Page:Myths of the Iroquois.djvu/71

SMITH.] You have stolen a helpless woman and a little boy from among them. I shall never forget it. If I am spared you will all lose your scalps." The Illinois warriors understood not a word; they thought he was joining in their triumph, and were satisfied that he would soon forget his own people.

After they had marched three days the woman became exhausted, and she was too faint to be dragged further. The warriors held a council, and she meanwhile spoke to the Seneca boy in earnest tones. " Avenge my blood!" said she; "and when you return to your own people tell them how the cruel Illinois took my life. Promise me you will never cease to be a Seneca." As he finished promising all she asked, she was slain and left dead on the ground.

Then they hurried forward, nearing their owji settlement early in the evening. Next day two runners were sent to the village to proclaim their success and return, and all the population turned out with shouts and cries of joy to meet them.

Now the fate of the boy had to be determined. He listened as the chief, with exaggerated gestures and exclamations, gave an account of the successful expedition. The people, as they listened, grew so excited that they beat the ground with their clubs and wished they could ex- terminate every Seneca in the world. They longed to kill the boy, but the chiefs held a council and decided that there was stuff in him, and they would therefore torture hun, and if he stood the test, adopt him into their own tribe. The boy meantime had dreamed a dream, in which he had been forewarned that the Illinois would inflict horrible tortures upon him. "If he can live through our tortures," said the chief, "he shall become an Illinois." The council fire glowed red with burning heat. They seized the captive and held him barefooted on the coals until his feet were one mass of blisters. Then they pierced the blisters with a needle made of fish bone and filled up the blisters with sharp flint stones. "Now run a race," they recommended; "run twenty rods." In his dream he had been told that if he could reach the Long House and find a seat on the wild-cat skin, they would vote him worthy of his life. His agony was intense, but up in his heart rose the memory of his tribe; and as the signal for his start was given he com- menced singing with all his might, saying, as they thought, their war song, but in reality the words: "I shall never forget this; never for- give your cruelty. If I am spared you shall every one of you lose your scalps." This gave him courage. He forgot his agony. He bounded forward and flew so swiftly that the Indians, who stood in rows ready to hit him as he passed with thorn-brier branches, could not touch him. He rushed into the Long House; it was crowded, but he spied a wild- cat skin on which an old warrior sat, and he managed to seat himself upon the tail, remembering his dream. The chiefs noticed his endur- ance and said again, "If we spare his life he will be worthy to become an Illinois; but he knows the trail, so we had better kill him."