{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_25794/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_25794","id":"gutenberg_25794","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25794","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Indians of North America -- Folklore","Indians of North America -- Poetry"],"text":"Produced by K. Nordquist, David Edwards, grythumn (harvested\nmissing illustrations from Internet Archive), Diane Monico,\nand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at\nhttps://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: (cover)]\n\n[Illustration: MINNEHAHA. (_Frontispiece._)]\n\n\n\n\nINDIAN LEGENDS OF\nMINNESOTA\n\n\nCOMPILED BY\n\nMRS. CORDENIO A. SEVERANCE\n\n\n\"Then a darker, drearier vision\nPassed before me vague and cloudlike;\nI beheld our nation scattered,\nAll forgetful of my council,\nWeakened, warring with each other:\nSaw the remnant of our people\nSweeping westward, wild and woful,\nLike the cloud rack of a tempest,\nLike the withered leaves of Autumn!\"\n\n\nD. D. MERRILL COMPANY\n\nNEW YORK AND SAINT PAUL\n\n\n\n\nCOPYRIGHTED, 1893,\n\nD. D. MERRILL CO.\n\n\n\n\nDedication,\n\nTO\n\nMRS. FRANCIS B. CLARKE\n\nAND\n\nMR. DELOS A. MONTFORT,\n\nUNDER WHOSE INSPIRATION AND THROUGH WHOSE\n\nASSISTANCE THIS UNDERTAKING HAS BEEN\n\nMADE POSSIBLE, THIS VOLUME IS\n\nRESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n                                                          PAGE\n\nTHE LONE WAR-PATH. Elaine Goodale Eastman,                   9\n\nFOND HEARTS OF THE FOREST,                                  22\n\nANPETUSAPA,                                                 32\n\nWINONA,                                                     48\n\nTHE PEACE-PIPE QUARRY. Adelaide George Bennett,             77\n\nTHE SONG OF HIAWATHA. Henry W. Longfellow,                  86\n\nHIAWATHA'S WOOING. Henry W. Longfellow,                     91\n\nTHE RIVER-LAKE. E. L. Fales,                                95\n\nSONG OF A NADOWESSEE CHIEF. Sir E. L. Bulwer,               97\n\n\"MAHNUSATIA.\" Fannie L. Stone,                              99\n\nTHE DESCENDING STAR. Ida Sexton Searls,                    126\n\nTHE TRAILING ARBUTUS. Adelaide George Bennett,             132\n\nNOPA. Ida Sexton Searls,                                   136\n\nTHE SEA-GULL,                                              139\n\nSWEET WATER,                                               162\n\nDEATH OF WINONA. H. L. Gordon,                             171\n\nTHE LEGEND OF THE MOCCASIN FLOWER. Ida Sexton Searls,      175\n\nNOTES,                                                     179\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nIn presenting to the public this volume the compiler wishes to disown\nany attempt at a complete collection of Indian legends; both her\nknowledge of archaeology, and the time allowed for the completion of\nthe work are inadequate to such an achievement. She has attempted to\ngather the more noticeable legends already in verse in order to\nstimulate interest in the scenery and romance of her State. From its\nname--Minnesota--to its floral emblem--the moccasin flower--the State\neverywhere bears the impress of former occupation. About every lake,\nforest, and valley clings the aroma of romance in the form of name or\nlegend of the vanished Red Man.\n\nThe indistinct memory of his loves, wars, and adventures is growing\nrapidly fainter, until even the story-teller himself is confused as to\nthe relation between event and locality. It has therefore seemed wise\nto link indissolubly scene and incident, that the poetry of those who\nhave here lived and loved may not be completely displaced by the\nprosaic commerce of the white man.\n\nThe compiler wishes also to express her thanks to the writers who have\nallowed their works to reappear in this volume: To Rev. E. D. Neill,\nD.D., for much valuable counsel, and to Houghton, Mifflin & Co., for\npermission to make extracts from Hiawatha.\n\n\n\n\nINDIAN LEGENDS.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Lone War-Path.\n\nA STORY OF SIOUX AND BLACKFOOT.\n\n\nO'er a vast prairie stoops the sultry night;\nThe moon in her broad kingdom wanders white;\nHigh hung in space, she swims the murky blue.\nLow lies yon village of the roaming Sioux--\nIts smoke-stained lodges, moving toward the west,\nBy conquering Sleep invaded and possessed.\n\nAll there, save one, own his benign command;\nTheir chief has lately left this little band,\nAnd up the glittering path of spirits fled;\nThus his young widow, not a twelvemonth wed,\nIn yonder solitary tent conceals\nThe aching hope, the trembling pangs she feels.\n\nHow breathless is the night! None saw it rise--\nThat black cloud stealing up the glassy skies--\nTill threatening murmurs, loud and louder grown,\nBurst from its swelling bosom, and the moon\nSlips into brief oblivion, while a glare\nAs of far, flickering torches, seems to bear\nThe challenge of the gods. Awake, awake!\nMake ready for the tempest, ere it break!\nDrive tent-pins deeper, stretch the covering tight--\nHobble the ponies, scattering in affright\nBefore the thunder-peals. When all is fast,\nKeep vigil, then, till the gods' wrath be past!\n\nA sudden fury sweeps the somber plain,\nIn dizzy slant descends the sheeted rain;\nSharp lightnings rend in twain the sable gloom,\nWhile, cannon-like, the unchained thunders boom!\nOn this wild tumult of the angry skies\nNo ear discerns a woman's thrilling cries;\nYet, ere its sullen echoes die away\nIn caverns where the mocking spirits play,\nFaint, but rejoicing, on a couch of skins,\nA new-made mother lays her lusty twins!\n\nThe wise men of the tribe strange signs relate--\nThis stormy birth portends a stormy fate--\nAnd since the warring heavens, that should affright,\nCalled forth these daring boys on such a night,\nTheir names must own the event that marked their birth--\nThe elder, \"As-he-walks-he-shakes-the-earth,\"\nThe younger twin, \"Coming-his-voice-is-heard\"--\nThus saith the oracle.\n\n                          This mighty word\nDarkens the mother's heart with nameless dread,\nBut casts no shadow on the unconscious head\nOf either sturdy twin. Their mutual play\nWith joyous echoes fills the livelong day!\nFrom helpless infancy to boyhood grown,\nOne brother never had been seen alone,\nTill sudden sorrow bowed the mother's pride--\nThe elder sickened and untimely died.\n\nThe gossips point to him that's left alone--\n\"He, too, will die, for half himself is gone!\"\nAt first, distraught he seemed--unlike a child;\nHe ate not, slept not, neither spoke nor smiled.\nThen sought the forest--wandered there alone\nFor days--his tender mother frantic grown--\nTill he returned to her, and smiling, said,\n\"My spirit meets and talks with him that's dead!\"\nThenceforth he seemed as one who, hand-in-hand,\nWalks with a brother in the spirit land.\n\nAmong the Sioux, in those heroic days,\nWhen certain valor gained the meed of praise,\nThe seasoned warrior, old and full of scars,\nCounted the hero of a hundred wars,\nYet craving higher honor, went alone,\nOn foot, to meet the enemy, and won\n(If he returned victorious), on that day\nA proud distinction.\n\n                Fancy her dismay,--\nThe mother of a tender youth untried,--\nWhen he, the twin we know of, seeks her side\nAnd murmurs in her ear, who loves him so,--\n\"Mother, my elder brother bids me go\nOn a lone war-path.\" Knowing well 'twere vain\nTo plead with him, her tears must fall like rain\nOn 'broidered moccasins for those dear feet;\nHis pouch, her choicest store of pounded meat\nMust fill before the dawn, which sends him forth\nOn foot, alone, to pierce the savage north.\n\n\n(DAKOTA WAR SONG.)\n\n_I hear them coming who made thee weep![A]\n  Leap on thy father's steed\n  And urge him to his utmost speed,\nAnd rush to meet the warlike host,\nAnd meet them first, who hurt thee most.\nStrike one among ten thousand,\n  And make but one to bleed!\nSo shall thy name be known,\nThrough all the world be known,\n  If one is made to bleed!\n  Heh-eh-eh-eh! Heh!_\n\nNow to the journey gallantly addressed,\n(Still at his twin's mysterious behest),\nHe kills a buck with branching horns, and takes\nThe tongue and heart for food--then straightway makes\nA sacrifice to that stern deity--\nThe thunder-god--who rules his destiny.\nOn a fair, level spot, encompassed round\nWith trees, he pins the carcass to the ground;\nPrays for success, his burning heart's desire,--\nThen sleeps beside the embers of his fire.\n\nHow wearisome, how long the painful days\nThat follow, as he treads by unknown ways\nA mazy wilderness, where lurk unseen\nAll perils challenging his eye-sight keen.\nYet on--with tattered shoes and blistering feet--\nTo find the savage foe he longs to meet!\nAt last, to wearied eyes that search in vain,\nThe far-off meeting-place of sky and plain,\nA fleck of dazzling whiteness doth appear.\nThe youth exclaims, \"My enemy is near!\"\nToward that white gleam his cautious steps are bent,\nSurely some roving Blackfoot's lonely tent.\n\nNearer and nearer creeps, with cat-like tread,\nThe watchful Sioux. Above his lowered head\nThe plumy grasses rear a swaying crest;\nHis sinuous motion ripples the broad breast\nOf this ripe prairie, like a playful wind\nThat leaves its shining, silver track behind.\n\nA tent of skins--that piercing eye saw true--\nWondrously white and beautifully new;\nIn all the colors known to savage art,\nA life-size figure with a blood-red heart\nGuards the low door. But who shall more divine,\nSince not a thread of smoke, nor sound, nor sign\nOf human presence makes the story clear,\nSave yonder dappled ponies grazing near?\n\nCrouched in deep grass the wily Indian lies,\nAmbitious that lone hunter to surprise--\nHis gaze the wide horizon ranges low\nFor the first glimpse of his returning foe;\nThe painted lodge full many a glance doth win--\nEach moment may reveal who lurks within!\n\nAt last it moves--that swinging oval door--\nAt last she steps upon the prairie floor,\nShading her dark eyes from the dazzling ray--\nA dusky princess, lovelier than the day!\nNo matron, to her hidden foeman's sight,\nHas ever seemed so radiantly bright.\nHer dress is rich, in style unlike the Sioux.\n(These belles in doe-skin have their fashions, too!)\n\nOn either shoulder lies a jetty braid;\nHer slender form, most delicately made,\nHer deep, black eyes and winsome features miss\nNaught of proportion. What a conquest this!\nTo such an enemy who would not bow?\nTruly our warrior is a captive now!\nVainly she gazes--turns and disappears,\nHis beating heart our youthful hero hears!\nRashly he thinks to follow and surprise\nThis charming stranger--carry off the prize\nBefore her lord's return. By impulse led,\nTo the low door he stoops his stately head,\nFlings a last hurried glance to left and right,\nThen enters, and beholds this beauty bright\nSeated upon a pile of costly skins,\nEmbroidering her hunter's moccasins!\nHe stands abashed--she glances up to greet\nHis hasty entrance with a smile so sweet,\nThen drops her lashes with such coquetry.\nAmazed, he thinks, \"No mortal woman she,\nWho does not fear a stranger entering so!\nRather some teasing fairy, or a doe\nIn woman's form.\"\nAbruptly he exclaims\n\"What are you--a Dakota?\" As he names\nThat warlike tribe, at last she starts, and shakes\nHer head; then with her slender fingers makes,\nSlowly, the signs all tribes of Indians know--\n\"I do not speak your language.\"\n\n                                \"Is it so?\nWhere is your husband?\" asks our hero young,\nIn this same silent, yet most graphic tongue.\n\"I am the daughter of a Blackfoot chief,\nWhose home is three days' journey north. In brief,\nMy brother is a hunter. I am here\nTo keep his lodge, while he pursues the deer.\"\n\"Then I will leave you,\" he replies, \"and when\nYour brother comes, I shall return again!\"\nThus saying, takes his leave; but, ere he goes,\nOne longing, lingering, backward glance he throws,\nWhich tells the maid how straight her arrow sped\nTo pierce the heart of him she else must dread.\n\n\n(DAKOTA LOVE SONG.)\n\n_My heart is heavy--my heart is sore--\n  I heard you were going away!\n  I wept all night--I wept all day--\nI wept till I could weep no more\n  When I heard you were going away\n        Far, far away!\n  O my heart! O my poor heart!\n      Heh-eh-eh-eh! Ho-o-o!_\n\nConcealing in the grass his eagle plumes,\nThe patient Sioux his lonely watch resumes.\nThe reddening sun is low, when, far away,\nHe sees a moving speck. With its last ray\nA handsome youth dismounts before the door.\nHis sister, as the custom was of yore,\nRemoves the body of the doe with speed,\nUnsaddles, waters, pickets out his steed,\nLeaving the wearied hunter to repose.\nA film of smoke, dissolving as it goes,\nCurls upward from the Blackfoot's lodge.\n\n                                    At last,\nThe youthful pair have ended their repast,\nAnd reappear without, to taste the cool\nOf evening. All their sportive converse, full\nOf meaning gestures, doth right well supply\nIts story to their unseen watcher's eye,\nWho through the night his tireless vigil keeps,\nWhile, wrapt in dreams, the unconscious Blackfoot sleeps.\n\nAt earliest dawn, in the chill morning gray,\nAgain the youthful hunter rides away;\nAnd, when the sun mounts half way up the sky,\nHer lover meets the Blackfoot maiden's eye.\nArchly she greets him--\"Laggard! why so late?\nHe whom you seek is gone--he could not wait!\"\n\"But you--you told him not,\" the youth replies,\n\"Of my first visit!\" In each other's eyes\nThey look and laugh; and in that laughter free\nDissolves the ancient, tribal enmity!\nThe wooing of an Indian is but brief.\nHe tells his tale, \"My father was a chief--\nThese eighteen years in yonder heaven he dwells.\"\nThe maiden's heart with awe and wonder swells\nOn hearing that mysterious name and birth\nWhich mark him as a being scarce of earth.\nThen, too, his gallant height and handsome face,\nEquipment strange, and bearing full of grace\nEnsnare her fancy.\n\n                        When the bold demand\nComes from this hero for her heart and hand,\nIn blush and smile her answer may be guessed;\nYet, womanlike, she puts him to the test!\n\"Ere I consent, you must return with me\nUnto my father's lodge. And first--but see\nThis raw-hide trunk. I pray you, creep inside--\"\n(All this by signs); \"then you can safely hide!\nI dread my brother's anger, when he hears\nOur foeman asks me for a wife.\"\n\n                                  Such fears\n(Prettily figured, it may be), win with ease\nThe youth's consent to any scheme you please;\nDanger, discomfort, ridicule--all three\nThis gallant wooer scorns, and smilingly\nConsents to crowd his noble length of limb\nWithin the narrow space allotted him.\n\nCaptive he lies, and, all defenseless, hears\nThe brother's late return. His jealous ears\nMiss no least accent in the voice of each,\nYet glean so little from their foreign speech\nThat, spite of passion (knowing woman's art),\nA spasm of dread contracts the hero's heart.\nSuppose, while thus in helpless case he lay,\nThe maid his place of hiding should betray!\nClutching with iron grasp his trusty gun,\nScarce breathing, he awaits the morrow's sun.\nMeanwhile, she prattles of adventures gay--\nTells how a handsome stranger called that day,\nDescribes his splendid dress,--the arms he bore,\nSuch as no Blackfoot ever saw before;\nBut not a word her cunning lips let fall\nOf love and courtship as the sum of all!\n\nAt daybreak forth again the hunter fares,\nBut with his artful sister first prepares\nA fresh surprise. When scarcely out of sight,\nShe hastens to relieve her captive knight;\nAnd while he gladly tastes the savory fare\nWhich presently her willing hands prepare,\nStretches his cramped limbs to the grateful sun,\nAnd drinks the favoring smiles so hardly won,\nA sudden shadow falls athwart his feet--\nAt last the war-like Sioux and Blackfoot meet.\n\nSurely the boy his sister's secret guessed,\nSince only kindness dwells within his breast\nToward his ancestral foe. By friendly signs,\nEach comely youth the other's thought divines;\nThen suddenly exclaims the dauntless Sioux,\n\"Listen, my friend! I must return with you\nTo ask and win this maiden for my wife!\"\n\"Return with us! not if you prize your life--\"\nThe startled Blackfoot answers. \"You must know\nThat all our tribe regard you as a foe;\nMy sister's suitors are as many now\nAs yonder leaves that twinkle on the bough.\nShould a Dakota venture such a plea,\nOur jealous youth would slay him instantly!\"\n\nThe youthful warrior merely smiles, and lays\nHis hand upon his gun, as one who says\n\"I can defend myself!\" \"Do you so prize\nThis thing?\" demands the other in surprise.\n\"Set up a mark, and you shall shortly see\nWhat sort of weapon 'tis I bear with me!\"\n\"Take my white pony!\" \"No,\" his friend replies,\n\"Set up a willow wand.\"\n\n                                The bullet flies\nStraight to its mark, and cleaves the target quite,\nWhile youth and maiden, starting in affright,\nBelieve some heavenly wight this deed hath done--\nDoubtless the thunder's veritable son!\nConvinced at last, the Blackfoot yields assent,\nAnd leads the stranger to his father's tent.\n\nOn the third evening, as the shadows fall,\nThe hospitable chief receives them all\nIn his great lodge, and listens to their tale\nOf the brave Sioux, whose weapon cannot fail,\nBut, like the thunder, with mysterious roar,\nStrikes enemies unseen. Well pleased before\nWith this fair stranger-youth's ingenuous face,\nHe bids him welcome with a courtly grace,\nAnd on the morn proclaims to all his band\nThis warrior shall receive his daughter's hand.\nThe fiery Blackfeet, when this word they know,\nDart glances of dire hatred at their foe;\nBut, hold! the criers once again appear--\n\"This foreign bridegroom hath a magic here!\nWeapon like his no Blackfoot ever saw!\nBring forth a mark and then prepare with awe\nTo witness its destruction!\"\n\n                                  Scoffingly\nEach brave presents his finest horse, while he\nAccepts of one, and fires before them all.\nAh, pity! see the noble creature fall!\nHear its death-scream!\n\n            Some trembled, others fled,\nBut all declared so fair a maid should wed\nNo less a brave than this. All cavil ceased;\nAnd now began with joy the marriage feast.\n\n\n(LOVE SONG.)\n\n    _One day you will remember me--\n        One day--one day!\n    You will at last remember me,\n              And say,\n\"I was so dear to her--so dear to her!\"\n            Yeh-eh-eh-eh--;\n      You will remember me\n              One day!\n            Yeh-eh-eh-eh--!_\n\nWhen the young hero carried home his bride,\nHe rode a pacing pony at her side;\nTwelve others followed--costly loads they bore,\nRich robes and gifts--the Blackfoot maiden's dower.\nOn a lone war-path finding such a fate,\nHis triumph all the village celebrate;\nPeace is declared between the tribes; and soon--\nBefore the waxing of another moon--\nGuns, knives and blankets, prized past all belief,\nAre sent as presents to the Blackfoot chief.\n\nSuch is the tale by Indian camp-fires told--\nThe old, old story that grows never old!\n\n                ELAINE GOODALE EASTMAN.\n\n\n[Footnote A: _I. e._, who slew thy father.]\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nFond Hearts of the Forest.\n\nA LEGEND OF FOUNTAIN CAVE, NEAR ST. PAUL.\n\n\nThe hazy gloaming gathers round,\nThe silence mellows every sound,\nThe gentle wind, through foliage nigh,\nBegins to breathe its plaintive sigh;\nWhile o'er the hill creeps silver light,\nWhere calm and chaste the queen of night,\nAwaking from her daily trance,\nDoth charm all nature with her glance.\nHer virgin train sweeps down the glade,\nKissing the cavern's mouth of shade;\nShe smiles upon the singing brook,\nWith sparkles filling every nook\nThat lurks about its dimpled face,\nGiving its deepest shadows grace,\nAnd breathing on its grassy mane\nA gloss it ne'er can hope to gain\nBeneath the sun's more kingly ray.\nWeirdly the purling waters play\nIn her embrace; then break away\nTo vanish under bending boughs,\nBut giving voice to gurgling vows\n\n[Illustration: FOUNTAIN CAVE.]\n\nOf future tryst, of love again\nWhere meet the river banks and glen.\nThe moonlight vaults beyond the trees\nTo gain the river side, and sees\nA dusky maiden sitting there,\nWho twines her lovely raven hair,\nAnd frequent lifts her melting eyes\nTo where the flashing ripple flies\nAcross the bosom of that glass\nWhere dancing stars nocturnal pass.\nA princess of the wildwood she,\nAnd graceful as the deer that flee\nTill stricken by the light-winged shaft\nSo deadly from the hunter's craft.\nThe river sings beneath her feet;\nIt finds an echo in the sweet\nAnd tender thought that throbs behind\nThe starry curtains of her mind.\nAnd when the thrills that sweep her heart\nNow from her tongue in music start,\nThe wavelets beating on the strand,\nThe murmuring leaves by zephyrs fanned,\nThe minor rhythms that wake the bowers\nOf this fair glen when evening lowers,\nAnd warbling birds' melodious throng,\nAll mingle with her low love song.\nHer voice is all that's wild and sweet,\nAnd slow must be that warrior's feet\nWho would not speed with all his heart\nTo see her red lips meet and part.\nLove moves her with his golden sway--\nA young and stalwart Chippewa\nHas gained her heart, and kindred ties\nAnd tribal feuds her love defies.\nWhat cares she that her people hate\nAnd his give back without abate?\nWhat cares she that he is not Sioux?\nIf he but keep his promise true!\nShe sings an old song, passion-laden\nBy many a dead Dahkota maiden:\n\n_O where is my lodge--my love?\n  O where is the lord of my breast?\nReveal me, Great Spirit above,\n  The arms where my passion may rest!\n\nBrave warriors are thick as the leaves\n  That follow the wind in the fall;\nEach maiden may think she receives\n  The smile of the noblest of all;\n\nBut I know a chief who can slay\n  The panther and bear with his hand,--\nAs warm and as proud as the day,\n  And braver than all in his band.