on account of her strange dress,--a goose skin around her head, and
a badly tanned robe about her. The people in the dance asked her: "Well,
what are you dancing for? What can you tell?" The woman said, "I am dancing
here to-day, and when the water in the streams gets warm next spring, I am
going to war; and then I will tell you what I have done to any people." The
chief was standing present, and when he learned who it was that his young
wife loved, he was much ashamed and went to his lodge.
When the dance was over, this young woman went to the lodge of the poor
young man to give back his dress to him. Now, while she had been gone,
Api-k[)u]nni had been thinking over all these things, and he was very much
ashamed. He took his robe and his goose skin and went away. He was so
ashamed that he went away at once, travelling off over the prairie, not
caring where he went, and crying all the time. As he wandered away, he came
to a lake, and at the foot of this lake was a beaver dam, and by the dam a
beaver house. He walked out on the dam and on to the beaver house. There he
stopped and sat down, and in his shame cried the rest of the day, and at
last he fell asleep on the beaver house.
While he slept, he dreamed that a beaver came to him--a very large
beaver--and said: "My poor young man, come into my house. I pity you, and
will give you something that will help you." So Api-k[)u]nni got up, and
followed the beaver into the house. When he was in the house, he awoke, and
saw sitting opposite him a large white beaver, almost as big as a man. He
thought to himself, "This must be the chief of all the beavers, white
because very old." The beaver was singing a song. It was a very strange
song, and he sang it a long time. Then he said to Api-k[)u]nni, "My son,
why are you mourning?" and the young man told him everything that had
happened, and how he had been shamed. Then the beaver said: "My son, stay
here this winter with me. I will provide for you. When the time comes, and
you have learned our songs and our ways, I will let you go. For a time make
this your home." So Api-k)u]nni stayed there with the beaver, and the
beaver taught him many strange things. All this happened in the fall.
Now the chief in the camp missed this poor young man, and he asked the
people where he had gone. No one knew. They said that the last that had
been seen of him he was travelling toward the lake where the beaver dam
was.
Api-k[)u]nni had a friend
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