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Chapter 1
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
—Longfellow
The Minnesota Wilderness August 1824
The evening shadows were long. The sky was awash with a crimson blush as the sun faded on the horizon, a mellow sighing of turtle doves breaking the cool, deep silence.
Riding in a canter ahead of a slow procession of many travois being dragged behind horses and dogs, Echohawk saw a frightened buck on the run, the white rosette of its rump seeming to hang for the smallest fraction of time at the top of each frantic bound, like a succession of sunbursts against the darkening forest.
Then Echohawk gazed down at the river at his one side, admiring the reflection of the green foliage of the maple, birch, and aspen trees that lined the riverbank, disturbed only by silver-scaled fish that now and then came to the surface with a sudden flip that started circles of ripples.
A deep, throaty cough, one that was filled with pain, drew Echohawk from his silent reverie. Echohawk jerked his head around, and rage filled his dark, fathomless eyes as he gazed down at his father, Chief Gray Elk, who lay on a travois behind Blaze, Echohawk’s prized rust-colored stallion. Echohawk’s father’s pride had been stripped from him, as well as his health, by a vile white man the whites of whose eyes were o-zah-wah, yellow, the color of a coward’s.
Echohawk’s gaze moved beyond his father to the many other travois. Some transported bundles of blankets, parfleches of dried meat, and those who were too elderly to ride or walk.
Others carried the wounded from a recent raid on their village, a village they had chosen to leave behind—a place of sadness and many deaths.
Even to let himself conjure up memories of the man he now called Yellow Eyes sent spirals of hate throughout Echohawk. Because of him and his Sioux friends, led by the renegade White Wolf, many proud Chippewa had died, Echohawk’s wife and unborn child among them, his father among the wounded. Because of Yellow Eyes and White Wolf, the Chippewa had been uprooted and a new place of peace and prosperity was now being sought.
Echohawk’s eyes narrowed when he recalled another raid on his father’s people twelve winters ago, when Echohawk had been a young brave of eighteen winters. His people had suffered many losses at the hand of those vile white men that day. And then, as now, the conflict had caused his band of people to move elsewhere, never wanting to stay where there had been so many deaths . . . so much blood spilled.
But Echohawk was proud to know that his chieftain father had wounded the white leader that day. Surely the man even now hobbled around on only one leg!
Echohawk tightened his reins and brought his horse to a halt. He turned to his people and thrust a fist into the air. “Ee-shqueen! Stay!” he shouted, the responsibilities of his father’s people his own until his father was able to perform in the capacity of chief again. “We shall rest for a
while, then resume our journey!”
Echohawk sat for a moment longer in his saddle, observing his people. He could see relief in their eyes over being allowed to rest, and realized only now how hard he had been driving them to get them to their planned destination.
But the fate of his people lay in his hands, and he realized the importance of getting them settled in a village soon, and into a daily routine. When the snows began coloring the ground and trees in cloaks of white, many deaths would come to those who were not prepared.
Dismounting, his brief breechclout lifting in the breeze, his moccasined feet making scarcely a sound on the crushed leaves beneath them, Echohawk went to his father and knelt down beside him, resting himself on his haunches. “How are you, gee-bah-bah, Father?” he asked, gently rearranging the bear pelts around his father’s slight form. His heart ached with knowing how it used to be before the vicious raid. His father had been muscled and strong. Vital. All of this had been robbed from him at the hands of Yellow Eyes and White Wolf, and someday, somehow, the evil men would pay. . . .
“Nay-mi-no-mun-gi, I am fine,” Chief Gray Elk said, his voice weak. With squinting eyes he looked past Echohawk at the loveliness of the surroundings, feeling serenity deep in the core of his being.
He turned his gaze back to Echohawk, a smile fluttering on his thin bluish lips. “Soon we shall be there, my son,” he said, wheezing with each word. “Do you not see it? Do you not feel it? This is a place of peace. A place of plenty. Surely we are near Chief Silver Wing’s village. Surely we are also near Colonel Snelling’s great fort, where Indians come and go in peace. Ah, my son, they say there is much good trading at Fort Snelling. We have been wrong not to move our people closer before now.” He coughed and paled. “It is best that we are here, my son. It is best.”
“Ay-uh, yes, and we will soon be making camp,” Echohawk said, nodding. “Our scouts have brought us to the Rum River. It is the same river that flows past Chief Silver Wing’s village. It is this same river that flows into the great Mississippi River that flows past Fort Snelling.” He nodded again. “Ay-uh, soon we will be there, gee-bah-bah.”
Gray Elk slipped a hand from beneath the pelts and clasped onto one of Echohawk’s, in his eyes a gleam of hope. “My son, Chief Silver Wing and I have been friends since our youth, when, side by side, we fought the Sioux for territorial rights,” he said, sucking in a wild gulp of air, then continuing to speak. “It will be good to see him again.”
Gray Elk’s grip tightened on Echohawk’s hand. “When Chief Silver Wing last came to me and we shared in a smoke and talk, he spoke of the abundance of wild rice plants that bend heavy with rice in the countless lakes and marshes near his village, and skies that are alive with waterfowl,” he continued softly. “Soon we share all of this with Chief Silver Wing and his people. Soon you will participate in the hunt again while our women gather the rice. Once more our people will be happy, Echohawk.”
“We shall ride together on the hunt, gee-bah-bah,” Echohawk encouraged, wanting so badly for this to be so. If his father died, his heart would be empty. He had lost his mother during an intensely cold winter fifteen winters ago, and his wife and unborn child only recently. Surely the Great Spirit would not take his father from him also!
“You will get well,” Echohawk quickly added. “You will ride your horse again.”
But Echohawk doubted his own words. His father was a leader who had ruled his people with kindly wisdom, and was struggling to stay alive long enough to see that his people could begin a life anew close to two old friends, one Indian and one white. They planned to make camp within a half-day’s ride from Chief Silver Wing, also Chippewa, and a half-day’s ride from Fort Snelling, where Colonel Josiah Snelling was in charge—a friend to all Indians.
Echohawk, a wise and learned man at his age of thirty winters, knew that his father had another reason for having chosen to make camp close to Chief Silver Wing’s village. Gray Elk hoped that perhaps Echohawk might find a wife among Chief Silver Wing’s people to replace the one that he was mourning.