\n\nIn his sinewy arms I shall rest,\n  And hear his voice call me \"sweet dove!\"\nO he is the lord of my breast!\n  With him is my lodge and my love!_\n\nShe stops! She turns with sudden start,\nWith troubled eyes and beating heart,\nTo the frowning bluffs, where warlike cries\nAnd sound of savage revel rise.\nThe warriors of her tribe are there,\nAll dancing in the firelight glare.\nTheir spears with reeking scalps are clad,\nTheir thoughts are blood, their brains are mad;\nEach yelling brave now only knows\nFierce hatred for his ancient foes.\nThey boast of all their deeds of might,\nOf secret slaughter, deadly fight,\nAnd woe to him who comes to meet\nThe lonely maid, Wenonah sweet,\nIf they his paddle's dip shall hear\nOr after learn his presence near.\nWhen their wild revel, to her fright,\nRose wilder with the fall of night,\nShe stole away and gained this place\nTo see again her lover's face.\nShe gazes on the distant shore,\nBut all is quiet as before.\nAgain she sings, her flute-like tones\nSo low that were the very stones\nOn which she rests her feet possessed\nWith sense to hear, what she confessed\nIn tuneful cadence would be lost\nTo them, for well she knows the cost\nFor him who loves her, if her thought\nBe told aloud, and so there naught\nBreaks on the air but melody.\nIf sung in words, her song would be:\n\n_My love is strong, my love is brave,\n  His heart is warm and true;\nHe soon will come across the wave\n  And bear me in his light canoe,\nTo be his queen and slave._\n\n_To me he bowed his eagle plume,\n  He tamed his eagle eye,\nAnd vowed his love would life consume\n  If I refused with him to fly,\nHis teepee to illume.\n\nO come, my chief! I watch--I wait!\n  I give up all for thee;\nIf thou wilt have an alien mate,\n  Wenonah longs that one to be,\nThat she may share thy fate.\n\nCome quickly, love, but make no sound,\n  My people are thy foes,\nIf thou shouldst here by them be found\n  A warrior's death thy life would close,\nThy soul be skyward bound.\n\nWhat then would poor Wenonah do\n  If she were left alone?\nShe scarce would see the hand that slew\n  Ere she would raise her death-chant tone,\nAnd with thee perish too!_\n\nShe scans the echoing cliff once more,\nThen turns to view the farther shore,\nAnd bending low she strives to hear\nSome sound to tell her he is near.\nO'er all there seems to fall a hush\nAs tender as her cheek's warm blush.\nSo firmly rooted to the spot--\nAs if she had all things forgot--\nShe looks like some wild, charm-bound elf,\nAs lifeless as the moon itself.\nBut no! the parted lip and eye\nOf flashing fire such thoughts belie,\nAnd well and eloquent avow\nThe soul beneath that rigid brow.\nO virgin heart! O passion bright!\nThat fills a glance with beauty's light.\nO Wenijishid, happy thou,\nWho surely will not tarry now!\nA moment thus--then up she springs,\nAnd now the song she softly sings\nFloats o'er the water from her lip\nTo meet the constant, noiseless dip\nOf Wenijishid's paddle blade.\nHow swift to greet the faithful maid\nHe comes! She waits, 'tween joy and fear,\nWhile on he glides, each stroke more near.\nLove gives him more than wonted strength,\nAnd on the beach he leaps at length.\nWith trembling joy, with artless grace,\nShe springs into his glad embrace.\nWithin her brave young hero's arms\nForgot are all her past alarms.\nOne rapturous kiss with quick impress,--\nHis burning hands her locks caress,--\nAnd then they gaze, at love's sweet will,\nEye into eye with answering thrill!\n\"Wenonah, darling, since we met,\nNot once could I that smile forget\nWhich told me (more than words could tell)\nThe hopes that made this bosom swell\nWere fair in our great Spirit's sight.\nHe, ere another moon's swift flight,\nShall bid me take thee to my home\nAnd joy in thee, no more to roam.\"\nHer trustful voice is low and clear,\nAnd sweetest music in his ear:\n\"No chief is braver, none more bold\nThan he whose neck my arms enfold.\nHe dares the light the moonbeams make\nAnd danger courts for my poor sake.\nHark! Wenijishid, hearest thou not\nThose yells of warning? Though this spot\nRests now beneath a peaceful spell,\nHow long 'twill so we cannot tell.\nThy heart is big, and like a rock\nWill meet the blood-storm's awful shock;\nBut I am weaker--and I fear\nFor thee each moment thou art here.\nBehold how now the moonlight meets\nAnd with a kiss each ripple greets;\nWenonah's heart, o'erflowed with bliss,\nIs wholly thine, and thine her kiss.\"\nThe radiance mingled with the shade--\nThe murmur low by night winds made--\nThe rune, harmonious and complete,\nOf wavelets in their ceaseless beat--\nThe fragrance given of sleeping flower--\nThe brooding hush that fits the hour,--\nWith this fair scene all these are met\nTo make the scene more lovely yet.\nWenonah's kiss would all confess,\nIt gives to beauty holiness;\nThe moments passing seem to be\nEndowed with all eternity,\nAnd in this lonely spot, love found\nBrings the whole universe in bound!\nBut, hark! what sound the breezes bear\nTurning her gladness to despair?\nWenonah trembles like a reed,\nWith hunted look she turns to plead:\n\"O Wenijishid, leave me, quick!\nFor dangers gather round thee thick.\nWe are discovered, and thy death\nMay hang upon each wasted breath.\nFly for thy life! Too late! too late!\nTogether we must meet our fate.\"\nHe smiles, and there with dauntless front\nWould meet the coming foemen's brunt;\nBut she who will not leave his side\nBears in her hand his warrior pride,\nAnd hopes of joyous life with her\nAre sweeter than the battle's stir.\nHis war-whoop's taunt rings through the glen,\nWhile answering come the cries of ten.\nWenonah clasps his brawny arm,\nAnd lest his love might come to harm\nHe turns to where his birchen boat\nSeems chafing to be set afloat;\nAnd, ere their foes have gained the strand,\nThe light canoe beneath his hand\nLeaps off before a foaming track.\nHe flings a yell of triumph back,\nAnd grimly smiles as on he flies\nTo hear their disappointed cries;\nYet lest they may too soon pursue,\nHe urges on the flight anew.\nHe plies the paddle with a will,\nThey skim the waves,--but swifter still\nA vengeful arrow cleaves the air,\nTo sink between his shoulders bare.\nThe shock is cruel, and the blade\nFalls from his hand; his powers all fade\nLike thought, and plunging on his face,\nDeathlike he lies. Now to his place\nWenonah springs; with bloodless lip,\nWith gleaming eye and nervous grip,\nShe works the paddle with a force\nOf which but love could be the source.\nBeyond the range of bow, she flings\nThe blade aside and fiercely brings\nHer wounded hero to her breast.\nNow sadly called, now wildly pressed,\nHe breathes at last a feeble sigh,\nAnd, feeling sure he will not die,\nShe labors strongly, full of hope\nAnd nerved with any fate to cope.\nShe gains the shore, and stoutly bears\nHer chief through brush and wild beast lairs.\nAll through the night she speeds her flight.\nTo where his people's fires burn bright.\nWhen friendly, helping hands are found,\nAnd she has given him to their care,\nShe sinks upon the leafy ground,\nPanting like a hunted hare.\nHer faithful powers have filled their task,\nTheir sacred trust no more need ask,\nAnd now the goal is gained, they bind\nOblivion's charm around her mind.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nYoung life is pliant, love will give\nA mighty motive still to live.\nAnd when he wakes, with deep surprise\nHe meets the dark and glorious eyes\nOf dear Wenonah on him bent\nIn passion's hope absorbed, content.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSince this took place it is not known\nHow many changing moons have flown;\nYet still, when Luna's rapiers bright\nPierce through the tenuous robe of Night,\nAnd shining on the stilly shore\nCreate again that scene of yore,\nWenonah and her lover true\nPass over in their white canoe;\nTheir spirit forms unshadowed glide\nAcross the rapid, glistening tide.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nAnpetusapa.\n\nA LEGEND OF ST. ANTHONY FALLS.\n\n\n'Tis autumn, and the breezes lift\nTheir melancholy tones;\n'Tis evening: through each passing rift\nThe stars, like precious stones\nIn lustrous beauty (clouded soon),\nSweet incense to the sight,\nAttend their white-robed mistress moon,\nQueen of romantic night.\nAnon, as the cloud hosts fly\nBefore the wind across the sky,\nThe court of the queen is suddenly seen,\nWith its pomp sublime and array\nOf sparkling and glittering sheen,\nMore lovely than the light of day,\nMore glorious than the twilight gleam\nThat mingles with the sun's last beam\nWhere the waves of ocean play.\n\nBy the river's bank a wandering band\nHave reared their teepee walls,\nHere where the warriors all may stand\nAnd view the mighty falls.\nThe ivory moon is mounting high,\nThe lodge fires flicker low,\nAnd slumbering forms are visible by\nThe embers' last faint glow,\nWhen lightly steps a youthful brave\nOut from the forest ways\nInto the star-roofed nave,\nOut from the shadowing trees\n(Leaves fluttering slow in the slow night breeze)\nInto the broad, revealing rays,\nInto the silvery glow.\nWith step as buoyant as the air\nHe glides above the glistening sward;\nThe largest, whitest teepee there\nDoth seem to center his regard,\nFor there his unmarked path doth end,\nAnd there his burning glances send\nTheir passionate lightnings, wild, yet all\nMade reverent by the spot on which they fall.\nThis lodge doth tower\nAbove the poles on every hand\nLike some strange chieftain o'er his band.\nWhy comes he at this hour?\nHath dark revenge a purpose here?\nShall bloody strife appear\nOn such a scene? Ah, no! the power\nThat spurs him hath a softer spell;\nFor here the tribe's most cherished flower,\nThe daughter of the chief, doth dwell.\n\nHis deep, rich voice floats down the glade,\nIn soft, unwonted tones\nLike gentle winds through pine-tree cones;\nHe sings the Warrior's Serenade;\nWhile at the end of every strain--\nWith more effect his cause to plead--\nHe plays a wild and shrill refrain\nUpon a flute of rude-cut reed.\n\n_Lonely warbling bird of night!\n  Leave thy bough and perch above\nThe silent, dewy folds of white\n  That screen my sleeping love.\nDrink the moonlight rays that fall\n  Pure and mellow, like the beams\nOf starry eyes beyond my call,\n  Far in the land of dreams.\nTell her I am brave and strong;\nTell her I have loved her long;\n  Singing softly, like a dove,\n  Tell her all you know of love\nI cannot tell in song.\n\nTell her I am waiting here\n  At the threshold of her bower;\nWinds are lifting far and near\n  The sweets of every flower,\nAll the stars are out in state,\n  Music breathes in every stir,\nAll of nature seems to wait\n  For a glimpse of her.\nTell her I am brave and strong;\nTell her I have loved her long;\n  Singing softly like a dove,\n  Tell her all you know of love\nI cannot tell in song._\n\nIs it the wind that swings apart\nThe deerskin door from the lodge away?\nIs it a sudden leap of his heart\nThat makes too vivid fancy play?\nOr is it a nut-brown arm that holds\nThe trembling folds,\nAnd are those liquid eyes that shine\nLike diamonds fine?\nSing on, sing on, bold youth,\nAnd hope shall lead thee to the truth!\n\n_She is lovelier than the sky,\n  Sweeter than the freshest bud,\nI can no longer wait and sigh\n  Here in the moonlight flood;\nAll my heart is at her feet,\n  All my strength at her behest;\nO sing, and bid her come to greet\n  The one who loves her best!\nTell her I am brave and strong;\nTell her I have loved her long;\n  Singing softly, like a dove,\n  Tell her all you know of love\nI cannot tell in song._\n\nHis manly voice entreating calls\nAs softly as the dewdrop falls.\nHe ceases, and the night winds hush\nAs if they too had waited long;\nThe organ river's chanting rush\nSeems but an echo of his song.\nAnd shall he wait and plead in vain?\nAh, no! love is not always pain;\nFor see, the folds are drawn aside,\nAnd dimly there may be descried\nA shadowy form of shadowy grace,\nThat halts while still in gloom arrayed,\nWith eyes that light the tawny face\nAnd tresses darker than the shade.\n\nO spell of song! O power and thrill\nOf love! O dream that sways\nThe blood of youth, that feels no chill\nTill love betrays!\n\nO hark! ye sprites that haunt this time,--\nThis quiet moon-lit hour,\nWhen Cupid weaves, in every clime,\nHis web of subtlest power,--\nO, can ye hear, and not rejoice,\nThe music of a maiden's voice?\n\n\"Anpetusapa's glance would meet\nThe night bird that can sing so sweet.\"\nWith what a bounding stride he goes!\nWith what a light his dark eye glows!\nWith what a look he seeks to fire\nThose gentle eyes with his desire!\n\n\"O multiply what voice reveals;\nThe bird can sing not half it feels!\nToo deep, too deep, to tell in words,\nAnd even too sweet for song of birds,\nIs passion like this heart of mine\nDoth feel for thine!\"\n\nShe lightly steps into the light,\nShe gently lifts her gentle eyes,\nShe flies not, though her heart takes flight\nAnd soars without disguise.\n\n\"I know thee; thou art strong and tall,\nThy fearless deeds are known to all.\nO may this eve be not more fair\nThan life to thee, is all my prayer.\"\n\nHis mighty sinews, sternly trained,\nAre now with manly grace restrained,\nAnd the fortunate touch of a fairy's wand\nFar ruder would seem than the touch of his hand;\nAnd the light of his eye like a streamlet doth flow\nWhere passion and tenderness mingle and flash\nOn the dancing ripples, whose murmuring low\nFrom his lips seem to dash\nA faithful, harmonious echo:\n\n\"Of happiness all my life will tell\nIf thou in my lodge doth dwell.\nOh! couldst thou but know\nThe new, the glad, the tender glow\nThat warms my heart, so fiercely brave\nWhen breasting battle's fiercest wave--\nCouldst thou but feel it pulse and bound\nWhene'er my ear is charmed to hear\nThy gentle tongue's melodious sound--\nCouldst thou but see how these fond eyes\nRejoice to look upon thy face\nWhen like a dream before them rise\nThy matchless form and wondrous grace--\nHow deeply, thirstily they drink\nThy dew-bright eyes, whose flashing glance\nDoth like a luring firefly dance\n(Along an island's shadowy brink\nWhere rippling waters, restless waters,\nSing their low, unchanging song\nUpon the pebbles all night long).\nThou art a flower whose smile hath made\nA sunbeam pierce the forest shade;\nThou art a rose that fragrant grows\nTo beautify the darksome glade\nAnd sweeten every breeze that blows.\nAnpetusapa! wilt thou give\nThe promise that shall make me live\nAs I have never lived before?\nI love thee, and the powers divine\nShall teach thy heart to pulse with mine,\nAnd bless our union evermore\nWhile moons shall pass or starlight shine.\"\n\nThe guardian bosom of her lover\nServes well her modest blush to cover;\nHer willowy arms about him twine\nAs closely as the greenwood vine\nDoth hang upon the towering oak,\nThat holds it safe from every stroke\nAnd proudly shelters the delicate form\nFrom all the buffets of the storm.\nThe moon and every heavenly gem\nNow seem to shine alone for them.\n\nO Time! why must thou speed away?\nFor knowest thou not that present joy\nBears no increase for such as they,\nFor whom all change must bring alloy?\nAnd thou, young Love! canst thou not make\nA lonely Eden for their sake?\n'Tis better that but two should find\nGladness of heart and peace of mind,\nThan all the greater sum of life--\nWith burning hearts that fates unbind\nAnd crowding thoughts that gender strife.\nBut no, the gift of life is one\nOf strangest form, of blended tints\nAnd crossing lines, with mingled hints\nOf glory from an unseen sun;\nAnd shades that hourly darker grow\nFor those who seek that sun to know;--\nAnd they must take the whole or none.\nSo they must wake to memory\nOf other things, so they must be\nReminded of the powers that hold\nTheir future lives, to rule and mold.\n\n\"Anpetusapa need not name\nThe glory of her father's fame;\nHe is a mighty chief, and none\nToo quickly will he choose a son.\"\n\n\"O fear not, my blossom,\n  For he shall not see\nThe flower of his bosom\n  Mismated with me.\nWhere war-whoops are sounding\n  Their blood-stirring call,\nThere I shall go bounding\n  The foremost of all.\nWhen foemen shall fly me\n  And chiefs call me brave,\nHe will not deny me\n  The boon I shall crave.\"\n\n\"Yes, thou art brave for one so young;\nThis voice of mine thy feats hath sung\nWhen from the war-path thou returned\nOn which thy first renown was earned.\nIf my poor love can make thy bliss,\nMy service give the happier life,\nAll hope shall dwell in one kind kiss\nFor thine eternal-loving wife.\"\n\n\"O blessed promise! future bright!\nThis feeble tongue of mine can never\nReveal how dear thou art to-night,\nHow cherished thou shalt be forever!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe chief approved the suitor bold,\nAnd for rich goods his daughter sold.\nShe thought not of the trade, but went\nTo her young lord with true content,\nAnd while she dreamed of joy to come\nHer heart was full, her lips were dumb;\nAnd day by day her task was wrought,\nEach hour with self-denial fraught;\nHis wants were met, his lodge was trim,\nHer patient thoughts were all for him.\nThe powers divine did seem to bless\nThe promise of his wild caress;\nAnd so the happy moons flew by,\nTill new refulgence filled her sky\nWhen there appeared a baby boy,\nWhose laugh o'erflowed her cup of joy;\nFor this must prove, she could but feel,\nA bond between them strong as steel.\n\nAlas, thou too confiding wife,\nWhat clouds were gathering o'er thy life!\nFor vanity alone will stay\nWith human nature to the last;\nEach happy day will slip away\nInto the valleys of the past,\nReturning but a ghostly thing\nWhen the spirit drinks at Memory's spring.\n\nWhy did he vow to cherish ever?\nOr why allow his heart to change?\nWhat maid was she who came to sever\nThy love and thee? What magic strange\nHad she to work her strange endeavor?\nWhat mind shall solve the mystery\nOf loves that come and loves that flee?\nWhy should Anpetusapa give\nHer heart's whole life, her richest treasure,\nTo one whose boasted flame could live\nThrough but a dozen moons' small measure;\nWhose passion was for selfish pleasure?\n\nYet so it was; another came\nHer heart to cloud, her place to claim.\nHer lodge became another's nest;\nThe first wife, she was second now;\n'Neath custom's yoke compelled to bow\nAnd see her rival fondly pressed.\nThe death gloom settled on her brow,\nDay brought no sun, the night no rest.\nThe beam of sadness lit her eye,\nAnd memories that could never die\nUntil her body, void of breath,\nBecame the precious spoil of Death.\nMorn after morn beheld her still\nSlow sinking, like a mountain rill\nWhose fountain-head, once bubbling bright,\nHath dried away, and left the white\nAnd pulseless sand to mark where long\nBegan the sparkle and the song.\n\nOne joy alone was left to bring\nThe heart-swept thrill of other days,\nWhen to her baby she would sing\nHer lullaby of love and praise;\nAnd this, even this, renewed the thought\nOf joyous hopes that came to naught.\nBetrayed by faith, yet faithful to the last,\nShe murmured not; but patiently she passed\nEach day in kindly service, given\nAs if her heart were all unriven,\nUntil at length heroic strength\nCould bear no more.\n\n                Upon the shore\nOf wild Messipi's plunging flood,\nWhere they were camped so long before,\nThey camped again; again their blood\nMarched to the music of its roar.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n'Tis morning: every bird its matin sings\nAnd beats the air with throbbing wings,\nThe air so sweet and quick; the glistening dew\nHangs crystal beauty on all verdant things,--\nEach trembling drop reflecting true\nThe overspread, unclouded blue;\nWhile from the east the cohorts of the sun\nWith dazzling spears begin to strew\nThe morning vapors, damp and dun,\nWhose melting ranks are closed anew\nTo vanish where the rapid waters run.\n\nAnpetusapa hides her woe\nUntil her husband and her foe\nHave left the lodge and gone from sight.\nThen with a tearless eye and bright,\nShe gazes madly round the place\nWhere every comfort bears the trace\nOf wifely labor wrought with pain,\nOf woman's love that lives in vain.\nHere moccasins lie with bead-work gay;\nHere on the wall the breezes sway\nThe music-breathing flute,\nWhose lips are dry and mute,\nWhile she who once inspired its tone\nNow sits despairing and alone.\nThe very curls of smoke that rise\nAnd mingle with the morning skies,\nAre tokens of the duties done\nBeneath the red eye of the rising sun.\nAwhile she sits in cruel thought,\nTill, with her anguish overwrought,\nShe flies to him who sweetly bears\nThe image of her faithless god,\nAnd on each infant feature wears\nThe smiling hopes on which he trod.\nConvulsively she clasps her child,\nWhose love, alone left undefiled,\nIs not enough to nerve her soul\nBeneath its crushing weight of dole.\n\nShe listens to the roaring water,\nWhose voice she heard in music grand\nWhen she was but the old chief's daughter,\nWhen love such wondrous fortunes planned;\nAnd ruthless phantoms of the past\nAcross her mind are flitting fast,\nEach with a keen, envenomed dart\nThat poisons brain and tortures heart.\nWith breath too quick to lift a sigh,\nWith marble firmness on her brow,\nWith glassy wildness in her eye,\nShe seeks the river's margin now.\nShe springs into a birch canoe,\nAll beaded with the morning dew,\nAnd clasping close her mother's pride,\nSoon gains the middle of the tide.\n\nO hark! thou selfish one who gave\nEmbrace more treacherous than the wave:\nDoes not her song which mounts the air\nReproach thee with its grand despair?\nWhy dost thou hurry to the river?\nWhy dost thou call, why dost thou shiver,\nWhile she whom thou hast driven away\nIs bold amidst the chilly spray?\nWhat good is all thy vain remorse?