said: "Mother, when I am tall as my cousin Warca-Ziwin, you shall not
have to come for water. I will do it for you."

With a strange tremor in her voice which I could not understand, she
answered, "If the paleface does not take away from us the river we
drink."

"Mother, who is this bad paleface?" I asked.

"My little daughter, he is a sham,--a sickly sham! The bronzed Dakota is
the only real man."

I looked up into my mother's face while she spoke; and seeing her bite
her lips, I knew she was unhappy. This aroused revenge in my small soul.
Stamping my foot on the earth, I cried aloud, "I hate the paleface that
makes my mother cry!"

Setting the pail of water on the ground, my mother stooped, and
stretching her left hand out on the level with my eyes, she placed her
other arm about me; she pointed to the hill where my uncle and my only
sister lay buried.

"There is what the paleface has done! Since then your father too has
been buried in a hill nearer the rising sun. We were once very happy.
But the paleface has stolen our lands and driven us hither. Having
defrauded us of our land, the paleface forced us away.

"Well, it happened on the day we moved camp that your sister and uncle
were both very sick. Many others were ailing, but there seemed to be no
help. We traveled many days and nights; not in the grand, happy way that