The hunters, so soon as they perceived her, hastily ascended the bluff,
while her parents called to her and entreated her to go back from the
edge of the rock. "Come down to us, my child," they cried; "do not
destroy your life; you will kill us, we have no child but you."
Having finished her song, the maiden answered her parents. "You have
forced me to leave you. I was always a good daughter, and never
disobeyed you; and could I have married the man I love, I should have
been happy, and would never have left you. But you have been cruel to
me; you have turned my beloved from the wigwam; you would have forced me
to marry a man I hated; I go to the house of spirits."
By this time the hunters had nearly reached her. She turned towards them
for a moment with a smile of scorn, as if to intimate to them that their
efforts were in vain. But when they were quite near, so that they held
out their arms towards her in their eagerness to draw her from her
dangerous station, she threw herself from the rock.
The first blow she received from the side of the rock must have killed
her, for she fell like a dead bird, amidst the shouts of the hunters
above, and the shrieks of the women below.
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