wife,
pursued the fugitive, and soon overtook her. He renewed his entreaties,
and finding her still obstinate, he told her that she should become his
wife, and that he would kill her if she made any more trouble.

This last argument seemed to have the desired effect, for the girl
expressed her willingness to return home.

After they arrived, the man went to his wigwam to tell his wife of the
return of her sister, and that everything was now in readiness for
their marriage.

But one hour after, the girl was missing; and when found, was hanging to
a tree, forever free from the power of her tormentors. Her friends
celebrated the ceremonies of death instead of marriage.

It must be conceded that an Indian girl, when desperate with her love
affairs, chooses a most unromantic way of ending her troubles. She
almost invariably hangs herself; when there are so many beautiful lakes
near her where she could die an easier death, and at the same time one
that would tell better, than where she fastens an old leather strap
about her neck, and dies literally by choking. But there is this to be
taken into consideration. When she hangs herself near the village, she
can manage affairs so that she can be cut down if she concludes to live
a little longer; for this frequently occurs, and the suicide lives forty
and sometimes sixty years after. But when Wenona took the resolution of
ending her earthly sorrows, no doubt there were other passions beside
love influencing her mind.

Love was the most powerful. With him she loved, life would have been all
happiness--without him, all misery. Such was the reasoning of her
young heart.

But she resented the importunity of the hunter whose pretensions her
parents favored. How often she had told him she would die before she
would become his wife; and he would smile, as if he had but little faith
in the words of a woman. Now he should see that her hatred to him was
not assumed; and she would die such a death that he might know that she
feared neither him nor a death of agony.

And while her parents mourned their unkindness, her lover would admire
that firmness which made death more welcome than the triumph of
his rival.

And sacred is the spot where the devoted girl closed her earthly
sorrows. Spirits are ever hovering near the scene. The laugh of the
Dahcotah is checked when his canoe glides near the spot. He points to
the bluff, and as the shades of evening are throwing dimness and a
myste