Once she seemed particularly attracted by Catharine’s dress, which she examined with critical minuteness, evincing great surprise at the cut fringes of dressed doeskin with which Indiana had ornamented the border of the short jacket which she had manufactured for Catharine. These fringes she pointed out to the notice of the women, and even the old chief was called in to examine the dress; nor did the leggings and mocassins escape their observation. There was something mysterious about her garments. Catharine was at a loss to imagine what caused those deep guttural exclamations, somewhat between a grunt and a groan, that burst from the lips of the Indians, as they one by one examined them with deep attention. These people had recognised in these things the peculiar fashion and handiwork of the young Mohawk girl whom they had exposed to perish by hunger and thirst on Bare Hill, and much their interest was excited to know by what means Catharine had become possessed of a dress wrought by the hand of one whom they had numbered with the dead. Strange and mysterious did it seem to them, and warily did they watch the unconscious object of their wonder.
The knowledge that she possessed of the language of her friend Indiana, enabled Catharine to comprehend a great deal of what was said; yet she prudently refrained from speaking in the tongue of one, to whose whole nation she knew these people to be hostile, but she sedulously endeavoured to learn their own peculiar dialect, and in this she succeeded in an incredibly short time, so that she was soon able to express her own wants, and converse a little with the females who were about her.
She had noticed that among the tents there was one which stood apart from the rest, and was only visited by the old chief and his granddaughter, or by the elder women. At first she imagined it was some sick person, or a secret tent set apart for the worship of the Great Spirit; but one day when the chief of the people had gone up the river hunting, and the children were asleep, she perceived the curtain of skins drawn back, and a female of singular and striking beauty appeared standing in the open space in front. She was habited in a fine tunic of white dressed doeskin richly embroidered with coloured beads and stained quills, a full petticoat of dark cloth bound with scarlet descended to her ancles, leggings fringed with deer-skin knotted with bands of coloured quills, with richly wrought mocassins on her feet. On her head she wore a coronet of scarlet and black feathers; her long shining tresses of raven hair descended to her waist, each thick tress confined with a braided band of quills dyed scarlet and blue; her stature was tall and well-formed; her large, liquid, dark eye wore an expression so proud and mournful that Catharine felt her own involuntarily fill with tears as she gazed upon this singular being. She would have approached nearer to her, but a spell seemed on her; she shrunk back timid and abashed beneath that wild melancholy glance. It was she, the Beam of the Morning, the self-made widow of the young Mohawk, whose hand had wrought so fearful a vengeance on the treacherous destroyer of her brother. She stood there, at the tent door, arrayed in her bridal robes, as on the day when she received her death-doomed victim. And when she recalled her fearful deed, shuddering with horror, Catharine drew back and shrouded herself within the tent, fearing again to fall under the eye of that terrible woman. She remembered how Indiana had told her that since that fatal marriage-feast she had been kept apart from the rest of the tribe,--she was regarded by her people as a sacred character, a great _Medicine_, a female _brave_, a being whom they regarded with mysterious reverence. She had made this great sacrifice for the good of her nation. Indiana said it was believed among her own folks that she had loved the young Mohawk passionately, as a tender woman loves the husband of her youth; yet she had hesitated not to sacrifice him with her own hand. Such was the deed of the Indian heroine--and such were the virtues of the unregenerated Greeks and Romans!