THE FAMILY SAT BEFORE ITS TENT
The Feathered Bridegroom
LONG, long ago, before the coming of the white man to the shores of America, there lived, far up in the north country, near the banks of a broad river, a squaw named Speckled Eagle, with her little son Running Buffalo and her beautiful daughter Deerfoot, a maiden of fifteen.
Speckled Eagle was the widow of a great warrior and she determined that her daughter should never marry until there came to woo her some mighty chieftain of a powerful tribe. Many a young brave came to the tepee, for Deerfoot was as good as she was lovely. Many a one would have wed her, but none were ever rich or noble enough to please Speckled Eagle.
But one day as the family sat before its tent, weaving mats of sweet grass, a white canoe came gliding down the broad river, and in it there sat a handsome stranger. He was clad all in white, in garments made of deer-skin, sewed over with beads and shells and trimmed with ermine tails.
Speckled Eagle looked at him eagerly. Ah, if only he were coming to woo Deerfoot! As she watched, the stranger gave a few skillful strokes of his paddle that sent his canoe out of the current and brought it gliding toward the shore before Speckled Eagle’s lodge. In another moment he was stepping out upon the pebbly shore.
All a-flutter with excitement Speckled Eagle went hurrying down to meet him, not forgetting in her haste to snatch up a bundle of bark which hung in the tepee. When she had greeted the strange brave and bade him welcome to her lodge, she spread pieces of the bark before him on the ground from the landing to the tepee, to do him honor. When he had reached the campfire, she begged him to rest on a soft pile of skins while she and her daughter prepared a feast for him.
Everyone in her camp was delighted with the handsome stranger—all but one old dog which growled and showed his teeth from the moment the unknown brave stepped ashore. The man trembled at the dog’s angry snarls, and said he could not eat a bit of the feast until that ugly animal was taken away.
