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Updated: April 30, 2025
It will be recollected that at the dinner table at Colonel D'Egville's on the day of the capture of Major Montgomerie, and his party, among the guests were the chiefs Split-log and Walk-in-the-Water, the former distinguished by a huge bulbous excrescence miscalled a nose, and exquisitely slit ears that dangled gracefully upon his shoulders, at every movement of his Memnon-like head: the latter by his striking resemblance to the puritans of the days of the Commonwealth.
He came and went, solitary and self-contained, proud, cold, and revengeful. But this indifference was caused by sensitiveness and the feeling that he had been slighted. The dark lines relaxed, and his face wore a kindly glow whenever his teacher went to his desk if the split-log bench for a book-rest might be so called. "I would give my life for Gretchen and you," he said one day to Mr.
D'Egville made the usual signal for withdrawing. As soon as they had departed, followed a moment or two afterwards by Tecumseh and Gerald Grantham, Messieurs Split-log, Round-head, and Walk-in-the-Water, deliberately taking their pipe-bowl tomahawks from their belts, proceeded to fill them with kinni-kinnick, a mixture of Virginia tobacco, and odoriferous herbs, than which no perfume can be more fragrant.
Messieurs Split-log, Round-head, and Walk-in-the-water, fascinated by the eagles on the buttons of Major Montgomerie's uniform, appeared to regard that officer, as if they saw no just cause or impediment why certain weapons dangling at their sides should not be made to perform, and that without delay, an incision in the cranium of their proprietor. True, there was a difficulty.
Split-log and Walk-in-the-Water; in so much so indeed that, without waiting to descend the rigging in the usual manner, each abandoning his rifle, slid down by the first rope on which he could lay his hands; nor stayed his course until he found himself squatted, out of all reach of danger in the lowest hold, and within the huge coils of a cable where already lay ensconced a black bear, the pet of one of the sailors.
At this point of the argument, Messieurs Split-log, Round-head, and Walk-in-the-Water, having finished their kinni-kinnick, and imbibed a due quantum of whiskey: possibly, moreover, not much entertained by the conversation that was carried on in a language neither of them understood but imperfectly, rose to take their leave.
The second Chief, Round-head, who, by the way, was the principal in reputation after Tecumseh, we find the more difficulty in describing from the fact of his having had few or none of those peculiarities which we have, happily for our powers of description, been enabled to seize hold of in Split-log. His name we believe to have been derived from that indispensable portion of his frame.
At this point of the argument, Messieurs Split-log, Round-head, and Walk-in-the-Water, having finished their kinni-kinnick, and imbibed a due quantum of whiskey: possibly, moreover, not much entertained by the conversation that was carried on in a language neither of them understood but imperfectly, rose to take their leave.
Such was the Huron, or Wyandot Chief, whose cognomen of Split-log had, in all probability, been derived from his facility in "suiting the action to the word;" for, in addition to his gigantic nose, he possessed a fist, which in size and strength might have disputed the palm with Maximilian himself: although his practice had chiefly been confined to knocking down his drunken wives, instead of oxen.
Young men, roguish and rough and stout-hearted, had come to the old split-log altar and on penitent knees had sobbed out before God the awful sins of their hearts and had gone away happy with the new-found treasure of full salvation. Young ladies, vain and haughty, had melted under the gospel messages and had come to the feet of Jesus.
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