And she told her, that if she would see that Saviour's face in Heaven, and
dwell with him in joy and peace for ever, she must learn to pray for those
dreadful men who had made her fatherless and motherless, and her home a
desolation; that the fire of revenge must be quenched within her heart, and
the spirit of love alone find place within it, or she could not become the
child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven. How hard were these
conditions to the young heathen,--how contrary to her nature, to all that
she had been taught in the tents of her fathers, where revenge was virtue,
and to take the scalp of an enemy a glorious thing!
Yet when she contrasted the gentle, kind, and dovelike characters of her
Christian friends, with the fierce bloody people of her tribe and of her
Ojebwa enemies, she could not but own they were more worthy of love and
admiration: had they not found her a poor miserable trembling captive,
unbound her, fed and cherished her, pouring the balm of consolation into
her wounded heart, and leading her in bands of tenderest love to forsake
those wild and fearful passions that warred in her soul, and bringing her
to the feet of the Saviour, to become his meek and holy child, a lamb of
his "extended fold?"*
[*Footnote: The Indian who related this narrative to me was a son of a
Rice Lake chief, Mosang Poudash by name, who vouched for its truth as an
historic fact remembered by his father, whose grandsire had been one of the
actors in the massacre.
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