Of all the Sioux girls, Tachechana (or the
Fawn) was the lightest-hearted and the most envied. Her father had
been a distinguished brave, and her brothers had already left their
bones on a distant and dreary war-path. Numberless were the warriors,
who had sent presents to the lodge of her parents, but none of them
were listened to until a messenger from the great Mahtoree had come.
She was his third wife, it is true, but she was confessedly the most
favoured of them all. Their union had existed but two short seasons,
and its fruits now lay sleeping at her feet, wrapped in the customary
ligatures of skin and bark, which form the swaddlings of an Indian
infant.
At the moment, when Mahtoree and the trapper arrived at the opening of
the lodge, the young Sioux wife was seated on a simple stool, turning
her soft eyes, with looks that varied, like her emotions, with love
and wonder, from the unconscious child to those rare beings, who had
filled her youthful and uninstructed mind with so much admiration and
astonishment.
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