Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
“No speak Yengees,” replied Mary, exhausting in this brief sentence all the
English she could command.
Hope, in the impetuosity of her feelings, had forgotten that Magawisca had
forewarned her not to indulge the expectation that her sister could speak to her;
and the melancholy truth, announced by her own lips, seemed to Hope to open a
new and impassable gulf between them. She wrung her hands: “Oh, what shall I
do? what shall I say?” she exclaimed.
Magawisca now advanced to her, and said, in a compassionate tone, “Let me be
thy interpreter, Hope Leslie, and be thou more calm. Dost thou not see thy sister is
to thee as the feather borne on the torrent?”
“I will be more calm, Magawisca; but promise me you will interpret truly for
me.”
A blush of oended pride overspread Magawisca’s cheek. “We hold truth to be
the health of the soul,” she said: “thou mayst speak, maiden, without fear that I will
abate one of thy words.”
“Oh, I fear nothing wrong from you, Magawisca; forgive me—forgive me—I
know not what I say or do.” She drew her sister to a rock, and they sat down
together. Hope knew not how to address one so near to her by nature, so far
removed by habit and education. She thought that if Mary’s dress, which was
singularly and gaudily decorated, had a less savage aspect, she might look more
natural to her; and she signed to her to remove the mantle she wore, made of birds’
feathers, woven together with threads of the wild nettle. Mary threw it aside, and
disclosed her person, light and agile as a fawn’s, clothed with skins, neatly tted to
her waist and arms, and ambitiously embellished with embroidery in porcupine’s
quills and beads. The removal of the mantle, instead of the eect designed, only
served to make more striking the aboriginal peculiarities; and Hope, shuddering
and heart-sick, made one more eort to disguise them by taking o her silk cloak
and wrapping it close around her sister. Mary seemed instantly to comprehend
the language of the action; she shook her head, gently disengaged herself from the
cloak, and resumed her mantle. An involuntary exclamation of triumph burst from
Oneco’s lips. “Oh, tell her,” said Hope to Magawisca; “that I want once more to see
her in the dress of her own people—of her own family—from whose arms she was
torn to be dragged into captivity.”
A faint smile curled Magawisca’s lip, but she interpreted faithfully Hope’s
communication and Mary’s reply: “‘She does not like the English dress,’ she says.”
“Ask her,” said Hope, “if she remembers the day when the wild Indians sprung
upon the family at Bethel like wolves upon a fold of lambs? If she remembers when
Mrs. Fletcher and her innocent little ones were murdered, and she stolen away?”
“She says ‘she remembers it well, for then it was Oneco saved her life.’”
Hope groaned aloud. “Ask her,” she continued, with unabated eagerness,” if
she remembers when we played together, and, read together, and knelt together at
our mother’s feet; when she told us of the God that made us, and the Saviour that
redeemed us?”
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