The Hidden Children

Hidden Children, The

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Title: The Hidden Children
Author: Robert W. Chambers
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The Hidden Children
by Robert W. Chambers, 1914
TO MY MOTHER
Whatever merit may lie in this book is due to her wisdom, her
sympathy and her teaching
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
No undue liberties with history have been attempted in this romance.
Few characters in the story are purely imaginary. Doubtless the
fastidious reader will distinguish these intruders at a glance, and very
properly ignore them. For they, and what they never were, and what
they never did, merely sugar-coat a dose disguised, and gild the solid
pill of fact with tinselled fiction.
But from the flames of Poundridge town ablaze, to the rolling smoke of
Catharines-town, Romance but limps along a trail hewed out for her
more dainty feet by History, and measured inch by inch across the
bloody archives of the nation.
The milestones that once marked that dark and dreadful trail were dead
men, red and white. Today a spider-web of highways spreads over that

Dark Empire of the League, enmeshing half a thousand towns now all
a-buzz by day and all a-glow by night.
Empire, League, forest, are vanished; of the nations which formed the
Confederacy only altered fragments now remain. But their memory and
their great traditions have not perished; cities, mountains, valleys,
rivers, lakes, and ponds are endowed with added beauty from the lovely
names they wear-- a tragic yet a charming legacy from Kanonsis and
Kanonsionni, the brave and mighty people of the Long House, and
those outside its walls who helped to prop or undermine it, Huron and
Algonquin.
Perhaps of all national alliances ever formed, the Great Peace, which is
called the League of the Iroquois, was as noble as any. For it was a
league formed solely to impose peace. Those who took up arms against
the Long House were received as allies when conquered-- save only the
treacherous Cat Nation, or Eries, who were utterly annihilated by the
knife and hatchet or by adoption and ultimate absorption in the Seneca
Nation.
As for the Lenni-Lenape, when they kept faith with the League they
remained undisturbed as one of the "props" of the Long House, and
their role in the Confederacy was embassadorial, diplomatic and
advisory-- in other words, the role of the Iroquois married women. And
in the Confederacy the position of women was one of importance and
dignity, and they exercised a franchise which no white nation has ever
yet accorded to its women.
But when the Delawares broke faith, then the lash fell and the term
"women" as applied to them carried a very different meaning when spat
out by Canienga lips or snarled by Senecas.
Yet, of the Lenape, certain tribes, offshoots, and clans remained
impassive either to Iroquois threats or proffered friendship. They, like
certain lithe, proud forest animals to whom restriction means death,
were untamable. Their necks could endure no yoke, political or purely
ornamental. And so they perished far from the Onondaga firelight, far
from the open doors of the Long House, self-exiled, self-sufficient,

irreconcilable, and foredoomed. And of these the Mohicans were the
noblest.
In the four romances-- of which, though written last of all, this is the
third, chronologically speaking-- the author is very conscious of error
and shortcoming. But the theme was surely worth attempting; and if the
failure to convince be only partial then is the writer grateful to the Fates,
and well content to leave it to the next and better man.
BROADALBIN,
Early Spring, 1913.
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NOTE
During the serial