"The white men followed us for days. One evening I was with my mother, and heard my father tell her where the yellow metal was on the opposite side of the river, pointing to a great sycamore tree that grew on the river bank. 'Beneath that tree lies much of the yellow metal,' he said to her, and I saw the tree, and knew what he said was true.
"That night the white men came to our camp and had a long talk with my father, trying to make him tell where the mother gold was, and, when he would not, suddenly they fell upon the camp, and, after killing some of the young men, drove my father and the others away. At the first shot my mother ran away into the woods with me."
"That was horrible," interjected Stella.
"As my mother ran, she was shot in the back, but she kept on running until she was out of sight before she fell.
"Then the white men went away, and I lay there with my mother until she breathed no more and was cold.
"I cried for a long time because it was dark and cold, and I could hear the wild animals in the woods all about me.
"This frightened me, and I began to call 'Ai-i-e!' which is the Indian way of lamentation, and I cried louder all the time to keep the wild animals from me."
"And did no one hear you?"
"Yes. In the night I heard a noise in the wood, and it was the noise of a man walking, an Indian man, for it was soft, made by moccasins. Then I cried louder, and soon my father came and picked both me and my mother up in his arms and carried us away into the woods, where he buried my mother, and went away into the North again.
"But as I grew up, I thought often about the mother gold and the place where it was hidden by the Great Spirit, for so I had heard my father say. Once when I spoke of it to my father he told me never to speak of it to him again, for it was cursed, having taken away from him his son, who was killed by the white men, and my mother.