conda's son, for he was no heathen, but lived
where men worshipped a greater Wahconda than his father in a beautiful
house built with hands, and not beneath the shade of the cypress and the
oak." Upon this, her husband did but smile, when the pale man elevated
the spear he carried in his hand, and, with the bolts which issued from
it, struck him to the earth, from which he never rose again. Then there
came a cry of mourning from the cabin of the Little Black Bear. The
women rushed out, and tore their hair, and cut their flesh with sharp
stones, through grief for the death of the husband of their beloved
Starflower. And they sung a melancholy lament, for the youth who had
perished in the morning of life, while the down was yet upon his cheek,
and his heart had never felt the shaft of sorrow. They sung how happy
the lovers were, ere the malice and cruelty of white men destroyed their
joys; ere their sacrilegious hands had laid one low in the dust, and
left the other to pine under the bereavement, till death would be a
blessing. They painted the anger and grief of the great Wahconda when he
found the darling of his house numbered with the slain. They sung that,
exasperated with the children of earth for the murder of his beloved
son, he called upon his earthquakes to deface and lay waste their
country. They bade the eye note how well these ministers of his wrath
had performed his dread commands. So they sung--"For many a weary day's
journey upon the banks of the Mighty River, for many a long encamping in
the direction of the setting sun, the land lies in ruins. The bough is
broken, and the solid trunk is rent. The flower lies bleeding, and the
voice of the dove is hushed. But see, he has bidden the marks of havoc
be effaced from the country of the Ottoes, because it is the native land
of the beautiful woman who had become the wife of his son."

Long was the mourning continued, and deep the grief, which for many a
moon pervaded the cabins and camp of the Ottoes. The Great Wahconda did
not permit the Starflower to remain long upon the earth, but soon called
her away to be re-united to his beloved son in the land of spirits. Yet
she often returns to look upon the place of her birth, to breathe on the
things she loved, and to sit beneath the shade of the trees she planted.
In the season of flowers, she is often seen by moonlight, binding
together the choicest which grow on the prairie, and her voice is often
heard in the sighs