It was a clear star-light evening of July, the moon had not risen, and the planetary worlds above seemed to magnify themselves in the absence of the great source of day; a gentle draft of air down the stream was felt, and occasionally a rustling among the foliage was caused by the wind, augmented into a temporary breeze. The whole bank of the river was covered with tall forest trees, save where Mr. Harris’s little settlement was placed. On a bold bluff, now washed away, but which then jutted out into the stream, as if for the site of some defensive works, stood a female. She had been long looking up into the firmament, and then casting her eyes around, as if expecting some one to share with her the “contemplation of the starry heavens.”
The young woman stepped forward and looked down upon the waters below her for some time, and then murmured: “They are now, as in years past, above and below—the glorious constellations shining on, and year after year returning, with all their train rich in their lustre, and surveying themselves in the waters beneath. But _we_ change. Year after year passes, and my fathers’ race, if they appear at all, present themselves in diminished numbers and in wasting forms. The foot of the white man is on the soil, and he treats us as he does the forest trees. Where he finds our race convenient, he leaves them to perish for want of communion with their like; where he needs their lands, he strikes them down as cumberers of the ground; and I, who love the race—_I_ dwell among the pale faces, in peace; nay, I dwell among them of choice. I love their people, and I reverence the precepts by which some of them are governed—by which all profess to be guided. Oh, spirit of my fathers! must all pass away like the wreaths of mountain mist, and, as they fall, shall it be the disgrace of their name that vice, and not vengeance, swept them from the earth?
“Oh, what is this new principle which the whites have infused into my soul—the means and condition of future happiness? What is it that bids me forbear the wish that I was a man—a chief among my fathers’ people, that I might chase the intruder from our hunting-grounds, and restore to our nation the land which was purchased by trinkets and baubles, costless to the whites and useless to the red men? What is that principle that _bids_ me, nay _makes_ me, pray for the good of the whites around me, and look to the destruction of my father’s race as a means of that good?