Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/302

Rh affection,—their happiness during many years,—their children. She besought of him not to bring this second wife into their dwelling.

“In vain. The next evening the husband brought the new wife into his wigwam.

“In the early dawn of the following morning a death-song was heard on the Mississippi. A young Indian woman sate in a little canoe with her two small children, and rowed it out into the river in the direction of the falls. It was Ampato Sapa. She sang in lamenting tones the sorrow of her heart, of her husband's infidelity, and her determination to die. Her friends heard the song, and saw her intention, but too late to prevent it.

“Her voice was soon silenced in the roar of the fall. The boat paused for a moment on the brink of the precipice, and the next was carried over it and vanished in the foaming deep. The mother and her children were seen no more.” The Indians still believe, that in the early dawn may be heard the lamenting song, deploring the infidelity of the husband; and they fancy that at times may be seen the mother with her children clasped to her breast, in the misty shapes which arise from the fall around the Spirit Island.

This incident is only one among many of the same kind which occur every year among the Indians. Suicide is by no means rare among their women.

A gentleman who wished to contest this point with me, said, that during the two years which he had lived in this region he had only heard of eleven or twelve such occurrences. And quite enough too, I think! The occasion of suicide is, with the Indian woman generally, either that her father will marry her against her wishes and inclination; or, when she is married, that the husband takes a new wife. Suicide, a fact so opposed to the impulses of a living creature, seems to me to bear strong evidence in