\nThinkst thou from jaws of death to force\nA sacrifice so lightly thrust\nUpon the altar of thy lust?\nA host like thee could nothing urge\nTo meet one tone of her sad dirge:\n\n_My heart cannot live without loving;\n  My heart cannot give up its own;\nNo more will I linger with sorrow,\n  But follow the joys that have flown;\nWith Death I will rest me to-morrow\n  On a kind, dreamless bed of stone.\n\nI fear not the rush of the water,\n  For me all its terrors are vain;\nIt cannot bring less than gladness,\n  For it banishes all my pain;\nI will sink with my burden of sadness\n  And mix with the earth again.\n\nMy baby, my darling, my blossom,\n  Nor anguish nor falsehood shall know;\nTogether we cleave the wild billow--\n  Unfaltering together we go\nTo rest on the same rocky pillow,\n  To slumber and mingle below._\n\nPlunging on the sunlit stream,\nThe frail canoe, with trembling leaps,\nHurries toward the mists that gleam\nTo veil the awful steeps.\nWhat need has she for any veil?\nDespairing eyes will never quail!\nSee, now upon the glowing crest,\nWhere clouds of spray beneath her lie,\nShe clasps her boy upon her breast,\nShe gazes on the cloudless sky,\nAnd in its blue depth seems to see\nDeath, robed in peaceful purity;\nThen down into the boiling tomb\nThat makes for her the happiest doom.\nHow strange that peace should thus be found\nAmid such tumult-breathing sound!\nTo leap from life and light, and find\nA darkness sweeter to the mind!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLong shall the mists of morning show\nThe spirit of her who long ago\nWrapped them round her wearily--\nA victim of love and treachery.\nLong shall her mournful death-song find\nAn echo in the moaning wind;\nLong shall Dahkota legend bind\nThat echo with the roaring falls,\nThe ancient, foam-crowned, giant falls,\nWhose voice so oft hath given\nThe welcome of its watery halls,\nThat lead the soul, when the Great Spirit calls,\nTo the hunting-grounds of heaven.\nAnd though a child of the forest dark\nWeary of life would here embark,\nAs to a portal hither comes,--\nAnd yet who may not pass this way\nInto eternal joy and day,--\nThe water hides and soon benumbs\nThe sorrow, and the cadence deep\nBecomes a lullaby to hush\nThe spirit to its endless sleep\nBeneath the surging rush,\nBeneath the shrouding spray,\nWhere the tireless waters sweep\nTo their wild, unpausing leap--\nThen fly to the South away!\nThe flood is cold, but the heart is bold\nWhen the future that lives new sorrow gives;\nAnd within the chamber halls\nOf the grand and solemn falls\nMay be found a sleep so sweet and deep\nThat its darkness never palls,\nWhile ages pass with silent creep.\nTime hath no tooth to tear\nThe heart whose pulse is dead,\nAnd sorrow may live in the air\nBut not in the river-bed!\nI ween all peacefully there\nIs pillowed forever the head\nOf a woman whose heart was fair,\nThough her cheeks were dusky red.\n\n\n\n\nWinona.\n\n\nPART I.\n\nWinona,[1] first-born daughter, was the name\nOf a Dakota girl who, long ago,\nDwelt with her people here unknown to fame.\nSweet word, Winona, how my heart and lips\nCling to that name (my mother's was the same\nEre her form faded into death's eclipse),\nCling lovingly, and loth to let it go.\nAll arts that unto savage life belong\nShe knew, made moccasins, and dressed the game.\nFrom crippling fashions free, her well-knit frame\nAt fifteen summers was mature and strong.\nShe pitched the tipi,[2] dug the tipsin[3] roots,\nGathered wild rice and store of savage fruits.\nFearless and self-reliant, she could go\nAcross the prairie on a starless night;\nShe speared the fish while in his wildest flight,\nAnd almost like a warrior drew the bow.\nYet she was not all hardness: the keen glance,\nLighting the darkness of her eyes, perchance\nBetrayed no softness, but her voice, that rose\nO'er the weird circle of the midnight dance,\nThrough all the gamut ran of human woes,\n\n[Illustration: MAIDEN ROCK, LAKE PEPIN.]\n\nPassion, and joy. A woman's love she had\nFor ornament; on gala days was clad\nIn garments of the softest doeskin fine,\nWith shells about her neck; moccasins neat\nWere drawn, like gloves, upon her little feet,\nAdorned with scarlet quills of porcupine.\nInnocent of the niceties refined\nThat to the toilet her pale sisters bind,\nYet much the same beneath the outer rind,\nShe was, though all unskilled in bookish lore,\nA sound, sweet woman to the very core.\n\nWinona's uncle, and step-father too,\nWas all the father that she ever knew;\nBy the Absarakas[4] her own was slain\nBefore her memory could his face retain.\nTwo bitter years his widow mourned him dead,\nAnd then his elder brother she had wed.\nNone loved Winona's uncle; he was stern\nAnd harsh in manner, cold and taciturn,\nAnd none might see, without a secret fear,\nThose thin lips ever curling to a sneer.\nAnd yet he was of note and influence\nAmong the chieftains; true he rarely lent\nMore than his presence in the council tent,\nAnd when he rose to speak disdained pretence\nOf arts rhetoric, but his few words went\nStraight and incisive to the question's core,\nAnd rarely was his counsel overborne.\nThe Raven was the fitting name he bore;\nAnd though his winters well-nigh reached three-score,\nFew of his tribe excelled him in the chase.\nA warrior of renown, but never wore\nThe dancing eagle plumes, and seemed to scorn\nThe vanities and follies of his race.\n\nI said the Raven was beloved by none;\nBut no, among the elders there was one\nWho often sought him, and the two would walk\nApart for hours, and converse alone.\nThe gossips, marveling much what this might mean,\nWhispered that they at midnight had been seen\nFar from the village, wrapped in secret talk.\nThey seemed in truth an ill-assorted brace,\nBut Nature oft in Siamese bond unites,\nBy some strange tie, the farthest opposites.\nGray Cloud was oily, plausible, and vain,\nA conjurer with subtle scheming brain;\nToo corpulent and clumsy for the chase,\nHis lodge was still provided with the best,\nAnd though sometimes but a half welcome guest,\nHe took his dish and spoon to every feast.[5]\n\nPriestcraft and leechcraft were combined in him,\nTwo trades occult upon which knaves have thriven,\nAlmost since man from Paradise was driven;\nPadding with pompous phrases worn and old\nTheir scanty esoteric science dim,\nAnd gravely selling, at their weight in gold,\nPlacebos colored to their patients' whim.\nMan's noblest mission here too oft is made,\nIn heathen as in Christian lands, a trade.\nHoly the task to comfort and console\nThe tortured body and the sin-sick soul,\nBut pain and sorrow, even prayer and creed,\nAre turned too oft to instruments of greed.\nThe conjurer claimed to bear a mission high:\nMysterious omens of the earth and sky\nHe knew to read; his medicine could find\nIn time of need the buffalo, and bind\nIn sleep the senses of the enemy.\nPerhaps not wholly a deliberate cheat,\nAnd yet dissimulation and deceit\nOozed from his form obese at every pore.\nSkilled by long practice in the priestly art,\nTo chill with superstitious fear the heart,\nAnd versed in all the legendary lore,\nHe knew each herb and root that healing bore;\nBut lest his flock might grow as wise as he,\nDisguised their use with solemn mummery.\nWhen all the village wrapped in slumber lay,\nHis midnight incantations often fell,\nHis chant now weirdly rose, now sank away,\nAs o'er some dying child he cast his spell.\nAnd sometimes through his frame strange tremors ran--\nMagnetic waves, swept from the unknown pole\nLinking the body to the wavering soul;\nAnd swifter came his breath, as if to fan\nThe feeble life spark, and his finger tips\nWere to the brow of pain like angel lips.\nNo wonder if in moments such as these\nHe half believed in his own deities,\nAnd thought his sacred rattle could compel\nThe swarming powers unseen to serve him well.\nThe Raven lay one evening in his tent\nWith his accustomed crony at his side;\nAround their heads a graceful aureole\nOf smoke curled upward from the scarlet bowl\nOf Gray Cloud's pipe with willow bark supplied.\nWinona's thrifty mother came and went,\nHer form with household cares and burdens bent,\nFresh fuel adds, and stirs the boiling pot.\nMeanwhile the young Winona, half reclined,\nPlies her swift needle, that resource refined\nFor woman's leisure, whatsoe'er her lot,\nThe kingly palace or the savage cot.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nThe cronies smoked without a sign or word,\nPassing the pipe sedately to and fro;\nOnly a distant wail of hopeless woe,\nA mother mourning for her child, was heard,\nAnd Gray Cloud moved, as though the sound had stirred\nSome dusty memory; still that bitter wail,\nRachel's despairing cry without avail,\nThat beats the brazen firmament in vain,\nSince the first mother wept o'er Abel slain.\nAt length the conjurer's lips the silence broke,\nSoftly at first as to himself he spoke,\nTill warmed by his own swarming fancies' brood\nHe poured the strain almost in numbers rude.\n\n[Illustration: \"WHERE THROUGH A LAKE THE MISSISSIPPI FLOWS.\"]\n\n\nTHE COMBAT BETWEEN THE THUNDER-BIRDS\nAND THE WATER-DEMONS.\n\nGray Cloud shall not be as other men,\nDull clods that move and breathe a day or two,\nEre other clods shall bury them from view.\nTempest and sky have been my home, and when\nI pass from earth I shall find welcome there.\nSons of the Thunder-Bird my playmates were,\nAges ago[6] (the tallest oak to-day\nIn all the land was but a grass blade then).\nReared with such brethren, breathing such an air,\nMy spirit grew as tall and bold as they;\nWe tossed the ball and flushed the noble prey\nO'er happy plains from human footsteps far;\nAnd when our high chief's voice to arm for war\nRang out in tones that rent the morning sky,\nNone of the band exulted more than I.\n\nA god might gaze and tremble at the sight\nOf our array that turned the day to night;\nWith bow and shield and flame-tipped arrows all,\nRushing together at our leader's call,\nLike storm clouds sweeping round a mountain height.\nThe lofty cliffs our warlike muster saw,\nHard by the village of great Wabashaw,[7]\nWhere through a lake the Mississippi flows;\nFar o'er the dwelling of our ancient foes,\nThe hated Water-Demon[8] and his sons,\nCold, dark and deep the sluggish current runs.\n\nUp from their caverns swarming, when they heard\nThe rolling signal of the Thunder-Bird,\nThe Water-Demon and his sons arose,\nAnd answered back the challenge of their foes.\nWith horns tumultuous clashing like a herd\nOf warring elks that struggle for the does,\nThey lashed the wave to clouds of spray and foam,\nThrough which their forms uncouth, like buffaloes\nSeen dimly through a morning mist, did loom,\nOr isles at twilight rising from the shore.\n\nThough we were thirty, they at least fourscore,\nWe rushed upon them, and a midnight pall\nOver the seething lake our pinions spread,\n'Neath which our gleaming arrows thickly sped,\nAs shooting stars that in the rice-moon fall.\nRent by our beating wings the cloud-waves swung\nIn eddies round us, and our leader's roar\nSmote peal on peal, and from their bases flung\nThe rocks that towered along the trembling shore.\n\nA Thunder-Bird--alas, my chosen friend,\nBut even so a warrior's life should end,--\nA Thunder-Bird was stricken; his bright beak,\nCleaving the tumult like a lightning streak,\nSmote with a fiery hiss the watery plain;\nHis upturned breast, where gleamed one fleck of red,\nHis sable wings, one moment wide outspread,\nBlackened the whirlpool o'er his sinking head.\n\nThe Water-Demon's sons by scores were slain\nBy our swift arrows falling like the rain;\nWith yells of rage they sank beneath the wave\nThat ran all redly now, but could not save.\nWe asked not mercy, mercy never gave;\nOur flaming darts lit up the farthest cave,\nFathoms below the reach of deepest line;\nOur cruel spears, taller than mountain pine,\nMingled their life blood with the ruddy wave.\n\nThe combat ceased, the Thunder-Birds had won.\nThe Water-Demon with one favorite son\nFled from the carnage and escaped our wrath.\nThe vapors, thinly curling from the shore,\nFaint musky odors to our nostrils bore.\nThe air was stilled, the silence of the dead;\nThe sun, just starting on his downward path,\nA rosy mantle o'er the prairie shed,\nSave where, like vultures, ominous and still,\nWe clustered close, on sullen wings outspread;\nAnd sometimes, with a momentary chill,\nA giant shadow swept o'er plain and hill,--\nA Thunder-Bird careering overhead,\nSeeking the track by which the foe had fled.\n\nWhile thus we hovered motionless, the sun\nAdown the west his punctual course had run,\nWhen lo, two shining points far up the stream\nThat split the prairie with a silver seam,--\nThe fleeing Water-Demon and his son;\nLike icicles they glittered in the beam\nStill struggling up from the horizon's rim.\nHis sleeping anger kindled at the sight,\nOur leader's eyes glowed like a flaming brand.\nThrilled by one impulse, all our sable band\nDove through the gathering shadows of the night\nOn wings outshaken for a headlong flight.\nAnger, revenge, but more than all the thirst,\nThe glorious emulation to be first,\nStung me like fire, and filled each quivering plume.\nWith tenfold speed our sharp beaks cleft the gloom,\nA swarm of arrows singing to the mark,\nWe hissed to pierce the foe ere yet 'twas dark.\n\nStill up the stream the Water-Demons fled,\nTheir bodies glowed like fox-fire far ahead;\nBut every moment saw the distance close\nBetween our thirsty spear-heads and our foes.\nLouder the blast our buzzing pinions made\nThan mighty forest in a whirlwind swayed;\nThe giant cliffs of Redwing speeding back,\nLike specters melting from a cloudy wrack,\nMelted from view in our dissolving track.\nKaposia's village, clustered on the shore,\nWith sound of snapping poles and tipis riven,\nVanished like swan's-down by a tempest driven.\nStung by our flight, the keen air smote us sore\nAs ragged hailstones; on, still on, we strained,\nAnd fast and faster on the chase we gained,\nBut neck and neck the fierce pursuit remained,\nTill close ahead we saw the rocky walls\nO'er which the mighty river plunging falls,[9]\nAnd at their base the Water-Demons lay:\nThe panting chase at last had turned to bay.\nThen thrilled my nerves with more than mortal strength;\nA breath of Deity was in the burst\nThat bore me out a goodly lance's length\nTo meet the Water-Demon's son accurst.\nHis evil horn clanged hollow on my shield\nJust as my spear transfixed him through and through;\nA moment towering o'er the foam he reeled,\nThen sank beneath the roaring falls from view.\nA dying yell that haunts me yet he gave,\nAnd as he fell the crippled water coiled\nAbout him like a wounded snake, and boiled,\nLashing itself to madness o'er his grave.\n\nWe knew not where the parent Demon fled;\nNone of our spears might pierce his ancient mail,\nWelded with skill demoniac scale on scale.\nSome watery realm he wanders, and 'tis said\nThat he is changed and bears a brighter form,\nAnd goodly sons again about him swarm;\nAnd peace, 'tis but a hollow truce I know,\nNow reigns between him and his ancient foe.\nHe hates me still, and fain would do me harm,\nBut neither man nor demon dares offend,\nWho hath the cruel Thunder-Bird for friend.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\nPART II.\n\nNature hath her _elite_ in every land,\nSealed by her signet, felt although unseen.\nWinona 'mid her fellows moved a queen,\nAnd scarce a youthful beau in all the band\nBut sighed in secret longing for her hand.\nOne only she distinguished o'er the rest,\nThe latest aspirant for martial fame,\nRedstar, a youth whose coup-stick like his name\n(Till recently he had been plain Chaske)[10]\nWas new, fresh plucked the feathers on his crest.\nJust what the feats on which he based his claim\nTo warlike glory it were hard to say;\nHe ne'er had seen more than one trivial fray,\nBut bold assurance sometimes wins the day.\nWinona gave him generous credit, too,\nFor all the gallant deeds he meant to do.\nHis gay, barbaric dress, his lofty air\nEnmeshed her in a sweet bewildering snare.\nTransfigured by the light of her own passion,\nShe saw Chaske in much the usual fashion\nOf fairer maids, who love, or think they do.\n'Tis not the man they love, but what he seems;\nA bright Hyperion, moving stately through\nThe rosy ether of exalted dreams.\nAlas! that love, the purest and most real,\nClusters forever round some form ideal;\nAnd martial things have some strange necromancy\nTo captivate romantic maiden fancy.\nThe very word \"Lieutenant\" hath a charm,\nE'en coupled with a vulgar face and form,\nA shriveled heart and microscopic wit,\nScarce for a coachman or a barber fit;\nHis untried sword, his title, are to her\nBetter than genius, wealth, or high renown;\nHis uniform is sweeter than the gown\nOf an Episcopalian minister;\nAnd \"dash,\" for swagger but a synonym,\nIs knightly grace and chivalry with him.\n\nUnnoted young Winona's passion grew,\nChaske alone the tender secret knew;\nAnd he, too selfish love like hers to know,\nWarmed by her presence to a transient glow,\nHer silent homage drank as 'twere his due.\nWinona asked no more though madly fond,\nNor hardly dreamed as yet of closer bond;\nBut chance, or Providence, or iron Fate\n(Call it what name you will), or soon or late,\nBends to its purpose every human will,\nAnd brings to each its destined good or ill.\n\n\nTHE GROVE.\n\nO'erlooking Minnetonka's shore,\nA grove enchanted lured of yore,\nLured to their deepest woe and joy,\nA happy maiden and careless boy;\nLured their feet to its inmost core,\nWhere like snowy maidens the aspen trees\nSwayed and beckoned in the breeze,\nWhile the prairie grass, like rippling seas,\nFaintly murmuring lulling hymns,\nRippled about their gleaming limbs.\n\nThere is no such charm in a garden-close,\nHowever fair its bower and rose,\nAs a place where the wild and free rejoice.\nNor doth the storied and ivied arch\nWoo the heart with half so sweet a voice\nAs the bowering arms of the wild-wood larch,\nWhere the clematis and wild woodbine\nFestoon the flowering eglantine;\nWhere in every flower, shrub, and tree\nIs heard the hum of the honey-bee,\nAnd the linden blossoms are softly stirred,\nAs the fanning wings of the humming-bird\nScatter a perfume of pollen dust,\nThat mounts to the kindling soul like must;\nWhere the turtles each spring their loves renew--\nThe old, old story, \"coo-roo, coo-roo,\"\nMingles with the wooing note\nThat bubbles from the song-bird's throat;\nWhere on waves of rosy light at play,\nMingle a thousand airy minions,\nAnd drifting as on a golden bay,\nThe butterfly with his petal pinions,\nFrom isle to isle of his fair dominions\nFloats with the languid tides away;\nWhere the squirrel and rabbit shyly mate,\nAnd none so timid but finds her fate;\nThe meek hen-robin upon the nest\nThrills to her lover's flaming breast.\nYouth, Love, and Life, 'mid scenes like this,\nGo to the same sweet tune of bliss;\nE'en the flaming flowers of passion seem\nPure as the lily buds that dream\nOn the bosom of a mountain stream.\n\nSuch was the grove that lured of yore,\nOverlooking Minnetonka's shore,\nLured to their deepest woe and joy\nA happy maiden and careless boy,--\nLured their feet to its inmost core;\nWhere still mysterious shadows slept,\nWhile the plenilune from her path above\nWith liquid amber bathed the grove,\nThat through the tree-tops trickling crept,\nAnd every tender alley swept.\nThe happy maiden and careless boy,\nCaught for a moment their deepest joy,\nAnd the iris hues of Youth and Love,\nA tender glamour about them wove;\nBut the trembling shadows the aspens cast\nFrom the maiden's spirit never passed;\nAnd the nectar was poisoned that thrilled and filled,\nFrom every treacherous leaf distilled,\nHer veins that night with a strange alloy.\n\nSwift came the hour that maid and boy must part;\nA glow unwonted, tinged with dusky red\nWinona's conscious face as home she sped;\nAnd to the song exultant in her heart,\nBeat her light moccasins with rhythmic tread.\nBut at the summit of a little hill,\nAlong whose base the village lay outspread,\nA sudden sense of some impending ill\nSmote the sweet fever in her veins with chill.\nThe lake she skirted, on whose mailed breast\nRode like a shield the moon from out the west,\nShe neared her lodge, but there her quick eye caught\nThe voice of Gray Cloud, and her steps were stayed,\nFor over her of late an icy fear\nBrooded with vulture wings when he was near.\n\nShe knew not why, her eye he never sought,\nNor deigned to speak, and yet she felt dismayed\nAt thought of him, as the mimosa's leaf\nBefore the fingers touch it shrinks with dread.\nShe paused a moment, then with furtive tread\nClose to the tipi glided like a thief;\nWith lips apart, and eager bended head,\nShe listened there to what the conjurer said.\n\nHis voice, low, musical, recounted o'er\nStrange tales of days when other forms he wore:\nHow, far above the highest airy plain\nWhere soars and sings the weird, fantastic crane,\nWafted like thistle-down he strayed at will,\nWith power almost supreme for good or ill,\nOver all lands and nations near and far,\nBeyond the seas, or 'neath the northern star,\nAnd long had pondered where were best to dwell\nWhen he should deign a human shape to wear.\n\"Whether to be of them that buy and sell,\nWith fish-scale eyes, and yellow corn-silk hair,\nOr with the stone-men chase the giant game.\nBut wander where you may, no land can claim\nA sky so fair as ours; the sun each day\nCircles the earth with glaring eye, but sees\nNo lakes or plains so beautiful as these;\nNor e'er hath trod or shall upon the earth\nA race like ours of true Dakota birth.\nOur chiefs and sages, who so wise as they\nTo counsel or to lead in peace or war,\nAnd heal the sick by deep mysterious law.