FAMINE.

Wazíya came down from the North —

from the land of perpetual winter.

From his frost-covered beard issued forth the sharp-biting,

shrill-whistling North-wind;

At the touch of his breath

the wide earth turned to stone, and the lakes and the rivers:

From his nostrils the white vapors rose,

and they covered the sky like a blanket.

Like the down of Magá fell the snows,

tossed and whirled into heaps by the North-wind.

Then the blinding storms roared on the plains,

like the simoons on sandy Sahara;

From the fangs of the fierce hurricanes

fled the elk and the deer and the bison.

Ever colder and colder it grew,

till the frozen ground cracked and split open;

And harder and harder it blew,

till the hillocks were bare as the boulders.

To the southward the buffalos fled,

and the white rabbits hid in their burrows;

On the bare sacred mounds of the dead

howled the gaunt, hungry wolves in the night-time,

The strong hunters crouched in their tees;

by the lodge-fires the little ones shivered;

And the Magic-Men danced to appease,

in their teepee, the wrath of Wazíya;

But famine and fatal disease,

like phantoms, crept into the village.

The Hard Moon was past, but the moon

when the coons make their trails in the forest

Grew colder and colder. The coon,

or the bear, ventured not from his cover;

For the cold, cruel Arctic simoon

swept the earth like the breath of a furnace.

In the tee of Ta-té-psin the store

of wild-rice and dried meat was exhausted;

And Famine crept in at the door,

and sat crouching and gaunt by the lodge-fire.

But now with the saddle of deer

and the gifts came the crafty Tamdóka;

And he said, “Lo I bring you good cheer,

for I love the blind Chief and his daughter.

Take the gifts of Tamdóka, for dear

to his heart is the dark-eyed Winona.”

The aged Chief opened his ears;

in his heart he already consented:

But the moans of his child and her tears

touched the age-softened heart of the father,

And he said, “I am burdened with years,—

I am bent by the snows of my winters;

Ta-té-psin will die in his tee;

let him pass to the Land of the Spirits;

But Winona is young; she is free

and her own heart shall choose her a husband.”

The dark warrior strode from the tee;

low-muttering and grim he departed;

“Let him die in his lodge,” muttered he,

“but Winona shall kindle my lodge-fire.”