“Good!” he answered, pressing her vehemently to his heart. “It is sweet to me to hear the Sunflower say that she loves the dying Wawandah. The white chief will take care of you when I am dead.”
“If Wawandah dies, the Sunflower will die too. She cannot live without him. Her heart is too full to live alone.”
“No, no!” he replied. “The white chief will go with you to the White Bear. He will say that I am very sorry for the wrong I have done him, and that the last prayer of Wawandah, who has been so ungrateful to him, is, that he will take back his wife—the sweetest flower of the Saukie tribe.”
The Sunflower raised her drooping head, and looked Wawandah steadily in the face for some moments. She made no remark, but resumed the same desponding attitude.
Summoning all his remaining strength—for life was fast ebbing away—the Indian now stretched himself to the utmost tension of his body, and, shouting out the war-cry of his tribe, drew his knife and plunged it into his heart—then fell back and expired.
For some moments the Sunflower lay as one unconscious on the bleeding body of the ill fated Wawandah; then raising herself up, she revealed her face, the extreme paleness of which was visible even beneath the dark hue of her skin. She asked the Chippewa to come near her, that she might communicate to him a message for the White Bear, offering her silver arm bands as the price of his service.
The cupidity of the Chippewa, more than any remorse he felt, or desire to assist the Sunflower, induced him to approach and receive the trinkets and the message; but while he was busily engaged in securing that which was on her left arm, the Sunflower suddenly drew the knife from the body of her husband and plunged it into the heart of the Chippewa, to whom she owed all the bitterness of her fate. He fell dead at the feet of Wawandah, and before Captain Hughes, or any of his party, had time to prevent her, or even to understand her intention, she raised herself to her feet with the reeking knife in her hand, and killed herself with a single and unfaltering blow.
Deeply shocked and pained by this lamentable catastrophe, Captain Hughes caused his men to cut litters with their axes and carry the bodies to the fort. No one felt regret for the just punishment of the Chippewa; but the fate of the unhappy lovers created a deep sympathy in the hearts of all—the more so from the surpassing personal beauty of both. Two graves were dug—one inside and the other on the outside of the stockade. In the first was placed a rude coffin, lined with a buffalo skin, which Captain Hughes had substituted for that of the grizzly bear, were placed the bodies of Wawandah and the Sunflower. A sort of mound was then raised over it, and at the head was stuck a short pole, the top of which, for about twelve inches, was painted red. The Chippewa was thrown unceremoniously, and without coffin, into the grave that had been dug for him outside.
Some time afterward Captain Hughes, having occasion to visit the encampment of the Shawnees, on a subject connected with the differences then existing between them and the North-West Company, took the opportunity of communicating to the White Bear all that he knew relating to the flight and death of the unfortunate Sunflower and Wawandah; adding to the detail the account of the sepulchral rites he had caused to be accorded to them.
The chief, a good deal emaciated and of much sterner look than when last introduced to the reader, at first heard him with grave and imperturbable silence. But when he came to that part of his narrative which described the remorse of Wawandah for the injury he had done him, a tear, vainly sought to be hidden by a sudden motion of the head, stole down his cheek.