Nopa
In the shelter of the forest,
By the cataract’s lonely brink,
(Shadow Falls, we call them nowadays)
Where the red deer came to drink,
Lived old Chaska and his daughter
Nopa, in their tepee small.
Handsome was this dusky maiden,
Eyes like deer and form so tall.
“Seche-do—bad man,” said Chaska,
As the moccasin he laid down,
Ready for the wampum finish;
Nopa’s skill his work must crown.
She had told him of an artist,
Sunny-haired with hand of snow,
Whose canoe was fastened daily,
In the river just below.
“Talk not to the treacherous white man,”
Chaska said, in tones of wrath,
“Harken, daughter, to my warning;
Never must he cross my path!”
But poor Nopa little heeded
Her old father’s wise command;
Watching close, each day and evening
For the footsteps in the sand.
Weeks have passed without his coming;
Weeks like years, so full of pain
To the Indian maiden thinking,
“Will he never come again?”
Surely now she hears his footsteps
Where the misty waters pour.
Falling headlong down the chasm:
Nopa will return no more.
Chaska hears her calling wildly;
Seeks to grasp the fleeing form
Follows till the rushing waters,
Swollen with the autumn’s storm,
Cruel, cast his lifeless body
‘Mong the rocks and caverns wild;
Desolate, the lonely tepee
Waits the hunter and his child.
Now, in autumn, when the aster
Nods its purple plumes in pride;
When the black-eyed Susan coyly
’Neath the gorgeous sumach hides;
And the golden-rod so stately,
To outshine all others tries;
In the mist of early evening
Two dark forms are seen to rise.
Chaska and his dusky daughter,
Shades from out the spirit-land,
Flitting, falling, downward, downward,
Till they reach the shining sand.
Vanish then beside the river,
Where her faithless lover’s bark
Once was moored. The waves, all lonely,
Lap the sands with shadows dark.
IDA SEXTON SEARLS.