in the company of a beautiful daughter of the principal man in the
village, whose name was Ni-ar-gua.

Do-ran-to was never permitted to go to war or to hunt the buffalo,
a mode of life too tame and inactive for one of his restless spirit;
but the compensation was in the frequent opportunities it gave him
of walking and talking with the beautiful Ni-ar-gua, over whose heart
he had soon gained a complete victory.

It would not do, however, for the daughter of a distinguished chief
to be the wife of a captive slave, belonging, too, to a tribe toward
which the Tetons entertained a hereditary hostility. It would be a
flagrant violation of every rule of Indian etiquette. The mother of
the youthful Ni-ar-gua, like her white match-making sisters, soon
noticed the growing familiarity of the two lovers, and she like a good
wife reported the matter to her husband, the chief. The intelligence
was entirely unexpected, and by no means very agreeable to his feeling
of pride, so, after the savage method of disciplining refractory
daughters, Ni-ar-gua was not only roughly reproved for her temerity,
but received a good lodge-poling from her irate father, besides.
He also threatened to shoot an arrow through the heart of Do-ran-to
for his impudent pretensions. The result, however, of the attempt
to break the match, as in similar cases in civilized life, was not
only unsuccessful, but served to increase the flame it was intended
to extinguish, and to strengthen instead of dissolve the attachment
between the two.

If now their partiality for each other was not visible and open,
they were none the less determined to carry out their designs.
When the young Pawnee perceived that there were difficulties in