The little encampment, that the
good chief Micco had established beside the great spring, had grown
into a populous village, surrounded, in all directions, by broad fields
of waving maize and yellow pumpkins, besides an abundance of other
things pleasant and useful. The forests still teemed with game, and
the rivers with fish, and the skill of the Indian hunter was such that
both could be obtained in plenty at all seasons.
In this beautiful land, with every want anticipated, surrounded by
devoted friends, and leading a life of active usefulness, it would seem
as though no man could be unhappy. There was, however, at least one
among its dwellers who was so, and he was their ruler, the chief of
them all, whose word was their law, and whose slightest command they
hastened to obey. They called him Ta-lah-lo-ko (the White Chief),
though in another land he would be known as Rene de Veaux.
It was a great longing to visit once more this other land, the fair
France of his birth, and the apparent impossibility of ever doing so,
that made the white chief unhappy, and caused his people to regard him
sorrowfully, as one troubled by an evil spirit. The old medicine men
of the tribe used their most powerful incantations against it, and made
charms with which to drive it away; but they did not succeed, because
they could not understand it, and did not even know its name, which was
"Homesickness."
When the good old chief Micco died, which he did a few months before
the time which this chapter opens, greatly lamented by all his people,
the person who would have naturally succeeded to his office was
Yah-chi-la-ne (the Eagle).
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