The blackened stumps that now dot the sunny hillside of the Cayudutta change into the old-time, mighty forest, and present a scene that is full of life; for down a well-worn footpath come the Indian girls to fill their jugs at the spring,—afterwards to be known as Tekakwitha's Spring.

These dusky Caughnawaga maidens have the well-known Indian features strongly marked,—the high cheek bones, the dull red skin, and soft dark eyes; but Tekakwitha shields hers with her blanket from the light. Unlike the rest, there is an air of thoughtfulness about her and a touch of mystery. Excessive shyness in the Lily of the Mohawks is strangely blended with a sympathetic nature; and with a quiet force of character she leads their chatter, half unconsciously, to channels of her own choosing.

"A manuscript of the time," says Shea, "describes the Indian maiden with her well-oiled and neatly parted hair descending in a long plait behind, while a fine chemise was met at the waist by a neat and well-trimmed petticoat reaching to the knee; below this was the rich legging and then the well-fitted moccasin, the glory of an Iroquois belle. The neck was loaded with beads, while the crimson blanket enveloped the whole form."

This, in general, is the costume of the merry group with Tekakwitha at the spring. The upper garment, however, is a kind of tunic or simple overdress; nor can it be said that all are equally neat in their appearance. Some have their dark, straight hair tied loosely back and hanging down, or else with wampum braided in it. A few are clothed in foreign stuff, bought from the Dutch for beaver-skins and worn in shapeless pieces hung about them with savage carelessness. On their dark arms the sunlight flashes back from heavily beaded wrist and arm bands, begged or borrowed from their more industrious companions. Not like theirs is Tekakwitha's costume. It is made of deer and moose skins,—all of native make, and stitched together by a practised hand, as every one of the pretty squaws well knew. Her needle was a small bone from the ankle of the deer, her thread the sinews of the same light-footed animal, whose brain she mixed with moss and used to tan the skins and make the soft brown leather which she shaped so deftly into tunic, moccasins, and leggings. Her own skirt was scarce so richly worked with quills of the porcupine as that of her adopted sister there beside her, though both were made by Tekakwitha's hands.

The Indian girls about her like her for her generous nature and her merry, witty speeches. She makes them laugh right heartily while she stands waiting for her jug to fill up at the trickling spring.

These daughters of the Iroquois are bubbling over with good spirits, and their pottery jugs with water, when all at once they spy a band of hunters coming homeward down the Cayudutta valley from the Sacondaga country. Knowing there is one among them who but waits his chance to lay his wealth of beaver-skins at Tekakwitha's feet and take her for his wife, they turn girl-like to tease her; but the quick and timid orphan, dreading the license of their tongues, has bounded up the hill, and hastens to her uncle's cabin with her jug, leaving her companions to bandy words with the young hunters as they stop beside the little pool for a draught of refreshing water.

Of all the people in the ancient Caughnawaga village, the only story that has been written out in full and handed down in precious manuscript, brown with age, is the story of her who bounded up the hill and left her comrades at the spring. In a double sense she left them. She was far above them. She stands to-day upon a mystic height; and many, both of her race and our own in these our days, do homage to her memory.

May her home at Caughnawaga, high above the stones that lie imbedded in the Mohawk River, and close beside the spring that trickles downward to the Cayudutta,