Well might Harpstenah sit in her lodge and weep.

The sorrows of her life passed in review before her.

Yet she was once the belle of an Indian village; no step so light, no laugh so merry as hers.

She possessed too, a spirit and a firmness not often found among women.
She was by birth the third daughter, who is always called Harpstenah among the Sioux.

Her sisters were married, and she had seen but fourteen summers when old Cloudy Sky, the medicine man, came to her parents to buy her for his wife.
They dared not refuse him, for they were afraid to offend a medicine man, and a war chief besides.