The wedding morning dawned, and the Indians began the games and merrymaking that always marked a marriage. The bridegroom and the young braves vied in races and wrestling matches, and the women too had a part in the festivities, singing and chanting weird songs as they tended the fire and roasted venison for the feast. Everybody was happy,—every one but the bride, who did not want to marry, and who sat in her wigwam looking sadly out upon the sport. Suddenly came the decision that she would not be the squaw of the man she detested.
Quickly, softly, she crept from the wigwam and hurried to the river bank. The others were so busy with their merrymaking that they did not see her go, and soon she came to where her canoe was moored to some bushes. She stepped into it, pushed it from shore, and began drifting down the stream. It was good to be there on the water, for, like all Indian girls, she loved to paddle, and in her joy of skimming along with the current she began to sing.
Suddenly a whoop went up from the village of her people. It was not the cry of those victorious in a game, it was a shout of anger, a cry of alarm, for they had seen her and believed she was trying to escape from the marriage every one knew was distasteful to her. The bridegroom started in pursuit, then another Indian and another, until every man in the village was rushing to the river and some had already begun the chase in canoes.
“They shall not take me back,” the girl murmured. “I will not go back to the village and become Kunawa’s squaw.”
With swift, powerful strokes she paddled down the stream. She forgot that the cataract was roaring below her, forgot that her canoe was going rapidly and surely toward the bright foam from which no boat could come back. She thought only that she was fleeing from a wedding, and not until she saw the rapids beneath her did she realize her fate. Then she began her death song, and those in pursuit heard it for a moment, loud, clear, and plaintive as the canoe cut into the cataract, then suddenly silenced as it shot down to the rapids. Some of the women wailed and joined in the funeral dirge, and some of the others cried out in fear to the Great Spirit.
“It is the last of Kunawa’s bride!” they exclaimed. “She is now on her way to the Spirit Land.”