Dr. Gale had played a brief part in the settlement of a new country from which he now disappeared as if he had never been.
In after years only the few who belonged to that early settlement remembered that Mary was his child, and told of it sometimes, when they recounted the adventurous life of those early days. A young man listened to these reminiscences from the lips of the strange, irascible, but warm hearted Frenchman, and treasured them in memory. Hence this true tale. Nikumi released from her reptile inhabited cave by the little red bird in the tree down the ravine, came back to her tipi. She had kept her child but she had lost her lover and her life. How should she take it up again? She had been always quiet and little given to the chatter and laughter of the young squaws; she was only a little more quiet now, and Mary's lot was decided; she would always be an Indian woman.
One day Sarpy came to her and told her that Gale had left money for her and she was to come to the fort for what she wished. And after a time it came to pass that Sarpy took her to wife as Gale had done. Perhaps that was in his mind when he looked at Gale with a smile in his eyes; but Nikumi would not listen to him till she had waited long, and until Sarpy told her and she heard from others that Gale would never come again. And she was his faithful wife for many years, occupying always, because of her inherent dignity and real womanliness, a position high in the estimation both of the white and the red men. Many tales are told of her life with Sarpy, how at one time she carried him miles on her back when he was stricken with fever in the mountains, until she brought him to aid and safety. Another time when he had given orders that no more goods should be given her from the post (she was always very liberal to her relatives and he wished to check it) she quietly picked up two or three bolts of calico, and walking to the river bank, threw them in; a second armful followed, and then the enemy capitulated. And still another time when Sarpy had bought a beautiful black mare, "Starlight," to minister to the pleasure of a designing English widow, she one day quietly appeared when the horse was driven round by Sarpy's black servant, and ordered it taken to the stable, and enforced the order, too. But this is another story.
In later years, as Sarpy's dominion ceased with the gradual decline of the fur company, and he spent much of his time in St. Louis, Nikumi lived with Mary, who had married an Indian like herself, with a mixture of white blood in his veins, although he was French, and who occupied a prominent position in one of the tribes to whom was given a distinct reservation. From this mixture of English, French, and Indian bloods has arisen a family which stands at the head of their tribe, and one member who is known throughout this country. It is worthy of notice, too, that with one exception it has been the women of the family who have shown the qualities which gave them preëminence.
Nikumi died March 23, 1888, at the home of her daughter Mary; but her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren live to show that sometimes the mixture of races tends to development of the virtues, and not, as has been so often said, of the vices of both races.
THE HEROINE OF THE JULES-SLADE TRAGEDY
By Mrs. Harriet S. MacMurphy
Our two weeks' ride over Iowa prairies was ended and we had reached our new home in Nebraska. I sat in the buggy, a child of twelve, with my three-year-old brother beside me, on the eastern bank of the Missouri river, while father went down where the ferry boat lay, to make ready for our crossing.
In the doorway of a log cabin near by stood a young girl two or three years older than I. We gazed at each other shyly. She was bare-headed and bare-footed, her cheeks tanned, and her abundant black hair roughened with the wind, but her eyes were dark and her figure had the grace of untrammeled out door life. To my girl's standard she did not appeal, and I had not then the faintest conception of the romance and tragedy of which she was the heroine.