Book 2. The Opening Of The Drama - Chapter 3. Wallulah

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_ BOOK II. THE OPENING OF THE DRAMA
CHAPTER III. WALLULAH

Ne'er was seen
In art or nature, aught so passing sweet
As was the form that in its beauteous frame
Inclosed her, and is scattered now in dust.

CAREY: Dante.

Multnomah passed on to seek the lodge of his daughter Wallulah, a half Asiatic, and the most beautiful woman in all the land of the Wauna.

Reader, would you know the tale of the fair oriental of whom was born the sweet beauty of Wallulah?

Eighteen years before the time of our story, an East Indian ship was wrecked on the Columbia bar, the crew and cargo falling into the hands of the Indians. Among the rescued was a young and exceedingly lovely woman, who was hospitably entertained by the chief of the tribe. He and his people were deeply impressed by the grace of the fair stranger, whose dainty beauty won for her the name of "Sea-Flower," because the sea, that is ever drifting weeds, had for once wafted a flower to the shore.

As she sat on the mat in the rude bark lodge, the stern chief softened his voice, trying to talk with her; the uncouth women gently stroked her long soft hair, and some of the bolder and more curious touched her white hands wonderingly, while the throng of dusky faces pressed close round the pale, sweet creature whose eyes looked at them with a deep, dumb woe they could not understand.

When she had become familiar with the Willamette tongue, she told them that she was the daughter of a chief far away across the great water, who ruled a country as broad as the land of the Wauna and far richer. He had sent her as a bride to the ruler of another land, with a fabulous dowry of jewels and a thousand gifts besides. But the ship that bore her and her splendid treasures had been turned from its course by a terrible storm. Day after day it was driven through a waste of blackness and foam,--the sails rent, the masts swept away, the shattered hulk hurled onward like a straw by the fury of the wind. When the tempest had spent itself, they found themselves in a strange sea under strange stars. Compass and chart were gone; they knew not where they were, and caught in some unknown current, they could only drift blindly on and on. Never sighting land, seeing naught but the everlasting sweep of wave and sky, it began to be whispered in terror that this ocean had no further shore, that they might sail on forever, seeing nothing but the boundless waters. At length, when the superstitious sailors began to talk of throwing their fair charge overboard as an offering to the gods, the blue peaks of the Coast Range rose out of the water, and the ever rain-freshened green of the Oregon forests dawned upon them. Then came the attempt to enter the Columbia, and the wreck on the bar.[1]

Multnomah made the lovely princess his wife, and Sea-Flower showed the spirit of a queen. She tried to introduce among the Indians something of the refinement of her oriental home. From her the degraded medicine-men and dreamers caught a gleam of the majestic lore of Buddha; to the chiefs-in-council she taught something of the grave, inexorable justice of the East, that seemed like a higher development of their own grim unwritten code. Her influence was very great, for she was naturally eloquent and of noble presence. More than one sachem felt the inspiration of better, purer thoughts than he had ever known before when the "war-chief's woman" spoke in council. Strange gatherings were those: blood-stained chiefs and savage warriors listening all intent to the sweetest of Indian tongues spoken in modulations that were music; the wild heart of the empire stirred by the perfumed breath of a woman!

She had died three years before the events we have been narrating, and had left to her daughter the heritage of her refinement and her beauty. Wallulah was the only child of the war-chief and his Asiatic wife, the sole heir of her father's sovereignty.

Two miles from the council grove, in the interior of the island, was Wallulah's lodge. The path that Multnomah took led through a pleasant sylvan lawn. The grass was green, and the air full of the scent of buds and flowers. Here and there a butterfly floated like a sunbeam through the woodland shadows, and a humming-bird darted in winged beauty from bloom to bloom. The lark's song came vibrating through the air, and in the more open spaces innumerable birds flew twittering in the sun. The dewy freshness, the exquisite softness of spring, was everywhere.

In the golden weather, through shadowed wood and sunny opening, the war-chief sought his daughter's lodge.