\nOur beauteous warriors, lithe of limb and strong,\nFierce to avenge their own and others' wrong,\nWhat gasping terror smites their battle song\nWhen, night-birds gathering near the dawn of day,\nOr wolves in chorus ravening for the prey,\nThey burst upon the sleeping Chippeway;[11]\nTheir women wail whose hated fingers dare\nTo reap the harvest of our midnight hair;\nSwifter than eagles, as a panther fleet,\nA hungry panther seeking for his meat,\nSo swift and noiseless their avenging feet.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nDakota matrons truest are and best,\nDakota maidens too are loveliest.\"\n\nHe ceased, and soon, departing through the night,\nShe watched his burly form till out of sight.\nAnd then the Raven spoke in whispers low:\n\"Gray Cloud demands our daughter's hand, and she\nUnto his tipi very soon must go.\"\nWinona's mother sought to make reply,\nBut something checked her in his tone or eye.\nAgain the Raven spoke, imperiously:\n\"Winona is of proper age to wed;\nHer suitor suits me, let no more be said.\"\n\nWinona heard no more; a rising wave\nOf mingled indignation, fear, and shame\nLike a resistless tempest shook her frame,\nThe earth swam round her, and her senses reeled;\nBetter for her a thousand times the grave\nThan life in Gray Cloud's tent, but what could she\nAgainst the stern, implacable decree\nOf one whose will was never known to yield?\n\nWinona fled, scarce knowing where or how;\nFled like a phantom through the moonlight cool,\nUntil she stood upon the rocky brow\nThat overlooked a deep sequestered pool,\nWhere slumbering in a grove-encircled bay\nLake Minnetonka's purest waters lay.\nUnto the brink she rushed, but faltered there--\nLife to the young is sweet; in vain her eye\nSwept for a moment grove and wave and sky\nWith mute appeal. But see, two white swans fair\nGleamed from the shadows that o'erhung the shore,\nLike moons emerging from a sable screen;\nSwimming abreast, what haughty king and queen,\nWith arching necks their regal course they bore.\nWinona marveled at the unwonted sight\nOf white swans swimming there at dead of night,\nHer frenzy half beguiling with the scene.\nUnearthly heralds sure, for in their wake\nWhat ruddy furrows seamed the placid lake.\nAlmost beneath her feet they came, so near\nShe might have tossed a pebble on their backs,\nWhen lo, their long necks pierced the waters clear,\nAs down they dove, two shafts of purest light,\nAnd chasing fast on their descending tracks,\nA swarm of spirals luminous and white,\nSwirled to the gloom of nether depths from sight.\n\nThen all was still for some few moments' space,\nSo smooth the pool, so vanished every trace,\nIt seemed that surely the fantastic pair\nHad been but snowy phantoms passing there.\nWinona hardly hoped to see them rise,\nBut while she gazed with half-expectant eyes,\nThe waters strangely quivered in a place\nAbout the bigness of a tipi's space,\nWhere weirdly lighting up the hollow wave\nBeat a deep-glowing heart, whose pulsing ray\nNow faded to a rosy flush away,\nNow filled with fiery glare the farthest cave.\nA shapeless bulk arose, then, taking form,\nBloomed forth upon the bosom of the lake\nA crystal rose, or hillock mammiform,\nAnd round its base the curling foam did break\nAs round a sunny islet in a storm;\nAnd on it poised a swiftly changing form,\nWith filmy mantle falling musical,\nAnd colors of the floating bubble's ball,\nFair and elusive as the sprites that play,\nBright children of the sun-illumined spray,\n'Mid rainbows of a mountain waterfall.\nThen mingling with the falling waters came\nIn whispers sibilant Winona's name;\nSo indistinct and low that voice intense,\nThat she, half frightened, cowering in the grass\nIn much bewilderment at what did pass,\nTill thrice repeated noted not its sense.\n\nShe rose, and on the very brink defined,\nAgainst the sky in silhouette outlined,\nErect before the Water-Demon stood.\nAgain those accents weird her wonder stirred,\nAnd this is what the listening maiden heard:\n\"Thy fate, Winona, hangs on thine own choice\nTo scorn or heed the Water-Demon's voice.\nGone are thy pleasant days of maidenhood,\nAnd evil hours draw nigh, but knowest thou not,\nThat what thou fleest is the common lot\nOf all thy sisters? Thou must be the bride\nOf one thou lovest not, must toil for him,\nWatch for his coming, and endure his whim;\nMust share his tent, and lying at his side\nWeep for another till thine eyes grow dim.\nAnd he, so fondly loved, will pass thee by\nIndifferent with cold averted eye;\nE'en he, whose wanton hands and hated arms\nHave crushed the fair flower of thy maidenhood,\nWill weary of thy swiftly-fading charms,\nAnd seek another when thy beauty wanes.\nAha, thou shudderest; in thy tense veins,\nFierce and rebellious, leaps the mingling blood\nOf countless warriors, high of soul and brave;\nAnd would'st thou quench their spirit 'neath the wave?\nIs Gray Cloud's life more dear to thee than thine?\nThe village sleeps, unguarded is his tent,\nThy knife is keen, and unto thee is lent\nA spell to-night of potency malign.\nCradled in blissful dreams alone he lies,\nAnd he shall stray so deep in sleep's dominions,\nHe would not waken though the rushing pinions\nOf his own Thunder-Bird should shake the sky.\nAll freedom-loving spirits are with thee,\nStrike hard and fear not as thou would'st be free;\nLest thine own hatred prove too weak a charm,\nThe Water-Demon's hate shall nerve thine arm.\"\n\nThe Water-Demon sank and disappeared,\nAnd faint and fainter fell those accents weird,\nUntil the air was silent as the grave,\nStill as December's crystal seal the wave.\nHomeward again Winona took her way.\nHow changed in one short hour! no longer now\nThe song-birds singing at her heart, but there\nA thousand gnashing furies made their lair,\nAnd urged her on; her nearest pathway lay\nOver a little hill, and on its brow\nA group of trees, whereof each blackened bough\nBore up to heaven as if in protest mute\nIts clustering load of ghastly charnel fruit,[12]\nThe swaddled forms of all the village dead--\nMaid, lusty warrior, and toothless hag,\nThe infant and the conjurer with his bag,\nPeacefully rotting in their airy bed.\nAs on a battle plain she saw them lie,\nFouling the fairness of the moonlit sky;\nAnd heavily there flapped above her head,\nSome floating drapery or tress of hair,\nLoading with pestilential breath the air\nThat fanned her temples, or the reeking wing\nOf unclean bird obscenely hovering;\nAnd something crossed her path that halting nigh,\nAt the intruder glared with evil eye,--\nShe hardly heeded passing swiftly by.\n\nLeaving behind that hideous umbrage fast,\nWhat wraith escaping from its tenement,\nWinona through the sleeping village passed,\nAnd pausing not, to Gray Cloud's tipi went,\nLaid back the door, and with a stealthy tread,\nEntered and softly crouched beside his head.\nHer gaze that seemed to pierce his inmost thought,\nKeen as the ready knife her hand had sought,\nAnd through the open door the slant moonbeams\nSmiting the sleeper's face awaked him not.\nHe vaguely muttered in his wandering dreams\nOf \"medicine,\" and of the Thunder-Bird.\nAs if to go, her knife she half returned;\nWhether her woman's heart with pity stirred,\nOr superstitious awe, she slightly turned,\nBut gazing still, over his features came\nThe semblance of a smile, and his arms moved,\nClasping in rosy dreams some form beloved,\nAnd his lips moved, and though no sound she heard,\nShe thought they shaped her name, and a red flame\nLeaped to her brain, and through her vision passed;\nA raging demon seized and filled her frame,\nAnd like a lightning flash leaped forth her knife:\nThat cold keen heart-pang is his last of life;\nThe Water-Demon is avenged at last.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\nPART III.\n\nShe struck but once, no need hath lightning stroke\nFor second blow to rend the heart of oak,\nNor waited there to see how Gray Cloud died;\nHer fury all in that fierce outburst spent,\nAs from a charnel cave she fled the tent;\nThe wolfish dog suspiciously outside\nSniffed at her moccasins but let her pass.\nHer tipi soon she reached, distant no more\nThan arrow from a warrior's bowstring sent,\nPaused but to wipe her knife upon the grass,\nAnd found her usual couch upon the floor.\nBut not to sleep; she closed her eyes in vain,\nShutting away the moonlight from her view;\nDarkness and moonlight wore the same dread hue,\nFlooding the universe with crimson stain.\nShe clasped her bosom with her hands to still\nThe throbbing of her heart that seemed to fill\nWith tell-tale echoes all the air; an owl\nThe secret with unearthly shrieks confessed,\nAnd Gray Cloud's dog sent forth a doleful howl\nAt intervals; but worse than all the rest,\nThat dreadful drum still beating in her breast,\nAs furious war-drums in the scalp-dance beat\nTo the mad circling of delirious feet.\n\n[Illustration: \"THE GIANT CLIFFS OF RED-WING SPREADING BACK.\"]\n\nEarly next morning, as the first faint rays\nOf sunlight through the rustling lindens played,\nTwo children sent to seek the conjurer's aid,\nGazed on the sight, with horror and amaze,\nOf Gray Cloud's lifeless body rolled in blood.\nFast through the village spread the news, and stirred\nWith mingled fear and wonder all who heard.\nThe oracles were baffled and dismayed,\nAnd spoke with muffled tones and looks of dread:\n\"Some envious foeman lurking in the wood,\nWith medicine more strong than his,\" they said,\n\"Stole in last night and gave the fatal wound.\"\nThe warriors scoured the country miles around,\nSeeking for sign or trail, but naught they found:\nThe murderer left behind no clue or trace\nMore than a vampire's flight through darkling space.\n\nThe Raven with a stoic calmness heard\nOf Gray Cloud's death, nor showed by look or word\nThe wrath that to its depth his being stirred.\nWinona heard the news with false surprise,\nAs if just roused from sleep she rubbed her eyes;\nWhen she arose her knees like aspens shook,\nBut this she quelled and forced a tranquil look\nTo feign the calmness that her soul forsook.\nAnd when the mourning wail rose on the air,\nWinona's voice was heard commingling there.\nShe gathered with the other maidens where,\nOn a rude bier, the conjurer's body lay\nAdorned and decked in funeral array.\nShe flung a handful of her sable hair,\nAnd wept such tears above the painted clay[13]\nAs weeps a youthful widow, only heir,\nOver the coffin of a millionaire.\n\nMoons waxed to fullness and to sickles waned.\nThe gossips still conversed with bated breath.\nThe appalling mystery of Gray Cloud's death,\nWrapped in impenetrable gloom, remained\nA blighting shadow o'er the village spread.\nBut youthful spirits are invincible,\nNor fear nor superstition long can quell\nThe bubbling flow of that perennial well;\nAnd so the youths and maidens soon regained\nThe wonted gayety that late had fled.\nAll save Winona, in whose face and mien,\nUnto the careless eye, no change was seen;\nBut one that noted might sometimes espy\nA furtive fear that shot across her eye,\nAs in a forest, 'thwart some bit of blue,\nDarts a rare bird that shuns the hunter's view.\nHer laugh, though gay, a subtle change confessed,\nAnd in her attitude a vague unrest\nBetrayed a world of feelings unexprest.\nA shade less light her footsteps in the dance,\nAnd sometimes now the Raven's curious glance\nHer soul with terrors new and strange oppressed.\n\nGrief shared is lighter, none had she to share\nBurdens that grew almost too great to bear,\nFor Redstar sometimes seemed to look askance,\nAnd sought, they said, to win another breast.\nWinona feigned to laugh, but in her heart\nThe rumor rankled like a poisoned dart.\nSometimes she almost thought the Raven guessed\nThe guilty secrets that her thoughts oppressed,\nAnd sought, whene'er she could, to shun his sight.\nApart from human kind, still more and more,\nThe Raven dwelt, and human speech forbore.\nAnd once upon a wild tempestuous night,\nWhen all the demons of the earth and air\nLike raging furies were embattled there,\nShe, peering fearfully, amid the swarm\nFlitting athwart the flashes of the storm,\nBy fitful gleams beheld the Raven's form.\nTo her he spoke not since the fateful night\nHis chosen comrade passed from human sight,\nSave only once, forgetting he was by\nAnd half forgetting too her care and woes,\nUnto her lips some idle jest arose.\n\"Winona,\" said the Raven, in a tone\nOf stern reproof that on the instant froze\nAll thought of mirth, and when she met his eye,\nAs by a serpent's charm it fixed her own;\nThe hate and anger of a soul intense\nWere all compressed in that remorseless glance,\nThe coldly cruel meaning of whose sense\nSmote down the shield of her false innocence.\nShe strove to wrest her eye from his in vain,\nHeld by that gaze ophidian like a bird,\nAs in a trance she neither breathed nor stirred.\nAnd gazing thus an icy little lance,\nSmaller than quill from wing of humming-bird,\nShot from his eyes, and a keen stinging pain\nSped through the open windows of her brain.\nHer senses failed, she sank upon the ground,\nAnd darkness veiled her eyes; she never knew\nHow long this was, but when she slowly grew\nBack from death's counterfeit, and looked around,\nSo little change was there, that it might seem\nThe scene had been but a disordered dream.\nThe Raven sat in his accustomed place,\nSmoking his solitary pipe; his face,\nA gloomy mask that none might penetrate,\nBetrayed no sign of anger, grief, or hate;\nAbsorbed so deep in thoughts that none might share,\nHe noted not Winona's presence there;\nFrom his disdainful lips the thin blue smoke\nFrom time to time in little spirals broke,\nFloating like languid sneers upon the air,\nAnd settling round him in a veil of blue\nSo sinister to her disordered view,\nThat she arose and quickly stole away.\nShe shunned him more than ever from that day,\nAnd never more unmoved could she behold\nThat countenance inscrutable and cold.\n\nBut Hope and Love, like Indian summer's glow,\nGilding the prairies ere December's snow,\nLit with a transient beam Winona's eye.\nThe season for the Maidens' Dance drew nigh,\nAnd Redstar vowed, whatever might betide,\nTo claim her on the morrow as his bride.\nWhat now to her was all the world beside?\nThe evil omens darkening all her sky,\nMalicious sneers, her rival's envious eye,\nWhile her false lover lingered at her side,\nAll passed like thistle-down unheeded by.\nThe evening for the dance arrived at last;\nAn ancient crier through the village passed,\nAnd summoned all the maidens to repair\nTo the appointed place, a greensward where,\nSince last year unprofaned by human feet,\nRustled the prairie grass and flowers sweet.\nNone but the true and pure might enter there--\nMaidens whose souls unspotted had been kept.\nAt set of sun the circle there was formed,\nAnd thitherward the happy maidens swarmed.\nThe people gathered round to view the scene:\nOld men in broidered robes that trailing swept,\nAnd youths in all their finery arrayed,\nDotting like tropic birds the prairie green,\nTheir rival graces to the throng displayed.\nWinona came the last, but as she stept\nInto the mystic ring one word, \"Beware!\"\nRang out in such a tone of high command\nThat all was still, and every look was turned\nTo where the Raven stood; his stern eye burned,\nAnd like a flower beneath that withering glare\nShe faded fast. No need that heavy hand\nTo lead Winona from the joyous band;\nNo need those shameful words that stained the air:\n\"Let not the sacred circle be defiled\nBy one who, all too easily beguiled,\nBeneath her bosom bears a warrior's child.\"\n\nWinona swiftly fleeing, as she passed,\nOne look upon her shrinking lover cast\nThat seared his coward heart for many a day,\nInto the deepest woods she took her way.\nThe dance was soon resumed, and as she fled,\nLike hollow laughter chasing overhead,\nPursued the music and the maidens' song.\nJust as she passed from sight an angry eye\nGlared for a moment from the western sky,\nAnd flung one quivering shaft of dazzling white,\nWith tenfold thunder-peal, adown the night.\nHer mother followed her, and sought her long,\nCalling and listening through the falling dew,\nWhile fast and furious still the cadence grew\nOf the gay dance, whose distant music fell,\nSmiting the mother like a funeral knell.\nHigh rode the sun in heaven next day before\nThe stricken mother found along the shore\nThe object of her unremitting quest.\nThe cooling wave whereon she lay at rest\nHad stilled the tumult of Winona's breast\nAlong that shapely ruin's plastic grace,\nAnd in the parting of her braided hair,\nThe hopeless mother's glances searching there\nThe Thunder-Bird's mysterious mark might trace.\n\nSo died Winona, and let all beware,\nFor vengeance follows fast and will not spare,\nNor maid, nor warrior that dares offend\nWho hath the cruel Thunder-Bird for friend.\n\n\n\n\nTHE PEACE-PIPE\nQUARRY\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\nOutward swell the rolling prairies like the waves of ocean deep;\nHigher rise the crested billows rolling upward as they sweep\nFrom horizon to horizon, and the air grows pure and free,\n\"On the mountains of the prairie,\" on the wind-swept emerald sea.\n\nAs in olden time the zealots who would build unto their God,\nSacred temples for his worship, chose a \"high place,\" and the sod\nOf the consecrated mountain was made holy by the rites\nOf footsore and weary pilgrims who had sought the sacred heights,\nSo instinctively the red-men, roaming o'er the boundless main,\nLooked for their Manitou above the low level of the plain;\nSought and found him on the summit of the green wave's swelling crest\nRising upward like a mountain, in the valley of the West.\n\nNot to him they founded temples, gilded fanes and altars fair;\nLooking up, they saw already Manitou enthroned there\nIn the fastness of the mountain, with his sphynx-like, stony face\nWatching like a guardian spirit, o'er the dusky lawless race\nWho regarded not each other, and their deadly hatred slaked\nIn the blood of friends and foemen, when their slumbering ire was waked.\n\n\"Gitche Manitou, the Mighty,\" the Great Spirit throned above,\nWas a God of truth and wisdom, was a God of peace and love;\nAnd as God upon Mount Sinai, stooping from his heavenly throne,\nGave the law unto his people, deeply graven into _stone_,\n\"Gitche Manitou, the Mighty,\" in compassion for the race\nOf unlettered, untaught heathen who knew not his god-like face\nSave they saw it in the tempest or the lightning's livid glare,\nOr in some familiar emblem they could see, or feel, or wear,\nTaught them peace and love to kindred, through an emblem formed of stone,\nFashioned in the well-known outlines of a thing they called their own.\nIn the caverns of his store-house, deeply sunken in the ground,\nLay the mystical red pipe-stone, never yet by sachem found.\nWith his strong right hand almighty, rent he now the ground in twain,\nBroke the red stone of the quarry, and, resounding o'er the plain,\nCame this message to the warriors:--\"Let this be to you a sign:\nMake you calumets of pipe-stone, pledge you peace and love divine,\nBy the smoking of this signet. Let it pass from hand to hand.\nCease you from your wars and wrangling, and be brothers in the land.\"\n\nThe Great Spirit's words were heeded, and the calumet, the pipe\nWhich they often smoked together in their councils, was the type\nOf good-will and peace thereafter, and upon the quarry's site,\nHostile tribes and tongues and races meeting, never meet to fight.\n\nMany legends and traditions cluster round this sacred spot;\nMany histories and records deep with hidden meaning fraught,\nHave been chiseled on the ledges at the ancient bowlders' base,\nWho, like strangers in the valley, drifted to a resting place.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nHere, ere Manitou had given to the tribes the pipe of peace,\nSaw he mighty war and bloodshed, saw the tribes of men decrease,\nUntil fleeing from destruction, come three maidens to the rocks--\nThe last remnant of all women, hiding from the fearful shocks\nOf the deadly fight and carnage which was raging through the air,\nDriven to these three large bowlders, as a refuge in despair.\nNow in memory of the conflict and the part the bowlders bore,\nThey are named in weird tradition, \"The Three Maidens,\" evermore.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nHere the thunder-bird portentous, Wakan, terrible in might,\nMade his home in awful grandeur on the cliff's mysterious height.\nHere the flapping of his pinions brought the fierce, hot lightning's\n  glare,\nGlazing all the fissured surface like enamel smooth and fair;\nMelting all the red rock's substance till a foot-print of the bird,\nPlastic then, took form and hardened for a witness of the word.\n\n[Illustration: _Falls of Winnewissa._]\n\nNorthward, just beyond the quarry, stands the famous \"Leaping Rock,\"\nWith its proud head reared to heaven, with an air that seems to mock\nAnd to set at stern defiance, boastful braves who seek for fame,\nAnd from agile feats to gather for themselves an envied name.\nHither came to try his daring, with brave heart to valor nerved,\nHopefully a young Sioux chieftain, never from his purpose swerved,\nCame in all his youthful vigor, with his band of stalwart braves,\nFrom the land of the Dakotas; zealously his spirit craves\nTo lead them all in bravery as he oft before has led,\nAnd the plumes of the war eagle proudly waving on his head,\nTo wear in boastful triumph on the far-famed treacherous height,\nAnd in his tribe's traditions, thus his envied name to write.\n\nFearlessly he stands a moment on the overhanging edge\nOf the nearest cliff's high summit, eyes the small and slippery ledge\nJust beyond the yawning chasm which his daring feet must leap;\nStands there bold and free and fearless, taking inward at a sweep\nAll the fearful odds and chances, the deep chasm he must cross--\nCalculates with hope of winning, never with a fear of loss.\nHigh above him arch the heavens; deep below him yawns the gulf;\nIn his ears the cataract thunders, and before him stands the rough,\nTowering rock with air defiant, standing mocking, beckoning there.