Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 17, 2025
His eyes are closing fast in death, but his lips murmur "Wenona! I come! I come!" IT was in the spring of 1848, that several Dahcotahs were carefully making their way along the forests near the borders of the Chippeway country.
The Dahcotahs say that meteors are men or women flying through the air; that they fall to pieces as they go along, finally falling to the earth. They call them "Wah-ken-den-da," or the mysterious passing fire. They have a tradition of a meteor which, they say, was passing over a hill where there was an Indian asleep.
"The laws of the white people are very just," said an old man of the party; "they let their people live near us and sell us whiskey, they take our furs from us, and get much money. They have the right to bring their liquor near us, and sell it, but if we buy it we are punished. When I was young," he added, bitterly, "the Dahcotahs were free; they went and came as they chose.
The medicine men offered to cure his disease; but he knew that it was beyond their art, and he cared not how soon death came, nor in what form. He met the fate he sought. A war party was formed among the Dahcotahs to seek more scalps, more revenge. But the Track-maker was weary of glory. He went with the party, and never returned.
Every preparation was made for the death-strife. Not a Sioux warrior but vowed he would with his own arm avenge the death of his friend. The very tears of the wife were dried when the hope of vengeance cheered her heart. The Track-maker was famous as a warrior. Already did the aged Dahcotahs listen to his words; for he was both wise and brave.
Often beaten, they were never conquered, and have always occupied the ground which they had selected from the beginning. Unlike the great families of the Dahcotahs and Algonquins who yet retain the predominant characteristics of the wandering nations of South-west Asia, the Shoshones seem to have been in all ages a nation warlike, though stationary.
A certain quantity of sugar was dealt out to each individual, and any one of them who could not eat all that was given him was obliged to pay leggins, or a blanket, or something valuable, to the medicine man. On this occasion, indeed on most occasions, the Dahcotahs have no difficulty in disposing of any quantity of food.
Shah-co-pee has great influence among the Dahcotahs, and he was to come to Fort Snelling to be present at the council of peace. Early in the morning he and about twenty warriors left their village on the banks of the St. Peters, for the Fort.
But her lover loved his nation even more than he did her; and though he would have died to have saved her from sorrow, yet he knew she could never be his wife. Even were he to marry her, her life would ever be in danger. A Chippeway could not long find a home among the Dahcotahs. The Track-maker bitterly regretted that they had ever met, when he saw her grief at the prospect of parting.
These rites have been preserved from generation to generation, told from father to son, and they will be handed down until the Dahcotahs are no more, or until religion and education take the place of superstition and ignorance until God, our God, is known and worshipped among a people who as yet have hardly heard His name.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking