The Hatchet and the Plow

I once saw the aged and venerable chief, and . . . thought of many things when seated near him, beneath the wide-spreading shade of an old sycamore, on the banks of the Allegheny,—many things to ask him . . . . He was constitutionally sedate, was never observed to smile, much less to indulge in the luxury of a laugh. . . . His person was stooped, and his stature was far short of what it once had been . . . .Time and hardship had made dreadful impressions upon that ancient form. The chest was sunken and his shoulders were drawn forward, making the upper part of his body resemble a trough. His limbs had lost size and become crooked. His feet (for he had taken off his moccasins) were deformed and haggard . . . I would say that most of his fingers on one hand were useless; the sinews had been severed by the blow of a tomahawk or scalping-knife. How I longed to ask him what scene of blood and strife had thus stamped the enduring evidence of its existence upon his person! . . . He had but one eye, and even the socket of the lost organ was hid by the overhanging brow resting upon the high cheek-bone. His remaining eye was of the brightest and blackest hue. Never have I seen one, in young or old, that equalled it in brilliancy. Perhaps it had borrowed lustre from the eternal darkness that rested on its neighboring orbit. . . .He had a full head of hair, white as the driven snow . . . . As he stood before me—the ancient chief in ruins—how forcibly I was struck with the truth of that beautiful figure of the old aboriginal chieftain, who, in describing himself, said he was “like an aged hemlock, dead at the top, and whose branches alone were green.”