Books Should Be Free Loyal Books Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads |
|
Po-No-Kah An Indian Tale of Long Ago By: Mary Mapes Dodge (1830-1905) |
---|
![]()
AN INDIAN TALE OF LONG AGO
By Mary Mapes Dodge
1903
PO NO KAH. AN INDIAN STORY OF LONG AGO.
I. THE HEDDEN FAMILY.
We who live in comfortable country homes, secure from every invader,
find it difficult to conceive the trials that beset the hardy pioneers
who settled our Western country during the last century. In those days, and for many a year afterward, hostile Indians swarmed in
every direction, wherever the white man had made a clearing, or started
a home for himself in the wilderness. Sometimes the pioneer would be
unmolested, but oftener his days were full of anxiety and danger.
Indeed, history tells of many a time when the settler, after leaving
home in the morning in search of game for his happy household would
return at night to find his family murdered or carried away and his
cabin a mass of smoking ruins. Only in the comparatively crowded
settlements, where strength was in numbers, could the white inhabitants
hope for security though bought at the price of constant vigilance and
precaution. In one of these settlements, where a few neatly whitewashed cabins, and
rougher log huts, clustered on the banks of a bend in the Ohio River,
dwelt a man named Hedden, with his wife and three children. His farm
stretched further into the wilderness than his neighbors', for his had
been one of the first cabins built there, and his axe, ringing merrily
through the long days, had hewn down an opening in the forest, afterward
famous in that locality as "Neighbor Hedden's Clearing." Here he had
planted and gathered his crops year after year, and in spite of
annoyances from the Indians, who robbed his fields, and from bears, who
sometimes visited his farm stock, his family had lived in security so
long that, as the settlement grew, his wife sang at her work, and his
little ones shouted at their play as merrily as though New York or
Boston were within a stone's throw. To be sure, the children were bidden
never to stray far from home, especially at nightfall; and the crack of
rifles ringing now and then through the forest paled their cheeks for
an instant, as the thought of some shaggy bear, furious in his death
agony, crossed their minds. Sometimes, too, the children would whisper together of the fate of poor
Annie Green, who, a few years before had been found killed in the
forest; or their mother would tell them with pale lips of the night when
their father and neighbor Freeman encountered two painted Indians near
the cabin. The tomahawk of the Indian who tried to kill their father was
still hanging upon the cabin wall. But all this had happened twelve years earlier before Bessie, the
oldest girl, was born and seemed to the children's minds like a bit of
ancient history almost as far off as the exploits of Hannibal or Julius
Caesar appear to us. So, as I have said, the girls and boys of the
settlement shouted joyously at their play, or ran in merry groups to the
rough log hut, called "The School House," little dreaming of the cares
and anxieties of their elders. Bessie Hedden was a merry hearted creature, and so pretty that, had she
been an Indian maiden, she would have been known as "Wild Rose," or
"Singing Bird," or "Water Lily," or some such name. As it was, many of
the villagers called her "Little Sunshine," for her joyous spirit could
light up the darkest corner. She was faithful at school, affectionate
and industrious at home, and joyous and honorable among her playmates.
What wonder, then, that everybody loved her, or that she was happiest
among the happy? Her brother Rudolph was much younger than she, a
rosy checked, strong armed little urchin of seven years; and Kitty, the
youngest of the Hedden children, was but three years of age at the date
at which my story opens. There was one other individual belonging to the family circle, larger
even than Bessie, stronger and saucier even than Rudolph, and but little
older than Kitty. He had no hands, yet once did, as all admitted, the
best day's work ever performed by any member of the family... Continue reading book >>
|
Genres for this book |
---|
Kids |
Fiction |
eBook links |
---|
Wikipedia – Mary Mapes Dodge |
Wikipedia – Po-No-Kah An Indian Tale of Long Ago |
eBook Downloads | |
---|---|
ePUB eBook • iBooks for iPhone and iPad • Nook • Sony Reader |
Kindle eBook • Mobi file format for Kindle |
Read eBook • Load eBook in browser |
Text File eBook • Computers • Windows • Mac |
Review this book |
---|