University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

Well might Harpstenah sit in her lodge and weep.
The sorrows of her life passed in review before her. Yet
she was once the belle of an Indian village; no step so
light, no laugh so merry as hers. She possessed too, a
spirit and a firmness not often found among women.

She was by birth the third daughter, who is always
called Harpstenah among the Sioux. Her sisters were
married, and she had seen but fourteen summers when
old Cloudy Sky, the medicine man, came to her parents to
buy her for his wife.

They dared not refuse him, for they were afraid
to offend a medicine man, and a war chief besides.
Cloudy Sky was willing to pay them well for their child.
So she was told that her fate for life was determined upon.
Her promised bridegroom had seen the snows of eighty
winters.

It was a bright night in the “moon for strawberries.”[2]
Harpstenah had wept herself to sleep, and she had reason
too, for her young companions had laughed at her, and told

her that she was to have for a husband an old man without
a nose. And it was true, though Cloudy Sky could
once have boasted of a fine aquiline. He had been drinking
freely, and picked a quarrel with one of his sworn
friends. After some preliminary blows, Cloudy Sky seized
his antagonist and cut his ear sadly, but in return he had
his nose bitten off.

She had wept the more when her mother told her that in
four days she was to go to the teepee of her husband. It
was in vain to contend. She lay down beside the fire;
deep sleep came upon her; she forgot the events of the
past day; for a time she ceased to think of the young
man she loved, and the old one she hated. In her dreams
she had travelled a long journey, and was seated on the
river shore, to rest her tired limbs. The red light of the
dying sun illumined the prairies, she could not have
endured its scorching rays, were it not for the sheltering
branches of the tree under which she had found a resting-place.

The waters of the river beat against her feet. She
would fain move, but something chained her to the spot.
She tried to call her mother, but her lips were sealed, and
her voice powerless. She would have turned her face from
the waters, but even this was impossible. Stronger and
stronger beat the waves, and then parted, revealing the
dreaded form of the fairy of the waters.

Harpstenah looked upon death as inevitable; she had
ever feared that terrible race of beings whose home was in
the waters. And now the fairy stood before her!

“Why do you tremble maiden? Only the wicked need
fear the anger of the gods. You have never offended us,

nor the spirits of the dead. You have danced in the scalp-dance,
and have reverenced the customs of the Sioux.
You have shed many tears. You love Red Deer, and
your father has sold you to Cloudy Sky, the medicine
man. It is with you to marry the man you love, or the
one you hate.”

“If you know everything,” sighed the girl, “then you
must know that in four days I am to take my seat beside
Cloudy Sky in his wigwam. He has twice brought calico
and cloth, and laid them at the door of my father's
teepee.”

“You shall not marry Cloudy Sky, if you have a strong
heart, and fear nothing,” replied the fairy. The spirits of
the water have determined on the death of Cloudy Sky.
He has already lived three times on earth. For many
years he wandered through the air with the sons of the
thunder bird; like them he was ever fighting against the
friends of Unktahe.

“With his own hand he killed the son of that god, and
for that was he sent to earth to be a medicine man. But
long ago we have said that the time should come, when
we would destroy him from the earth. It is for you to
take his life when he sleeps. Can a Dahcotoh woman
want courage when she is to be forced to marry a man she
hates?”

The waters closed over the fairy as he disappeared, and
the waves beat harder against Harpstenah's feet. She
awoke with the words echoing in her heart, “Can a Sioux
woman want courage when she is to be forced to marry a
man she hates?” “The words of the fairy were wise and
true,” thought the maiden. “Our medicine men say that

the fairies of the water are all wieked; that they are ever
seeking to do harm to the Dahcotahs. My dream has
made my heart light. I will take the life of the war chief.
At the worst they can but take mine.”

As she looked round the teepee, her eye rested upon the
faces of her parents. The bright moonlight had found its
way into the teepee. There lay her father, his haughty
countenance calm and subdued, for the “image of death”
had chased away the impression left on his features of a
fierce struggle with a hard life. How often had he warned
her of the danger of offending Cloudy Sky, that sickness,
famine, death itself, might be the result. Her mother too,
had wearied her with warnings. But she remembered her
dream, and with all a Sioux woman's faith in revelations,
she determined to let it influence her course.

Red Deer had often vowed to take the life of his rival,
though he knew it would have assuredly cost him his
own. The family of Cloudy Sky was a large one; there
were many who would esteem it a sacred duty to avenge
his death. Besides he would gain nothing by it, for the
parents of Harpstenah would never consent to her marriage
with the murderer of the war chief.

How often had Red Deer tried to induce the young girl
to leave the village, and return with him as his wife. “Have
we not always loved each other,” he said. “When we were
children, you made me mocassins, and paddled the canoe
for me, and I brought the wild duck, which I shot while it
was flying, to you. You promised me to be my wife, when
I should be a great hunter, and had brought to you the
scalp of an enemy. I have kept my promise, but you have
broken yours.”

“I know it,” she replied; “but I fear to keep my word.
They would kill you, and the spirits of my dead brothers
would haunt me for disobeying my parents. Cloudy Sky
says that if I do not marry him he will cast a spell upon
me; he says that the brightness would leave my eye, and
the color my cheek; that my step should be slow and weary,
and soon would I be laid in the earth beside my brothers.
The spirit that should watch beside my body would be offended
for my sin in disobeying the counsel of the aged. You,
too, should die, he says, not by the tomahawk, as a warrior
should die, but by a lingering disease—fever should enter
your veins, your strength would soon be gone, you would
no longer be able to defend yourself from your enemies.
Let me die, rather than bring such trouble upon you.”

Red Deer could not reply, for he believed that Cloudy
Sky could do all that he threatened. Nerved, then, by her
devotion to her lover, her hatred of Cloudy Sky, and her
faith in her dream, Harpstenah determined her heart should
not fail her; she would obey the mandate of the water
god; she would bury her knife in the heart of the medicine
man.