\nWith a fixed resolve and purpose, he leaps upward in the air--\nLeaps, but not as he had counted, for his feet touch not the goal,\nBut his body plunges downward, and the young Sioux warrior's soul,\nRising upward through the ether, seeks the happy hunting ground\nJust as anxious friends and kindred gather hastily around,\nDropping tears unto his memory and with slow and measured tread,\nBear away the bold young chieftain, to the mansions of the dead.\nFear the falls of Winnewissa sweetly wooing to repose\nWith its murmurous plash of waters perfume-laden of the rose,\n'Neath the soil which once _his_ kindred claimed and lived in until we\nRising eastward like a storm-cloud, swept the land from sea to sea.\nSleepeth well the brave young warrior in this legend-hallowed ground,\nThe long sleep that knows no waking till the common trump shall sound.\nStill the Indian camp-fires glimmer round the sacred quarry's edge,\nAnd the calumet, the peace-pipe, is to them a friendly pledge:\nAnd the doubting pale-face dwelling near the blood-red mystic stone,\nFeels around him peace and safety like Elijah's mantle thrown.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nLong may Manitou, the mighty, the Great Spirit throned above,\nSmile upon his helpless children, fill their lives with peace and love;\nAnd at last, in the great council, at the bidding of his voice,\nMay they meet to smoke the peace-pipe with the people of his choice.\n\n\n\n\nThe Song of Hiawatha.\n\n\nTHE PEACE-PIPE.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nOn the Mountains of the Prairie,[14]\nOn the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,[15]\nGitche Manito, the mighty,\nHe the Master of Life, descending,\nOn the red crags of the quarry\nStood erect, and called the nations,\nCalled the tribes of men together.\nFrom his footprints flowed a river,\nLeaped into the light of morning,\nO'er the precipice plunging downward\nGleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.\nAnd the Spirit, stooping earthward,\nWith his finger on the meadow\nTraced a winding pathway for it,\nSaying to it, \"Run in this way!\"\n  From the red stone of the quarry\nWith his hand he broke a fragment,\nMolded it into a pipe-head,\nShaped and fashioned it with figures;\nFrom the margin of the river\nTook a long reed for a pipe-stem,\nWith its dark green leaves upon it;\nFilled the pipe with bark of willow,\nWith the bark of the red willow;\nBreathed upon the neighboring forest,\nMade its great boughs chafe together,\nTill in flame they burst and kindled;\nAnd erect upon the mountains,\nGitche Manito, the mighty,\nSmoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe,\nAs a signal to the nations.\n  And the smoke rose slowly, slowly,\nThrough the tranquil air of morning,\nFirst a single line of darkness,\nThen a denser, bluer vapor,\nThen a snow-white cloud unfolding,\nLike the tree-tops of the forest,\nEver rising, rising, rising,\nTill it touched the top of heaven,\nTill it broke against the heaven,\nAnd rolled outward all around it.\n  From the Vale of Tawasentha,\nFrom the Valley of Wyoming,[16]\nFrom the groves of Tuscaloosa,[17]\nFrom the far-off Rocky Mountains,\nFrom the Northern lakes and rivers\nAll the tribes beheld the signal,\nSaw the distant smoke ascending,\nThe Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe.\n  And the Prophets of the nations\nSaid: \"Behold it, the Pukwana!\nBy this signal from afar off,\nBending like a wand of willow,\nWaving like a hand that beckons,\nGitche Manito, the mighty,\nCalls the tribes of men together,\nCalls the warriors to his council!\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\nII.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nBy the shores of Gitche Gumee,\nBy the shining Big-Sea-Water,\nStood the wigwam of Nokomis,\nDaughter of the Moon, Nokomis\nDark behind it rose the forest,\nRose the black and gloomy pine-trees,\nRose the firs with cones upon them;\nBright before it beat the water,\nBeat the clear and sunny water,\nBeat the shining Big-Sea-Water.\nThere the wrinkled, old Nokomis\nNursed the little Hiawatha,\nRocked him in his linden cradle,\nBedded soft in moss and rushes,\nSafely bound with reindeer sinews;\nStilled his fretful wail by saying,\n\"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!\"\nLulled him into slumber, singing,\n\"Ewa-yea! my little owlet!\nWho is this, that lights the wigwam?\nWith his great eyes lights the wigwam?\nEwa-yea! my little owlet!\"\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nHiawatha's Wooing.\n\n\n  At the doorway of his wigwam\nSat the ancient Arrow-maker,\nIn the land of the Dacotas,\nMaking arrow-heads of jasper,\nArrow-heads of chalcedony.\nAt his side, in all her beauty,\nSat the lovely Minnehaha,\nSat his daughter, Laughing Water,\nPlaiting mats of flags and rushes;\nOf the past the old man's thoughts were,\nAnd the maiden's of the future.\n  He was thinking, as he sat there,\nOf the days when with such arrows\nHe had struck the deer and bison,\nOn the Muskoday, the meadow;\nShot the wild goose flying southward,\nOn the wing, the clamorous Wawa;\nThinking of the great war-parties,\nHow they came to buy his arrows,\nCould not fight without his arrows.\nAh, no more such noble warriors,\nCould be found on earth as they were!\nNow the men were all like women,\nOnly used their tongues for weapons!\n  She was thinking of a hunter,\nFrom another tribe and country,\nYoung and tall and very handsome,\nWho one morning, in the Spring-time,\nCame to buy her father's arrows,\nSat and rested in the wigwam,\nLingered long about the doorway,\nLooking back as he departed.\nShe had heard her father praise him,\nPraise his courage and his wisdom;\nWould he come again for arrows\nTo the Falls of Minnehaha?\nOn the mat her hands lay idle,\nAnd her eyes were very dreamy.\n  Through their thoughts they heard a footstep,\nHeard a rustling in the branches,\nAnd with glowing cheek and forehead,\nWith the deer upon his shoulders,\nSuddenly from out the woodlands\nHiawatha stood before them.\n  Straight the ancient Arrow-maker\nLooked up gravely from his labor,\nLaid aside the unfinished arrow,\nBade him enter at the doorway,\nSaying, as he rose to meet him,\n\"Hiawatha, you are welcome!\"\n  At the feet of Laughing Water\nHiawatha laid his burden,\nThrew the red deer from his shoulders;\nAnd the maiden looked up at him,\nLooked up from her mat of rushes,\nSaid with gentle look and accent,\n\"You are welcome, Hiawatha!\"\n  Very spacious was the wigwam,\nMade of deer-skin dressed and whitened,\nWith the Gods of the Dakotas\nDrawn and painted on its curtains,\nAnd so tall the doorway, hardly\nHiawatha stooped to enter,\nHardly touched his eagle-feathers\nAs he entered at the doorway.\n  Then uprose the Laughing Water,\nFrom the ground fair Minnehaha,\nLaid aside her mat unfinished,\nBrought forth food and set before them,\nWater brought them from the brooklet,\nGave them food in earthen vessels,\nGave them drink in bowls of bass-wood,\nListened while the guest was speaking,\nListened while her father answered,\nBut not once her lips she opened,\nNot a single word she uttered.\n  Yes, as in a dream she listened\nTo the words of Hiawatha,\nAs he talked of old Nokomis,\nWho had nursed him in his childhood.\nAs he told of his companions,\nChibiabos, the musician,\nAnd the very strong man, Kwasind,\nAnd of happiness and plenty\nIn the land of the Ojibways,\nIn the pleasant land and peaceful.\n  \"After many years of warfare,\nMany years of strife and bloodshed,\nThere is peace between the Ojibways\nAnd the tribe of the Dakotas.\"\nThus continued Hiawatha,\nAnd then added, speaking slowly,\n\"That this peace may last forever,\nAnd our hands be clasped more closely,\nAnd our hearts be more united,\nGive me as my wife this maiden,\nMinnehaha, Laughing Water,\nLoveliest of Dakota women!\"\n  And the ancient Arrow-maker\nPaused a moment ere he answered,\nSmoked a little while in silence,\nLooked at Hiawatha proudly,\nFondly looked at Laughing Water,\nAnd made answer very gravely:\n\"Yes, if Minnehaha wishes;\nLet your heart speak, Minnehaha!\"\n  And the lovely Laughing Water\nSeemed more lovely, as she stood there,\nNeither willing nor reluctant,\nAs she went to Hiawatha,\nSoftly took the seat beside him,\nWhile she said, and blushed to say it,\n\"I will follow you, my husband!\"\n  This was Hiawatha's wooing!\nThus it was he won the daughter\nOf the ancient Arrow-maker,\nIn the land of the Dakotas!\n\n                HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.\n\n\n\n\nThe River-Lake.\n\n\nAfter the cooling shower\nSoft is the twilight hour\n  On the river-lake.\nSweetly the plaintive note\nGushes from whippoorwill's throat,\nGently, gently we float,\n  Light as a fine snow-flake,\n  Down the river-lake.\nThe dripping oars at rest\n  Their murmurous music wake,\nAnd ripple o'er the breast\n  Of the peaceful river-lake.\n\nThe lovely shadows fall\nLike a sin-outshutting wall\n  On the river-lake,\nCharming the hour and place.\nThe holiness we trace\nIn Nature's quiet grace\n  Makes sacred for her sake\n  All on the river-lake.\nO this is purest joy!\n  This it is that makes\nMe love the wide St. Croix,\n  The river-lake of lakes.\n\n                E. L. FALES.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nSong of a Nadowessee Chief.\n\n\nSee on his mat--as if of yore,\n  All life-like sits he here!\nWith that same aspect which he wore\n  When light to him was dear.\n\nBut where the right hand's strength? and where\n  The breath that loved to breathe,\nTo the Great Spirit aloft in air,\n  The peace-pipe's lusty wreath?\n\nAnd where the hawk-like eye, alas!\n  That wont the deer pursue,\nAlong the waves of rippling grass,\n  Or fields that shone with dew?\n\nAre these the limber, bounding feet\n  That swept the winter's snows?\nWhat stateliest stag so fast and fleet?\n  Their speed outstripped the roe's!\n\nThese arms, that then the steady bow\n  Could supple from its pride,\nHow stark and helpless hang they now\n  Adown the stiffened side!\n\nYet weal to him--at peace he stays\n  Where never fall the snows;\nWhere o'er the meadows springs the maize\n  That mortal never sows.\n\nWhere birds are blithe on every brake--\n  Where forests teem with deer--\nWhere glide the fish through every lake--\n  One chase from year to year!\n\nWith spirits now he feasts above;\n  All left us--to revere\nThe deeds we honor with our love,\n  The dust we bury here.\n\nHere bring the last gift! loud and shrill\n  Wail, death dirge for the brave!\nWhat pleased him most in life may still\n  Give pleasure in the grave.\n\nWe lay the ax beneath his head\n  He swung when strength was strong--\nThe bear on which his banquets fed--\n  The way from earth is long!\n\nAnd here, new sharped, place the knife\n  That severed from the clay,\nFrom which the ax had spoiled the life,\n  The conquered scalp away!\n\nThe paints that deck the dead bestow--\n  Yes, place them in his hand--\nThat red the kingly shade may glow\n  Amid the spirit-land.\n\n                SIR. E. L. BULWER.\n\n\n\n\n\"Mahnusatia.\"\n\n\nA pine-girt lake, broad spread; a glimpse\nOf clear-rimmed bay, encroaching lusk\nUpon a lapse of rocky vale;\nBeyond, a brunt-browed mountain, set\nAbrupt against a weary waste\nOf level, sparse-grown forest plain.\nVanguard of Order's birth on Earth's\nPrimeval stage, sphynx-like, the mount\nFrom chaos burst upon a world\nOf sea in space. It kept its head\nTo the sun; it pierced the dense of the mists;\nIt gathered forces, one by one,\nUntil the land by light was kissed.\nThe waters slunk away to Lake\nSuperior's bent, leaving a child\nAt play, on a plateau's breast, content.\nMarking the march of time, the mount\nGrew grim and gray, while ages stored\nTheir riches at its feet away:--\nOre-of-iron riches deep stowed\nIn vaults of rock, for creature king\nOf future age to fit the key\nOf genius in their ancient locks;\nStowed wealth to bless a nation, whose\nMotto: \"Onward! Light!\" befits it\nFor that mountain's home, which pierced through\nInchoate night; stowed signet seal,\nWith which to stamp that fair land's Queen\nOf States, whose crested monogram,\nWith sheaves of wheat entwined, the North\nStar scintillates.\n\n                            Guarding the till\nOf treasure, mountain, grim and gray,\nPlaying with wind and wave, child-lough\nAnd lazy bay--Archaic group\nAre they, whose quiet naught details\nOf primal epochs; yet, as face\nOf man with furrowed wrinkles marked\nAnd seared, suggests his past life's course,\nTheir presence in itself reveals\nThe trace of annals which their calm\nConceals. So Mystery's seeds were sown.\nEven the simple Indian folk,--\nNaive indigene of primitive plain,--\nBeheld with minds to quickened thought\nProvoked, that single skyward height\nBreak stark upon the main and called\nIt \"Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog.\"\nBecause, they said, it was the breast\nOf Mother Earth, which there arose\nTo succor spirit souls in quest\nOf joyous hunting-grounds, of which\nTheir wise men tell. And not to them\nAlone has nature from this rare\nScene appealed to fancy; for, when\nOld Father Time, from out his horn\nOf plenty, had poured the years full\nGenerations high upon the one\nTo which this legend runs, the white\nMan came, bearing a waving stick,\nHis country's standard, into these\nProemial haunts. The lake, wine-stained,\nHe called \"Vermilion,\" but the mount\nWhich broke upon his vision from\nUnder a chastened moon, he named,\n\"Jasper,\" after glories promised\nTo the kingdom of his own God.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe wild rice bent its fragile stalk\nBeneath a crown of ripened grain;\nThe birch and oak and maple blazed\nThe Autumn's glory forth, and set aflame\nWith red and gold, the northland pines,\nPerennial green. The light wind's voice\nWas muffled in requiem, mournful, low,--\nA parting song to Summer, sad, soft,\nAnd measured slow. Timed to the chant\nOf death, but tuned to death's sweet hope--\nJoy-hope of sorrow born--fair birth,\nA freer life of fuller scope!\nThe sinking sun set all ablush\nThe bosom of the lake. Upon the edge\nOf twilight rode the specter moon--\nSwift pinioned bird of noiseless flight--\nAnd hung a halo far above\nMount Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog.\nAlong the shard-strewn shore, a band\nOf Chippeway braves had pitched their camp,\nTo celebrate, with rites of their\nMedawe, the flooding season's\nTide of full-grown grain. In and out\nAmong the shadow-lengthened pines,\nTheir dusky forms moved, one by one,\nTo circle silently around\nThe council fire. And when the tribe\nWere gathered all, the day was done;\nIts splendor shifted to the Queen\nOf Night, that, flushed with triumph, flung\nAdown the path of sky, beyond\nMount Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog\nA bridge of golden gleams, to lose\nThemselves within the darkling depths\nOf Lake Vermilion's lifeless bay.\n\nThen Guteba, like Jacob's son,\nThe favored one of twelve, arose.\nNo warrior paint his tawny skin\nBedecked, nor eagle plume, nor claw\nOf beast adorned his royal head--\nBase custom that of vulgar herd.\nHe wore a girt of wampum, nor\nNeed had he of other raiment;\nFor form erect, and sinewy frame\nAnd kindling eye, bespoke the garb\nOf manhood.\n\n                Thus he addressed them:\n\"From yonder window, framed in sky,\nSwings Ko-go-gau-pa-gon.\nThe God of Life has placed it there.\nDown-hanging from the happy land,\nWhere spirits go, it forms a bridge,\nO'er which all ransomed souls must cross.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nIn fineness built, of beam of moon,\nIt sinks and rolls, my children. But\nThe light of foot and brave of heart\nFear not. And one thing mark: before\nAn Indian may touch sole upon\nThose gleaming strands of gold, he first\nMust navigate the bay, within\nWhose darkly deep and treacherous bounds\nThe water, shamming, seems to sleep,\nBut only lies, like cunning fox,\nTo snare unwary passers-by\nAnd hold them from their homeward way.\n\n\"The story is not new. It is\nTold with every year, as I do tell\nIt now, when comes Medawe time;\nWhen all the earth was young in youth\nThe mighty Water reigned thereon\nAnd breath of life was not. Then, here,\nUpon the wind was heard a voice\nIn thunder tones, which said unto\nThe Water, 'Kitchie Gumme, I\nAm Gezha Manitou--of Life\nThe Master Spirit. Lo! I bid\nThy waves recede. Here, leading up\nPast Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog\nUnto the Soul's Hereafter, I\nHave established Ke-wa-ku-na.\nThy waters overleap my path\nSo that my children cannot pass.\nThou'st gone too far. Retreat to serve\nWithin the spacious metes which I\nHave set for thee.' Because the waves\nWould not, Gezha Manitou hurled\nThem back upon each other, till\nThey sank deeper and deeper and\nDeeper into perpetual sea.\nTime does not count backward beyond\nThat struggle, but the water's voice\nHas ever since been dumb where it\nTook place; his arms have there refused\nThe birch canoe to cradle, or\nThe fish to succor. There, also\nHe called the Matchie Manitou,\nThe evil ones, to do his will.\nThey slew the buffalo, until\nThe rocks turned red with blood. They stole\nThe souls of them who sought to pass\nThe water grave; and man grew sad\nAnd heavy-hearted. Then the voice\nOf Gezha Manitou again\nWas heard in words of speech to say:\n'When winter snows, and springtime showers,\nAnd summer suns have rounded out\nThe moon of ripened grain, light fires\nTo mark the places where your dead\nAwait my messengers to guide\nThem home. Of meat to eat provide\nThem none; but shape their arrows strong\nAnd true. My buffalo will herd\nUpon the water, and, along\nThe shores, thy garnered stores of grass\nAnd grain must yield them food. Their horns\nWill golden glimmer on the night\nTo make them easy prey for home\nBound souls, and they shall not be harmed\nBy Matchie Manitou. All clothed\nIn serpent skin and sharpened tooth\nAnd poisoned tongue, my guides will come.\nThen, let the living wary be\nAnd go not near the tombs after\nThe haze of dusk turns dark of night;\nFor swift my heralds will approach\nThose ghostly haunts with sure demand\nFor every soul that's found therein,\nBe it in body dead or quick.'\n\n\"The month, the day, the hour is here,\nMy children, when the dead may cross\nTo Ke-wa-ku-na less the fear\nOf harm, and we have come to say\nThe last farewell. Wacumic's tomb,\nAmong the rest, awaits the torch.\nIn council, he was the Wise Man;\nIn war, the Brave Chief, and at home\nThe Best Loved,--his forefathers famed\nFor deeds of valor, virtue, and\nWisdom far back as memory takes\nThe trail. His name, interpreted\n'The waters ceased and earth began,'\nDenotes the time to which his line\nOf lineage runs. His spirit craves\nThe promised land of happy hunt,\nAnd chase, and sweetly flowing streams.\nOur numbers are few, but our hearts\nAre strong. We are weak from the loss\nOf many battles, far from home;\nOur horizon is shadowed by the Sioux;\nTheir echoing songs ring the woodlands\nThrough. Is it wise for us to light\nThe zenith of our skies, e'en tho'\nIt be with flame of sacred fire?\nWacumic was my father; you\nMy children are. I have finished.\"\nAgainst the circle's center stake\nThe chieftain placed his wing-trimmed stick--\nMost curious crozier, which gave\nUnto the thought of him, whose palm\nIt touched a brilliant speaking tongue;\nResumed his honored place the tribe\nAmong.\n\n    Then stranger far, than track\nOf wayward bird, or swirling wind,\nWas Janishkisgan's forward course.\nA maid of plebeian birth, she did\nNot ask the leave of public speech--\nA right to woman not allowed--\nBut from her people, where she sat,\nWith meekness due, stepped out and grasped\nThe staff Guteba had released,\nThus arrogating to herself\nThe right of oracle.\n\n                  She said:\n\"I was thy dead chief's handmaid, Friends.\nTwelve months agone, I was with him\nUpon the battle-field alone.\nThe Sioux were all around us; their\nFaces war-red painted; their cries\nOf vengeance filling all the air.\nHe to his saddle caught me up.\nThe Great Spirit strengthened his arm;\nThe lightning whet his ax; the wind\nSpeeded his pony's hoofs. Through walls\nOf human blood he cut our way,\nAnd on his tomb no single scalp\nThe deed remarks, or notes the slain\nHe left to whiten bones upon\nThe plains. He saved my life. What can\nI better do with it than use\nIt for him? Arrows ready make;\nGather the grass and grain with which\nTo feed the golden horns; prepare\nThe fuel for the sacred fires\nAnd I will light and keep them bright\nUpon the tombs. From my lips\nSpeaks Gezha Manitou. I have done.\"\n\nUpon the silence which her words\nProduced, the night-hawk's startling cry\nSucceeded, and, round and round, above\nHer head a milk-white falcon soared,\nNow sailing high, now skimming low,\nAs if some mystic orison\nIn exultation it performed.\n\n  Symbolic bird! Thy course no chance\nDirected. Talismanic art\nThou held by this nomadic tribe:\nFor, when the First Wacumic ruled\nThe band, from all the hosts of field\nAnd feathery flock of heaven, thou wert\nElected Totem. Favored One!\nTheir fate forever linked to thine;\nThy image crested on their shields;\nThy every flight prophetic held!\n\n      Now, watch the trend of savage mind.\nEven Chief Guteba, who loved\nThe Indian maid, knew that the bird\nA seal had put upon her, from which\nHer accomplished task alone would\nFreedom give; and drove his knife\nInto the thickness of his thigh\nHilt deep, to ease his pain of heart\nThat one so young, so fair and so\nMuch loved withal, must need take thought\nOf courage.\n\n            The Great Medicine\nConfirmed the omen, in these words:\n\"Daughter, thou art chosen: go forth.\nI give thee holy token, no\nWoman ever wore before. It is\nThe medicine, which none but brave\nOf noble birth may wear. Though thou\nArt not of chieftain father bred,\nStill yet thou art born noble. Take,\nJanishkisgan, and to the top\nOf Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog.\nThere let thine eye be keen, the path\nOf open safety to descry;--\nUse this plume of eagle plucked,\nTo point to us the way. We will\nPrepare the arrows; grass and grain\nArrange, and make the fuel ready for\nThe flame upon the graves. When four\nAnd twenty hours have passed, light thou\nThe fires upon the tombs, and keep\nThem brightly burning till the ripe\nRich moon has emptied all its gold.\"\n\n  He hung the amulet about\nHer throat--the medicine, a bag\nOf dried, misshapen skin, that held\nThe healing herbs--a homely guise\nThat promised for them little worth;\nFor, so are virtues ofttimes clothed.\n\n  She raised her eyes to heaven, as one\nMade free of fear and full of faith;\nThen moved away, while marveled all\nWho saw her glowing, peaceful face,\nNot knowing that her heart held court\nWithin its inner self, as thus:\n\"I thank thee, milk-white bird, that guides\nMy path. E'en now Guteba's lips\nAre ripe to burst with love of me.\nI see it in his glance; I hear\nIt in his tones. My heart doth not\nRespond. His presents are prepared\nWith which to buy me from my sire;\nHis wigwam waits his bride, but I\nWill never follow there. Thou hast\nGiven me right, thou barbarous bird,\nTo say him nay, who loves him not;\nFor, where the handmaid must obey,\nThe maid who lights the sacred fire\nAnd bears the medicine shall have\nHer equal say. And should my life\nYield in my task, thou'rt kinder, Death,\nThan wandering heart from wigwam fire.\"\n\n  The Chippeway band to safety moved,\nFar toward the rising sun, and pitched\nTheir camp anew; then hoped, less hope,\nFor tidings of Janishkisgan,\nThat never came.\n\n                Guteba's face\nThe while was draped with care, his tongue\nWith sadness locked. To muffled ears\nHis wise men spake, when they implored\nHim, for his honor's sake, to take\nA wife--he being counted less\nThan man by Redskin code, who sits\nWithin his teepee door, without\nThe serving squaw and papoose squawk.\n\n  Meantime the Great White Bird, from out\nThe North, came riding on the wind,\nIts wings o'er heaven spread, and shed\nIts down on hill and plain, the earth\nIn snow deep lying. Fasted then\nGuteba long, and vowed unto\nHimself that, cold in death or rich\nIn life, the maiden should be found;\nAcross his shoulder flung his bow\nAnd arrow quiver; in his belt\nPlaced tomahawk and battle-ax\nAnd lance; to westward sallied forth,\nNor of his purpose spoke.\n\n  Three times the sun went round\nIts course and still he tarried from\nHis home, while in the Chippeway camp\nAnxiety grew alarm at his\nExtended stay, and laggard seemed\nEach tiny fleeting moment to\nThe last, until, when three times three\nThe days had rolled into the past.\nA shout was heard, and sound of life\nAnd roll of drum and tramp of feet\nAnd happy, joyous song proclaimed\nThe sachem's safe return.\n\n                        He came\nWith flowing locks and steady step,\nAnd form erect, his people round\nAbout him flocking, wild with joy,\nAnd full of eager questions, put,\nOf where he'd been and what he'd seen;\nTo which his only answer was:\n\"Up Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog.\"\nAs one possessed by purpose stern,\nHe passed along, nor paused until\nThe halt was made his wigwam door\nBefore, where his aged mother stood\nTo give him greeting. Something more\nThan sweetness beamed in welcome from\nHis smile the while he took her hand\nIn his and spoke that blessed name\n  Of \"Mother.\"\n\n            Then, most sudden end\nOf joy!--into her outstretched arms\nHe sank, as tho' he lent himself\nTo gentle sleep, upon his lips\nThe seal of Gezha Manitou;\nElse had they told the tale, the which\nTo tell, had given him strength to bear\nA deep and mortal arrow wound\nA long march: How Janishkisgan\nLingered from her father's tent\nTo nurse the water Medicine Sioux,\n\"Chief Minnepazuka\" called, who, though\nFor healing arts renowned, had down\nBeen stricken with the plague upon\nThe mountain top, his wisdom shorn\nOf power through lack of body strength\nWith which to put it into use.\nThe dead Chief's sense of justice craved\nThe gift of further speech, to tell\nThe facts that lead thereto as all\nSufficient in themselves to plead\nHer pardon. How Janishkisgan\nFound the Sioux, near the jaws of death,\nAnd in her sympathy forgot\nThat she a Chippeway was and he\nOf hostile stem. She took from him\nThe secret he had wrested from\nThe waves, and mixed a cure thereby\nWith which his life she saved. She kept\nThe fires burning, while waiting on\nHis needs, nor gave him but the time\nThat they required; yet both had learned\nA lesson, dear as life itself--\nEach to the other had taught it,\nAnd both had learned the same--learned to love\nWith a love so holy, that they\nMust needs a union plan, in which\nThere, too, should be united all\nTheir severed bands. Guteba heard,\nWith his own ears, the chieftain swear\nThat he would bring from his far home,\nOn western slopes, the richest gifts\nOf field and forest, to demand\nHis bride from her own father's hand:\nAnd, with the rest, bring too, the white\nWinged dove of peace, nor claim from lips\nSo passing sweet, one tiny kiss\nWithout this all accomplished. Chief\nGuteba, hid in neighboring shrub,\nO'erheard these vows, with tomahawk\nWell aimed against the Sioux Chief's head;\nAnd, hanging on the words, felt all\nHis being's manhood stir in plea\nFor nobler action: fall down let\nThe threatening blade, and, chief to chief,\nChallenged the Sioux to combat with\nThe lance for Janishkisgan's hand;\nIt being current practice, that\nHe who victored in such a fray\nWas held a friend for aye, by all\nThe vanquished chieftain's people. Hurt\nWith fatal stab, the Chippeway Chief\nHad hastened home, to urge upon\nHis tribe the well-earned peace, the which\nMinnepazuka's lance had won.\n\n  Inexplicable fate! That coined\nHis lofty purpose and effort, staunch,\nInto the very ill, for whose\nOpposite good he sought; in death,\nClosed his lips, still undelivered\nOf their message, and left instead\nA gaping wound to cry, \"Revenge!\"\n\n  The tribe tore out their hair, and put\nThe blackening pigment on, and sang\nTheir grieving songs; athirst for blood,\nUnheeding danger, struck their tents\nAnd formed for march, in single file,\nBack, back in gloom, to silent tombs,\nBeside the dark, deep bay, below\nMount Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog,\nThere to lay their beloved chief's\nRemains.\n\n  And, there, Janishkisgan,\nFilled with the superstition of\n  Her kind, made pillow nightly on\nHer mother's grave, as well secure\nAs tho' she slept within the wigwam.\nAnd there it was, one morning's dawn,\nThe somber funeral cortege found\nHer. Most certain proof of innocence\nAnd guilelessness and conscience all\nAt ease to rest upon a grave\nAt night, was it considered. But thus\nTo be, in calm repose, a smile\nTranscendent on the lips, as if\nGood spirits hovered near, almost\nWere past belief of seeing eye.\nSo moved were they, who saw her there,\nThey stole away in awesome hush\nAlong a trackless trail, beneath\nA ledge of rugged rock. Above\nTheir heads a bowlder's jutting edge\nProtruded, where, this early morn,\nMinnepazuka came to sing\nA song of love.\n\n  Alas! That she,\nWho dreamed of him, had dream so sweet,\nHer smile to him disastrous proved:\nFor, in that northern wild, no spot\nSo fit for ambush was as this\nUnbeaten, shrub-grown path of rock\nTo which the Chippeways' impulse\nLed them; and none so ill-secure\nFrom ambuscading foe as this\nSame barren bowlder, upon whose\nO'erhanging height, the Sioux reclined.\n\n  His prelude, played on flageolet,\nIn clear and clarion tones, broke through\nThe still of dawn and fell on ears\nOf foes, who crept upon him, the while\nHe softly sang:\n\n  \"Oh, my Dove's Eye,\nThou dear one, hearest thou not\nMy voice? Thou lingerest far from me.\nI am the Water Medicine. Rocks\nFlow living streams if I but call.\nThou sharest my secrets, wee one;\nThou, too, hast quaffed of Immortal\nWaters. Why linger far from me?\nWhen the fever was upon me,\nThen wast thou near me, thou Sunbeam.\nNow, I am strong. To-morrow will\nI journey toward the setting sun.\nBut I will come back again for thee.\nMy people shall be thine, my own.\nHearken to the voice of my song.\n\n[Illustration]\n\nMy love is like the shining sun\nUpon the pure snow of the mount--\nIt would blush upon thy cheek, but\nIt would not destroy thee. Hear me,\nGentle one; fear me not. Thou didst\nNot love the Chief Guteba. Thy\nLips have confessed it to me, and\nMy lance drank his heart dry. Now, thou\nSleepest upon thy mother's tomb.\"\n\n  As like the lightning of the storm\nForensic message on the walls\nOf heaven writes, to fill the earth\nWith pause of tragic dread, so did\nGuteba's name, on alien tongue\nFor one brief moment holden stay\nThe stealthy steps that stole about\nThe Sioux and closed escaping path\nAround him. And as thunder lends\nUnto the tempest's roar a voice\nMore awful because of that but\nMomentary respite, so with\nThe next succeeding breath, the air\nWas curdled with the Chippeway cry\nOf vengeance. Before the Sioux could\nChange within his grasp the place\nOf joyous flute for battle-ax\nHe was surrounded by them and made\n                  Their royal captive.\n\n  In thongs bound\nDown and tortured, Janishkisgan\nNext beheld him. But love, like theirs,\nWhich hath preserved itself through test\nIn purity, knows not despair.\nNor can it hush itself to ease\nIf it can find the chance to act\nIn the beloved one's behalf.\nSo while the maid, well-honored guard\nOf sacred fires, passed freely round,\nFrom friend, to friend, with greetings kind,\nIn measure full returned, her thoughts\nWere busy with the night.\n\n                                When all\nWas still beneath the stars, she left\nHer blanket couch, high-heaped on leaves,\nAnd let the prisoner free. Under\nAn old oak tree they said farewell,\nNot without Minnepazuka's\nProtestations, who plead as thus:\n\n  \"Oh, come with me, and be my bride;\nMy home is on the prairies wide,\nWhere West sweeps westward, in its pride,\nTo mount the heights of mountain side;\nWhere yellow glows the sunflower's gold,\nAnd earth rolls rich in mellow mold;\nWhere cactus bloom and roses blush,\nAnd rivers sweep through greensward lush;\nWhere deer and antelope and bear\nAbound as free as sunlit air;\nWhere buffalo and cayote dwell\nAnd perch and trout the clear brook swell.\nOh, come; oh, come, and live with me--\nTo serve thee I shall happy be.\nI'll pluck thee bed of down of swan;\nThy cares make light as foot of fawn;\nI'll build canoe of birch-wood bark\nTo cradle thee, my Singing Lark.\nI'll rob the white bear for thy frock;\nI'll bring thee paint from red of rock;\nI'll note the honey-bee in its flight--\nGather its sweets by bright moonlight.\nI'll coax the fishes from the wave;\nThy slightest wish shall bind me slave;\nMy arrow true its bow will fly\nTo draw abundance from the sky;\nThe heavens shall tremble at my voice\nAnd thy dear heart rejoice, rejoice.\nOh, fly with me, these arms to bless;\nRest, rest, my little love, on my breast.\"\n\n  \"It cannot be, my beaming-eyed,\nUntil our people are allied.\nMy father's step is growing slow,\nNo other child hath he. The snow\nUpon his head would pile did I\nBut go with thee. I beg thee fly.\"\n\n  \"No claim so binding is as love--\nOh, come, oh, come, my nestling dove--\nThy hands have set me free. And all\nThe blame of my escape will fall\nOn thee. Thy father will disown\nThee; the children cruel will stone\nThee, and----\"\n\n  \"And I will think of thee.\"\n\n  \"Leave thee alone to bear such wrongs!\nOh, no. Upon my wrists bind back\nThe thongs. I will not freedom take.\n'Twere better far than price like this\nTo perish at the stake. Bind back\nThe thongs.\"\n\n  \"Thou wouldst spare me pain? Then,\nGo. Each tiny, lapping flame of fire\nThat fed its tongue on thee, would scorch\nThe life-blood in my heart until\nUpon the funeral pyre, I'd throw\nMy worthless self. I beg thee go.\"\n\n\"Alas! Thy heart is cold to me.\"\n\n  \"Nay, nay, not so; it all is thine.\nI give it in this kiss. 'Twill sing\nTo thee from throat of bird; it will\nEcho on the wind; it will\nCaress thee from the dew;--'tis all\nI have; it is thine. Farewell.\"\n\n  \"Gentle One, thou givest me life,\nTo take it from me. Thou lily heart,\nThou art my own, my other self:\nThy god declares it unto thee,\nAnd mine to me.\"\n\n  \"And over all\nIs the Great Spirit. Farewell.\"\n\n  \"Thou wilt not go?\"\n\n        \"Farewell.\"\n\n              \"Farewell.\"\n\nSad fate, by human standard judged,\nThe Indian maiden brought upon\nHerself. Given to eat with dogs,\nClothed in rags, disgraced, driven from\nHer father's door, the power of love\nSustained her. Magic Power, Great\nArchitect, Superb Chemist Love!\nThe heart that entertains thee\nGrows lofty in spirit gentleness,\nE'en tho' thou deignst to make it but\nThy workshop. So Janishkisgan\nKnew thee. Fearing only to prove\nUnworthy of her august guest,\nShe walked in the midst of scorn,\nContempt, contumely, sneers and stern\nDispleasure, with that forbearance\nAnd kindly dignity, which re-won\nHer friends, despite themselves; so that\nAt last they gave her pitying peace,\nAnd listened with their heart-strings tuned\nTo life's better part, while she sang\nHer farewell song, each eve beneath\nThe tree.\n\n            After a time the plague\nBroke out and lamentations rose\nOn every hand. Old women made\nTheir teas and plied their healing arts;\nThe Great Medicine Men implored\nGezha Manitou's aid, and all\nThe vibrant air was resonant\nWith invoking incantations.--\nDeath marched on. Then Janishkisgan\nBethought her of her lover's cure;\nGathered the balsam root and mixed\nTherefrom the potent draught, as he\nHad taught her. Great Medicine\nIt was, that brought the glow of health\nInto the faded, hollow cheeks,\nAnd all the people blessed the maid;\nCalled her, \"Mahnusatia,\" which means\nThe balm that heals. Surrounded by\nThe dread disease, she came and went\nUnscathed, as if by unseen hands\nProtected. Where her gentle tones\nWere heard or where her light step fell,\nIt was as if an angel passed.--\nWan faces smiled, and hearts felt hope,\nAnd trembling lips found voice to cry:\n\"Mahnusatia! Mahnusatia!\"\n\nThus in love was she renamed.\nReinstated and reintrenched\nDeeper then ever in hearts which\nHad once renounced her, still she lived\nAs one apart. The seasons came\nAnd passed, and as they did, the tribe\nChanged camp, from place to place, with each\nRecurring Autumn to return\nTo Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog;\nBut \"Mahnusatia\" never left\nThe silent village. There she kept\nHer vigil, night by night, under\nThe old oak tree. Her form became\nWasted; her eyes lustrous; her limbs\nGrew to tremble, but her voice was\nSweeter, as on each even's breeze,\nIn rain or shine, in storm or calm,\nWas heard her fond farewell. Her life's\nLast breath was spent in that farewell.\nHer body lay under the oak, whose\nSpreading branches caught up the sad\nRefrain, \"Farewell, farewell,\" and gave\nIt back again each eventide.\n\n  Her spirit lived in a thousand\nTongues, for where the Chippeway saw\nThe balsam tree, he turned his face\nToward Wey-do-dosh-she-ma-de-nog,\nAs Mahometan to Mecca, and\nCried out in reverential tones,\n\"Mahnusatia! Mahnusatia!\"\n\n  It lives to-day, mere chance of fate,\nPerchance, a monument of fame,\nThan which nor time, nor nation, nor\nPeople have ever better built;\nA monument of State, that rears\nIts regal, star-crowned head above\nIts sisters', in the grandest, most\nGlorious Union, which the world\nHas ever known.\n\n  Yet who shall say,\nWho hath not infinite knowledge,\nIt is but fortune's accident\nThat honors such fidelity?\nWho, rather, shall not concede, that,\nDown the path of time, a fitness,\n\n[Illustration: THE RIVER LAKE.]\n\nEverlasting, perpetuates\nThat sweet, sweet Indian name, which, in\nNobler accents, English spoken,\nEchoes the wide, wide world around:\n\"Minnesota! Minnesota!\"\n\n                MRS. FANNIE L. STONE.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nThe Descending Star.\n\n(A CHIPPEWA LEGEND.)\n\n\nThe Chieftain sat in his wigwam door\n  And smoked his evening pipe,\nWhile a crowd of Indian boys and girls,\n  Knowing his wisdom ripe,\nWere begging him to a story tell,\n  For votive offering brought,\nThe tobacco loved by the aged sage;\n  So he told the tale they sought.\n\n\"There was once a time when the world was filled\n  With a people happy,\" he said:\n\"The crimson tide of war rolled not,\n  Nor against each other led,\nEach rival tribe their warriors brave:\n  For the nations were as one,\nThe frightful scourge that has wasted us\n  Had, happily, not begun.\n\n\"With game in plenty forest and plain\n  Abounded. None were in want\nAnd ghastly famine never touched\n  The tribes with its finger gaunt.\n\n[Illustration: CARVER'S CAVE.]\n\nAt the bidding of man the beasts of the field\n  All meekly went and came;\nFor they feared him not, nor reason had,\n  But all were harmless and tame.\n\n\"Unending spring for winter's blasts\n  And chills gave never a place;\nEach tree and bush bowed low with fruit\n  So they needed not the chase.\nA carpet of flowers covered the earth,\n  While the air with their perfume\nWas laden. The songs of mated birds\n  Rose ever in sweetest tune.\n\n\"The earth was indeed a paradise,\n  And man was worthy to live\n'Mong these delights in tranquil peace\n  That merit alone can give.\nThe Indians--sole possession then--\n  Roamed here and there at will,\nO'er plains and lakes and wilderness--\n  Ah, that it were so still!\n\n\"They numbered millions, as nature designed,\n  Enjoying her many gifts.\nThe sports of the field were their delight;\n  Such life the soul uplifts.\nThey watched the stars with loving gaze,\n  And thought that they must be\nThe homes of the good, with the Great Spirit\n  In the heavens roaming free.\n\n\"One night a star shone strangely bright,\n  Out-shining all the rest.\nAt first they deemed it far away,\n  Its nearness never guessed.\nThen some declared they believed it stood\n  Just over the tree-tops tall.\nTo solve the doubt a council of\n  The wisest men they call.\n\n\"These went one night and found the star\n  Was something like a bird.\nIt hovered just above the trees--\n  They feared, for they had heard\nFrom their forefathers that it might\n  A bloody war foretell,\nAnd over them a silent dread\n  Of some disaster fell.\n\n\"One moon had waned--the mystery\n  No one could solve or tell\nIf the omen of their heavenly guest\n  Foreboded ill or well:\nWhen a warrior had a wondrous dream,\n  A lovely maiden came\nAnd stood by his side--in sweetest tones,\n  She called him by his name.\n\n\"'I love your beautiful lakes,' said she,\n  'Your mountains clothed in green,\nIn yonder sky, shining above,\n  My sisters still are seen.\nBut I have left them to come and live\n  Among your race, young brave:\nTo find a suitable home for me\n  Go ask your sages grave.'\n\n\"'And pray what form shall I assume\n  To be best loved by you?'\nThe youth awoke and stepped from his lodge\n  The ominous star to view.\nIt shone with undimmed luster where\n  It had stood for many a day:\nYet he firmly believed it the visitor\n  His waking had driven away.\n\n\"At early dawn the crier was sent\n  Around the camp to call\nThe warriors at once to the Council Lodge,\n  And there before them all,\nThe young brave told his dream so strange.\n  For love, they said, no doubt\nFor love of man the star had come\n  And wandered thereabout.\n\n\"To welcome her to earth next night\n  Five noble braves were sent.\nShe took the pipe of peace, which herbs\n  A sweet aroma lent.\nThen with expanded wing she came\n  And hovered near their homes,\nLike one who wished to be at rest\n  But still unwilling roams.\n\n\"In dreams she asked the youth again:\n  'Pray tell where I shall live,\nAnd what form now must I assume\n  To most enjoyment give?'\nHe could not decide, so she was told\n  For herself 'twere best to choose.\nThe tribe might through their ignorance\n  Her heavenly wisdom lose.\n\n\"On the mountains first in the pure white rose\n  She dwelt; but all unseen\nBy the tribe she loved: so next she went\n  To be the prairie's queen.\nShe trembled with fear, with ceaseless dread,\n  At the hoof of the buffalo;\nFor safety then a rocky cliff\n  She sought and glanced below.\n\n\"'I know where I will live,' she said,\n  'Where glides the swift canoe\nOf the race I most admire, and where,\n  Dear children, always you\nMy playmates can be. I will kiss your cheeks\n  As you slumber by the lake.\nHere with you all, my best beloved,\n  My home I will ever make.'\n\n\"These words she spoke and alighted soon\n  On the water's limpid breast.\nLooked down at her image reflected there,\n  At last she was at rest.\n\n[Illustration: \"THESE WORDS SHE SPAKE AND ALIGHTED SOON ON THE WATERS'\nLIMPID BREAST.\"]\n\nIn the morning sun, as pure as heaven,\n  A thousand lilies basked;\nFor Wah-be-gwan-nee, water lily,\n  The Indian children asked.\n\n\"In the southern sky this bright star lived;\n  Her brethren can be seen\nFar off in the cold North, hunting the bear:\n  Meanwhile, with ardor keen,\nHer sisters watch from East and West,\n  And here, an exile lone,\nShe sees her heavenly kindred fair\n  In the home that was her own.\n\n\"My children, when the lilies pure\n  You pluck from the placid lake,\nHold them toward heaven, their rightful home,\n  Abandoned for your sake.\nSo they may be happy here on earth\n  As any sister star\nThat, stationed in the summer sky,\n  Gleams brightly from afar.\"\n\n                IDA SEXTON SEARLS.\n\n\n\n\nThe Trailing Arbutus.\n\nEPIGAEA REPENS.\n\n\nIn the vast, primeval forest, unremembered moons ago,\nWhen the streams were dumb and palsied, all the earth was white with snow,\nWhen the eerie wind went chasing evil spirits through the wood,\n'Neath the gaunt and leafless tree-tops, an old Indian teepee stood.