Suddenly a familiar sound attracted his attention, and he turned toward it. A few steps, and he came to the margin of a small lake. Several snow-white swans were floating on it; and near the edge of the water, but concealed from the swans by the tall reeds that grew along the shore, was his daughter, watching them.

She was attired in a simple dress of some oriental fabric. Her form was small and delicately moulded; her long black hair fell in rich masses about her shoulders; and her profile, turned toward him, was sweetly feminine. The Indian type showed plainly, but was softened with her mother's grace. Her face was sad, with large appealing eyes and mournful lips, and full of haunting loveliness; a face whose strange mournfulness was deepened by the splendor of its beauty; a face the like of which is rarely seen, but once seen can never be forgotten.

There was something despondent even in her pose, as she sat with her shoulders drooping slightly forward and her dark eyes fixed absently on the swans, watching them through the bending reeds. Now one uttered its note, and she listened, seeming to vibrate to the deep, plaintive cry; then she raised to her lips a flute that she held in her hands, and answered it with a perfect intonation,--an intonation that breathed the very spirit of the swan. So successful was the mimicry that the swans replied, thinking it the cry of a hidden mate; and again she softly, rhythmically responded.

"Wallulah!" said the chief.

She sprang to her feet and turned toward him. Her dark face lighted with an expressive flash, her black eyes shone, her features glowed with joy and surprise. It was like the breaking forth of an inner illumination. There was now nothing of the Indian in her face.

"My father!" she exclaimed, springing to him and kissing his hand, greeting him as her mother had taught her to do from childhood. "Welcome! Were you searching for me?"

"Yes, you were well hidden, but Multnomah is a good hunter and can always track the fawn to its covert," replied the chief, with the faint semblance of a smile. All that there was of gentleness in his nature came out when talking with his daughter.

"You have come from the council? Are you not weary and hungry? Come to the lodge, and let Wallulah give you food, and spread a mat for you to rest upon."

"No, I am hungry only to see Wallulah and hear her talk. Sit down on the log again." She seated herself, and her father stood beside her with an abstracted gaze, his hand stroking her long, soft tresses. He was thinking of the darker, richer tresses of another, whose proud, sad face and mournful eyes with their wistful meaning, so like Wallulah's own, he, a barbarian prince, could never understand.

Although, according to the superstitious custom of the Willamettes, he never spoke the name of Sea-Flower or alluded to her in any way, he loved his lost wife with a deep and unchanging affection. She had been a fair frail thing whose grace and refinement perplexed and fascinated him, moving him to unwonted tenderness and yearning. He had brought to her the spoils of the chase and of battle. The finest mat was braided for her lodge, the choicest skins and furs spread for her bed, and the chieftainess's string of hiagua shells and grizzly bear's claws had been put around her white neck by Multnomah's own hand. In spite of all this, she drooped and saddened year by year; the very hands that sought to cherish her seemed but to bruise; and she sickened and died, the delicate woman, in the arms of the iron war-chief, like a flower in the grasp of a mailed hand.

Why did she die? Why did she always seem so sad? Why did she so often steal away to weep over her child? Was not the best food hers, and the warm place by the lodge fire, and the softest bearskin to rest on; and was she not the wife of Multnomah,--the big chief's woman? Why then should she droop and die like a winged bird that one tries to tame by tying it to the wigwam stake and tossing it food?

Often the old chief brooded over these questions, but it was unknown to all, even to Wallulah. Only his raven tresses, cut close year by year in sign of perpetual mourning, told that he had not forgotten, could never forget.

The swans had taken flight, and their long lingering note sounded faint in the distance.

"You have frightened away my swans," said Wallulah, looking up at him smilingly.

A shadow crossed his brow.

"Wallulah," he said, and his voice had now the stern ring habitual to it, "you waste your life with the birds and trees and that thing of sweet sounds,"--pointing to the flute. "Better be learning to think on the things a war-chief's daughter should care for,--the feast and the council, the war-parties and the welcome to the braves when they come back to the camp with the spoil."

