They danced nimbly around their father,
while he stood with all the dignity of a buck
elk, viewing the landscape reddened by sunrise
and the dwellers therein, the old and the new,
the red and the white. He noticed that they
were still unmingled; the river divided them.
At last he took the dancing little embryo
warriors one in either hand, and lifted them to
his majestic shoulders. There he placed them
in perfect poise. His haughty spirit found a
moment's happiness in fatherhood.
Suddenly Tawasuota set the two boys on the
ground again, and signed to them to enter the
teepee. Apparently all was quiet. The camps
and villages of the Minnesota reservation were
undisturbed, so far as he could see, save by the
awakening of nature; and the early risers
among his people moved about in seeming se-
curity, while the smoke of their morning fires
arose one by one into the blue. Still the war-
rior gazed steadily westward, up the river,
whence his quick ear had caught the faint but
ominous sound of a distant war-whoop.
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