Part 1

# Atala ### By Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de

---

ATALA

By François Auguste de Chateaubriand

Illustrated by Gustave Doré

[Illustration: 005]

INTRODUCTION.

Among the illustrious names which adorn the annals of France, that of François Auguste de Chateaubriand, the author of “Atala,” “Les Martyrs,” “The Last of the Abencerages,” and many other brilliant and renowned works, occupies a proud pre-eminence. But his fame rests not merely upon his literary achievements. His services as a statesman and the record and example of his private life-even his sufferings and misfortunes-have served to enhance his reputation and endear his memory, both among his own countrymen, and among just, noble and patriotic minds in other lands. He was great both by his character and abilities; and, while his celebrity is undiminished by the lapse of time, his works are still read and will long continue to be read and admired, even through all changes in the manners and sentiments of mankind. Fashions and modes in literature and art, as in society, come and go; new institutions arise, demanding new methods and modifying cherished customs; and men’s thoughts enlarge and widen with improved conditions, as with the inevitable progress of the age. But the master mind ever asserts its power. He who has once truly stirred the human heart in its purest depths speaks not alone to his own generation, but appeals to all other hearts and belongs to all his race. His good gifts are the birthright of the world. The rank of Chateaubriand has been fixed by the united judgment of his associates and his successors; and since time has allayed the fierce passions which raged in France during his lifetime, his character is more and more deeply respected and admired. His sincerity of purpose and enlightened understanding, his grandeur and nobility of thought, his energy of action and loftiness of aim, preserve for him ever his exalted position, made brilliant by the fires of genius and perpetuated by the force of truth.

Chateaubriand was born at St. Malo in September, 1768, and died in Paris, after an active and most eventful career, on the fourth of July, 1848. The earlier portion of his life was passed in the quiet of his home at Combourg. At the termination of his collegiate training at Dole and Rennes, he entered the army, in which he soon gained promotion. At about the age of nineteen he was presented at court, became acquainted with the fashionable world, and was received and welcomed into the choicest literary circles of Paris, where he gained the friendship of La Harpe, Fontanes, Malesherbes, and others among the distinguished savants of that period. It was a troubled and stormy epoch in France. The social and political forces which culminated in the great Revolution were beginning to be seriously felt, and faction, turbulence and anarchy were already rife in Paris when Chateaubriand left his native shores for America, moved by a desire to discover the northwest passage, but also with an attendant purpose, long cherished, of observing the mode of life and studying the characteristics of the aborigines, for the purpose of embodying in his writings the impressions thus gained of man in a primitive condition.

From this period to the time of his death his life was a singular series of vicissitudes--at one time the brilliant and revered statesman, at another the voluntary abdicator of all his rights and honors; and even, at one bitter passage of his existence, living in an unwarmed London garret and obtaining a precarious livelihood by giving lessons in his native tongue and translating for the booksellers.

The utter upheaval of affairs in France brought the greatest distress upon himself, his family and his immediate friends, and, with the sensitive heart of genius, the blows which had fallen so keenly doubtless engendered the melancholy cast with which his writings are sometimes tinged. His first work, an idyllic poem, showed little of the genius so finely developed in after years; but his finest literary productions--“The Martyrs,” “The Last of the Abencerages” and “The Genius of Christianity,” to which “Atala” and “René” properly belong--remain a splendid monument to his powers and exhibit his earnest desire to be numbered among the benefactors and enlighteners of mankind.

The present work, “Atala,” is the gathered fruit of his previous studies amid the wilds of America. It abounds in sparkling description, romantic incident and sentiments tender and heroic. It is pervaded by purity of tone and elevation of thought, qualities the more commendable and marked because produced in an age proverbially lax and frivolous.

The illustrations of M. Doré have given an additional value to this tale, so simple, so unsophisticated, yet blooming with all the wild luxuriance of nature. The artist has added his gifts to those of the poet; and those acquainted only with his ready and original powers as the delineator of farce and drollery, or of the exceptionally tragic and horrible, will find new cause for admiration in these quiet renderings of the primeval beauties of the American wild--its plains and forests, its still lagoons and roaring cataracts, its mountain slopes and deep defiles--all its aspects of rudest workmanship--and will welcome these efforts of his genius in the lovely realm of descriptive art, wedded as they are to the exquisite simplicity of this Indian romance. As in his other works, here may be noted the same surpassing fertility of resource, the same alertness of intellect and readiness and swiftness of touch; but there may also be found new proofs of his complete sympathy with all that is picturesque in forest beauty and his high intuitive perception of every possible phase of nature in her wildest caprice and most tender bloom.

We append the following extracts from different prefaces to the author’s writings, as constituting what is explanatory of the story that follows:

[From the Preface to the First Edition.]

