After a time, when the fire had died down and the scout’s pards were silently smoking in camp near by, and the child had gone to sleep in the tepee, its hunger satisfied—while Buffalo Bill and the aged Indian were sitting alone in the darkness, the latter told the story of the “queen of the stars,” the “child of the moon.”
In substance it was that years before a little child had been stolen by a band of Kiowas who had murdered her parents. Later the chief who had the child became alarmed, because of persistent inquiries by the government agent, who suspected him and threatened to cut off his allowance from the government, and sold the little yellow-haired girl to a Cheyenne warrior for two ponies.
The Cheyenne a year later sold the child to a Sioux chief for five ponies, and the tribe soon discovered supernatural attributes. With the colored figments of the squaws the child made pictures that “deceived the eye” and sang in a way that charmed the great chiefs of the tribe.
And then one day, with a white woman who had long been a prisoner, the child walked out of camp and defied all the warriors to detain them. She pointed to the moon and said she was its child and came to watch over the red men and they must not dispute her. She pointed her finger at the medicine man, looked sternly at him and walked toward him. He shrank before her.
The old Indian told how the child, followed by the woman, went to the mountain and knocked with a stick upon its side, and the mountain opened and swallowed up both child and woman, and closed again.
Next evening the child was heard singing in a voice that hushed the universe, and when the people of the tribe drew near they saw her walking on the very top of the mountain and pointing to the stars. Again she told them she was daughter of the moon and queen of the stars, and sang to them.
The Indians left rich offerings of food and blankets before the rocks that had swallowed up the girl and woman.
Thereafter when the new moon appeared other offerings of food and blankets were made, and the custom had continued until it became a tribal law.
The story of the child spread to other tribes, particularly to the Cheyennes who had sold her to the Sioux. The Cheyennes made long pilgrimages each year to make offerings, swear allegiance and hear the sweet voice of the child once held by their tribe.
From the Cheyennes the Kiowas learned of the child’s power, and they, too, came to pay tribute each year.