The White Deer named Virginia Dare
Doug.Secrist@precision.chigate.com (Doug Secrist) wrote:
Howdy all! Here's another story from *Tunkashila*. I was amazed to
read of an Indian myth that centered around Virginia Dare. As you'll
recall, Viginia Dare was the firstborn girl from the first white colony
settlement. I plan to use this story at our next campfire. Here it is!
Along the bay islands, where the pale people set up their first
permanent settlement, there was born a child, the one known as Virginia
Dare. And the people of the islands, the Chesapeake people, called the
newborn White Fawn. Around the pine-speckled islands and sea-grass
peninsulas, her story was told. It said that upon the child's death, her
spirit would assume the form of a frosted fawn whose face, because her
race had come from accross the sea, would always gaze wistfully in that
direction, as if yearning for that faraway shore. The story went on to
say that if ever a runner should catch the fawn after she was fully
grown into a white deer and shoot her with an arrow whose head was cast
of silver, this would restore her to mortal form.
Now, the far banks and islands of coasts, not often met by travelers,
were home to the Hatteras people, but the long salt-bitten winters
presided over by hungry moons seperated them from their pale friends,
and in time, they lost touch with one another. One autumn day, a hunter
named Little Oak came upon some ruined, abondoned log houses in the saw
grass of the settlement of Roanoke. There were no pale people living
there anymore; the berry brambles and rose hips had grown up between the
cracks of the wind-washed logs. Slow autumn turtles lay by the cold
hearthsides of cracked ashen clay. All that the hunter named Little Oak
could find was an old baby's rattle, clutched by the claws of a rose
thorn. Then he spied a beautiful white doe. By instinct, he drew his
bow, but he would not let the arrow loose, holding it in check, the
barred turkey feathers itching at his ear.
Time passed and the white doe was well known amoung the hunters of
Roanoke Island. Often she was seen browsing amid the brown herd of deer
that lived there. But she always remained apart, turning her head to the
east, sad-eyed and dreaming on the direction of the distant sea. Those
who were compelled to hunt her said that their arrows, though
well-aimed, fell harmless at her hooves...whereupon she would leap with
the west wind, swift as milkweed down, bounding the sand hills, driving
the quick curlews and iron-winged cranes up into the cold gray,
slate-colored sky.
Talk of the white doe flowed like a river tumbling from its source in
the clefted rocks; it went various ways. Some of the people had fear of
the animal, thinking her spirit was one of desolation. They said none
but the spirit deer could travel the high grassy grounds od Croatan and
yet the same day be seen in the cranberry bogs of East Lake.
Always sad, head ever turned toward the eastern-glinting sea, always
beautiful, always a little apart, the white doe danced in a dream of her
own making. Then, early one autumn, the people of the islands decided
what to do: They would hold a great deer hunt, and all the finest bow
hunters would be invited to join in. Afterward, there would be a feast
and celebration. Now the plan, they say, was to hunt the milk white doe.
If any runner or hunter...and all the best were gathered there...could
bring her down with an arrow, then all would know if she was flesh or
spirit; and, thereafter, if she should prevail, then no one would ever
go after her again. It was thus decreed, and the hunt and race was on.
Some took to the high sunburned mounds above the sound; some went to the
low thistle meadows of the flat ocean islands. Hunters and runners alike
spread out like a peat fire across good ground, quaking ground, low
ground and high; and the bird-swept praries rang with their chants. The
best bows were drawn and the straightest arrows noched. Only one hunter,
howere, had a arrow with a cast-silver tip that had come from over the
sea from the island known as England...a silver arrow point given, they
say, by the great queen herself. This was a thing that could, it was
told, reach the heart of even the most charmed lives.
And it happened that the swift doe was chased from the rank grass of
the shaky land; a bowstring's angry twang sent her flying on the north
wind's breath. Through tangled wood and trailless bog, through morass
and highland, she sped. And the myriad bowstrings made the sounds of
harmless bees in the wake of her whiteness. She plunged on through the
billows of the sound, reaching the sand hills on Roanoke. Here, she
stood atop the ruins of the olf fort, gray-logged and
silvery-splintered, breathing the easternmost breeze from the afar,
panting, her small tongue flickering like a pink petal. Now, in the
deep, wind-blown grass, Little Oak appeared, took aim at the glowing
form before him, and let loose the fated bowstring that burned the air
and sent the silver-headed arrow on an irretrievable mission. The
beautiful sad-eyed doe leapt, heart pierced, into the air and sank
desparately to the ground. Then Little Oak threw down his bow, ran to
her side, lifted the head of snow, soft as a cloud, looked into the
dying eyes, and saw, suddenly, the face of a pretty young woman, who,
through dry, heart-spent lips, whispered her name, Virginia Dare, and
died.
So goes the story. And the lost Virginia Dare, what of her? Did she
die in infancy? Did her child bones mingle with the dust of her legend
and blossom in the wild rores of Croatan? Did she ever grow to
womanhood? Did she end her life in whatever darkness that still
enshrouds the lost pale colony that vanished into the deep mists?
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