Oak Openings Read online

  The "chiente'" or shanty of le Bourdon stood quite near to the banks of the Kalamazoo, and in a most beautiful grove of the burr-oak. Ben had selected the site with much taste, though the proximity of a spring of delicious water had probably its full share in influencing his decision. It was necessary, moreover, that he should be near the river, as his great movements were all made by water, for the convenience of transporting his tools, furniture, etc., as well as his honey. A famous bark canoe lay in a little bay, out of the current of the stream, securely moored, head and stern, in order to prevent her beating against any object harder than herself.

  The dwelling had been constructed with some attention to security. This was rendered necessary, in some measure, as Ben had found by experience, on account of two classes of enemies—men and bears. From the first, it is true, the bee-hunter had hitherto apprehended but little. There were few human beings in that region. The northern portions of the noble peninsula of Michigan are some-what low and swampy, or are too broken and savage to tempt the native hunters from the openings and prairies that then lay, in such rich profusion, further south and west. With the exception of the shores, or coasts, it was seldom that the northern half of the peninsula felt the footstep of man. With the southern half, however, it was very different; the "openings," and glades, and watercourses, offering almost as many temptations to the savage as they have since done to the civilized man. Nevertheless, the bison, or the buffalo, as the animal is erroneously, but very generally, termed throughout the country, was not often found in the vast herds of which we read, until one reached the great prairies west of the Mississippi. There it was that the red men most loved to congregate; though always bearing, in numbers, but a trifling proportion to the surface they occupied. In that day, however, near as to the date, but distant as to the events, the Chippewas, Ottawas, Pottawattamies, kindred tribes, we believe, had still a footing in Michigan proper, and were to be found in considerable numbers in what was called the St. Joseph's country, or along the banks of the stream of that name; a region that almost merits the lofty appellation of the garden of America. Le Bourdon knew many of their warriors, and was much esteemed among them; though he had never met with either of those whom chance now had thrown in his way. In general, he suffered little wrong from the red men, who wondered at his occupation, while they liked his character; but he had sustained losses, and even ill- treatment, from certain outcasts of the tribes, as well as from vagrant whites, who occasionally found their way to his temporary dwellings. On the present occasion, le Bourdon felt far more uneasiness from the circumstance of having his abode known to Gershom Waring, a countryman and fellow-Christian, in one sense at least, than from its being known to the Chippewa and the Pottawattamie.

  The bears were constant and dangerous sources of annoyance to the bee-hunter. It was not often that an armed man—and le Bourdon seldom moved without his rifle—has much to apprehend from the common brown bear of America. Though a formidable-looking animal, especially when full grown, it is seldom bold enough to attack a human being, nothing but hunger, or care for its young, ever inducing it to go so much out of the ordinary track of its habits. But the love of the bear for honey amounts to a passion. Not only will it devise all sorts of bearish expedients to get at the sweet morsels, but it will scent them from afar. On one occasion, a family of Bruins had looked into a shanty of Ben's, that was not constructed with sufficient care, and consummated their burglary by demolishing the last comb. That disaster almost ruined the adventurer, then quite young in his calling; and ever since its occurrence he had taken the precaution to build such a citadel as should at least set teeth and paws at defiance. To one who had an axe, with access to young pines, this was not a difficult task, as was proved by the present habitation of our hero.

  This was the second season that le Bourdon had occupied "Castle Meal," as he himself called the shanty. This appellation was a corruption of "chateau au Mtel" a name given to it by a wag of a voyageur^ who had aided Ben in ascending the Kalamazoo the previous summer, and had remained long enough with him to help him put up his habitation. The building was just twelve feet square, in the interior, and somewhat less than fourteen on its exterior. It was made of pine logs, in the usual mode, with the additional security of possessing a roof of squared timbers of which the several parts were so nicely fitted together as to shed rain. This unusual precaution was rendered necessary to protect the honey, since the bears would have unroofed the common bark coverings of the shanties, with the readiness of human beings, in order to get at stores as ample as those which the bee-hunter had soon collected beneath his roof. There was one window of glass, which le Bourdon had brought in his canoe; though it was a single sash of six small lights, that opened on hinges; the exterior being protected by stout bars of riven oak, securely let into the logs. The door was made of three thicknesses of oaken plank, pinned well together, and swinging on stout iron hinges, so secured as not to be easily removed. Its outside fastening was made by means of two stout staples, a short piece of ox-chain, and an unusually heavy padlock. Nothing short of an iron bar, and that cleverly applied, could force this fastening. On the inside, three bars of oak rendered all secure, when the master was at home.

  "You set consid'rable store by your honey, I guess, STRANger," said Gershom, as le Bourdon unlocked the fastenings and removed the chain, "if a body may judge by the kear (care) you take on't! Now, down our way we ain't half so partic'lar; Dolly and Blossom never so much as putting up a bar to the door, even when I sleep out, which is about half the time, now the summer is fairly set in."

