The Ottawa Free Trader

In Old Indian and his Daughter.

Towards night, P--n and myself arrived with Mitchell at his hut, where we found his aged Indian father and young sister waiting his return. "Old Peter," as he is called, had come, with his daughter, a hundred and fifty miles in a bark canoe, to visit him. The old man, now over eighty years of age, shook with palsy, and was constantly muttering to himself in a language half-French, half-Indian, while his daughter, scarce twenty years old, was silent as a statue. She was quite pretty, and her long hair, which fell over her shoulders, was not straight, like that of her race, but hung in wavy masses around her bronzed visage. She would speak to none, not even to answer a question, except to her father and brother. I tried in vain to make her say no or yes. She would invariably turn to her father and he would answer for her. This old man still roams the forest, and stays where night overtakes him. It was sad to look upon his once powerful frame, now bowed and tottering, while his thick gray hair hung like a huge mat around his wrinkled and seamed visage. His tremulous hand and faded eye could no longer send the unerring rifle ball to its mark, and he was compelled to rely on a rusty fowling piece. Every thing about him was in keeping--even his dog was a mixture of the wolf and dog, and he was the quickest creature I ever saw move. Poor old man, he will scarcely stand another winter. I fear-and some lonely night in the lonely forest, that dark-skinned maiden will see him die, far from human habitations; and her feeble arm will carry his corpse many a weary mile; to rest among his friends. As I have seen her decked out with water-lilies, paddling that old man over the lake, I have sighed over her fate. She seems wrapped up in her father, and to have but one thought--one purpose of life-the guarding and nursing of her feeble parent. The night that sees her sitting alone by the camp-fire beside her dead parent, will witness a grief as intense and desolate as ever visited a more cultivated bosom. God help her in that sad hour. I can conceive of no sadder sight than that forsaken maiden, in some tempestuous night, sitting all alone in the heart of the boundless forest, holding the dead or dying head of her father, while the moaning winds sing his dirge, and the flickering fire sheds a ghastly light on the scene. Sorrow in the midst of a wilderness seems doubly desolate.

How strong is habit. That old man cannot be persuaded to sit down in peace beneath a quiet roof, ministered to and cherished as his wants require, but still clings to his wandering life, and endures hunger, cold and fatigue, and wanders houseless and homeless. He still hunts, though his shot seldom strikes down a deer, and he still treads the forest, though his trembling limbs but half fulfil their office, and his aged shoulders groan under the burden of his light canoe. I saw him looking at a handful of specimens of birch bark he had collected, and was balancing which to choose as material for a new boat. He still looks forward to years of hunting and days of toil, when the bark of life is already touching those dark waters that roll away from this world and all that it contains.

After spending a night with Mitchell we bade him good bye, and started for the Adirondack mountains, where it was necessary to have another guide. He rowed us across the lake, and accompanied us several miles on our way, as if loth to leave us. I gave him a canister of powder, a pocket compass, and a small spy-glass, to keep as mementoes of me, and shook his honest hand with as much regret as I ever did that of a white man. I shall long remember him-he is a man of deeds and not of words-kind, gentle, delicate in his feelings, honest and true as steel. I would start on a journey of a thousand miles in the woods with him alone, without the slightest anxiety, although I was burdened down with money. I never laid my head beside a trustier heart than his, and never slept sounder than I have with one arm thrown over his brawny chest.-Headley-