After many days he awakened; great was the rejoicing. His father appointed a day of feasting; and the tribe gathered to do honor to him who had fought so bravely in the face of defeat. Cattle were slaughtered, fires were kindled, and strange dances were in progress when Pa-che-ta approached. Demonstrations of joy greeted his appearance.
Among the children on the outer edge of the circle, stood little N-tha-thah, gazing proudly at the big brother who would one day be his chief. As the excitement increased, his heart swelled with pride, and the next moment found him, bow and arrows in hand, the center of the charmed circle.
Pa-che-ta gazed at the child with a strange look in his piercing black eyes. Then, with a stealthy movement, he turned and slowly reached for the rifle which rested against the stump of a tree.
Lay-law-she-kaw, keen witted and alert, noticed the sudden change that came over the face of his eldest son. What was the cause of that cruel, crafty expression? Had bad spirits entered the brain of Pa-che-ta, whose noble deeds would ever after be celebrated by the nation? Now the brave was creeping cautiously toward the little one, who stood motionless, in round-eyed wonder. Deliberately he placed the weapon to his shoulder and took aim—but the crack of another rifle broke the awful hush which had fallen upon the people, and when the smoke cleared away, Pa-che-ta lay in a pool of blood. The father had fired in time to preserve his young child.
For many years the old women of the tribe told, in accents of awe, how evil spirits had gone into the brain of their noblest warrior and looked out of his eyes with terrible glances of murderous hatred, in the moment of his greatest triumph. How they had been driven out with a rifle ball, and Lay-law-she-kaw, O-kee-nah (the chief), sorrowing for his first born, had that day been called by the Great Spirit to enter the Happy Hunting Grounds.
The North American Indian was of a strange, somewhat contradictory character: in war, daring, cunning, boastful, ruthless; in peace, cheerful, dignified, superstitious, revengeful; clinging as far as possible, to the customs of his forefathers. Civilization came almost as a destroyer. Future generations will know him only as a dim, historic figure, around which clusters the mythology of ancient America.
Whence came these legends and traditions? The children of Nature read them in the leafy woodlands, on the broad prairie, in the blue vault of heaven, the crimson sunset, the dark storm-threatening clouds, in every gentle breeze or sweeping hurricane. Each story lived in the hearts of the people, and here and there a mighty forest tree bore a quaint inscription
"Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the Here and the Hereafter."