The bright look died out of her face.

"You say those words so often," she replied sorrowfully, "and I try to obey, but cannot. War is terrible to me."

His countenance grew harsher, his hand ceased to stroke her hair.

"And has Multnomah, chief of the Willamettes and war-chief of the Wauna, lived to hear his daughter say that war is terrible to her? Have you nothing of your father in you? Remember the tales of the brave women of Multnomah's race,--the women whose blood is in your veins. Remember that they spoke burning words in the council, and went forth with the men to battle, and came back with their own garments stained with blood. You shudder! Is it at the thought of blood?"

The old wistful look came back, the old sadness was on the beautiful face again. One could see now why it was there.

"My father," she said sorrowfully, "Wallulah has tried to love those things, but she cannot. She cannot change the heart the Great Spirit has given her. She cannot bring herself to be a woman of battle any more than she can sound a war-cry on her flute," and she lifted it as she spoke.

He took it into his own hands.

"It is this," he said, breaking down the sensitive girl in the same despotic way in which he bent the wills of warriors; "it is this that makes you weak. Is it a charm that draws the life from your heart? If so, it can be broken."

Another moment and the flute would have been broken in his ruthless hands and its fragments flung into the lake; but Wallulah, startled, caught it from him with a plaintive cry.

"It was my mother's. If you break it you will break my heart!"

The chief's angry features quivered at the mention of her mother, and he instantly released the flute. Wallulah clasped it to her bosom as if it represented in some way the mother she had lost, and her eyes filled with tears. Again her father's hand rested on her head, and she knew that he too was thinking of her mother. Her nature rose up in revolt against the Indian custom which forbade talking of the dead. Oh, if she might only talk with her father about her mother, though it were but a few brief words! Never since her mother's death had her name been mentioned between them. She lifted her eyes, pathetic with three years' hunger, to his. As their glances met, it seemed as if the veil that had been between their diverse natures was for a moment lifted, and they understood each other better than they ever had before. While his look imposed silence and sealed her lips as with a spoken command, there was a gleam of tenderness in it that said, "I understand, I too remember; but it must not be spoken."

There came to her a sense of getting closer to her father's heart, even while his eyes held her back and bade her be silent.

At length the chief spoke, this time very gently.

"Now I shall talk to you not as to a girl but as to a woman. You are Multnomah's only child. When he dies there will be no one but you to take his place. Are your shoulders strong enough to bear the weight of power, the weight that crushes men? Can you break down revolt and read the hearts of plotters,--yes, and detect conspiracy when it is but a whisper in the air? Can you sway council and battle to your will as the warrior bends his bow? No; it takes men, men strong of heart, to rule the races of the Wauna. Therefore there is but one way left me whereby the line of Multnomah may still be head of the confederacy when he is gone. I must wed you to a great warrior who can take my place when I am dead and shelter you with his strength. Then the name and the power of Multnomah will still live among the tribes, though Multnomah himself be crumbled into dust."

She made no reply, but sat looking confused and pained, by no means elated at the future he had described.

"Have you never thought of this,--that some time I must give you to a warrior?"

Her head drooped lower and her cheek faintly flushed.

"Sometimes."

"But you have chosen no one?"

"I do not know," she faltered.

Her father's hand still rested on her head, but there was an expression on his face that showed he would not hesitate to sacrifice her happiness to his ambition.

"You have chosen, then? Is he a chief? No, I will not ask that; the daughter of Multnomah could love no one but a chief. I have already selected a husband for you. Tear this other love from your heart and cast it aside."

The flush died out of her cheek, leaving it cold and ashen; and her fingers worked nervously with the flute in her lap.

