Waukewa's Eagle
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AMERICAN INDIAN STORIES
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Boys And Girls Bookshelf
BY JAMES BUCKHAM
One day, when the Indian boy Waukewa was hunting along the
mountain-side, he found a young eagle with a broken wing, lying at the
base of a cliff. The bird had fallen from an aerie on a ledge high
above, and being too young to fly, had fluttered down the cliff and
injured itself so severely that it was likely to die. When Waukewa saw
it he was about to drive one of his sharp
arrows through its body, for
the passion of the hunter was strong in him, and the eagle plunders many
a fine fish from the Indian's drying-frame. But a gentler impulse came
to him as he saw the young bird quivering with pain and fright at his
feet, and he slowly unbent his bow, put the arrow in his quiver, and
stooped over the panting eaglet. For fully a minute the wild eyes of the
wounded bird and the eyes of the Indian boy, growing gentler and softer
as he gazed, looked into one another. Then the struggling and panting of
the young eagle ceased; the wild, frightened look passed out of its
eyes, and it suffered Waukewa to pass his hand gently over its ruffled
and draggled feathers. The fierce instinct to fight, to defend its
threatened life, yielded to the charm of the tenderness and pity
expressed in the boy's eyes; and from that moment Waukewa and the eagle
were friends.
Waukewa went slowly home to his father's lodge, bearing the wounded
eaglet in his arms. He carried it so gently that the broken wing gave no
twinge of pain, and the bird lay perfectly still, never offering to
strike with its sharp beak the hands that clasped it.
Warming some water over the fire at the lodge, Waukewa bathed the broken
wing of the eagle and bound it up with soft strips of skin. Then he made
a nest of ferns and grass inside the lodge, and laid the bird in it. The
boy's mother looked on with shining eyes. Her heart was very tender.
From girlhood she had loved all the creatures of the woods, and it
pleased her to see some of her own gentle spirit waking in the boy.
When Waukewa's father returned from hunting, he would have caught
up the young eagle and wrung its neck. But the boy pleaded with him so
eagerly, stooping over the captive and defending it with his small
hands, that the stern warrior laughed and called him his "little
squaw-heart." "Keep it, then," he said, "and nurse it until it is well.
But then you must let it go, for we will not raise up a thief in the
lodges." So Waukewa promised that when the eagle's wing was healed and
grown so that it could fly, he would carry it forth and give it its
freedom.
It was a month--or, as the Indians say, a moon--before the young eagle's
wing had fully mended and the bird was old enough and strong enough to
fly. And in the meantime Waukewa cared for it and fed it daily, and the
friendship between the boy and the bird grew very strong.
But at last the time came when the willing captive must be freed. So
Waukewa carried it far away from the Indian lodges, where none of the
young braves might see it hovering over and be tempted to shoot their
arrows at it, and there he let it go. The young eagle rose toward the
sky in great circles, rejoicing in its freedom and its strange, new
power of flight. But when Waukewa began to move away from the spot, it
came swooping down again; and all day long it followed him through the
woods as he hunted. At dusk, when Waukewa shaped his course for the
Indian lodges, the eagle would have accompanied him. But the boy
suddenly slipped into a hollow tree and hid, and after a long time the
eagle stopped sweeping about in search of him and flew slowly and sadly
away.
Summer passed, and then winter; and spring came again, with its flowers
and birds and swarming fish in the lakes and streams. Then it was that
all the Indians, old and young, braves and squaws, pushed their light
canoes out from shore and with spear and hook waged pleasant war against
the salmon and the red-spotted trout. After winter's long imprisonment,
it was such joy to toss in the sunshine and the warm wind and catch
savory fish to take the place of dried meats and corn!
Above the great falls of the Apahoqui the salmon sported in the cool,
swinging current, darting under the lee of the rocks and leaping full
length in the clear spring air. Nowhere else were such salmon to be
speared as those which lay among the riffles at the head of the Apahoqui
rapids. But only the most daring braves ventured to seek them there,
for the current was strong, and should a light canoe once pass the
danger-point and get caught in the rush of the rapids, nothing could
save it from going over the roaring falls.
Very early in the morning of a clear April day, just as the sun was
rising splendidly over the mountains, Waukewa launched his canoe a
half-mile above the rapids of the Apahoqui, and floated downward, spear
in hand, among the salmon-riffles. He was the only one of the Indian
lads who dared fish above the falls. But he had been there often, and
never yet had his watchful eye and his strong paddle suffered the
current to carry his canoe beyond the danger-point. This morning he was
alone on the river, having risen long before daylight to be first at the
sport.
The riffles were full of salmon, big, lusty fellows, who glided about
the canoe on every side in an endless silver stream. Waukewa plunged his
spear right and left, and tossed one glittering victim after another
into the bark canoe. So absorbed in the sport was he that for once he
did not notice when the head of the rapids was reached and the canoe
began to glide more swiftly among the rocks. But suddenly he looked up,
caught his paddle, and dipped it wildly in the swirling water. The canoe
swung sidewise, shivered, held its own against the torrent, and then
slowly, inch by inch, began to creep upstream toward the shore. But
suddenly there was a loud, cruel snap, and the paddle parted in the
boy's hands, broken just above the blade! Waukewa gave a cry of
despairing agony. Then he bent to the gunwale of his canoe and with the
shattered blade fought desperately against the current. But it was
useless. The racing torrent swept him downward; the hungry falls roared
tauntingly in his ears.
Then the Indian boy knelt calmly upright in the canoe, facing the mist
of the falls, and folded his arms. His young face was stern and lofty.
He had lived like a brave hitherto--now he would die like one.
Faster and faster sped the doomed canoe toward the great cataract. The
black rocks glided away on either side like phantoms. The roar of the
terrible waters became like thunder in the boy's ears. But still he
gazed calmly and sternly ahead, facing his fate as a brave Indian
should. At last he began to chant the death-song, which he had learned
from the older braves. In a few moments all would be over. But he would
come before the Great Spirit with a fearless hymn upon his lips.
Suddenly a shadow fell across the canoe. Waukewa lifted his eyes and saw
a great eagle hovering over, with dangling legs, and a spread of wings
that blotted out the sun. Once more the eyes of the Indian boy and the
eagle met; and now it was the eagle who was master!
With a glad cry the Indian boy stood up in his canoe, and the eagle
hovered lower. Now the canoe tossed up on that great swelling wave that
climbs to the cataract's edge, and the boy lifted his hands and caught
the legs of the eagle. The next moment he looked down into the awful
gulf of waters from its very verge. The canoe was snatched from beneath
him and plunged down the black wall of the cataract; but he and the
struggling eagle were floating outward and downward through the cloud of
mist. The cataract roared terribly, like a wild beast robbed of its
prey. The spray beat and blinded, the air rushed upward as they fell.
But the eagle struggled on with his burden. He fought his way out of the
mist and the flying spray. His great wings threshed the air with a
whistling sound. Down, down they sank, the boy and the eagle, but ever
farther from the precipice of water and the boiling whirlpool below. At
length, with a fluttering plunge, the eagle dropped on a sand-bar below
the whirlpool, and he and the Indian boy lay there a minute, breathless
and exhausted. Then the eagle slowly lifted himself, took the air under
his free wings, and soared away, while the Indian boy knelt on the sand,
with shining eyes following the great bird till he faded into the gray
of the cliffs.