Page:Rocky Mountain life.djvu/117



CHAPTER X.
Tahtunga-egoniska. High gaming. Weur-sena Warkpollo, a strange story. The Death Song, a tale of love. Medicine-men. Extraordinary performance of Tahtunga-mobellu. Wonderful feats of jugglery.

AMONG our daily visitors was Tahtunga-egoniska, a head chief of the Brulé village.

Years had bleached his locks with their taming frosts and taught him self-government. Well disposed as a man, he never became a participant in those disgusting scenes of intoxication that almost continually transpired around us. He was a mere looker on —a moralizer; and, as he witnessed the blameworthy conduct of his people, an ill-suppressed sigh was frequently audible, and the inward workings of regret were plainly defined upon his countenance. Melancholy too had left her traces upon him, and, as he sat day by day in gloomy silence, he seemed the very impersonation of grief.

Whenever the throng dispersed for a few moments, he would improve the opportunity for conversation with us; for in the benevolence of his heart he loved the whites, and was greatly pained at the injuries and injustice it was so often their lot to endure.

But he had a story of his own to tell; it was a tale of affliction — a stab at the best feelings of a father's heart! And, by whom? By the very whites he loved! Aye, by the very men whose business it was to degrade his people and ruin them by the contaminating effects of an unhallowed intercourse!

Six months had scarcely yet passed since the old chief had been called to mourn his youthful hope, and the pride and joy of his declining years — his first-born son! And that son had fallen by the hand of the white man!

Still, the sorrow-stricken father harbored no thought of revenge; he sought nothing for himself save the locks of that son, that he might hang them within his lodge, and gaze upon them and weep!

His simple tale was so touching in its nature it served to enlist the deep sympathies of our hearts. We began to regard him with much deference, and felt quite at home in his company. He would frequently entertain us with his anecdotes as occasions suggested, and at such times he invariably proved both agreeable and communicative.

The history of his own life, too, was far from uninteresting. He was the only one of the Brulé chiefs, then living, who had signed the first treaty with the whites, since which he had ever observed its stipulations with scrupulous exactness, and still carefully retained a silver medal bestowed upon him by the Government agent at that time.

Some of his stories were garbed with a strange romance, and though they may appear foreign to truth in many respects, I cannot resist the temptation of presenting a few of them to the reader.