Withered Witchlike Hags Flitted Around The
Blaze, And Here For Hour After Hour Sat A Circle Of Children And
Young Girls, Laughing And Talking, Their Round Merry Faces Glowing In
The Ruddy Light.
We could hear the monotonous notes of the drum from
the Indian village, with the chant of the war song, deadened in the
distance, and the long chorus of quavering yells, where the war dance
was going on in the largest lodge.
For several nights, too, we could
hear wild and mournful cries, rising and dying away like the
melancholy voice of a wolf. They came from the sisters and female
relatives of Mahto-Tatonka, who were gashing their limbs with knives,
and bewailing the death of Henry Chatillon's squaw. The hour would
grow late before all retired to rest in the camp. Then the embers of
the fires would be glowing dimly, the men would be stretched in their
blankets on the ground, and nothing could be heard but the restless
motions of the crowded horses.
I recall these scenes with a mixed feeling of pleasure and pain. At
this time I was so reduced by illness that I could seldom walk
without reeling like a drunken man, and when I rose from my seat upon
the ground the landscape suddenly grew dim before my eyes, the trees
and lodges seemed to sway to and fro, and the prairie to rise and
fall like the swells of the ocean. Such a state of things is by no
means enviable anywhere.
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