A wife of tall Wazi-kute
--the mother of boastful Tamdoka--
Brought her handsomest robe from the tee,
with a vaunting and loud proclamation:
She would stake her last robe on her son who,
she boasted, was fleet as the Cabri [80]
And the tall, tawny chieftain looked on,
approving the boast of the mother.
Then fleet as the feet of a fawn to her lodge
ran the dark eyed Winona,
She brought and she staked on the lawn,
by the side of the robe of the boaster,
The lily-red mantle Duluth, with his own hands,
had laid on her shoulders.
"Tamdoka is swift, but forsooth,
the tongue of his mother is swifter,"
She said, and her face was aflame
with the red of the rose and the lily,
And loud was the roar of acclaim;
but dark was the face of Tamdoka.

They strip for the race and prepare,
--DuLuth in his breeches and leggins;
And the brown, curling locks of his hair
downward droop to his bare, brawny shoulders,
And his face wears a smile debonair,
as he tightens his red sash around him;
But stripped to the moccasins bare,
save the belt and the breech-clout of buckskin,
Stands the haughty Tamdoka aware