\nIn it lived an old man only, with white locks and flowing beard,\nClad in furs from head to foot-sole, like one to the north-land reared:\n\nWeakly his scant fire resisted the dread storm-fiend's icy breath,\nAnd its deep, portentous rumblings spoke of swift approaching death.\nCrouching there, \"O Mannaboosho,\" cried he through the awful night,\n\"Here behold me, thy brave warrior. I will conquer in thy might.\"\nThen the lodge door softly opened and in stepped a beauteous form\nClad in ferns and sweet spring grasses. When she breathed, the air\n  grew warm.\nLarge her eyes were, glowing brightly, as at night, the lustrous fawn's.\nRed her cheeks were like wild roses or bright carmine-tinted dawns.\nLong her hair and black as raven's, trailing o'er the frozen ground,\nAnd her hands with pussy-willows, like close-fitting gloves were bound.\nFair wild-flowers crowned her tresses and her dainty little feet\nWere encased in two white lilies from the great lakes pure and sweet.\n\nSaid the old man, \"Ah, my daughter, I am glad to see you here.\nThough my lodge is cold and cheerless, it will shield you, never fear;\nBut pray tell me, fearless maiden, how these icy blasts you dare\nTo confront in such strange clothing? Will you not the secret share?\nI am old Kabibonokka, and my breath in ice congeals.\nWhen I shake my locks, the snow falls. All the earth my power feels.\nHastily the birds fly southward and the squirrels safely hide.\"\n\"Ah how strange!\" replied the maiden. \"I spread beauty far and wide.\nWhen I shake my raven tresses, soft, warm rain falls from the sky,\nAll the birds come back a-building in the leafy tree-tops high.\"\nThus they talked, but soon the teepee grew like summer, strangely warm,\nAnd the old man's head dropped listless o'er a soundly-sleeping form.\nHigh the sun rode in the heavens, and a bluebird, pert and trim,\nCalled out, \"Say-ee, I am thirsty;\" and the rivers flowed for him.\nAs the old man slept, the maiden passed her hand above his head,\nAnd he smaller grew and smaller, till, all mortal substance sped,\nBut a mass of green leaves growing there remained upon the earth;\nAnd the fairy maiden stooping, with an air of quiet mirth,\nTook pink-tinted flowers and hid them all about beneath the leaves;\nAnd her sweet, fresh breath upon them, like a spell she softly breathes\nAs she sings with clear, wild warblings, \"of my graces, I give all;\nAnd who shall desire to pluck thee, on his bended knees shall fall.\"\n\nThen as onward moved the maiden, through the woods and o'er the plains,\nAll the jocund birds sang to her, o'er her fell the spring-time rains,\nAnd the arbutus in beauty, 'neath her fairy footsteps sprung.\nNowhere else in vale or woodland were the precious seedlets flung.\nStill Northern Minnesota, near the great unsalted sea,\nTrace we will the maiden's footsteps where these self-same blossoms be.\n\n                ADELAIDE GEORGE BENNET.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nNopa.\n\n\nIn the shelter of the forest,\n  By the cataract's lonely brink,\n(Shadow Falls, we call them nowadays)\n  Where the red deer came to drink,\nLived old Chaska and his daughter\n  Nopa, in their tepee small.\nHandsome was this dusky maiden,\n  Eyes like deer and form so tall.\n\n\"Seche-do--bad man,\" said Chaska,\n  As the moccasin he laid down,\nReady for the wampum finish;\n  Nopa's skill his work must crown.\nShe had told him of an artist,\n  Sunny-haired with hand of snow,\nWhose canoe was fastened daily,\n  In the river just below.\n\n\"Talk not to the treacherous white man,\"\n  Chaska said, in tones of wrath,\n\"Harken, daughter, to my warning;\n  Never must he cross my path!\"\nBut poor Nopa little heeded\n  Her old father's wise command;\nWatching close, each day and evening\n  For the footsteps in the sand.\n\n[Illustration: SHADOW FALLS.]\n\nWeeks have passed without his coming;\n  Weeks like years, so full of pain\nTo the Indian maiden thinking,\n  \"Will he never come again?\"\nSurely now she hears his footsteps\n  Where the misty waters pour.\nFalling headlong down the chasm:\n  Nopa will return no more.\n\nChaska hears her calling wildly;\n  Seeks to grasp the fleeing form\nFollows till the rushing waters,\n  Swollen with the autumn's storm,\nCruel, cast his lifeless body\n  'Mong the rocks and caverns wild;\nDesolate, the lonely tepee\n  Waits the hunter and his child.\n\nNow, in autumn, when the aster\n  Nods its purple plumes in pride;\nWhen the black-eyed Susan coyly\n  'Neath the gorgeous sumach hides;\nAnd the golden-rod so stately,\n  To outshine all others tries;\nIn the mist of early evening\n  Two dark forms are seen to rise.\n\nChaska and his dusky daughter,\n  Shades from out the spirit-land,\nFlitting, falling, downward, downward,\n  Till they reach the shining sand.\nVanish then beside the river,\n  Where her faithless lover's bark\nOnce was moored. The waves, all lonely,\n  Lap the sands with shadows dark.\n\n                IDA SEXTON SEARLS.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nThe Sea-Gull.[18]\n\nA LEGEND OF LAKE SUPERIOR. OJIBWAY.\n\n_In the measure of Hiawatha._\n\n[The numerals refer to Notes to The Sea-Gull, in Appendix.]\n\n\nOn the shore of Gitchee Gumee[19]--\nDeep, mysterious, mighty waters--\nWhere the manitoes--the spirits--\nRide the storms and speak in thunder,\nIn the days of Neme-Shomis,[20]\nIn the days that are forgotten,\nDwelt a tall and tawny hunter--\nGitchee Pez-ze-u--the Panther,\nSon of Waub-Ojeeg,[21] the warrior,\nFamous Waub-Ojeeg, the warrior.\nStrong was he and fleet as roebuck,\nBrave was he and very stealthy;\nOn the deer crept like a panther;\nGrappled with Makwa,[22] the monster,\nGrappled with the bear and conquered;\nTook his black claws for a necklet,\nTook his black hide for a blanket.\nWhen the Panther wed the Sea-Gull,\nYoung was he and very gladsome;\nFair was she and full of laughter;\nLike the robin in the spring-time,\nSang from sunrise till the sunset;\nFor she loved the handsome hunter.\nDeep as Gitchee Gumee's waters\nWas her love--as broad and boundless;\nAnd the wedded twain were happy--\nHappy as the mated robins.\nWhen their first-born saw the sunlight\nJoyful was the heart of Panther,\nProud and joyful was the mother,\nAll the days were full of sunshine,\nAll the nights were full of starlight.\nNightly from the land of spirits\nOn them smiled the starry faces--\nFaces of their friends departed.\nLittle moccasins she made him,\nFeathered cap and belt of wampum\nFrom the hide of fawn a blanket,\nFringed with feathers, soft as sable;\nSinging at her pleasant labor,\nBy her side the tekenagun,[23]\nAnd the little hunter in it.\nOft the Panther smiled and fondled,\nSmiled upon the babe and mother,\nFrolicked with the boy and fondled.\nTall he grew and like his father,\nAnd they called the boy the Raven--\nCalled him Kak-kah-ge--the Raven.\nHappy hunter was the Panther.\nFrom the woods he brought the pheasant,\n\n[Illustration: WELCOME ISLAND, THUNDER BAY.]\n\nBrought the red-deer and the rabbit,\nBrought the trout from Gitchee Gumee--\nBrought the mallard from the marshes--\nRoyal feast for boy and mother:\nBrought the hides of fox and beaver,\nBrought the skins of mink and otter,\nLured the loon and took his blanket,\nTook his blanket for the Raven.\nWinter swiftly followed winter,\nAnd again the tekenagun\nHeld a babe--a tawny daughter,\nHeld a dark-eyed, dimpled daughter;\nAnd they called her Waub-omee-mee--\nThus they named her--the White-Pigeon.\nBut as winter followed winter\nCold and sullen grew the Panther;\nSat and smoked his pipe in silence;\nWhen he spoke he spoke in anger;\nIn the forest often tarried\nMany days, and homeward turning,\nBrought no game unto his wigwam;\nOnly brought his empty quiver,\nBrought his dark and sullen visage.\n\nSad at heart and very lonely\nSat the Sea-Gull in the wigwam;\nSat and swung the tekenagun\nSat and sang to Waub-omee-mee:\nThus she sang to Waub-omee-mee,\nThus the lullaby she chanted:\n\nWa-wa, wa-wa, wa-we-yea;\nKah-ween, nee-zheka ke-diaus-ai,\nKe-gah nau-wai, ne-me-go s'ween,\nNe-baun, ne-baun, ne-daun-is ais,\nWa-wa, wa-wa, wa-we-yea;\nNe-baun, ne-baun, ne-daun-is-ais,\nE-we wa-wa, wa-we-yea,\nE-we wa-wa, wa-we-yea.\n\nTRANSLATION:\n\nSwing, swing, little one, lullaby;\nThou'rt not left alone to weep;\nMother cares for you--she is nigh;\nSleep, my little one, sweetly sleep;\nSwing, swing, little one, lullaby;\nMother watches you--she is nigh;\nGently, gently, wee one, swing;\nGently, gently, while I sing\nE-we wa-wa--lullaby,\nE-we wa-wa--lullaby.\n\nHomeward to his lodge returning\nKindly greeting found the hunter,\nFire to warm and food to nourish,\nGolden trout from Gitchee Gumee,\nCaught by Kah-kah-ge--the Raven.\nWith a snare he caught the rabbit--\nCaught Wabose,[24] the furry-footed,\nCaught Penay,[24] the forest-drummer;\nSometimes, with his bow and arrows,\nShot the red-deer in the forest,\nShot the squirrel in the pine-top,\nShot Ne-ka, the wild-goose, flying.\nProud as Waub-Ojeeg, the warrior,\nTo the lodge he bore his trophies.\nSo when homeward turned the Panther,\nEver found he food provided,\nFound the lodge-fire brightly burning,\nFound the faithful Sea-Gull waiting,\n\"You are cold,\" she said, \"and famished;\nHere are fire and food, my husband.\"\nNot by word or look he answered;\nOnly ate the food provided,\nFilled his pipe and pensive puffed it,\nSat and smoked in sullen silence.\nOnce--her dark eyes full of hunger--\nThus she spoke and thus besought him:\n\"Tell me, O my silent Panther,\nTell me, O beloved husband,\nWhat has made you sad and sullen?\nHave you met some evil spirit--\nMet some goblin in the forest?\nHas he put a spell upon you--\nFilled your heart with bitter waters,\nThat you sit so sad and sullen,\nSit and smoke, but never answer,\nOnly when the storm is on you?\"\n\nGruffly then the Panther answered:\n\"Brave among the brave is Panther\nSon of Waub-Ojeeg, the warrior,\nAnd the brave are ever silent;\nBut a whining dog is woman,\nWhining ever like a coward.\"\nForth into the tangled forest,\nThreading through the thorny thickets,\nTreading trails on marsh and meadow,\nSullen strode the moody hunter.\nSaw he not the bear or beaver,\nSaw he not the elk or roebuck;\nFrom his path the red-fawn scampered,\nBut no arrow followed after;\nFrom his den the sly wolf listened,\nBut no twang of bow-string heard he.\nLike one walking in his slumber,\nListless, dreaming, walked the Panther;\nSurely had some witch bewitched him,\nSome bad spirit of the forest.\n\nWhen the Sea-Gull wed the Panther,\nFair was she and full of laughter;\nLike the robin in the spring-time,\nSang from sunrise till the sunset;\nBut the storms of many winters\nSifted frost upon her tresses,\nSeamed her tawny face with wrinkles,\nNot alone the storms of winters\nSeamed her tawny face with wrinkles.\nTwenty winters for the Panther\nHad she ruled the humble wigwam;\nFor her haughty lord and master\nBorne the burdens on the journey,\nGathered fagots for the lodge-fire,\nTanned the skins of bear and beaver,\nTanned the hides of moose and red-deer;\nMade him moccasins and leggins,\nDecked his hood with quills and feathers--\nColored quills of Kaug,[25] the thorny,\nFeathers from Kenew,[25] the eagle.\nFor a warrior brave was Panther;\nOften had he met the foemen,\nMet the bold and fierce Dakotas,\nWestward on the war-path met them;\nAnd the scalps he won were numbered,\nNumbered seven by Kenew-feathers.\nSad at heart was Sea-Gull waiting,\nWatching, waiting in the wigwam;\nNot alone the storms of winters\nSifted frost upon her tresses.\n\nKa-be-bon-ik-ka, the mighty,[26]\nHe that sends the cruel winter,\nHe that turned to stone the Giant,\nFrom the distant Thunder-mountain,\nFar across broad Gitchee Gumee,\nSent his warning of the winter,\nSent the white frost and Kewaydin,[27]\nSent the swift and hungry North-wind.\nHomeward to the South the Summer\nTurned and fled the naked forests.\nWith the Summer flew the robin,\nFlew the bobolink and blue-bird.\nFlock-wise following chosen leaders,\nLike the shaftless heads of arrows\nSouthward cleaving through the ether,\nSoon the wild-geese followed after.\nOne long moon the Sea-Gull waited,\nWatched and waited for her husband,\nTill at last she heard his footsteps,\nHeard him coming through the thicket.\nForth she went to meet her husband,\nJoyful went to greet her husband.\nLo behind the haughty hunter,\nClosely following in his footsteps,\nWalked a young and handsome woman,\nWalked the Red Fox from the island--\nGitchee Menis--the Grand Island--\nFollowed him into the wigwam,\nProudly took her seat beside him.\nOn the Red Fox smiled the hunter,\nOn the hunter smiled the woman.\n\nOld and wrinkled was the Sea-Gull,\nGood and true, but old and wrinkled.\nTwenty winters for the Panther\nHad she ruled the humble wigwam,\nBorne the burdens on the journey,\nGathered fagots for the lodge-fire,\nTanned the skins of bear and beaver,\nTanned the hides of moose and red-deer,\nMade him moccasins and leggins,\nDecked his hood with quills and feathers,\nColored quills of Kaug, the thorny,\nFeathers from the great war-eagle;\nEver diligent and faithful,\nEver patient, ne'er complaining.\nBut like all brave men the Panther\nLoved a young and handsome woman;\nSo he dallied with the danger,\nDallied with the fair Algonkin,[28]\nTill a magic mead she gave him,\nBrewed of buds of birch and cedar,[29]\nMadly then he loved the woman;\nThen she ruled him, then she held him\nTangled in her raven tresses,\nTied and tangled in her tresses.\nAh, the tall and tawny Panther!\nAh, the brave and brawny Panther!\nSon of Waub-Ojeeg, the warrior!\nWith a slender hair she led him,\nWith a slender hair she drew him,\nDrew him often to her wigwam;\nThere she bound him, there she held him\nTangled in her raven tresses,\nTied and tangled in her tresses.\nAh, the best of men are tangled--\nSometimes tangled in the tresses\nOf a fair and crafty woman.\n\nSo the Panther wed the Red Fox,\nAnd she followed to his wigwam.\nYoung again he seemed and gladsome,\nGlad as Raven when the father\nMade his first bow from the elm-tree,\nFrom the ash-tree made his arrows,\nTaught him how to aim his arrows,\nHow to shoot Wabose--the rabbit.\nThen again the brawny hunter\nBrought the black bear and the beaver,\nBrought the haunch of elk and red-deer,\nBrought the rabbit and the pheasant--\nChoicest bits of all for Red Fox.\nFor her robes he brought the sable,\nBrought the otter and the ermine,\nBrought the black-fox tipped with silver.\n\nBut the Sea-Gull murmured never,\nNot a word she spoke in anger,\nWent about her work as ever,\nTanned the skins of bear and beaver,\nTanned the hides of moose and red-deer,\nGathered fagots for the lodge fire,\nGathered rushes from the marshes;\nDeftly into mats she wove them;\nKept the lodge as bright as ever.\nOnly to herself she murmured,\nAll alone with Waub-omee-mee.\nOn the tall and toppling highland,\nO'er the wilderness of waters;\nMurmured to the murmuring waters,\nMurmured to the Nebe-naw-baigs--\nTo the spirits of the waters;\nOn the wild waves poured her sorrow.\nSave the infant on her bosom\nWith her dark eyes wide with wonder,\nNone to hear her but the spirits,\nAnd the murmuring pines above her.\nThus she cast away her burdens,\nCast her burdens on the waters;\nThus unto the good Great Spirit,\nMade her lowly lamentation:\n\"Wahonowin!--Wahonowin![30]\nGitchee Manito, bena-nin!\nNah, Ba-ba showain nemeshin!\nWahonowin!--Wahonowin!\"\n\nKa-be-bon-ik-ka,[26] the mighty,\nHe that sends the cruel winter,\nFrom the distant Thunder-mountain\nOn the shore of Gitchee Gumee,\nOn the rugged northern border,\nSent his solemn, final warning,\nSent the white wolves of the Nor'land.[31]\nLike the dust of stars in ether--\nIn the Pathway of the Spirits,[32]\nLike the sparkling dust of diamonds,\nFell the frost upon the forest,\nOn the mountains and the meadows,\nOn the wilderness of woodland,\nOn the wilderness of waters.\nAll the lingering fowls departed--\nAll that seek the South in winter,\nAll but Shingebis, the diver;[33]\nHe defies the Winter-maker,\nSits and laughs at Winter-maker.\n\nKa-be-bon-ik-ka, the mighty,\nFrom his wigwam called Kewaydin--\nFrom his home among the icebergs,\nFrom the sea of frozen waters,\nCalled the swift and hungry North-wind,\nThen he spread his mighty pinions\nOver all the land and shook them.\nLike the white down of Waubese[34]\nFell the feathery snow and covered\nAll the marshes and the meadows,\nAll the hill-tops and the highlands.\nThen old Peboean[35]--the winter--\nLaughed along the stormy waters,\nDanced upon the windy headlands,\nOn the storm his white hair streaming,\nAnd his steaming breath, ascending,\nOn the pine-tops and the cedars\nFell in frosty mists of silver,\nSprinkling spruce and fir with silver,\nSprinkling all the woods with silver.\n\nBy the lodge-fire all the winter\nSat the Sea-Gull and the Red Fox,\nSat and kindly spoke and chatted,\nTill the twain seemed friends together.\nFriends they seemed in word and action,\nBut within the breast of either\nSmoldered still the baneful embers--\nFires of jealousy and hatred--\nLike a camp-fire in the forest\nLeft by hunters and deserted;\nOnly seems a bed of ashes,\nBut the East wind, Wabun-noodin,\nScatters through the woods the ashes,\nFans to flame the sleeping embers,\nAnd the wild-fire roars and rages,\nRoars and rages through the forest.\nSo the baneful embers smoldered,\nSmoldered in the breast of either.\n\nFrom the far-off Sunny Islands,\nFrom the pleasant land of Summer,\nWhere the spirits of the blessed\nFeel no more the fangs of hunger,\nOr the cold breath of Kewaydin,\nCame a stately youth and handsome,\nCame Segun,[36] the foe of Winter.\nLike the rising sun his face was,\nLike the shining stars his eyes were,\nLight his footsteps as the Morning's,\nIn his hand were buds and blossoms,\nOn his brow a blooming garland.\nStraightway to the icy wigwam\nOf old Peboean, the Winter,\nStrode Segun and quickly entered.\nThere old Peboean sat and shivered,\nShivered o'er his dying lodge-fire.\n\n\"Ah, my son, I bid you welcome;\nSit and tell me your adventures;\nI will tell you of my power;\nWe will pass the night together.\"\nThus spake Peboean--the Winter;\nThen he filled his pipe and lighted;\nThen by sacred custom raised it\nTo the spirits in the ether;\nTo the spirits in the caverns\nOf the hollow earth he lowered it.\nThus he passed it to the spirits,\nAnd the unseen spirits puffed it.\nNext himself old Peboean honored;\nThrice he puffed his pipe and passed it,\nPassed it to the handsome stranger.\n\n\"Lo I blow my breath,\" said Winter,\n\"And the laughing brooks are silent.\nHard as flint become the waters,\nAnd the rabbit runs upon them.\"\n\nThen Segun, the fair youth, answered:\n\"Lo, I breathe upon the hillsides,\nOn the valleys and the meadows,\nAnd behold, as if by magic--\nBy the magic of the spirits,\nSpring the flowers and tender grasses.\"\n\nThen old Peboean replying:\n\"Nah![37] I breathe upon the forests,\nAnd the leaves fall sere and yellow;\nThen I shake my locks and snow falls,\nCovering all the naked landscape.\"\n\nThen Segun arose and answered:\n\"_Nashke_![37]--see!--I shake my ringlets;\nOn the earth the warm rain falleth,\nAnd the flowers look up like children\nGlad-eyed from their mother's bosom.\nLo, my voice recalls the robin,\nBrings the bobolink and bluebird,\nAnd the woods are full of music.\nWith my breath I melt their fetters,\nAnd the brooks leap laughing onward.\"\n\nThen old Peboean looked upon him,\nLooked and knew Segun, the Summer,\nFrom his eyes the big tears started\nAnd his boastful tongue was silent.\nNow Keezis--the great life-giver,\nFrom his wigwam in Waubu-nong[38]\nRose and wrapped his shining blanket\nRound his giant form and started,\nWestward started on his journey,\nStriding on from hill to hill-top.\nUpward then he climbed the ether--\nOn the Bridge of Stars[39] he traveled,\nWestward traveled on his journey\nTo the far-off Sunset Mountains--\nTo the gloomy land of shadows.\n\nOn the lodge-poles sang the robin--\nAnd the brooks began to murmur.\nOn the South-wind floated fragrance\nOf the early buds and blossoms.\nFrom old Peboean's eyes the tear-drops\nDown his pale face ran in streamlets;\nLess and less he grew in stature\nTill he melted down to nothing;\nAnd behold, from out the ashes,\nFrom the ashes of his lodge-fire,\nSprang the Miscodeed[40] and, blushing,\nWelcomed Segun to the North-land.\n\nSo from Sunny Isles returning,\nFrom the Summer-Land of spirits,\nOn the poles of Panther's wigwam\nSang Opee-chee--sang the robin.\nIn the maples cooed the pigeons--\nCooed and wooed like silly lovers.\n\"Hah!--hah!\" laughed the crow derisive,\nIn the pine-top, at their folly--\nLaughed and jeered the silly lovers.\nBlind with love were they, and saw not;\nDeaf to all but love, and heard not;\nSo they cooed and wooed unheeding,\nTill the gray hawk pounced upon them,\nAnd the old crow shook with laughter.\n\nOn the tall cliff by the sea-shore\nRed Fox made a swing. She fastened\nThongs of moose-hide to the pine-tree,\nTo the strong arm of the pine-tree.\nLike a hawk, above the waters,\nThere she swung herself and fluttered,\nLaughing at the thought of danger,\nSwung and fluttered o'er the waters.\nThen she bantered Sea-Gull, saying,\n\"See!--I swing above the billows!\nDare you swing above the billows--\nSwing like me above the billows?\"\n\nTo herself said Sea-Gull--\"Surely\nI will dare whatever danger\nDares the Red Fox--dares my rival;\nShe shall never call me coward.\"\nSo she swung above the waters--\nDizzy height above the waters,\nPushed and aided by her rival,\nTo and fro with reckless daring,\nTill the strong tree rocked and trembled,\nRocked and trembled with its burden.\nAs above the yawning billows\nFlew the Sea-Gull like a whirlwind,\nRed Fox, swifter than red lightning,\nCut the thongs, and headlong downward,\nLike an osprey from the ether,\nLike a wild-goose pierced with arrows,\nFluttering fell the frantic woman,\nFluttering fell into the waters--\nPlunged and sunk beneath the waters!