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Updated: June 5, 2025
Quadaquina, when they were by themselves, related to his mother what he had witnessed at the Falls, but made no allusion to the quarrel betwixt Ohquamehud and himself, nor of the threats of the former. He could give no account of the address to the Manito, the distance having been too great to allow him to hear the words.
Why does he cover up his face from her, and hide his grief? Is she unworthy," she added, laying her hand on his shoulder, and looking affectionately in his face, "to listen to his voice?" He turned towards her, and paused before he said "The stone in the path of Ohquamehud is very small, and will not hurt his feet." "Peéna, then, will try to remove it. She has strength to move small stones."
Quadaquina stepped back, and from the loose stones lying round, picked up one as large as he could lift, and going to the edge, dropped it full upon the head of Ohquamehud. The Indian instantly let go his hold, falling a distance of eighty feet, and grazing against the side of the huge rock on his way, until with a splash he was swallowed up in the foaming water that whirled him out of sight.
In explanation of this scene we may say, that, unhappily, like most Indians, Ohquamehud was addicted to the use of spirituous liquors, his indulgence in the fiery gratification being limited only by his inability at all times to obtain it.
Without his consciousness it had come, and without his consciousness departed; and when he laid the Bible, in which he had been reading, upon the table, he knew not either the danger he had escaped, or the means by which it had been averted. Nor let the conduct of Ohquamehud excite surprise. An American Indian, he was susceptible to the influence of the legends and traditions of his race.
He despised Ohquamehud for the miserable exhibitions of imbecility he made in his cups, and hated him for the violence to his mother. All these he took out of it for Peéna." "Accursed be the gifts of the pale faces!" exclaimed Ohquamehud. "For such rags our fathers sold our hunting-grounds, and gave permission to the strangers to build walls in the rivers so that the fish cannot swim up."
The kindness shown by Holden to his sister and her son, and the reverence with which she regarded him, it might be expected would have influenced Ohquamehud; but they had no such effect. To the kindness he ascribed a sinister motive; and of course, Peéna's gratitude was misplaced.
"What Father Holden say, I do." The Indian, who, until now, had been silent, here addressed her in his own tongue. "Can the Partridge," he said, "use her wings to no better purpose than to fly upon the errands of her white master?" "Ohquamehud," said the squaw, "is a wise warrior, and his eyes are sharp, but they see not into the heart of a woman.
Having thus spoken, and conciliated by every means that occurred to his untutored mind, the good-will of the tutelary Spirit of the Falls, recounting the generosity of the Indians, and the ingratitude of the whites, remonstrating with the Manito for his supposed anger, and pointing out its folly, trying to stimulate his indignation on account of the neglect of himself, and, to tempt his love of presents by promises, Ohquamehud threw a quantity of tobacco in the leaf, which the Indians were accustomed to raise themselves around their cabins, into the flames.
It was now a question of endurance between them, and it is probable that both would have perished, had not an unexpected actor appeared upon the scene. The boy Quadaquina had been watching Ohquamehud. Like a trained blood-hound, he had kept faithfully on the track and scarcely let the Indian out of sight until he, came near the village.
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