  "And whereabouts is 'down our way,' if one may be so bold as to ask the question?" returned le Bourdon, holding the door half-opened, while he turned his face toward the other, in expectation of the answer.

  "Why, down at Whiskey Centre, to be sure, as the v'y'gerers and other boatmen call the place."

  "And where is Whiskey Centre?" demanded Ben, a little pertinaciously.

  "Why, I thought everybody would 'a' known that," answered Greshom; "sin' whiskey is as drawin' as a blister. Whiskey Centre is just where I happen to live; bein' what a body may call a travellin' name. As I'm now down at the mouth of the Kalamazoo, why Whiskey Centre's there, too."

  "I understand the matter, now," answered le Bourdon, composing his well-formed mouth in a sort of contemptuous smile. "You and whiskey, being sworn friends, are always to be found in company. When I came into the river, which was the last week in April, I saw nothing like whiskey, nor anything like a Centre at the mouth."

  "If you'd 'a' be'n a fortnight later, STRANger, you'd 'a' found both. Travellin' Centres, and stationary, differs somewhat, I guess; one is always to be found, while t'other must be s'arched a'ter."

  "And pray who are Dolly and Blossom; I hope the last is not a

  WHISKEY blossom?"

  "Not she—she never touches a spoonful, though I tell her it never hurt mortal! She tries hard to reason me into it that it hurts ME— but that's all a mistake, as anybody can see that jest looks at me."

  Ben DID look at him; and, to say truth, came to a somewhat different conclusion.

  "Is she so blooming that you call her 'Blossom'?" demanded the bee- hunter, "or is she so young?"

  "The gal's a little of both. Dolly is my wife, and Blossom is my sister. The real name of Blossom is Margery Waring, but everybody calls her Blossom; and so I gi'n into it, with the rest on 'em."

  It is probable that le Bourdon lost a good deal of his interest in this flower of the wilderness, as soon as he learned she was so nearly related to the Whiskey Centre. Gershom was so very uninviting an object, and had so many palpable marks, that he had fairly earned the nickname which, as it afterward appeared, the western adventurers had given HIM, as well as his ABODE, wherever the last might be, that no one of decently sober habits could readily fancy anything belonging to him. At any rate, the bee-hunter now led the way into his cabin, whither he was followed without unnecessary ceremony, by all three of his guests.

/>   The interior of the "chiente," to use the most poetical, if not the most accurate word, was singularly clean for an establishment set up by a bachelor, in so remote a part of the world. The honey, in neat, well-constructed kegs, was carefully piled along one side of the apartment, in a way to occupy the minimum of room, and to be rather ornamental than unsightly. These kegs were made by le Bourdon himself, who had acquired as much of the art as was necessary to that object. The woods always furnished the materials; and a pile of staves that was placed beneath a neighboring tree sufficiently denoted that he did not yet deem that portion of his task completed.

  In one corner of the hut was a pile of well-dressed bearskins, three in number, each and all of which had been taken from the carcasses of fallen foes, within the last two months. Three more were stretched on saplings, near by, in the process of curing. It was a material part of the bee-hunter's craft to kill this animal, in particular; and the trophies of his conflicts with them were proportionably numerous. On the pile already prepared, he usually slept.

  There was a very rude table, a single board set up on sticks; and a bench or two, together with a wooden chest of some size, completed the furniture. Tools were suspended from the walls, it is true; and no less than three rifles, in addition to a very neat double- barrelled "shot-gun," or fowling-piece, were standing in a corner. These were arms collected by our hero in his different trips, and retained quite as much from affection as from necessity, or caution. Of ammunition, there was no very great amount visible; only three or four horns and a couple of pouches being suspended from pegs: but Ben had a secret store, as well as another rifle, carefully secured, in a natural magazine and arsenal, at a distance sufficiently great from the chiente to remove it from all danger of sharing in the fortunes of his citadel, should disaster befall the last.

  The cooking was done altogether out of doors. For this essential comfort, le Bourdon had made very liberal provision. He had a small oven, a sufficiently convenient fire-place, and a storehouse, at hand; all placed near the spring, and beneath the shade of a magnificent elm. In the storehouse he kept his barrel of flour, his barrel of salt, a stock of smoked or dried meat, and that which the woodsman, if accustomed in early life to the settlements, prizes most highly, a half-barrel of pickled pork. The bark canoe had sufficed to transport all these stores, merely ballasting handsomely that ticklish craft; and its owner relied on the honey to perform the same office on the return voyage, when trade or consumption should have disposed of the various articles just named.

  The reader may smile at the word "trade," and ask where were those to be found who could be parties to the traffic. The vast lakes and innumerable rivers of that region, however, remote as it then was from the ordinary abodes of civilized man, offered facilities for communication that the active spirit of trade would be certain not to neglect. In the first place, there were always the Indians to barter skins and furs against powder, lead, rifles, blankets, and unhappily "fire-water." Then, the white men who penetrated to those semi-wilds were always ready to "dicker" and to "swap," and to "trade" rifles, and watches, and whatever else they might happen to possess, almost to their wives and Children.

