on the
opposite shore, and now and then in the stillness of the evening their
wild shouts of revelry would come faintly to their ears, borne by the
breeze over the waters of the lake.

The allusion that Indiana had made to her own history, though conveyed
in broken and hardly intelligible language, had awakened feelings of
deep interest for her in the breasts of her faithful friends. Many
months after this she related to her wondering auditors the fearful
story of the massacre of her kindred, and which I may as well relate,
as I have raised the curiosity of my youthful readers, though to do so
I must render it in my own language, as the broken half-formed sentences
in which its facts were conveyed to the ears of my Canadian Crusoes
would be unintelligible to my young friends. _[FN: The facts of
this narrative were gathered from the lips of the eldest son of a Rice
Lake chief. I have preferred giving it in the present form, rather
than as the story of the Indian girl. Simple as it is, it is matter of
history.]_

There had been for some time a jealous feeling existing between the
chiefs of two principal tribes of the Ojebwas and the Mohawks, which
like a smothered fire had burnt in the heart of each, without having
burst into a decided blaze--for each strove to compass his ends and
obtain the advantage over the other by covert means. The tribe of the
Mohawks of which I now speak, claimed the southern shores of the Rice
Lake for their hunting grounds, and certain islands and parts of the
lake for fishing, while that of the Ojebwas considered themselves
masters of the northern shores and certain rights of water beside.
Possibly it was about these rights that the quarrel originated, but if
so, it was not openly avowed between the "Black Snake," (that was the
totem borne by the Mohawk chief,) and the "Bald Eagle" (the totem of the
Ojebwa).

These chiefs had each a son, and the Bald Eagle had also a daughter of
great and rare beauty, called by her people, "The Beam of the Morning;"
she was the admiration of Mohawks as well as Ojebwas, and many of the
young men of both the tribes had sought her hand, but hitherto in vain.
Among her numerous suitors, the son of the Black Snake seemed to be the
most enamoured of her beauty; and it was probably with some intention of
winning the favour of the young Ojebwa squaw for his son, that the Black
Snake accepted the formal invitation of the Bald Eagle to come to his
hunting grounds dur