Such fleeting beauty suggested to Alfonso's feverish brain the
supernatural, the abode perhaps of spirit beings. For days the medicine
man and Mariposa, daughter of the Indian chief, watched and cared for
Alfonso, whose life hovered over the grave.
Mariposa, Spanish for butterfly, was a fit name for the pretty Indian
maiden. She paid great deference not only to her tall father, Red Cloud,
but to the pale faces whenever in their presence. For four years
Mariposa, unusually bright, attended the Indian school at Carlisle, Pa.;
when she returned to her wild home in the forest she was able to speak
and read the language of the pale face, and beside she loved history and
poetry.
One day, Alfonso's health having slowly improved, Mariposa put in his
hands a small pine cone, the size of a hen's egg, and said, "Three years
go by from the budding to the ripening of the seed of the sequoias, or
big trees."
Alfonso did not know, till Mariposa told him that the big trees were
called sequoia in honor of a Cherokee chief, Sequoyah, who invented
letters for his people. She also told Alfonso that there were at least
ten groves of big trees on the northern slope of the Sierra Nevada range;
that some of the trees were thirty feet in diameter, and 325 feet in
height; that sixteen Yosemite braves on their ponies had taken refuge
from a terrible storm in the hollow of a single sequoia.
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