“I was still very young when I conceived the idea of composing an epic on ‘The Man of Nature,’ to depict the manners of savages, by uniting them with some well-known event. After the discovery of America, I saw no subject more interesting, especially to Frenchmen, than the massacre of the Natchez colony in Louisiana, in 1727. All the Indian tribes conspiring, after two centuries of oppression, for the restoration of liberty to the New World, appeared to me to offer a subject almost as attractive as the conquest of Mexico. I put some fragments of the work to paper; but I soon found that I was weak in local coloring, and that, if I wished to produce a picture of real resemblance, it became necessary for me, in imitation of Homer’s example, to visit the tribes I was desirous of describing.

“In 1789 I made M. de Malesherbes acquainted with my idea of going to America; but, wishing at the same time to give a useful object to my voyage, I formed the project of discovering the overland passage so long sought after, and concerning which even Captain Cook himself had left some doubts. I started, visited the American solitudes, and returned with plans for a second voyage, which was to last nine years. I proposed to traverse the entire continent of North America, afterwards to explore the coasts to the north of California, and to return by Hudson’s Bay, rounding the pole. M. de Malesherbes undertook to submit my plans to the Government, and it was then that he listened to the first fragments of the little work I now offer to the public. The Revolution put a stop to all my projects. Covered with the blood of my only brother, of my sister-in-law, and of the illustrious old man, their father; having seen my mother and another talented sister die in consequence of the treatment they had undergone in prison, I wandered forth to foreign lands, where the only friend I had preserved stabbed himself in my arms.

“Of all my manuscripts upon America, I have only saved some fragments, ‘Atala’ in particular, which was itself but an episode of ‘The Natchez.’ ‘Atala’ was written in the desert, beneath the huts of the savages. I do not know whether the public will like the story, which quits all beaten tracks, and represents a nature and manners altogether foreign to Europe. There is no adventure in ‘Atala.’ It is a sort of poem, half descriptive, half dramatic. It consists entirely in the portraiture of two lovers walking and talking together in the solitudes, and in the picture of the trials of love in the midst of the calm of the desert. I have endeavored to give to this work the most antique forms. It is divided into Prologue, Recital and Epilogue. The principal parts of the story have each a denomination, such as ‘The Hunters,’ ‘The Laborers,’ etc.; and it was thus that, in the early ages of Greece, the rhapsodists sang, under different titles, fragments of the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey.’”

“The moralities I have been desirous of inculcating in ‘Atala’ are easily discoverable, and as they are summed up in the Epilogue, I need not speak of them here. I will merely say a word or two concerning Chactas, the lover of Atala.

“He is a savage more than half civilized, since he knows not only the living, but also the dead languages of Europe. He can therefore express himself in a mixed style, suitable to the line upon which he stands, between society and nature. This circumstance has given me some advantages, by permitting Chactas to speak as a savage in the description of manners, and as a European in the dramatic portions of the narrative. Without that the work must have been abandoned. If I had always made use of the Indian style, ‘Atala’ would have been Hebrew for the reader.

“As to the missionary, he is a simple priest, who speaks without blushing of the Cross, of the blood of his Divine Master, of the corrupted flesh, etc.; in one word, he is really a priest. I am aware that it is difficult to depict such a character without awakening ideas of ridicule in the minds of certain readers. Where I do not draw a tear, I may raise a smile; that must depend upon individual sentiment.”

“I must say a last word as to ‘Atala.’ The subject is not entirely of my invention. It is certain that there was a savage at the galleys and at the court of Louis XIV.; it is certain that a French missionary accomplished the facts I have related; it is certain that I saw savages in the American forests carrying away the bones of their forefathers, and a young mother exposing the body of her child upon the branches of a tree. Some other circumstances narrated are also veritable, but as they are not of general interest, it is needless for me to speak of them.”

[From the Preface to “Alain” and “René” published in 1805. ]

“I have been stopped in the corrections neither by the consideration of the cost of the book, nor by that of the length of the work. A few years have sufficed to make me acquainted with the weak or defective portions of that episode. Obedient upon this point to the critics, even so far as to reproach myself with an excess of docility, I have proved to those who attacked me that I never remain voluntarily in error, and that, at all times and upon all subjects, I am ready to give way to lights superior to my own. ‘Atala’ has been reprinted eleven times--five times separately and six times in the ‘Genius of Christianity.’ If those eleven editions were compared, scarcely two would be found to be altogether alike.

“The twelfth, which I now publish, has been revised with the greatest care. I have consulted the friends prompt to censure me; I have weighed each phrase, examined every word. The style, freed from certain epithets which embarrassed it, proceeds perhaps more naturally and with greater simplicity. I have introduced more order and logic into certain ideas, and I have effaced even the slightest inaccuracies of language. M. de la Harpe observed to me, on the subject of ‘Atala,’ ‘If you will shut yourself up with me only for a few hours, that time will suffice for wiping out the spots that cause your critics to cry out so loudly.’ I have passed four years in the revision of this episode; but it is now as I intend it to remain. It is at present the only ‘Atala’ I shall ever in future acknowledge.”

