“The Head Buffalo, with the morning, will offer to him that which he holds dearest.”
The Head Buffalo looked upon the priests, and said—
“The Head Buffalo fears the Great Spirit. He will kill a deer, and, in the morning, it shall be burned to the Great Spirit.”
Chenos said to him—
“You have told the council how the battle was fought and who fell; you have shown the spent quiver and the scalps, but you have not spoken of your prisoner. The Great Spirit keeps nothing hid from his priests, of whom Chenos is one. He has told me you have a prisoner, one with tender feet and a trembling heart.”
“Let any one say the Head Buffalo ever lied,” replied the warrior. “He never spoke but truth. He has a prisoner, a woman taken from the strange camp, a daughter of the sun, a maiden from the happy islands which no Shawano has ever seen, and she shall live with me, and become the mother of my children.”
“Where is she?” asked the head chief.
“She sits on the bank of the river at the bend where we dug up the bones of the great beast, beneath the tree which the Master of Breath shivered with his lightnings. I placed her there because the spot is sacred, and none dare disturb her. I will go and fetch her to the council fire, but let no one touch her or show anger, for she is fearful as a young deer, and weeps like a child for its mother.”
Soon he returned, and brought with him a woman. She shook like a reed in the winter’s wind, and many tears ran down her cheeks. The men sat as though their tongues were frozen. Was she beautiful? Go forth to the forest when it is clothed with the flowers of spring, look at the tall maize when it waves in the wind, and ask if they are beautiful. Her skin was white as the snow which falls upon the mountains beyond our lands, save upon her cheeks, where it was red,—not such red as the Indian paints when he goes to war, but such as the Master of Life gives to the flower which grows among thorns. Her eyes shone like the star which never moves. Her step was like that of the deer when it is a little scared.
The Head Buffalo said to the council—