Swift the strong hunters climbed as she sang, and the foremost of all was Tamdóka;
From crag to crag upward he sprang; like a panther he leaped to the summit.
Too late!—on the brave as he crept turned the maid in her scorn and defiance;
Then swift from the dizzy height leaped. Like a brant arrow-pierced in mid-heaven.
Down whirling and fluttering she fell, and headlong plunged into the waters.
Forever she sank mid the wail, and the wild lamentation of women.
Her lone spirit evermore dwells in the depths of the Lake of the Mountains,
And the lofty cliff evermore tells to the years as they pass her sad story.[[BX]]
In the silence of sorrow the night o'er the earth spread her wide, sable pinions;
And the stars[a/][[18]] hid their faces; and light on the lake fell the tears of the spirits.
As her sad sisters watched on the shore for her spirit to rise from the waters,
They heard the swift dip of an oar, and a boat they beheld like a shadow,
Gliding down through the night in the gray, gloaming mists on the face of the waters.
'Twas the bark of DuLuth on his way from the Falls to the Games at Keóza.
FOOTNOTES
Tee—teepee, the Dakota name for tent or wigwam
See Hennepin's Description of Louisiana, by Shea, pp. 243 and 256. Parkman's Discovery, p. 246—and Carver's Travels, p. 67.