Miracle in the Wilderness Read Free Page B

was Jesus and He grew up to become a great preacher. He preached that God, His Father, was our Father and the Father of all. Those who did not believe in Him or His message caused Him to be tortured and nailed to a cross until He gave up the ghost. He died so that men all over the world would remember the love that He preached. And after the third day He rose from His tomb and joined His Father in Heaven and men believed and worshiped Him.”
    Jasper spoke no more. He was close to the end of his resources and would have fallen but for clutching the shoulder of Nyagway who having interpreted the last sentences added, “The tale is at an end. The white man is very ill.” The Indians had fallen quite silent and Quanta’s head was momentarily sunk upon his chest in some kind of faraway contemplation.
    There occurred then a diversion that sent the party springing to its arms as two snow-shoe-equipped Algonkin scouts hurried in from a side trail and conferred with Quanta. The gist of their report was that a large force of Iroquois with some English was no more than a few hours behind.
    Quanta’s lieutenant gestured towards the captives. “Shall I kill them?”
    Quanta debated. A word, a nod, a flashing of axe blades in the moonlight and he would be relieved of this hazard to the security of his command. He would have concluded the raid to the best of his ability. Yet he hesitated.
    Quanta was himself a deeply religious man and where a Christian would have crossed himself, now his fingers sought and touched the little medicine bundle that hung about his neck, a collection of small objects, a queerly shaped stone, some feathers, the leg bone of a small animal and some dried plants, objects endowed with magical properties, talismans wrapped in an otter-skin always carried on his person. He feared and worshiped many mysterious and unseen beings of the forest as well as the manifestations of nature, the skies overhead, lightning, thunder, fire and water and he recognized the mysterious cosmic powers abounding everywhere in his world.
    And as he clutched his medicine bag for protection and thought, it came to him that while the beliefs of himself and the people from over the seas were so different one should not be disrespectful towards strange Gods and the magic of others and that if this were the night of the Great Manitou of the white man to whom even the wild deer bowed down in prayer, it might not be propitious to harm them.
    In the specific religion of the Algonkin tribes of the north country their chief deity was a mighty Great Hare who lived behind the sky. How this little animal slipping furtively through the forest paths, shy and elusive, had grown to be their all-encompassing, omnipotent deity, Quanta did not know. Surely it went back to some ancient tale, the beginnings of which had been forgotten even by the wisest and most long-lived of the elders. But as he looked up into the same bright winter canopy behind which his captive had seen his Manitou and Father he visualized spreading from horizon to horizon the softness of the belly of the symbolic animal to which he would be gathered when death finally came to him and in the warmth of whose bosom he would rest in eternal bliss.
    For a moment the thought flashed through his mind, the Great Hare and the Father and the Son by the woman who was denied the hospitality of the lodge, were they perhaps one and the same? But then it seemed to him it could not be so, that the tale was too strange and that besides the Great Hare there were other Gods and they must not be offended. For his logic was not like the logic of the white man. His captives were not only his prisoners but at the same time his guests and their beliefs were to be respected. Respect for the Gods of strangers! Like all early and primitive people this was one of the strongest traits with which they were imbued for one never knew too much about the powers of these foreign spirits. That night he had witnessed