When the feast was concluded, the songs and dances, and sacrifices,
finished, the Wahconda's son prepared to take his departure to the
mountains where his father dwelt. The tribe attended him to the edge of
the forest, which had been the hunting-grounds of the Ottoes ever since
the rivers ran, and there they left him to pursue his journey with his
beautiful and happy wife to the abodes of spirits, and great warriors,
and just men. But before the chief parted from his daughter, he made her
husband a long speech, and prayed that peace might ever be between them
and their people. He told him he had given him his all--his dearly
beloved daughter, to whom he must be kind and affectionate. He must not
put heavy burdens upon her; he must not send her to cut wood, nor bring
home the bison's flesh, nor pound the corn, for her hands had never been
hardened in tasks like these, nor her shoulders bowed in her father's
house to the labours of the field, or forest, or cabin. "She had been,"
he said, "the darling of her father's household, and knew not labour but
by name."
The Wahconda's son smiled at the words of the old chief, and told him
"that services, like those he had mentioned, were never required of
women in the Wahconda's dwelling. The people of the happy vales and the
spirits of the mountains fed not," he said, "upon bison's meat, nor
pounded corn; and the sun, which was the same at all seasons, beamed so
warm, that they kept no fires. It was a lovely land, far pleasanter than
that which the Ottoes abode in, nor was it subject to those dreadful
storms and tempests which terrified and annoyed those who dwelt upon the
banks of the Great River." And then, mounting his noble horse, and
taking his little wife behind him, he again bade them farewell and rode
away.
He had been gone two moons--the third was in its wane, and the parents
had become consoled for the loss of their daughter. It was upon a clear
and beautiful evening in the Moon of Harvest, when the forest was losing
its robe of green, and putting on its garment of brown and scarlet, and
cool and steady winds were succeeding to the hot and parching breezes of
summer, that the Ottoes assembled to dance and feast in the cabin of
their chief. It was one of the most beautiful nights ever beheld.
Nothing was heard to break the stillness of the hour, save the rustling
of the branches of the cedar and pine, the slight music of a little
rivulet, and the mournful singing of the wekolis,[A] perched in the low
branches of the willow. The feast was prepared, the Master was
propitiated, and they were sitting down to partake of the good things of
the land and water, when suddenly the earth began to move like the
waters of lake Huron, when agitated by winds from the regions of the
frozen star. Upon every side of them, above them, and beneath them, the
earth thundered, with a rattling sound. In vain did the Ottoes attempt
to leave the cabin; they rolled about like a canoe launched upon a
stormy river, or a ball tossed upon frozen water. The rocking of the
earth continued throughout the hours of darkness. When light came, it
was frightful to behold the disfigured face of the earth. In some places
lakes were scooped out, and mountains piled up on their brink. Trees
were rooted up and broken; little streams had disappeared, even large
rivers had ceased to be. The tall magnolia lay broken in many pieces,
the larch tree had been snapped like a rotten reed. The flowers of the
meadows were scorched and seared, the deer in the thicket lay mangled
and bruised, the birds sat timid and shy on the broken bough. The people
called their priests together, and demanded why these things were. The
priests answered, "Because the Master of Life was angry, but with whom
they knew not. Yet soon should they learn, for there was one coming
hither who would be able to tell them."
[Footnote A: Wekolis--the whip-poor-will.]
Three suns had passed, and the knowledge of the cause still remained
hidden from them. On the morning of the fourth day, when the chief went
out of his lodge, he found his beloved daughter weeping by the door of
the cabin. Oh! how changed was the beautiful Mekaia--she was no longer a
Star-flower. The brightness of her eye had departed, as the beauty of
the green fields and leafy forests is driven hence by the chills of
winter, her cheek was sunken and hollow, her long black locks lay
uncombed upon her shoulders, and the joy and cheerfulness which once
warmed her heart, and made her foot lighter than the antelope's, were no
more. She, whose feet were fleeter than the deer's, now walked feebly,
and rested oft; she, whose tongue outchirped the merriest birds of the
grove, and warbled sweeter music than the song-sparrow, now spoke in
strains as gloomy and sad as the bittern that cries in the swamps when
night is coming on, or the solitary bird of wisdom perched among the
leaves of the oak. The father sat down by her, and asked her whence she
came.
"From the valley upon this side of the mountains," she answered.
"Where is thy husband?" demanded Wasabajinga.
"Dead," answered the Starflower, and wept afresh.
"Wah!" exclaimed the warrior, and hid his face with his hands. When he
had sat thus awhile, he inquired the manner of his death. She told him,
that, before they reached the mountains of the Wahconda, they saw a pale
man coming towards them, mounted on a low, black horse. When he came up
them, he asked her husband if he would buy blankets, and beads, and the
fire-eater. That the Wahconda's son answered, "No;" and told him it was
very--very bad in him to carry the fire-eater, to destroy the poor
misguided Indians. The man upon the black horse answered, "That he was a
better man than the Wahconda's son, for he was no heathen, but lived
where men worshipped a greater Wahconda than his father in a beautiful
house built with hands, and not beneath the shade of the cypress and the
oak." Upon this, her husband did but smile, when the pale man elevated
the spear he carried in his hand, and, with the bolts which issued from
it, struck him to the earth, from which he never rose again. Then there
came a cry of mourning from the cabin of the Little Black Bear. The
women rushed out, and tore their hair, and cut their flesh with sharp
stones, through grief for the death of the husband of their beloved
Starflower. And they sung a melancholy lament, for the youth who had
perished in the morning of life, while the down was yet upon his cheek,
and his heart had never felt the shaft of sorrow. They sung how happy
the lovers were, ere the malice and cruelty of white men destroyed their
joys; ere their sacrilegious hands had laid one low in the dust, and
left the other to pine under the bereavement, till death would be a
blessing. They painted the anger and grief of the great Wahconda when he
found the darling of his house numbered with the slain. They sung that,
exasperated with the children of earth for the murder of his beloved
son, he called upon his earthquakes to deface and lay waste their
country. They bade the eye note how well these ministers of his wrath
had performed his dread commands. So they sung--"For many a weary day's
journey upon the banks of the Mighty River, for many a long encamping in
the direction of the setting sun, the land lies in ruins. The bough is
broken, and the solid trunk is rent. The flower lies bleeding, and the
voice of the dove is hushed. But see, he has bidden the marks of havoc
be effaced from the country of the Ottoes, because it is the native land
of the beautiful woman who had become the wife of his son."
Long was the mourning continued, and deep the grief, which for many a
moon pervaded the cabins and camp of the Ottoes. The Great Wahconda did
not permit the Starflower to remain long upon the earth, but soon called
her away to be re-united to his beloved son in the land of spirits. Yet
she often returns to look upon the place of her birth, to breathe on the
things she loved, and to sit beneath the shade of the trees she planted.
In the season of flowers, she is often seen by moonlight, binding
together the choicest which grow on the prairie, and her voice is often
heard in the sighs of the breeze in spring. The Wahconda's son never
comes with her, for he fears the treachery and violence of the pale
faces.