A STRANGE STORY. 93 



pie, with all those dear to me, and prayed the Good Spirit that I might 

 again behold them ere my passage to the death-land. 



" ' I fled, hoping to reach the home of my birth ; — but age had enfeebled 

 me, and being pursued, I sought refuge in this cave. Here, having passed 

 a night and a day in earnest communion with the Big Medicine, — a strange 

 feeling came upon me. I slumbered, in a dreamy state of consciousness, 

 from then till now. 



'"But your looks again ask, who are the Shoshones ? — what became of 

 them ? And from whence were the Scarred-arms ?' 



" ' The Lacotas will soon know the Shoshones, and bring from their 

 lodges many scalps and medicine-dogs. Divided into two tribes, that 

 nation long since sought home in other lands. One crossed the snow- 

 hills towards the sun-setting ; — the Lacotas shall visit them, and avenge 

 the blood and wrongs of ages. The other journeyed far away towards the 

 sun of winter, and now live to the leftward of the places where the His- 

 panola builds his earth-lodge.* 



" ' Then came the Scarred-arms from a far off country, a land of much 

 snow and cold. Pleased with the thickly tenanted hunting grounds that 

 here met them, they stopped for the chase, and, by a possession through 

 successive generations, have learned to consider these grounds as their 

 own. But they are not theirs. 



" ' The Great Spirit gives them to the Lacotas, and they shall inhabit the 

 land of their daughter's captivity. 



" ' Why wait ye here ? Go and avenge the blood of your comrades 

 upon the Scarred-arms. Tiiey even now light their camp-fire by the 

 stream at the mountain's base. Fear not, — their scalps are yours ! 

 Then return ye to my people, that ye may come and receive your inheri- 

 tance. 



" ' Haste ye, that I may die. And, oh Warkantunga ! inasmuch as thou 

 hast answered the prayer of thine handmaid, and shown to me the faces of 

 my people, take me from hence.' 



" The awe-struck warriors withdrew. They found the enemy encamped 

 at the foot of the mountain. They attacked him and were victorious ; — 

 thirty-five scalps were the trophies of their success. 



" On reaching their homes the strange adventure excited the astonish- 

 ment of the whole nation. The Scarred-arms were attacked by our war- 

 riors, thus nerved with the hope of triumph, and were eventually driven 

 from the country now possessed by the Locotas as their own. 



" The grateful braves soon sought out the mountain, to do reverence to 

 the medicine-woman who had told them so many good things. A niche in 

 the mountain-side, from whence issued a sparkling streamlet, told their 

 place of refuge ; but the cave and the woman alike had disappeared. 



" Each successive season do our warriors visit the Shoshones for scalps 

 and medicine-dogs, — and each of our braves, as he passes the Old Woman's 



* It is a singular fact, that the Cumanches and Snakes, (Shoshones,) though living 

 nearly a thousand miles distant from eacli other, with hostile tribes intervening, 

 speak precisely the same language, and call themselves by the same general name. 

 They have lost all tradition, liowever, of having formed one nation, in any previous 

 age. 



