For a single instant, Uncas enjoyed his triumph, smiling calmly on the scene. Then motioning the crowd away, with a high and haughty sweep of his arm, he advanced in front of the nation with the air of a king, and spoke in a voice louder than the murmur of admiration that ran through the multitude.
“Men of the Lenni Lenape!” he said, “my race upholds the earth! Your feeble tribe stands on my shell! What fire, that a Delaware can light, would burn the child of my fathers,” he added, pointing proudly to the simple blazonry on his skin; “the blood that came from such a stock, would smother your flames! My race is the grandfather of nations!”
“Who art thou!” demanded Tamenund, rising, at the startling tones he heard, more than at any meaning conveyed by the language of the prisoner.
“Uncas, the son of Chingachgook,” answered the captive, modestly, turning from the nation, and bending his head in reverence to the other’s character and years; “a son of the Great Unâmis.” *
“The hour of Tamenund is nigh!” exclaimed the sage; “the day is come, at last, to the night! I thank the Manitto, that one is here to fill my place at the council-fire. Uncas, the child of Uncas, is found! Let the eyes of a dying eagle gaze on the rising sun.”
The youth stepped lightly, but proudly, on the platform, where he became visible to the whole agitated and wondering multitude. Tamenund held him long at the length of his arm, and read every turn in the fine and lofty lineaments of his countenance, with the untiring gaze of one who recalled the days of his own happiness by the examination.
“Is Tamenund a boy!” at length the bewildered prophet exclaimed. “Have I dreamt of so many snows–that my people were scattered like floating sands–of Yengeese, more plenty than the leaves on the trees! The arrow of Tamenund would not frighten the young fawn; his arm is withered like the branch of the dying oak; the snail would be swifter in the race; yet is Uncas before him, as they went to battle, against the pale-faces! Uncas, the panther of his tribe, the eldest son of the Lenape, the wisest Sagamore of the Mohicans! Tell me, ye Delawares, has Tamenund been a sleeper for a hundred winters?”
The calm and deep silence which succeeded these words, sufficiently announced the awful reverence with which his people received the communication of the patriarch. None dared to answer, though all listened in breathless expectation of what might follow. Uncas, however, looking in his face, with the fondness and veneration of a favoured child, presumed on his own high and acknowledged rank, to reply.
“Four warriors of his race have lived and died,” he said, “since the friend of Tamenund led his people in battle. The blood of the Turtle has been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth, from whence they came, except Chingachgook and his son.”
“It is true–it is true,” returned the sage–a flash of recollection destroying all his pleasing fancies, and restoring him, at once, to a consciousness of the true history of his nation. “Our wise men have often said that two warriors of the ‘unchanged’ race were in the hills of the Yengeese; why have their seats at the council fires of the Delawares been so long empty?”
At these words, the young man raised his head, which he had still kept bowed a little, in reverence, and lifting his voice, so as to be heard by the multitude, as if to explain, at once, and for ever, the policy of his family, he said, aloud–
“Once we slept where we could hear the salt lake speak in its anger. Then we were rulers and Sagamores over the land. But when a pale-face was seen on every brook, we followed the deer back to the river of our nation. The Delawares were gone! Few warriors of them all stayed to drink of the stream they loved. Then said my fathers– ‘here will we hunt. The waters of the river go into the salt lake. If we go towards the setting sun, we shall find streams that run into the great lakes of the sweet water; there would a Mohican die, like fishes of the sea, in the clear springs. When the Manitto is ready, and shall say, ‘come,’ we will follow the river to the sea, and take our own again.’ Such, Delawares, is the belief of the children of the Turtle! Our eyes are on the rising, and not towards the setting sun! We know whence he comes, but we know not whither he goes. It is enough.”
The men of the Lenape listened to his words with all the respect that superstition could lend, finding a secret charm even in the figurative language with which the young Sagamore imparted his ideas. Uncas himself watched the effect of his brief explanation with intelligent eyes, and gradually dropped the air of authority he had assumed, as he perceived that his auditors were content. Then permitting his looks to wander over the silent throng that crowded around the elevated seat of Tamenund, he first perceived Hawk-eye, in his bonds. Stepping eagerly from his stand, he made a way for himself to the side of his friend, and cutting his thongs with a quick and angry stroke of his own knife, he motioned to the crowd to divide. The grave and attentive Indians silently obeyed, and once more they stood ranged in their circle, as before his appearance among them. Uncas then took the scout by the hand, and led him to the feet of the patriarch.
“Father,” he said, “look at this pale-face; a just man, and the friend of the Delawares.”
“Is he a son of Miquon?”*
“Not so; a warrior known to the Yengeese, and feared by the Maquas.”
“What name has he gained by his deeds?”
“We call him Hawk-eye,” Uncas replied, using the Delaware phrase; “for his sight never fails. The Mingoes know him better by the death he gives their warriors; with them he is the ‘long rifle.’ ”
“La Longue Carabine!” exclaimed Tamenund, opening his eyes, and regarding the scout, sternly. “My son has not done well to call him friend!”
“I call him so who proves himself such,” returned the young chief, with great calmness, but with a steady mien. “If Uncas is welcome among the Delawares, then is Hawk-eye with his friends.”
“The pale-face has slain my young men; his name is great for the blows he has struck the Lenape.”
“If a Mingo has whispered that much in the ear of the Delaware, he has only manifested that he is a singing-bird,” said the scout, who now believed it was time to vindicate himself from such offensive charges, and who spoke in the tongue of the man he addressed, modifying his Indian figures, however, with his own peculiar notions. “That I have slain the Maquas, I am not the man to deny, even at their own council fires; but that, knowingly, my hand has ever harmed a Delaware, is opposed to the reason of my gifts which is friendly to them, and all that belongs to their nation.”
A low exclamation of applause passed among the warriors, who exchanged looks with each other, like men that first began to perceive their error.
“Where is the Huron?” demanded Tamenund. “Has he stopped my ears!”
Magua, whose feelings, during that scene in which Uncas had triumphed, may be much better imagined than described, now answered to the call, by stepping boldly in front of the patriarch.
“The just Tamenund,” he said, “will not keep what a Huron has lent.”
“Tell me, son of my brother,” returned the sage, avoiding the dark countenance of le Subtil, and turning gladly to the more ingenuous features of Uncas; “has the stranger a conqueror’s right over you?”
“He has none. The panther may get into snares set by the women, but he is strong, and knows how to leap through them.”
“La Longue Carabine?”
“Laughs at the Mingoes. Go, Huron; ask your squaws the colour of a bear!”
“The stranger and the white maiden that came into my camp together?”
“Should journey on an open path.”
“And the woman that the Huron left with my warriors?”
Uncas made no reply.
“And the woman that the Mingo has brought into my camp?” repeated Tamenund, gravely.
“She is mine!” cried Magua, shaking his hand in triumph at Uncas. “Mohican, you know that she is mine.”
“My son is silent,” said Tamenund, endeavouring to read the expression of the face that the youth turned from him, in sorrow.
“It is so,” was the low and brief reply.
A short and impressive pause succeeded, during which it was very apparent with what reluctance the multitude admitted the justice of the Mingo’s claim. At length the sage, on whom alone the decision depended, said, in a firm voice–