“The Sioux will soon know the Shoshones, and bring from their lodges many scalps and medicine-dogs.  Divided into two tribes, that nation long since sought homes in other lands.  One crossed the Snow-hills, toward the sun-setting; the Sioux shall visit them and avenge the blood and wrongs of ages.  The other journeyed far toward the sun of winter, and now live to the leftward of the places where Hispanola builds his earth-lodge.[48]

“Then came the Scarred-Arms from a far-off country, a land of much snow and cold.  Pleased with the great numbers of buffalo and other game that they found here, they stopped for the chase, and by many generations of possession have claimed these regions for their own; but they are not theirs.  The Great Spirit gave this country to the Sioux, and they shall inhabit the land of their daughter’s captivity.

“Why are you waiting here?  Go and avenge the blood of your comrades upon the Scarred-Arms.  They even now light their camp-fire by the stream at the mountain’s base.  Fear not; their scalps are yours.  Then return to my people, that ye may come and receive your inheritance.

“Haste ye, that I may die; and oh!  War-ka-tun-ga!  Inasmuch as thou hast answered the prayer of thy handmaid, and shown to me the faces of my people, take me from hence.”

The awe-struck warriors withdrew.  They found the enemy encamped at the foot of the mountain, as they had been told by the mysterious woman.  They attacked them, and were victorious.  Thirty-five scalps were the reward of their bravery.

On arriving at their village, their strange adventures excited the astonishment of all the warriors, chiefs, and medicine-men.  They planned an expedition against the Scarred-Arms, having been nerved up to a pitch of extraordinary bravery by the story of the old woman of the cave.  Thus their enemies were eventually driven from the country, and the Sioux came into possession of their own.

The thankful warriors went to the cave en masse, to do reverence to the memory of the strange medicine-woman who had told them so many wonderful things.  They found, upon their arrival there, only a small niche in the side of the mountain, and a sparkling little stream.  Both the cave and the woman had disappeared.

For years after this strange occurrence the Sioux warriors visited the land of the Shoshones for scalps, and, as they passed the mountain where the old woman had been seen, they always offered something to the spirit of the place, and stopped to quench their thirst at the sparkling little stream.

On White River there is a bluff against which the full force of the stream has dashed for ages, until it has formed a precipice several hundred feet high.  It is called by the Indians The Place of the Death Song.  There is a legend which says that at one time the bands of the Ogallallas and Brules lived upon this river, immediately opposite the precipice.  While residing there one of the braves of the Ogallallas offered to the father of a beautiful squaw six horses for her, according to the savage custom of thus purchasing a wife.  The offer was immediately accepted by the father of the young girl, for he was very poor and needed the animals to use on the impending annual hunt after buffalo.