The emigrant looked at him disdainfully.
"Keep your promises as well as I shall mine: and now begin the torture—you will see a man die."
Things were done as had been arranged; the emigrant and his servants were flayed alive. The emigrant endured the torture with a courage which even the chief admired. Not a cry, not a groan, issued from his bleeding chest; he was made of granite. When his skin was entirely stripped off, Natah Otann went up to him; the unhappy wretch was not yet dead.
"Thou art a man," he said to him. "Die satisfied. I will keep the promise I made thee."
And moved doubtlessly by a feeling of pity for so much firmness, he blew out his brains.
This horrible punishment lasted four hours. The Indians plundered all the Americans possessed, and what they could not carry off they burned. Natah Otann rigidly kept the oath he had made to his victim: as he said, from a strip of his skin, imperfectly tanned, he made a bag, in which he placed the lock of hair, and hung it round the child's neck by a cord also made of his skin. On the homeward road to his village, Natah Otann paid the most assiduous attention to the poor little creature; and, on rejoining the tribe, the chief declared before all that he adopted the girl, and gave her the name of Prairie Flower.
At the period our story begins, Prairie Flower was fourteen years of age; she was a charming creature, gentle and simple, lovely as the princess of a fairy tale. Her large blue eyes, veiled by long brown lashes, reflected the azure of the heaven, and she ran about, careless and wild, through the forests and over the prairie, dreaming at times beneath the shady recesses of the giant trees, living as the birds live, forgetting the past, which was to her as yesterday, caring nothing for the future, which to her had no existence, and only thinking of the present to be happy.
The charming girl had unconsciously become the idol of the tribe. The old White Buffalo more especially felt an unbounded affection for her; but the experiment he had made with Natah Otann disgusted him with a second trial at education. He only watched over her with truly paternal care, correcting any fault he might notice in her with a patience and kindness nothing could weary. This old tribune, like all energetic and implacable men, had the heart of a lamb; having entirely renounced the world which mistook him, he had refreshed his soul in the desert, and recovered the illusions and generous impulses of his youth.
Prairie Flower had retained no remembrance of her early years; as no one ever alluded in her presence to the terrible scenes which introduced her to the tribe, fresher impressions had completely effaced them. Loved and petted by all, Prairie Flower fancied herself a child of the tribe. Her long tresses of light hair, gilded like ripe corn, and the dazzling whiteness of her skin, could not enlighten her, for in many Indian nations these anomalies are found; the Mandans, among others, have many women and warriors who, if they put on European clothes, might easily pass for whites.
The Blackfeet, seduced by the charms of this gentle young creature, attached the destinies of the tribe to her. They considered her their tutelary genius, their palladium: their faith in her was deep, serene, and simple. Prairie Flower was truly the Queen of the Blackfeet; a sign from her rosy fingers, a word from her dainty lips, was obeyed with unbounded promptitude and devotion. She could do anything, say everything, demand everything, without fearing even a second's hesitation to her will. She exercised this despotic authority unsuspectingly; she alone was unaware of the immense power she possessed over these brutal natives, who in her presence became gentle and devoted.