When her mother found that her daughter had been carried off by the storm, she raised loud cries and lamented exceedingly. This she continued to do for a long time, and would not be comforted. At last the spirits began to pity her, and determined to raise another storm to bring the daughter back. This was even a greater storm than the first. The water of the lake washed away the ground, and swept on to the lodge of Ishkwon Daimeka, whose wife, when she saw the flood approaching, leaped into the box, and the waves, carrying her off, landed her at the very spot where was her mother’s lodge.
Monedo Kway was overjoyed, but when she opened the box she found her daughter, indeed, but her beauty had almost all departed. However, she loved her still, because she was her daughter, and now thought of the young man who had come to seek her in marriage. She sent a formal message to him, but he had heard of all that had occurred, and his love for the girl had died away.
“I marry your daughter!” replied he. “Your daughter! no, indeed! I shall never marry her!”
The storm that brought the girl back was so strong that it tore away a large part of the shore of the lake and swept off Ishkwon Daimeka’s lodge, the fragments of which, lodging in the straits, formed those beautiful islands which are scattered in the St. Clair and Detroit rivers. As to Ishkwon Daimeka himself, he was drowned, and his bones lie buried under the islands. As he was carried away by the waves on a fragment of his lodge, the old man was heard lamenting his fate in a song.
THE SPIRITS AND THE LOVERS.
At the distance of a woman’s walk of a day from the mouth of the river, called by the pale-faces the Whitestone, in the country of the Sioux, in the middle of a large plain, stands a lofty hill or mound. Its wonderful roundness, together with the circumstance of its standing apart from all other hills, like a fir-tree in the midst of a wide prairie, or a man whose friends and kindred have all descended to the dust, has made it known to all the tribes of the West. Whether it was created by the Great Spirit or filled up by the sons of men, whether it was done in the morning of the world, ask not me, for I cannot tell you. Know it is called by all the tribes of the land the Hill of Little People, or the Mountain of Little Spirits. No gifts can induce an Indian to visit it; for why should he incur the anger of the Little People who dwell in it, and, sacrificed upon the fire of their wrath, behold his wife and children no more? In all the marches and counter-marches of the Indians, in all their goings and returnings, in all their wanderings by day or by night to and from lands which lie beyond it, their paths are so ordered that none approaches near enough to disturb the tiny inhabitants of the hill. The memory of the red-man of the forest has preserved but one instance when their privacy was violated, since it was known through the tribes that they wished for no intercourse with mortals. Before that time many Indians were missing each year. No one knew what became of them, but they were gone, and left no trace nor story behind. Valiant warriors filled their quivers with arrows, put new strings to their bows, new shod their moccasins, and sallied out to acquire glory in combat; but there was no wailing in the camp of our foes: their arrows were not felt, their shouts were not heard. Yet they fell not by the hands of our foes, but perished we know not how.
Many seasons ago there lived within the limits of the great council-fire of the Mahas a chief who was renowned for his valour and victories in the field, his wisdom in the council, his dexterity and success in the chase. His name was Mahtoree, or the White Crane. He was celebrated throughout the vast regions of the West, from the Mississippi to the Hills of the Serpent, from the Missouri to the Plains of Bitter Frost, for all those qualities which render an Indian warrior famous and feared.
In one of the war expeditions of the Pawnee Mahas against the Burntwood Tetons, it was the good fortune of the former to overcome and to make many prisoners—men, women, and children. One of the captives, Sakeajah, or the Bird-Girl, a beautiful creature in the morning of life, after being adopted into one of the Mahas families, became the wife of the chief warrior of the nation. Great was the love which the White Crane had for his wife, and it grew yet stronger when she had brought him four sons and a daughter, Tatokah, or the Antelope. She was beautiful. Her skin was fair, her eyes were large and bright as those of the bison-ox, and her hair black, and braided with beads, brushed, as she walked, the dew from the flowers upon the prairies. Her temper was gentle and her voice sweet.