University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

Shah-co-pee has looked rather grave lately. There is
trouble in the wigwam.

The old chief is the husband of three wives, and they and
their children are always fighting. The first wife is old as
the hills, wrinkled and haggard; the chief cares no more for
her than he does for the stick of wood she is chopping.

She quarrels with everybody but him, and this prevents
her from being quite forgotten.

The day of the second wife is past too, it is of no use for
her to plait her hair and put on her ornaments; for the old
chief's heart is wrapped up in his third wife.

The girl did not love him, how could she? and he did
not succeed in talking her into the match; but he induced
the parents to sell her to him, and the young wife went
weeping to the teepee of the chief.

Hers was a sad fate. She hated her husband as much
as he loved her. No presents could reconcile her to her situation.
The two forsaken wives never ceased annoying
her, and their children assisted them. The young wife had
not the courage to resent their ill treatment, for the loss of
her lover had broken her heart. But that lover did not
seem to be in such despair as she was—he did not quit the
village, or drown himself, or commit any act of desperation.
He lounged and smoked as much as ever. On one
occasion when Shah-co-pee was absent from the village the
lovers met.

They had to look well around them, for the two old
wives were always on the look out for something to tell of
the young one; but there was no one near. The wind
whistled keenly round the bend of the river as the Dahcotah
told the weeping girl to listen to him.

When had she refused? How had she longed to hear
the sound of his voice when wearied to death with the long
boastings of the old chief.

But how did her heart beat when Red Stone told her that
he loved her still—that he had only been waiting an opportunity

to induce her to leave her old husband, and go with
him far away.

She hesitated a little, but not long; and when Shah-co-pee
returned to his teepee his young wife was gone—no
one had seen her depart—no one knew where to seek for
her. When the old man heard that Red Stone was gone
too, his rage knew no bounds. He beat his two wives
almost to death, and would have given his handsomest
pipe-stem to have seen the faithless one again.

His passion did not last long; it would have killed him
if it had. His wives moaned all through the night, bruised
and bleeding, for the fault of their rival; while the chief
had recourse to the pipe, the never-failing refuge of the
Dahcotah.

“I thought,” said the chief, “that some calamity was
going to happen to me” (for, being more composed, he began
to talk to the other Indians who sat with him in his
teepee, somewhat after the manner and in the spirit of Job's
friends). “I saw Unk-a-tahe, the great fish of the water,
and it showed its horns; and we know that that is always a
sign of trouble.”

“Ho!” replied an old medicine man, “I remember when
Unk-a-tahe got in under the falls” (of St. Anthony) “and
broke up the ice. The large pieces of ice went swiftly
down, and the water forced its way until it was frightful
to see it. The trees near the shore were thrown down, and
the small islands were left bare. Near Fort Snelling there
was a house where a white man and his wife lived. The
woman heard the noise, and, waking her husband, ran out;
but as he did not follow her quick enough, the house was
soon afloat and he was drowned.”

There was an Indian camp near this house, for the body
of Wenona, the sick girl who was carried over the Falls,
was found here. It was placed on a scaffold on the shore,
near where the Indians found her, and Checkered Cloud
moved her teepee, to be near her daughter. Several other
Dahcotah families were also near her.

But what was their fright when they heard the ice breaking,
and the waters roaring as they carried everything before
them? The father of Wenona clung to his daughter's
scaffold, and no entreaties of his wife or others could induce
him to leave.

“Unk-a-tahe has done this,” cried the old man, “and I
care not. He carried my sick daughter under the waters,
and he may bury me there too.” And while the others fled
from the power of Unk-a-tahe, the father and mother clung
to the scaffold of their daughter.

They were saved, and they lived by the body of Wenona
until they buried her. The power of Unk-a-tahe is great!”
so spoke the medicine man, and Shah-co-pee almost forgot
his loss in the fear and admiration of this monster of the
deep, this terror of the Dahcotahs.

He will do well to forget the young wife altogether; for
she is far away, making mocassins for the man she loves.
She rejoices at her escape from the old man, and his two
wives; while he is always making speeches to his men,
commencing by saying he is a great chief, and ending with
the assertion that Red Stone should have respected his old
age, and not have stolen from him the only wife he loved.