LEGENDS OF THE NORTHWEST. BY H. L. GORDON,_Author of Pauline_.CONTAININGPRELUDE--THE MISSISSIPPI.THE FEAST OF THE VIRGINS, A LEGEND OF THE DAKOTAS.WINONA, A LEGEND OF THE DAKOTAS.THE LEGEND OF THE FALLS, A LEGEND OF THE DAKOTAS.THE SEA-GULL, THE OJIBWA LEGEND OF THE PICTURED ROCKS OF LAKE SUPERIOR.MINNETONKA. * * * * *PREFACE.I have for several years devoted many of my leisure hours to the studyof the language, history, traditions, customs and superstitions ofthe Dakotas. These Indians are now commonly called the "Sioux"--a namegiven them by the early French traders and _voyageurs_. "Dakota"signifies _alliance_ or _confederation_. Many separate bands,all having a common origin and speaking a common tongue, were unitedunder this name. See "_Tah-Koo Wah-Kan_," or "_The Gospel Amongthe Dakotas_," by Stephen R. Riggs, pp. 1 to 6 inc.They were, but yesterday, the occupants and owners of the fair forestsand fertile prairies of Minnesota--a brave, hospitable and generouspeople,--barbarians, indeed, but noble in their barbarism. They maybe fitly called the Iroquois of the West. In form and features, inlanguage and traditions, they are distinct from all other Indian tribes.When first visited by white men, and for many years afterwards, theFalls of St. Anthony (by them called the Ha-Ha) was the center of theircountry. They cultivated tobacco, and hunted the elk, the beaver andthe bison. They were open-hearted, truthful and brave. In their warswith other tribes they seldom slew women or children, and rarelysacrificed the lives of their prisoners.For many years their chiefs and head men successfully resisted theattempts to introduce spirituous liquors among them. More than a centuryago an English trader was killed at Mendota, because he persisted,after repeated warnings by the chiefs, in dealing out _mini-wakan_(Devil-water) to the Dakota braves.With open arms and generous hospitality they welcomed the first whitemen to their land; and were ever faithful in their friendship, tillyears of wrong and robbery, and want and insult, drove them to desperationand to war. They were barbarians, and their warfare was barbarous,but not more barbarous than the warfare of our Saxon and Celtic ancestors.They were ignorant and superstitious, but their condition closely resembledthe condition of our British forefathers at the beginning of the Christianera. Macaulay says of Britain, "Her inhabitants, when first they becameknown to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the natives ofthe Sandwich Islands." And again, "While the German princes who reignedat Paris, Toledo, Arles and Ravenna listened with reverence to theinstructions of Bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and took parteagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessexand Mercia were still performing savage rites in the temples of Thorand Woden."The day of the Dakotas is done. The degenerate remnants ofthat once powerful and warlike people still linger around the fortsand agencies of the Northwest, or chase the caribou and the bison onthe banks of the Sascatchewan, but the Dakotas of old are no more.The brilliant defeat of Custer, by Sitting Bull and his braves, wastheir last grand rally against the resistless march of the sons ofthe Saxons and the Celts. The plow-shares of a superior race are fastleveling the sacred mounds of their dead. But yesterday, the shoresof our lakes, and our rivers, were dotted with their tepees. Theirlight canoes glided over our waters, and their hunters chased the deerand the buffalo on the sites of our cities. To-day, they are not. Letus do justice to their memory, for there was much that was noble intheir natures. In the following Dakota Legends I have endeavored tofaithfully represent many of the customs and superstitions, and someof the traditi....