*****

“The new nature and the new manners I have described have also drawn upon me another ill-considered reproach. I have been taken for the inventor of certain extraordinary details, whereas I merely repeated circumstances well known to all travellers. Some notes added to the present edition of ‘Atala’ would easily have justified this assertion; but if I had introduced them at every point where each reader might have looked for them, they would soon have exceeded the length of the work itself. I therefore gave up the idea of annotations.”

[Illustration: 010]

[Illustration: 011]

PROLOGUE

France formerly possessed in North America a vast empire, extending from Labrador to the Floridas, and from the shores of the Atlantic to the most distant lakes of Upper Canada.

Four great rivers, deriving their sources from the same mountains, divided these immense regions: the river St. Lawrence, which is lost to the east in the gulf of that name; the Western River, whose waters flow on to seas unknown; the river Bourbon, which runs from south to north into Hudson’s Bay; and the Mississippi, whose waters fall from north to south into the Gulf of Mexico.

The last-named river, in its course of more than a thousand leagues, waters a delicious country, called by the inhabitants of the United States the New Eden, to which the French left the pretty appellation of Louisiana. A thousand other rivers, tributaries of the Mississippi--the Missouri, the Illinois, the Arkansas, the Wabache, the Tennessee--enrich it with their mud and fertilize it with their waters. When all these rivers have been swollen by the deluges of winter, uprooted trees, forming large portions of forests torn down by tempests, crowd about their sources. In a short time the mud cements the torn trees together, and they become enchained by creepers, which, taking root in every direction, bind and consolidate the débris. Carried away by the foaming waves, the rafts descend to the Mississippi, which, taking possession of them, hurries them down towards the Gulf of Mexico, throws them upon sandbanks, and so increases the number of its mouths. At intervals the swollen river raises its voice whilst passing over the resisting heaps, and spreads its overflowing waters around the colonnades of the forests, and the pyramids of the Indian tombs: and so the Mississippi is the Nile of these deserts. But grace is always united to splendor in the scenes of Nature: while the mid-stream bears away towards the sea the dead trunks of pine-trees and oaks, the lateral currents on either side convey along the shores floating islands of pistias and nenuphars, whose yellow roses stand out like little pavilions. Green serpents, blue herons, pink flamingoes, and baby crocodiles embark as passengers on these rafts of flowers; and the brilliant colony, unfolding to the wind its golden sails, glides along slumberingly till it arrives at some retired creek in the river.

The two shores of the Mississippi present the most extraordinary picture. On the western border vast savannahs spread away farther than the eye can reach, and their waves of verdure, as they recede, appear to rise gradually into the azure sky, where they fade away. In these limitless meadows herds of three or four thousand wild buffaloes wander at random. Sometimes, cleaving the waters as it swims, a bison, laden with years, comes to repose among the high grass on an island of the Mississippi, its forehead ornamented with two crescents, and its ancient and slimy beard giving it the appearance of a god of the river throwing an eye of satisfaction upon the grandeur of its waters, and the wild abundance of its shores.

[Illustration: 013]

Such is the scene upon the western border; but it changes on the opposite side, which forms an admirable contrast with the other shore. Suspended along the course of the waters, grouped upon the rocks and upon the mountains, and dispersed in the valleys, trees of every form, of every color, and of every perfume, throng and grow together, stretching up into the air to heights that weary the eye to follow. Wild vines, bignonias, coloquintidas, intertwine each other at the feet of these trees, escalade their trunks, and creep along to the extremity of their branches, stretching from the maple to the tulip-tree, from the tulip-tree to the holly-hock, and thus forming thousands of grottoes, arches and porticoes. Often, in their wanderings from tree to tree, these creepers cross the arm of a river, over which they throw a bridge of flowers. Out of the midst of these masses, the magnolia, raising its motionless cone, surmounted by large white buds, commands all the forest, where it has no other rival than the palm-tree, which gently waves, close by, its fans of verdure.

A multitude of animals, placed in these retreats by the hand of the Creator, spread about life and enchantment. From the extremities of the avenues may be seen bears, intoxicated with the grape, staggering upon the branches of the elm-trees; cariboos bathe in the lake; black-squirrels play among the thick foliage; mocking-birds, and Virginian pigeons not bigger than sparrows, fly down upon the turf, reddened with strawberries; green parrots with yellow heads, purple woodpeckers, cardinals red as fire, clamber up to the very tops of the cypress-trees; humming-birds sparkle upon the jessamine of the Floridas; and bird-catching serpents hiss while suspended to the domes of the woods, where they swing about like the creepers themselves.

