Old Chactas, blind elder of the Natchez, tells the young Frenchman René of his youth: captured by an enemy tribe, he was saved by Atala, the chief’s Christian daughter, and fled with her through the forests and storms of the Mississippi country. Their refuge with the missionary Father Aubry tests love against a vow.
A founding text of French Romanticism, here with Gustave Doré’s illustrations; its picture of Native Americans is a European fantasy of 1801. Download the free EPUB.