ter.
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 _Maga_[BJ] 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[BK] danced to appease,
in their _teepee_, the wrath of _Waziya_;
But famine and fatal disease,
like phantoms, crept into the village.
The Hard Moon[BL] was past, but the moon
when the coons make their trails in the forest[BM]
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-te-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 Tamdoka;
And he said, "Lo I bring you good cheer,
for I love the blind Chief and his daughter.
Take the gifts of Tamdoka, 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-te-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 gri