If all is silence and repose in the savannahs on the other side of the river, all here, on the contrary, is sound and motion; peckings against the trunks of the oaks, frictions of animals walking along as they nibble or crush between their teeth the stones of fruits, the roaring of the waves, plaintive cries, dull bellowings and mild cooings, fill these deserts with a tender yet wild harmony. But when a breeze happens to animate these solitudes, to swing these floating bodies, to confound these masses of white, blue, green, and pink, to mix all the colors and to combine all the murmurs, there issue such sounds from the depths of the forests, and such things pass before the eyes, that I should in vain endeavor to describe them to those who have never visited these primitive fields of Nature.

After the discovery of the Mississippi by Father Marquette and the unfortunate La Salle, the first Frenchmen who established themselves at Biloxi and at New Orleans entered into an alliance with the Natchez, an Indian nation whose power was redoubtable in those countries. Quarrels and jealousies subsequently ensanguined the land of hospitality. Amongst these savages there was an old man named Chactas, * who, on account of his age, wisdom and knowledge of the affairs of life, was the patriarch and the beloved of the deserts. Like many other men, he had acquired virtue by calamity. Not only were the forests of the New World filled with his misfortunes, but he bore the tale of his calamities even to the shores of France. Kept at the galleys at Marseilles by a cruel act of injustice, restored to liberty, and presented to Louis XIV., he had conversed with the great men of that age, and had been present at the fêtes of Versailles, at the tragedies of Racine, and at the funeral orations of Bossuet: in one word, the savage had contemplated society at the moment of its greatest splendor.

For several years Chactas, restored to the bosom of his country, had been in the enjoyment of repose. Nevertheless, Providence granted him even this favor dearly: the old man had become blind. A young girl used to accompany him on the hills of the Mississippi, just as Antigone formerly guided the steps of Odipus over the Cithæron, or as Malvina conducted Ossian over the rocks of Morven.

In spite of the numerous acts of injustice to which Chactas had been subjected by the French, he was very partial to them. He ever remembered Fénélon, whose guest he had been, and desired an opportunity for rendering service to the fellow-countrymen of that virtuous man. A favorable occasion presented itself. In 1725 a Frenchman named René, driven thither by his passions and his misfortunes, arrived at Louisiana. He ascended the Mississippi as far as the territory of the Natchez, and asked to be accepted as a warrior of that nation. Chactas, having questioned him, and finding him not to be shaken in his resolution, adopted him as a son, and united him to an Indian girl called Céluta. Shortly after this marriage the savages prepared to go beaver-hunting.

On account of the respect with which the Indian tribes regarded the old man, Chactas, although blind, was appointed by the council of the wise men to command the expedition. Prayers and fasts commenced, the jugglers interpreted the dreams, the manitous were consulted, sacrifices of tobacco were offered up, fillets of elk-tongues were burnt, the assistants examining whether they sputtered in the flames, in order to ascertain the will of the genii; and at length they started, after having partaken of the sacred dog. René was of the party.

* The harmonious voice.

With the assistance of the counter-currents, the pirogues reascended the Mississippi, and reached the bed of the Ohio. One moonlight night, while all the Natchez were asleep at the bottom of their pirogues, and the Indian fleet, under a crowd of beast-skin sails, was flying before a mild breeze, René, who had remained alone with Chactas, asked him to tell the story of his adventures. The old man consented to satisfy his curiosity, and began in these words:--

[Illustration: 016]

[Illustration: 017]

[Illustration: 019]

I. THE HUNTERS.

“The destiny which has brought us together, my dear son, is a singular one. I see in you the civilized man become savage: you see in me the wild man whom the Great Spirit (I know not from what motive) desired to civilize. Having each entered upon the career of life from opposite directions, you came to repose yourself at my place, and I have seated myself in yours; so that we must have acquired a totally different view of things. Which of the twain has gained or lost the more by this change of position? That is known to the genii, the least learned of whom possesses more wisdom than all mankind together.

“At the next flower-moon * there will be seven times ten snows, and three snows more, since my mother brought me into the world on the banks of the Mississippi. The Spaniards had recently established themselves in the Bay of Pensacola, but no European yet inhabited Louisiana. I had scarcely witnessed seventeen falls of the leaves when I marched with my father, the warrior Outalissi, against the Muscogulges, a powerful nation in the Floridas. We united our forces with those of the Spaniards, our allies, and the combat took place upon one of the branches of the Mobile. Areskoui * and the manitous were not favorable to us. Our enemies triumphed: my father lost his life; I was twice wounded whilst defending him. O why did I not then go down into the land of souls! I should have avoided the misfortunes which were awaiting me on earth. The Spirits ordained otherwise. I was dragged along by the defeated crowd to Saint Augustine.