He continued coldly,--

"The fame of your beauty has gone out through all the land. The chief of the Chopponish[2] has offered many horses for you, and the chief of the Spokanes, our ancient foes, has said there would be peace between us if I gave you to him. But I have promised you to another. Your marriage to him will knit the bravest tribe of the confederacy to us; he will take my place when I am dead, and our people will still be strong."

She made no reply. What could she do against her father's granite will? All the grace and mobility were gone from her face, and it was drooping and dull almost to impassiveness. She was only an Indian girl now, waiting to learn the name of him who was to be her master.

"What is the name of the one you love? Speak it once, then never speak it again."

"Snoqualmie, chief of the Cayuses," faltered her tremulous lips.

A quick change of expression came into the gaze that was bent on her.

"Now lift your head and meet your fate like the daughter of a chief. Do not let me see your face change while I tell you whom I have chosen."

She lifted her face in a tumult of fear and dread, and her eyes fastened pathetically on the chief.

"His name is--" she clasped her hands and her whole soul went out to her father in the mute supplication of her gaze--"the chief Snoqualmie, him of whom you have thought."

Her face was bewilderment itself for an instant; the next, the sudden light, the quick flash of expression which transfigured it in a moment of joy or surprise, came to her, and she raised his hand and kissed it. Was that all? Remember she had in her the deep, mute Indian nature that meets joy or anguish alike in silence. She had early learned to repress and control her emotions. Perhaps that was why she was so sad and brooding now.

"Where have you seen Snoqualmie?" asked Multnomah. "Not in your father's lodge, surely, for when strange chiefs came to him you always fled like a frightened bird."

"Once only have I seen him," she replied, flushing and confused. "He had come here alone to tell you that some of the tribes were plotting against you. I saw him as he went back through the wood to the place where his canoe was drawn up on the bank of the river. He was tall; his black hair fell below his shoulders; and his look was very proud and strong. His back was to the setting sun, and it shone around him robing him with fire, and I thought he looked like the Indian sun-god."

"I am glad it is pleasant for you to obey me. Now, listen while I tell you what you must do as the wife of Snoqualmie."

Stilling the sweet tumult in her breast, she tried hard to listen while he told her of the plans, the treaties, the friendships, and the enmities she must urge on her husband, when he became war-chief and was carrying on her father's work; and in part she understood, for her imagination was captivated by the splendid though barbarian dream of empire he set before her.

At length, as the sun was setting, one came to tell Multnomah that a runner from a tribe beyond the mountains had come to see him. Then her father left her; but Wallulah still sat on the mossy log, while all the woodland was golden in the glory of sunset.

Her beloved flute was pressed close to her cheek, and her face was bright and joyous; she was thinking of Snoqualmie, the handsome stately chief whom she had seen but once, but whose appearance, as she saw him then, had filled her girlish heart.

And all the time she knew not that this Snoqualmie, to whom she was to be given, was one of the most cruel and inhuman of men, terrible even to the grim warriors of the Wauna for his deeds of blood.

[1] Shipwrecks of Asiatic vessels are not uncommon on the Pacific Coast, several having occurred during the present century,--notably that of a Japanese junk in 1833, from which three passengers were saved at the hands of the Indians; while the cases of beeswax that have been disinterred on the sea-coast, the oriental words that are found ingrafted in the native languages, and the Asiatic type of countenance shown by many of the natives, prove such wrecks to have been frequent in prehistoric times. One of the most romantic stories of the Oregon coast is that which the Indians tell of a buried treasure at Mount Nehalem, left there generations ago by shipwrecked men of strange garb and curious arms,--treasure which, like that of Captain Kidd, has been often sought but never found. There is also an Indian legend of a shipwrecked white man named Soto, and his comrades (See Mrs. Victor's "Oregon and Washington"), who lived long with the mid-Columbia Indians and then left them to seek some settlement of their own people in the south. All of these legends point to the not infrequent occurrence of such a wreck as our story describes.

[2] Indian name of the Nez Perces.

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Read next: Book 2. The Opening Of The Drama: Chapter 4. Sending Out The Runners

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