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Views of Shoshone Falls.
Flowers still grow through the cracks of lava
SHOSHONE FALLSShoshone Falls Legend
In the gloomy gorge above the falls there was, long ago, the trysting place of a deep-chested Shoshone [warrior] and the slender wild girl whom he loved. Their last meeting was here on a pile of rocks which overlooked the plunging waters. He went away to scalp with deft incisions and then lift the shaggy mane of white men with triumphant shout; and she came daily to stand by the thundering avalanche and remember him. That he would return unharmed she did not, with the ageless resourcefulness of women, ever allow herself to doubt. But time passed, and the moons that came and ripened where many, and she still came nightly to stand on the brink and watch the changeless journeying of the water. And it was here that she stood one black night above the roar of the flood when a warrior stepped out of shadow and whispered to her and then disappeared. As quiet as the flat stone under her feet, she stood for a long while, looking down into the fault where the waters boiled up like seething white hills to fill the sky with dazzling curtains and roll away in convulsed tides. For an hour she gazed down there 200 feed to a mad pouring of motion and sound into a black graveyard of the dead. And then, slowly, she lifted her arms above her. Listed her head to the fullest curve of her throat, and stood tiptoe foe a moment, poised and beautiful, and then dived in a long swift arc against the falling white background… and the river at this point and since that hour has never been the same.
Quish-in-demi: Shoshone Tribe
