young girl is
carefully secluded from her brothers and cousins and future lovers, and
retires, as it were, into the nunnery of the woods, behind a veil of
thick foliage. Thus she is expected to develop her womanly qualities.
In meditation and solitude, entirely alone or with a chosen companion
of her own sex and age, she gains a secret strength, as she studies the
art of womanhood from nature herself.

"Come, let us practise our sacred dance," says one to the other. Each
crowns her glossy head with a wreath of wild flowers, and they dance
with slow steps around the white birch, singing meanwhile the sacred
songs.

Now upon the lake that stretches blue to the eastward there appears a
distant canoe, a mere speck, no bigger than a bird far off against the
shining sky.

"See the lifting of the paddles!" exclaims Winona.

"Like the leaping of a trout upon the water!" suggests Miniyata.

"I hope they will not discover us, yet I would like to know who they
are," remarks the other, innocently.

The birch canoe approaches swiftly, with two young men plying the light
cedar paddles.

The girls now settle down to their needle-work, quite as if they had
never laughed or danced or woven garlands, bending over their
embroidery in perfect silence. Surely they would not wish to attract
attention, for the two sturdy young warriors have already landed.

They pick up the canoe and lay it well up on the bank, out of sight.
Then one procures a strong pole. They lift a buck deer from the
canoe--not a mark upon it, save for the bullet wound; the deer looks as
if it were sleeping! They tie the hind legs together and the fore legs
also and carry it between them on the pole.

Quickly and cleverly they do all this; and now they start forward and
come unexpectedly upon the maidens' retreat! They pause for an instant
in mute apology, but the girls smile their forgiveness, and the youths
hurry on toward the village.

Winona has now attended her first maidens' feast and is considered
eligible to marriage. She may receive young men, but not in public or
in a social way, for such is not the custom of the Sioux. When he
speaks, she need not answer him unless she chooses.

It was no disgrace to the chief's daughter in the old days to work with
her hands. Indeed, their standard of worth was the willingness to work,
but not for the sake of accumulation, only in order to give. Winona has
learned to prepare skins, to remove the hair and tan the