# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/The Wicked Wife

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THE WICKED WIFE
WHEN Fort Edmonton, on the North Saskatchewan, was built by the Hudson Bay Company, a number of Snake Indians were found living among the Piegans of the district, and The Egg, one of the Snake squaws, married a white employee of the company. The presence of these Snakes so far from their old home fell about in this way. A Piegan, who was good, brave, and rich in ponies, had but one wife, whom he loved so much that he cared nothing for other women. While picking berries at a distance from their camp they were surprised by a war-party of Snakes, and knowing that he would be killed if captured, while his wife would be spared because of her beauty, he left her—since it was impossible for both to escape—and galloped back to his people. With six of her relatives he undertook her rescue, and followed the warm trail of the marauders for several days. When at last they came to the Missouri the man swam across it in the darkness and waited in a hollow to see the women when they should come to draw water. Among the first was his wife. He sprang from his hiding-place, kissed her, and in a hurried whisper said, "Come, swim the river with me. Five of your relatives and your brother wait for us in that wood." She hung back, saying that she wanted to get the pretty things that had been given to her, and to steal a horse; and on ​a promise that she would do this, the husband recrossed the river.
She was a faithless creature. She had already learned to love her captors, and she betrayed the little band of rescuers into their hands. Her husband, who alone was taken alive, the others being scalped, was, at her instigation, tortured by fire and boiling water, and bound to a tree with blackened face, that he might be given to the Sun. When camp was broken, an old woman who had lingered behind, out of pity for him, cut his bonds, gave him food, and promised that she would mark the trail followed by the wife. Then he went back to the north. Great were the anger and grief when he bore the news of death, defeat, and duplicity to his people, and quick was their revenge. The trail had been marked so well by twigs that they were soon in sight of the Snake camp, and, stealing into the lodge of the kind old woman, the husband clapped his hand on her mouth, that she might not scream, and kissed her. So soon as she had been quieted, she told him that his wife was not only with the Snakes, but had become chief among them, as she was believed to be "a great medicine." Having bidden the beldam to draw aside her friends and relatives, and charging her to say that she had been told in a dream to do so, the Piegans fell upon the camp with a whoop, and killed nearly all that were in it. The wife was decorated with the scalp of her Snake lover, and made to dance on burning ​brush until she fell and died. Then the old woman and her friends were summoned from their retreat, and as a reward for what she had done they received half of all the horses and plunder in the village. On the next day the Piegans started back to Canada, and as they had won the hearts of this company of Snake survivors, the latter followed them, married among them, and became as Piegans.