When Rev. James Martin visited the celebrated Penn’s Cave, in the Spring of 1795, it was related that he found a small group of Indians encamped there. That evening, around the campfire, one of the redskins related a legend of one of the curiosities of the watery cave, the flambuoyant “Indian Riding Pony” mural-piece which decorates one of the walls.

Spirited as a Remington, it bursts upon the view, creates a lasting impression, then vanishes as the power skiff, the “Nita-nee,” draws nearer.

According to the old Indians, there lived not far from where the Karoondinha emerges from the cavern a body of aborigines of the Susquehannock tribe who made this delightful lowland their permanent abode. While most of their cabins were huddled near together on the upper reaches of the stream, there were straggling huts clear to the Beaver Dams. The finding of arrow points, beads and pottery along the creek amply attests to this.

Among the clan was a maiden named Quetajaku, not good to look upon, but in no way ugly or deformed. In her youth she was light-hearted and sociable, with a gentle disposition. Yet for some reason she was not favored by the young bucks. All her contemporaries found lovers and husbands, but poor Quetajaku was left severely alone. She knew that she was not beautiful, though she was of good size; she was equally certain that she was not a physical monster. She could not understand why she could find no lover, why she was singled out to be a “chauchschisis,” or old maid. It hurt her pride as a young girl, it broke her heart completely when she was older.

Gradually she withdrew from the society of her tribal friends, building herself a lodge-house on the hill, in what is now the cave orchard. There she led a very introspective life, grieving over the love that might have been. To console herself she imagined that some day a handsome warrior would appear, seek her out, load her with gifts, overwhelm her with love and carry her away to some distant region in triumph. He would be handsomer and braver than any youth in the whole country of the Karoondinha. She would be the most envied of women when he came.

This poor little fancy saved her from going stark mad; it remedied the horror of her lonely lot. Every time the night wind stirred the rude hempen curtain which hung before the door of her cabin, she would picture it was the chivalrous stranger knight come to claim her. When it was cold she drew the folds of her buffalo robe tighter about her as if it was his arms.

As time went on she grew happy in her secret lover, whom no other woman’s flame could equal, whom no one could steal away. She was ever imagining him saying to her that her looks exactly suited him, that she was his ideal.

But like the seeker after Eldorado, years passed, and Quetajaku did not come nearer to her spirit lover. But her soul kept up the conceit; every night when she curled herself up to sleep he was the vastness of the night.

On one occasion an Indian artist named Naganit, an undersized old wanderer appeared at the lonely woman’s home. For a living he decorated pottery, shells and bones, sometimes even painted war pictures on rocks. Quetajaku was so kind to him that he built himself a lean-to on the slope of the hill, intending to spend the winter.

On the long winter evenings the old woman confided to the wanderer the story of her unhappy life, of her inward consolation. She said that she had longed to meet an artist who could carry out a certain part of her dream which had a right to come true.

When she died she had arranged to be buried in a fissure of rocks which ran horizontally into one of the walls of the “watery” cave. On the opposite wall she would like painted in the most brilliant colors a portrait of a handsome young warrior, with arms outstretched, coming towards her.

Naganit said that he understood what she meant exactly, but suggested that the youth be mounted on a pony, a beast which was coming into use as a mount for warriors, of which he had lately seen a number in his travels on the Virginia coast, near Chincoteague.

This idea was pleasing to Quetajaku, who authorized the stranger to begin work at once. She had saved up a little property of various kinds; she promised to bestow all of this on Naganit, except what would be necessary to bury her, if the picture proved satisfactory.

The artist rigged up a dog-raft with a scaffold on it, and this he poled into the place where the fissure was located, the woman accompanying him the first time, so there would be no mistake. All winter long by torchlight, he labored away. He used only one color, an intensive brick-red made from mixing sumac berries, the pollen of the Turk’s Cap Lily, a small root and the bark of a tree, as being more permanent than that made from ochers and other ores of stained earth.

Marvelous and vital was the result of this early impressionist; the painting had all the action of life. The superb youth in war dress, with arms outstretched, on the agile war pony, rushing towards the foreground, almost in the act of leaping from the rocky panel into life, across the waters of the cave to the arms of his beloved.

It would make old Quetajaku happy to see it, she who had never known love or beauty. The youth in the mural typified what Naganit would have been himself were he the chosen, and what the “bachelor maid” would have possessed had nature favored her. It was the ideal for two disappointed souls.

Breathlessly the old artist ferried Quetajaku to the scene of his endeavors. When they reached the proper spot he held aloft his quavering torch. Quetajaku, in order to see more clearly, held her two hands above her eyes. She gave a little cry of exclamation, then turned and looked at Naganit intently. Then she dropped her eyes, beginning to cry to herself, a rare thing for an Indian to do!

The artist looked at her fine face, down which the tears were streaming, and asked her the cause of her grief–was the picture such a terrible disappointment?

The woman drew herself together, replying that it was grander than she had anticipated, but the face of Naganit’sNaganit’s, and, strangely enough, the face she had dreamed of all her life.

“But I am not the heroic youth you pictured”, said the artist, sadly. “I am sixty years old, stoop-shouldered, and one leg is shorter than the other.” “ NaganitNaganit looked at the Indian woman. She was not hideous; there was even a dignity to her large, plain features, her great, gaunt form.

“I have never received such praise as yours. I always vowed I would love the woman who really understood me and my art. I am yours. Let us think no more of funeral decorations, but go to the east, to the land of war ponies, and ride to endless joy together.”

Quetajaku, overcome by the majesty of his words, leaned against his massive shoulder. In that way he poled his dog-raft against the current to the entrance of the cave. There was a glory in the reflection from the setting sun over against the east; night would not close in for an hour or two. And towards the darkening east that night two happy travelers could be seen wending their way.