He beat his two wives almost to death, and would have given his handsomest pipe-stem to have seen the faithless one again.
His passion did not last long; it would have killed him if it had. His wives moaned all through the night, bruised and bleeding, for the fault of their rival; while the chief had recourse to the pipe, the never-failing refuge of the Dahcotah.
“I thought,” said the chief, “that some calamity was going to happen to me” (for, being more composed, he began to talk to the other Indians who sat with him in his teepee, somewhat after the manner and in the spirit of Job’s friends). “I saw Unk-a-tahe, the great fish of the water, and it showed its horns; and we know that that is always a sign of trouble.”
“Ho!” replied an old medicine man, “I remember when Unk-a-tahe got in under the falls” (of St. Anthony) “and broke up the ice. The large pieces of ice went swiftly down, and the water forced its way until it was frightful to see it. The trees near the shore were thrown down, and the small islands were left bare. Near Fort Snelling there was a house where a white man and his wife lived. The woman heard the noise, and, waking her husband, ran out; but as he did not follow her quick enough, the house was soon afloat and he was drowned.”
There was an Indian camp near this house, for the body of Wenona, the sick girl who was carried over the Falls, was found here. It was placed on a scaffold on the shore, near where the Indians found her, and Checkered Cloud moved her teepee, to be near her daughter. Several other Dahcotah families were also near her.
But what was their fright when they heard the ice breaking, and the waters roaring as they carried everything before them? The father of Wenona clung to his daughter’s scaffold, and no entreaties of his wife or others could induce him to leave.
“Unk-a-tahe has done this,” cried the old man, “and I care not. He carried my sick daughter under the waters, and he may bury me there too.” And while the others fled from the power of Unk-a-tahe, the father and mother clung to the scaffold of their daughter.
