For the details of the second version of the legend as here summarized
I am indebted to Mr. Billy Minter, a West Point cadet from Austin.
Once two tribes of Indians living far to the north were at deadly
enmity with one another; one tribe lived in what is now Oklahoma, the
other in what is now the Panhandle of Texas. One day the son of the
chieftain of the southern tribe was walking in the woods. It was
springtime, the time to be in the woods, and there he met the daughter
of the chief of the northern tribe. It was springtime; their hatred was
forgotten, and often thereafter they met under the trees. But one day a
brave of the northern tribe discovered the lovers. He was afraid to
fight with this strong young Indian of the south whose fame as a
warrior was already far known; so he watched from the bushes and then
slipped away to tell the maiden’s father what he had seen.
When the lovers were parting, they discovered the trail of the watcher.
They realized that they could never meet thus again and that if the
maid returned to her people she would be terribly tortured. They fled
to the south, hoping to find refuge in some friendly tribe that knew
nothing of the quarrels of their ancestors. The next morning the father
of the maiden sent to the enemy’s camp a demand for his daughter. Then
the elopement was revealed. A truce was made and forthwith fifty picked
trailers and warriors from each tribe were sent to pursue and capture
the fugitives.
For many days the lovers fled, followed closer and closer by the
warriors. At length they found themselves hemmed in on top of a
mountain that faced precipitously on the Colorado River. Out of the
scrub cedars and from over the gullies, they saw the cordon of pitiless
pursuers nearing; beneath them they saw the swollen waters of the
Colorado whirling over the rocks. On the one hand, was a captivity
worse than death; on the other, the river below. “With one last prayer
to the Great Spirit, the lovers embraced and, still locked in this
embrace, leaped into the hungry water.”
“This,” concludes Mr. Minter, “is the legend of the Lovers’ Leap as
told to me when I was eleven years old by an old settler, himself the
son of a pioneer. He lived near the place, and told me the story while
I was camped on Mount Bonnell. Last week (July, 1922) I went again to
try to find him and have him retell the story, but I found that he had
been dead for two years, and so I have not been able to use the names
of the lovers, of the chiefs, and of the tribes, as well as many other
minute circumstances that he made the tale vivid with. The river does
not touch the foot of the cliff at the Lovers’ Leap. Indeed, it is a
good stone’s throw from it to the water’s edge. The old man explained
this discrepancy by saying that the legend was ages old and that at the
time of the leap the river did touch the bottom of the cliff when it
was on a big rise.”