  But we should be doing injustice to le Bourdon, were we in any manner to confound him with the "dickering" race. He was a bee- hunter quite as much through love of the wilderness and love of adventure, as through love of gain. Profitable he had certainly found the employment, or he probably would not have pursued it; but there was many a man who—nay, most men, even in his own humble class in life-would have deemed his liberal earnings too hardly obtained, when gained at the expense of all intercourse with their own kind. But Buzzing Ben loved the solitude of his situation, its hazards, its quietude, relieved by passing moments of high excitement; and, most of all, the self-reliance that was indispensable equally to his success and his happiness. Woman, as yet, had never exercised her witchery over him, and every day was his passion for dwelling alone, and for enjoying the strange, but certainly most alluring, pleasures of the woods, increasing and gaining strength in his bosom. It was seldom, now, that he held intercourse even with the Indian tribes that dwelt near his occasional places of hunting; and frequently had he shifted his ground in order to avoid collision, however friendly, with whites who, like himself, were pushing their humble fortunes along the shores of those inland seas, which, as yet, were rarely indeed whitened by a sail. In this respect, Boden and Waring were the very antipodes of each other; Gershom being an inveterate gossip, in despite of his attachment to a vagrant and border life.

  The duties of hospitality are rarely forgotten among border men. The inhabitant of a town may lose his natural disposition to receive all who offer at his board, under the pressure of society; but it is only in most extraordinary exceptions that the frontier man is ever known to be inhospitable. He has little to offer, but that little is seldom withheld, either through prudence or niggardliness. Under this feeling—we might call it habit also—le Bourdon now set himself at work to place on the table such food as he had at command and ready cooked. The meal which he soon pressed his guests to share with him was composed of a good piece of cold boiled pork, which Ben had luckily cooked the day previously, some bear's meat roasted, a fragment of venison steak, both lean and cold, and the remains of a duck that had been shot the day before, in the Kalamazoo, with bread, salt, and, what was somewhat unusual in the wilderness, two or three onions, raw. The last dish was highly relished by Gershom, and was slightly honored by Ben; but the Indians passed it over with cold indifference. The dessert consisted of bread and honey, which were liberally partaken of by all at table.

  Little was said by either host or guests, until the supper was finished, when the whole party left the chiente, to enjoy their pipes in the cool evening air, beneath the oaks of the grove in which the dwelling stood. Their conversation began to let the parties know something of each other's movements and characters.

  "YOU are a Pottawattamie, and YOU a Chippewa," said le Bourdon, as he courteously handed to his two red guests pipes of theirs, that he had just stuffed with some of his own tobacco—"I believe you are a sort of cousins, though your tribes are called by different names."

  "Nation, Ojebway," returned the elder Indian, holding up a finger, by way of enforcing attention.

  "Tribe, Pottawattamie," added the runner, in the same sententious manner.

  "Baccy, good"—put in the senior, by way of showing he was well contented with his comforts.

  "Have you nothin' to drink?" demanded Whiskey Centre, who saw no great merit in anything but "firewater."

  "There is the spring," returned le Bourdon, gravely; "a gourd hangs against the tree."

  Gershom made a wry face, but he did not move.

  "Is there any news stirring among the tribes?" asked the bee-hunter, waiting, however, a decent interval, lest he might be supposed to betray a womanly curiosity.

  Elksfoot puffed away some time before he saw fit to answer, reserving a salvo in behalf of his own dignity. Then he removed the pipe, shook off the ashes, pressed down the fire a little, gave a reviving draught or two, and quietly replied:

  "Ask my young brother—he runner—he know."

  But Pigeonswing seemed to be little more communicative than the Pottawattamie. He smoked on in quiet dignity, while the bee-hunter patiently waited for the moment when it might suit his younger guest to speak. That moment did not arrive for some time, though it came at last. Almost five minutes after Elksfoot had made the allusion mentioned, the Ojebway, or Chippewa, removed his pipe also, and looking courteously round at his host, he said with emphasis:

  "Bad summer come soon. Pale-faces call young men togedder, and dig up hatchet."

  "I had heard something of this," answered le Bourdon, with a saddened countenance, "and was afraid it might happen."

  "My brother dig up hatchet too, eh?" demanded Pigeonswing.

  "Why should I? I am alone here, on the Openings, and it would seem foolish in me to wish to fight."

&
nbsp; "Got no tribe—no Ojebway—no Pottawattamie, eh?"

  "I have my tribe, as well as another, Chippewa, but can see no use I can be to it, here. If the English and Americans fight, it must be a long way from this wilderness, and on or near the great salt lake."

  "Don't know—nebber know, 'till see. English warrior plenty in

  Canada."