O ne'er may the nations again be cursed
With conflict so dark and appalling!-
Foe grappled with foe, till the life-blood burst
From their agonized bosoms in falling.
Gloom, silence, and solitude, rest on the spot,
Where the hopes of the red man perished;
But the fame of the hero who fell shall not,
By the virtuous, cease to be cherished.
He fought, in defence of his kindred and king,
With a spirit most loving and loyal,
And long shall the Indian warrior sing
The deeds of Tecumseh, the royal.
The lightning of intellect flashed from his eye,
In his arm slept the force of the thunder,
But the bolt passed the suppliant harmlessly by,
And left the freed captive to wonder.*
Above, near the path of the pilgrim, he sleeps,
With a rudely-built tumulus o'er him;
And the bright-bosomed Thames, in its majesty, sweeps
By the mound where his followers bore him.
Monument Mountain.-BRYANT.
THOU, who would'st see the lovely and the wild
Mingled, in harmony, on Nature's face,
Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot
Fail not with weariness, for, on their tops,
The beauty and the majesty of earth,
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget
The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou stand'st,
The haunts of men below thee, and, above,
The mountain summits, thy expanding heart
Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world,
*This highly intellectual savage, appropriately styled "king of the woods," was no less distinguished for his acts of humanity than heroism. He fell in the bloody charge at Moravian town, during the war of 1812-15
To which thou art translated, and partake
The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look
Upon the green and rolling forest tops,
And down into the secrets of the glens
And streams, that, with their bordering thickets, strive
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once,
Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds,
And swarming roads; and, there, on solitudes,
That only hear the torrent, and the wind,
And eagle's shriek.......There is a precipice,
That seems a fragment of some mighty wall,
Built by the hand that fashioned the old world,
To separate its nations, and thrown down
When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path
Conducts you up the narrow battlement.
Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild
With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint,
And many a hanging crag. But, to the east,
Sheer to the vale, go down the bare old cliffs,-
Huge pillars, that, in middle heaven, upbear
Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark
With the thick moss of centuries, and there
Of chalky whiteness, where the thunderbolt.
Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see
Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall,
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and, at the base,
Dashed them in fragments; and to lay thine ear
Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound
Of winds, that struggle with the woods below,
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the scene
Is lovely round. A beautiful river there
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads,
The paradise he made unto himself,
Mining the soil for ages. On each side
The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
The mighty columns with which earth
There is a tale about these gray old rocks,
A sad tradition of unhappy love
And sorrows borne and ended, long ago,
When, over these fair vales, the savage sought
His game in the thick woods. There was a maid,
The fairest of the Indian maids, bright-eyed,
With wealth of raven tresses, a light form,
And a gay heart. About her cabin door
The wide old woods resounded with her song
And fairy laughter all the summer day.
She loved her cousin; such a love was deemed,
By the morality of those stern tribes,
Unlawful, and she struggled hard and long
Against her love, and reasoned with her heart,
As simple Indian maiden might. In vain.
Then her eye lost its lustre, and her step
Its lightness, and the gray old men, that passed
Her dwelling, wondered that they heard no more
The accustomed song and laugh of her, whose looks
Were like the cheerful smile of Spring, they said,
Upon the Winter of their age. She went
To weep where no eye saw, and was not found
When all the merry girls were met to dance,
And all the hunters of the tribe were out;
Nor when they gathered, from the rustling husk,
The shining ear; nor when, by the river side,
They pulled the grape, and startled the wild shades
With sounds of mirth. The keen-eyed Indian dames
Would whisper to each other, as they saw
Her wasting form, and say, The girl will die.
One day, into the bosom of a friend,
A playmate of her young and innocent years,
She poured her griefs. "Thou know'st, and thou alone,"
She said, "for I have told thee, all my love,
And guilt, and sorrow. I am sick of life.
All night I weep in darkness, and the morn
Glares on me, as upon a thing accursed,
That has no business on the earth. I hate
The pastimes, and the pleasant toils, that once
I loved; the cheerful voices of my friends
Have an unnatural horror in mine ear.
In dreams, my mother, from the land of souls,
Calls me, and chides me. All that look on me
Do seem to know my shame; I cannot bear
Their eyes; I cannot from my heart root out
The love that wrings it so, and I must die."
It was a summer morning, and they went
To this old precipice. About the cliffs
Lay garlands, ears of maize, and skins of wolf
And shaggy bear, the offerings of the tribe
Here made to the Great Spirit; for they deemed,
Like worshippers of the elder time, that God
Doth walk on the high places, and affect
The earth-o'erlooking mountains.
The ornaments, with which the father loved
To deck the beauty of his bright-eyed girl,
And bade her wear when stranger warriors came
To be his guests. Here the friends sat them down,
And sung, all day, old songs of love and death,
And decked the poor wan victim's hair with flowers,
And prayed that safe and swift might be her way
To the calm world of sunshine, where no grief
Makes the heart heavy and the eyelids red.
Beautiful lay the region of her tribe
Below her;-waters, resting in the embrace
Of the wide forest, and maize-planted glades,
Opening amid the leafy wilderness.
She gazed upon it long, and, at the sight
Of her own village, peeping through the trees,
And her own dwelling, and the cabin roof
Of him she loved with an unlawful love,
And came to die for, a warm gush of tears
Ran from her eyes. But, when the sun grew low,
And the hill-shadows long, she threw herself
From the steep rock, and perished. There was scooped,
Upon the mountain's southern slope, a grave;
And there they laid her, in the very garb
With which the maiden decked herself for death,
With the same withering wild flowers in her hair.
And, o'er the mould that covered her, the tribe
Built up a simple monument, a cone
Of small loose stones. Thenceforward, all who passed,
Hunter, and dame, and virgin, laid a stone,
In silence, on the pile. It stands there yet.
And Indians, from the distant west, that come
To visit where their fathers' bones are laid,
Yet tell the sorrowful tale, and, to this day,
The mountain, where the hapless maiden died,
Is called the Mountain of the Monument.
Grandeur and moral interest of American Antiquities.—
T. FLINT.
You will expect me to say something of the lonely records of the former races that inhabited this country. That there has, formerly, been a much more numerous population than exists here at present, I am fully impressed, from the result of my own personal observations. From the highest points of the Ohio, to where I am now writing,* and far up the upper Mississippi and Missouri, the more the country is explored and peopled, and the more its surface is penetrated, not only are there more mounds brought to view, but more incontestable marks of a numerous population.
Wells, artificially walled, different structures of convenience or defence, have been found in such numbers, as no longer to excite curiosity. Ornaments of silver and of copper, pottery, of which I have seen numberless specimens on all these waters, not to mention the mounds themselves, and the still more tangible evidence of human bodies found in a state of preservation, and of sepulchres full of bones,are unquestionable demonstrations, that this country was once possessed of a numerous population. * The mounds themselves, though of earth, are not those rude and shapeless heaps, that they have been commonly represented to be. I have seen, for instance, in different parts of the Atlantic country, the breast-works and other defences of earth, that were thrown up by our people during the war of the revolution. None of those monuments date back more than fifty years. These mounds must date back to remote depths in the olden time.
From the ages of the trees on them, and from other data, we can trace them back six hundred years, leaving it entirely to the imagination to descend farther into the depths of time beyond. And yet, after the rains, the washing, and the crumbling of so many ages, many of them are still twenty-five feet high. All of them are, incomparably, more conspicuous monuments than the works which I just noticed. Some of them are spread over an extent of acres. I have seen, great and small, I should suppose, a hundred.
* St. Charles, on the Missouri.
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