Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/39

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æt. 20.]
TO JOHN THOREAU.
15

woman. You are fortunate to have pitched your wigwam nearer to the great salt lake, where the Pale Face can never plant corn.

Brother: I need not tell thee how we hunted on the lands of the Dundees,—a great war-chief never forgets the bitter taunts of his enemies. Our young men called for strong water; they painted their faces and dug up the hatchet. But their enemies, the Dundees, were women; they hastened to cover their hatchets with wampum. Our braves are not many; our enemies took a few strings from the heap their fathers left them, and our hatchets are buried. But not Tahatawan's; his heart is of rock when the Dundees sing,—his hatchet cuts deep into the Dundee braves.

Brother: There is dust on my moccasins; I have journeyed to the White Lake, in the country of the Ninares.[1] The Long-knife has been

  1. White Pond, in the district called "Nine-Acre Corner," is here meant; the "Lee-vites" were a family then living on Lee's Hill. Naushawtuck is another name for this hill, where the old Tahatawan lived at times, before the English settled in Concord in September, 1635. The real date of this letter is November 11-14, 1837, and between its two dates the Massachusetts state election was held. The "great council-house" was the Boston State House, to which the Concord people were electing deputies; the "Eagle-Beak" named below was doubtless Samuel Hoar, the first citizen of the town, and for a time Member of Congress from Middlesex County. He was the father of Rockwood and Frisbie Hoar, afterwards judge and senator respectively.