Here are
still the marks of their tomahawks, the troughs in which they prepared
their corn, their caches.
A little way down the river is the site of an ancient Indian village,
with its regularly arranged mounds. As usual, they had chosen with the
finest taste. It was one of those soft shadowy afternoons when we went
there, when nature seems ready to weep, not from grief, but from an
overfull heart. Two prattling, lovely little girls, and an African boy,
with glittering eye and ready grin, made our party gay; but all were
still as we entered their little inlet and trod those flowery paths.
They may blacken Indian life as they will, talk of its dirt, its
brutality, I will ever believe that the men who chose that
dwelling-place were able to feel emotions of noble happiness as they
returned to it, and so were the women that received them. Neither were
the children sad or dull, who lived so familiarly with the deer and the
birds, and swam that clear wave in the shadow of the Seven Sisters. The
whole scene suggested to me a Greek splendor, a Greek sweetness, and I
can believe that an Indian brave, accustomed to ramble in such paths,
and be bathed by such sunbeams, might be mistaken for Apollo, as Apollo
was for him by West. Two of the boldest bluffs are called the Deer's
Walk, (not because deer do _not_ walk there,) and the Eagle's Nest. The
latter I visited one glorious morning; it was that, of the fourth of
July, and certainly I think I had never felt so happy that I was born in
America.
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