The Legend of Lover's Leap
On a fair spring morning when the young bucks hunted, as was their pleasure, and the old chiefs smoked and basked idly in the sun, as was their pleasure, and the women toiled in the little fields of corn, as was their necessity, Wah-Wah-Tee, the beautiful daughter of the Chief of the Wacos gathered flowers far up on the banks of the Brazos. Wah-Wah-Tee was a child of nature, yet she dreamed as other maids have done — and as she dreamed, the branches of the willows parted and the embodiment of her vision stood forth — a bold and handsome brave. He told her he belonged to the tribe of Apache, and Wah-Wah-Tee bade him go, for the two tribes were sworn foes. In all the annals of Indian "atrocities" there is no record where an Indian woman betrayed a man to his doom. John Smith was old and ugly and a foreigner, but Pocahontas pitied and saved him. The Apache was young, handsome and of her own race, Wah-Wah-Tee told him he must flee and that she must go, but her brothers were away to the southward, her father dozed in his wigwam and she lingered. The birds sang, the subtle odor of the wild grape filled the air; the sun shone bright, the clover spread its fragrant, glowing carpet of azure, and it was "Spring-time!" This Indian maid had never heard of "Romeo and Juliet," but the results were just the same as tho' she had "sat up nights" reading it, and modern romances, for she promptly fell in love with the "enemy of her house," he, presumably having fallen a victim to her charms 'ere he advanced from the sheltering willows. When the shadows of the afternoon were lengthening, Wah-Wah-Tee hastened, for she was several miles from the village by the Big Spring, but she was fleet of foot, and sped homeward like a young antelope, when danger is scented from afar. Like fair Minnehaha she had promised to follow where he led her. Had she known the civilized arts of diplomacy, she might have reconciled the two tribes, and "lived happily ever after," instead of furnishing this pathetic story. Then the Waco Chief might have said with the Arrow-maker of the Dakotas, and with many a father since —
Those we love and those who love us,
Just when, they have learned to help us,
When we are old and lean upon them:
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers
With his flute of reeds, a stranger,
Wanders piping through the village,
Beckons to the fairest maiden,
And she follows where he leads her,
Leaving all things for the stranger."
