“Embroider this curtain with quills, black and white, and criss-cross, so that it shall be more beautiful than the red cloth and the beadwork.”
So the youngest sister, when she had done her day’s work on the cloth, and was tired and ready to sleep, took the quills and the hair and began to embroider the curtain, black and white, in beautiful patterns like the boughs of the trees against the sky, till she could work no longer, and fell asleep with her chin on her breast.
Then her second sister came with her mischievous fingers and picked out all the embroidery of quills and hair, and in the morning came and shook her and waked her, and said, “You are lazy! you are lazy! Embroider this curtain!”
In this way the youngest sister’s task was doubled, and she grew thin for want of sleep; yet she was so beautiful, and her eyes shone so brightly, that her sisters hated her more and more, for they said to themselves, “If a great chief’s son comes this way, he will see her eyes shining even in the dark at the back of the lodge.”
One day, when the chief looked out of his door, he saw a new lodge standing in the middle of the village, covered with buckskin, and painted round with pictures of wonderful beasts that had never been seen in that country before. There was a fire in front of the lodge, and the haunch of a deer was cooking on the fire. When the chief went and stood and looked in at the door, the lodge was empty, and he said, “Whose can this lodge be?”
Then a voice close by him said, “It is the lodge of a chief who is greater than any chief of the Hurons or any chief of the Iroquois.”
“Where is he?” asked the old chief.
“I am sitting beside my fire,” said the voice; “but you cannot see me, for your eyes are turned inward. No one can see me but the maiden I have come to marry.”
“There are no maidens here,” said the old chief, “except my daughters.”
Then he went back to his lodge, where his two elder daughters were idling in the sun, and told them: