The Snake Lover

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​Once there was a beautiful girl.  She was of the age to be married, but she refused to accept any man as her husband no matter how many horses they would bring, or how many furs they offered to her family. Her father beseeched her to accept one of the suitors, but she steadfastly refused.
 
One thing did puzzle her father though.  Every night, she would dress herself in her finest clothes and would comb her hair and redden her cheeks.  Then, she would leave her lodge and walk away towards the sloughs.  Her mother and father didn’t know what she was up to, and they suspected that she had a secret lover who was the reason that she would not marry.

​The next night that she made herself up all pretty, her father told her older brother to follow her to spy what she was up to.  As she walked towards the sloughs, her brother kept his distance, but followed her as she walked.  Eventually, she walked up to a particularly large slough and entered a big patch of cattails.  She sat down there in an opening and then her brother witnessed a huge snake emerge from a large hole near where she was sitting.  The snake came close to the girl and she lay down on the ground.  The snake then started to wind around her body and she moaned as if laying with a lover.

The brother left and reported what he saw to his father.  The father was disturbed.  He told the brother that the next night he should dress as a woman and go to the slough to where he saw this happen.  So the next night the father refused to allow his daughter to leave.  Instead, the brother went in the girl’s place and when the snake emerged from its hole, the brother took his axe and cut the snake’s head from its body.  He then cast the snake’s body and head into the slough where it sank into the mud.
 
The next evening the girl dressed herself and went to the slough, but this time her snake lover did not come to her because it was dead.  She sadly went home and soon took a human man for her husband.