\nHark!--the wailing of the West-wind!\nHark!--the wailing of the waters,\nAnd the beating of the billows!\nBut no more the voice of Sea-Gull.\n\nIn the wigwam sat the Red Fox,\nHushed the wail of Waub-omee-mee,\nWeeping for her absent mother.\nWith the twinkling stars the hunter\nFrom the forest came and Raven.\n\"Sea-Gull wanders late,\" said Red Fox,\n\"Late she wanders by the sea-shore,\nAnd some evil may befall her.\"\nIn the misty morning twilight\nForth went Panther and the Raven,\nSearched the forest and the marshes,\nSearched for leagues along the lake-shore,\nBut they found no trace or tidings,\nFound no track in marsh or meadow,\nFound no trail in fen or forest,\nOn the shore-sand found no footprints.\nMany days they sought and found not.\nThen to Panther spoke the Raven:\n\"She is in the Land of Spirits--\nSurely in the Land of Spirits.\nHigh at midnight I beheld her--\nLike a flying star beheld her--\nTo the waves of Gitchee Gumee\nDownward flashing through the ether\nThus she flashed that I might see her,\nSee and know my mother's spirit;\nThus she pointed to the waters,\nAnd beneath them lies her body,\nIn the wigwam of the spirits--\nIn the lodge of Nebe-naw-baigs.\"[41]\n\nThen spoke Panther to the Raven:\n\"On the tall cliff by the waters\nWait and watch with Waub-omee-mee.\nIf the Sea-Gull hear the wailing\nOf her infant she will answer.\"\n\nOn the tall cliff by the waters\nSo the Raven watched and waited;\nAll the day he watched and waited,\nBut the hungry infant slumbered,\nSlumbered by the side of Raven,\nTill the pines' gigantic shadows\nStretched and pointed to Waubu-nong[38]--\nTo the far-off land of Sunrise;\nThen the wee one woke and, famished,\nMade a long and piteous wailing.\n\nFrom afar where sky and waters\nMeet in misty haze and mingle,\nStraight toward the rocky highland,\nStraight as flies the feathered arrow,\nStraight to Raven and the infant,\nSwiftly flew a snow-white sea-gull--\nFlew and touched the earth a woman.\nAnd behold, the long-lost mother\nCaught her wailing child and nursed her.\n\nThrice was wound a chain of silver\nRound her waist and strongly fastened.\nFar away into the waters--\nTo the wigwam of the spirits--\nTo the lodge of Nebe-naw-baigs--\nStretched the magic chain of silver.\nSpoke the mother to the Raven:\n\"O my son--my brave young hunter,\nFeed my tender little orphan;\nBe a father to my orphan;\nBe a mother to my orphan--\nFor the crafty Red Fox robbed us--\nRobbed the Sea-Gull of her husband,\nRobbed the infant of her mother.\nFrom this cliff the treacherous woman\nHeadlong into Gitchee Gumee\nPlunged the mother of my orphan.\nThen a Nebe-naw-baig caught me--\nChief of all the Nebe-naw-baigs--\nTook me to his shining wigwam,\nIn the cavern of the waters,\nDeep beneath the mighty waters.\nAll below is burnished copper,\nAll above is burnished silver\nGemmed with amethyst and agates.\nAs his wife the Spirit holds me;\nBy this silver chain he holds me.\n\n\"When my little one is famished,\nWhen with long and piteous wailing\nCries the orphan for her mother,\nHither bring her, O my Raven;\nI will hear her--I will answer.\nNow the Nebe-naw-baig calls me--\nPulls the chain--I must obey him.\"\nThus she spoke, and in the twinkling\nOf a star the spirit-woman\nChanged into a snow-white sea-gull,\nSpread her wings and o'er the waters\nSwiftly flew and swiftly vanished.\n\nThen in secret to the Panther\nRaven told his tale of wonder.\nSad and sullen was the hunter;\nSorrow gnawed his heart like hunger;\nAll the old love came upon him,\nAnd the new love was a hatred.\nHateful to his heart was Red Fox,\nBut he kept from her the secret--\nKept his knowledge of the murder.\nVain was she and very haughty--\nOge-ma-kwa[42] of the wigwam.\nAll in vain her fond caresses\nOn the Panther now she lavished;\nWhen she smiled his face was sullen,\nWhen she laughed he frowned upon her;\nIn her net of raven tresses\nNow no more she held him tangled.\nNow through all her fair disguises\nPanther saw an evil spirit,\nSaw the false heart of the woman.\n\nOn the tall cliff o'er the waters\nRaven sat with Waub-omee-mee,\nSat and watched again and waited,\nTill the wee one, faint and famished,\nMade a long and piteous wailing.\nThen again the snow-white Sea-Gull,\nFrom afar where sky and waters\nMeet in misty haze and mingle,\nStraight toward the rocky highland,\nStraight as flies the feathered arrow,\nStraight to Raven and the infant,\nWith the silver chain around her,\nFlew and touched the earth a woman.\n\nIn her arms she caught her infant--\nCaught the wailing Waub-omee-mee,\nSang a lullaby and nursed her.\nSprang the Panther from the thicket--\nSprang and broke the chain of silver!\nWith his tomahawk he broke it.\nThus he freed the willing Sea-Gull--\nFrom the Water-Spirit freed her,\nFrom the Chief of Nebe-naw-baigs.\n\nVery angry was the Spirit;\nWhen he drew the chain of silver,\nDrew and found that it was broken,\nFound that he had lost the woman,\nVery angry was the Spirit.\nThen he raged beneath the waters,\nRaged and smote the mighty waters,\nTill the big sea boiled and bubbled,\nTill the white-haired, bounding billows\nRoared around the rocky headlands,\nRolled and roared upon the shingle.\n\nTo the wigwam happy Panther,\nAs when first he wooed and won her\nLed his wife--as young and handsome.\nFor the waves of Gitchee Gumee\nWashed away the frost and wrinkles,\nAnd the spirits by their magic\nMade her young and fair forever.\n\nIn the wigwam sat the Red Fox\nSat and sang a song of triumph,\nFor she little dreamed of danger,\nTill the haughty hunter entered,\nFollowed by the happy mother,\nHolding in her arms her infant.\n\nWhen the Red Fox saw the Sea-Gull--\nSaw the dead a living woman,\nOne wild cry she gave despairing,\nOne wild cry as of a demon.\nUp she sprang and from the wigwam\nTo the tall cliff flew in terror;\nFrantic sprang upon the margin,\nFrantic plunged into the waters,\nHeadlong plunged into the waters.\n\nDead she tossed upon the billows;\nFor the Nebe-naw-baigs knew her,\nKnew the crafty, wicked woman,\nAnd they cast her from the waters,\nSpurned her from their shining wigwams;\nFar away upon the shingle\nWith the roaring waves they cast her.\nThere upon her bloated body\nFed the cawing crows and ravens,\nFed the hungry wolves and foxes.\n\nOn the shore of Gitchee Gumee,\nEver young and ever handsome,\nLong and happy lived the Sea-Gull,\nLong and happy with the Panther.\nEvermore the happy hunter\nLoved the mother of his children.\nLike a red star many winters\nBlazed their lodge-fire on the sea-shore.\nO'er the Bridge of Souls[43] together\nWalked the Sea-Gull and the Panther.\nTo the far-off Sunny Islands--\nTo the Summer-Land of Spirits,\nSea-Gull journeyed with her husband--\nWhere no more the happy hunter\nFeels the fangs of frost or famine,\nOr the keen blasts of Kewaydin,\nWhere no pain or sorrow enters,\nAnd no crafty, wicked woman.\nThere she rules his lodge forever,\nAnd the twain are very happy,\nOn the far-off Sunny Islands,\nIn the Summer-Land of Spirits.\nOn the rocks of Gitchee Gumee--\nOn the Pictured Rocks--the legend\nLong ago was traced and written,\nPictured by the Water-Spirits;\nBut the storms of many winters\nHave bedimmed the pictured story,\nSo that none can read the legend\nBut the Jossakeeds,[44] the prophets.\n\n\n\n\nSweet Water.\n\nA LEGEND OF DAHKOTAH LAND.\n\n\nWithin the forest, by a crystal spring\nWhere I, a weary hunter, paused to fling\nMy form at length upon the velvet bank,\nAnd from the cool, delicious water drank\nA draught so comforting it well might seem\nThe fabled fount of Ponce de Leon's dream,\nI met an aged half-breed, on whose cheek\nThe marks of seasons wild and winters bleak\nWere softened by the warm light from the west--\nSunset--the last day-beauty, and the best!\nBeside the spring he sat and gazed and dreamed\nIn melancholy silence, till it seemed\nHis very soul was pouring from his eyes\nAnd melting in that mirror, where the skies\nWere glassed in all their purity, and where\nNo ripple reached the surface from the fair\nWhite bosom of the palpitating sand,--\nA constant flowing breast o'er Nature's grand,\nTender, never weary heart! 'Twas life\nOf her life which I quaffed; 'twas sweet, and rife\nWith flavor from foundations of her hills:\n\n'Twas strong with her strength; throbbing with her thrills;\nEnriched with her untainted blood; a part\nOf that divinity which rules my heart!\nThus when at last I drew my lips away,\nAnd in the quiet of the closing day\nGave voice to my delight, the old man turned\nTo meet my glance. His deep eyes lit and burned\nWith growing brightness, and he softly said:\n\"This spring is sacred for the holy dead;\nThe spirit of Sweet Water lingers here;\nThe powers of mystery and reverent fear\nAnd lovely death brood o'er this sleeping wave--\nA monument for one who had no grave.\"\nForthwith he poured into my willing ear\nA tale so wondrous I must tell it here:\n\nOne morning in the strawberry moon,\nHer heart with Nature's heart in tune\nA maid went forth to meet the sun.\nThat wonderous alchemist of day\nWith mystic pigments had begun\nTo tint the dark with twilight gray;\nOn mystic fans the breezy hills\nBestirred the air with perfumed thrills,\nAnd mystic voices tried to tell\nWhat dewy benedictions fell\nThrough all the silent hours of night.\nThe bend of eastern sky grew light\nWith mystic rays of silver-green,\nSoon vanished in a violet sheen;\nAnd this fair, mystic phantom flew\nBefore a potent golden hue.\nThe maiden idly wandered over\nBanks of moss and beds of clover,\nPausing as she strolled along\nTo hear the sweetest wildwood song,\nOr watch the butterfly whose flight\nFrom meadow bloom to forest flower\nEnticed her pleasure-searching sight\nWith Nature's happiest power.\nShe passed along a forest trail\n'Neath trees that thrilled with morning life;\nAbove the song-birds' concert strife\nShe heard the blithesome call of quail,\nThe scornful cry of blue-jay dressed\nIn splendid robes, with lordly crest.\n'Twas joy to see, 'twas joy to hear,\n'Twas joy to wander without fear.\nO lightsome heart! O peaceful breast!\nWhere yet no passion brought unrest!\nGayly she tripped, unconscious all\nThat any danger might befall.\nBut suddenly the song-birds fled\nFrom all the branches overhead.\nThen on her startled hearing rang\nThe sharp and vengeful bow-string's twang\nA whizz--a yell--a writhing mass\nFell on the path she thought to pass--\nA tawny panther from whose side\nAn arrow drained the living tide.\nWith shrinking eyes she saw the beast\nRolling in agony, until\nAt last the sensate struggles ceased,\nAnd all that mighty frame was still.\nWhile she was wondering whose keen sight\n\n[Illustration]\n\nSo well had sped the arrow's flight,\nA tall young brave stepped from the wood\nAnd silently before her stood.\nHe gazed enraptured on her face,\nHer womanly charms, her youthful grace;\nAnd when he spoke, it was to tell\nThe flattering things that win so well.\nShe saw that he was one who fought\nAgainst her father's tribe, but naught\nAvailed that knowledge for defense\nAgainst his passionate eloquence,\nAnd ere they parted on that morn\nWithin her breast young Love was born.\nThey met again, and many times,\nAs young hearts have in many climes.\nAt last, upon a starry night,\nUnable longer to resist,\nShe gave up all and took her flight\nAnd went with him where he might list.\nWhile they had lingered in their love,\nThe stars had swiftly marched above--\nAnd thus it chanced that on their way\nThey met the heralds of the day.\nHer lover led through forests dim,\nHe brought her to the river bank;\nHis light canoe, all tight and trim,\nHe drew from grasses tall and rank.\nThey pushed away; no time was lost,\nAnd soon the placid stream was crossed.\nAgain they plunged among the trees.\nAlthough no doubt had power to seize\nUpon the maiden's heart, she feared\nAnd wondered that her brave appeared\nTo lose his wonted care; she knew\n'Twas strange to leave their tried canoe,\nBut went, unquestioning, and thought\nHis deeds would bring her fears to naught.\nTo her astonishment, he led\nHer from the forest's sheltering spread\nInto a small and star-lit glade,\nAnd, turning to her, softly bade\nHer fear not, for a warlike band\nEncompassed them on every hand.\nThey were her lover's friends in arms,\nThe war paint on their faces filled\nHer faithful breast with wild alarms,\nFor she herself would fain be killed\nA thousand times than that her flight\nShould lead her own to death that night.\nShe clasped his arm with trembling hand,\nAnd lifted to his bold black eyes\nA look he could but ill withstand--\nLove's first reproach, doubt's first surmise.\nFrom cold, white lips her question broke:\n\"Why do we thus these warriors meet\nSo near the lodges of my folk?\nWhy do you thus their presence greet?\"\nBefore his tongue could make reply,\nA burly warrior, standing by,\nStrode forward, and, with murderous look,\nHis tomahawk before her shook,\nAnd fiercely said: \"I am Two Bear;\nGreat chief am I! 'Tis sweet to tear\nThe craven hearts and drink the blood\nOf Two Bear's foes; a big red flood\nShall flow from coward Sioux, this morn\nTheir scalps Ojibway spears adorn.\nWhy have you kept us waiting here?\nBehold, the sun will soon appear,\nThe hour is late, the good time flies,\nAnd vengeance still unsated cries!\nCome,\" growled the brute, and clutched her wrist,\nAnd gave it rough and cruel twist;\n\"Come, lead us now, with noiseless creep,\nTo where thy Sioux dogs lie in sleep.\"\nLike thunderbolt from storm-filled air,\nThe young brave sprang upon Two Bear;\nWith mighty grasp he whirled him 'round\nAnd threw him fiercely to the ground.\n\"Dog thou,\" he cried; \"and darest thou pain\nThis beauty with thy paws again\nI'll kill thee, ponderous as thou art!\"\nBlack with the fury in his heart,\nThe bully rose, and toward the young\nAnd fearless champion wildly flung\nHis tomahawk, which, lightly dodged,\nSwung through the hissing air and lodged\nDeep in the nearest cottonwood.\nBrief were the moments while they stood\nAnd glared into each other's eyes.\nThen forward leaped, with fearful cries,\nAnd joined in combat, hand to hand.\nWith whirlwind sweep their knives outflashed,\nAnd lightning followed when they clashed.\nThe maiden stood in dumb surprise,\nAll heedless of the warrior band;\nToo anxious for her lover's fate\nTo think upon his present state,\nOr care what stir she might create.\nSternly the conflict raged. At length,\nAlthough he fought with giant strength,\nThe youthful brave was overpowered.\nHe fell; a crushing knee was pressed\nUpon his form, his foeman towered\nA moment o'er him, then his breast\nReceived the cruel, plunging knife.\nThe crimson flood gushed forth; a thrill\nOf anguish swept his features o'er;\nThe light departed; mortal strife\nWould stir the living pulse no more\nWithin that ghastly form so still!\nHer lover's awful death awoke\nThe maiden from her flight-born trance.\nShe flashed around one fearful glance--\nThe peril of her people broke\nUpon her mind; she must be brave,\nFor she alone could hope to save.\nShe saw with horror and alarm\nTwo Bear approach herself to claim\nAs prize for his victorious arm;\nHis wicked face was all aflame.\n'Twas worse than death for her to stay,\nAnd she must warn those far away.\nNo time was her's for useless grief.\nShe turned, and like a storm-chased leaf,\nFled swiftly toward the river bank.\nAlas! A dozen leaps were all.\nThe murderous tomahawk was thrown\nAnd cleft her brain. With one low moan,\nUpon her green death-bed she sank.\nBut simultaneous with her fall\nA wild Dahkotah war-whoop rang\nFrom out the forest, and a wall\nOf warriors rose on every hand.\nWith common stroke their bow-strings' twang\nSounded death to that fated band.\nThe avengers closed upon their foe,\nAnd ere they ceased the conflict wild,\nLaid every feathered top-knot low;\nIn heaps Ojibway braves were piled.\nWhen all the last red scalps were torn\nThey turned to find the murdered maid.\nAll in her tribe would rise and mourn\nWhen dead before them she was laid.\nBut strange event! With wondering tone,\nEach asked of each where she had flown.\nIn vain they searched. They found her not;\nBut there, upon the very spot\nWhere she had fallen, a fountain gushed\nWhich never man had seen before.\nThey gathered round with breathing hushed\nAnd gazed, and wondered more and more.\nWhile every grass-blade growing near\nWas red and matted thick with gore,\nThe overflow was sweet and clear;\nThe bosom of the bubbling spring\nWas spotless as a spirit's wing.\nWith single voice they all proclaimed\nThe magic spot a sacred place.\nThe vanished girl was thenceforth named\n\"Sweet Water,\" and to see her face\nDahkotah hearts will journey here\nTill from the earth they disappear;\nAnd when they die, their souls shall know\nThe secret of its crystal flow.\n\n[Illustration: ROCK GATEWAY, LAKE PEPIN.]\n\n\n\n\nDeath of Winona.\n\n\nDown the broad _Ha-Ha Wak-pa_[45] the band took their way to the Games\n  at _Keoza_,\nWhile the swift-footed hunters by land ran the shores for the elk and\n  the bison.\nLike _magas_[46] ride the birchen canoes on the breast of the dark,\n  winding river,\nBy the willow-fringed island they cruise, by the grassy hills green to\n  their summits;\nBy the lofty bluffs hooded with oaks that darken the deep with their\n  shadows;\nAnd bright in the sun gleam the strokes of the oars in the hands of\n  the women.\nWith the band went Winona. The oar plied the maid with the skill of a\n  hunter.\nThey tarried a time on the shore of _Remnica_--the Lake of the\n  Mountains.[47]\nThere the fleet hunters followed the deer, and the thorny _pahin_ for\n  the women.\nFrom the _tees_ rose the smoke of good cheer, curling blue through the\n  tops of the maples,\nNear the foot of a cliff that arose, like the battle-scarred walls of\n  a castle,\nUp-towering, in rugged repose, to a dizzy height over the waters.\nBut the man-wolf still followed his prey, and the step-mother ruled in\n  the _teepee_;\nHer will must Winona obey, by the custom and law of Dakotas.\nThe gifts to the _teepee_ were brought--the blankets and beads of the\n  White men,\nAnd Winona, the orphaned, was bought by the crafty, relentless Tamdoka.\nIn the Spring-time of life, in the flush of the gladsome mid-May days\n  of Summer,\nWhen the bobolink sang and the thrush, and the red robin chirped in\n  the branches,\nTo the tent of the brave must she go; she must kindle the fire in his\n  _teepee_;\nShe must sit in the lodge of her foe, as a slave at the feet of her\n  master.\nAlas for her waiting! the wings of the East-wind have brought her no\n  tidings;\nOn the meadow the meadow-lark sings, but sad is her song to Winona,\nFor the glad warbler's melody brings but the memory of voices departed.\nThe Day-Spirit walked in the west to his lodge in the land of the shadows;\nHis shining face gleamed on the crest of the oak-hooded hills and the\n  mountains,\nAnd the meadow-lark hied to her nest, and the mottled owl peeped from\n  her cover.\nBut hark! from the _teepees_ a cry! Hear the shouts of the hurrying\n  warriors!\nAre the feet of the enemy nigh,--of the crafty and cruel Ojibways?\nNay; look!--on the dizzy cliff high--on the brink of the cliff stands\n  Winona!\nHer sad face up-turned to the sky. Hark! I hear the wild wail of her\n  death-song:\n\n\"My Father's Spirit, look down, look down--\nFrom your hunting grounds in the shining skies;\nBehold, for the light of my heart is gone;\nThe light is gone and Winona dies.\n\n\"I looked to the East, but I saw no star;\nThe face of my White Chief was turned away.\nI harked for his footsteps in vain; afar\nHis bark sailed over the Sunrise-sea.\n\n\"Long have I watched till my heart is cold;\nIn my breast it is heavy and cold as a stone.\nNo more shall Winona his face behold,\nAnd the robin that sang in her heart is gone.\n\n\"Shall I sit at the feet of the treacherous brave?\nOn his hateful couch shall Winona lie?\nShall she kindle his fire like a coward slave?\nNo!--a warrior's daughter can bravely die.\n\n\"My Father's Spirit, look down, look down--\nFrom your hunting-grounds in the shining skies;\nBehold, for the light in my heart is gone;\nThe light is gone and Winona dies.\"\n\nSwift the strong hunters climbed as she sang, and the foremost of all\n  was Tamdoka;\nFrom crag to crag upward he sprang; like a panther he leaped to the\n  summit.\nToo late!--on the brave as he crept turned the maid in her scorn and\n  defiance;\nThen swift from the dizzy height leaped. Like a brant arrow-pierced in\n  mid-heaven,\nDown whirling and fluttering she fell, and headlong plunged into the\n  waters.\nForever she sank mid the wail, and the wild lamentation of women.\nHer lone spirit evermore dwells in the depths of the Lake of the\n  Mountains,\nAnd the lofty cliff evermore tells to the years as they pass her sad\n  story.[48]\n\nIn the silence of sorrow the night o'er the earth spread her wide,\n  sable pinions;\nAnd the stars hid their faces; and light on the lake fell the tears of\n  the spirits.\nAs her sad sisters watched on the shore for her spirit to rise from\n  the waters,\nThey heard the swift dip of an oar, and a boat they beheld like a shadow,\nGliding down through the night in the gray, gloaming mists on the face\n  of the waters.\n'Twas the bark of DuLuth on his way from the Falls to the Games at\n  _Keoza_.\n\n\n\n\nThe Legend of the Moccasin Flower.\n\n\nMinneopa was a maiden\n  Fleet of foot and fond of sport,\nShe, her mother's only daughter,\n  Cared not for the harsh report\nThat she left the woman's labor\n  To her only parent, while\nWith the hunt and ramble busied,\n  Oft she wandered many a mile.\n\nScarce her cousins could excel her\n  In the bending of the bow,\nThough they were so tall and manly,\n  With them hunting she would go.\nShe had shot the timid rabbit,\n  With her arrows swift and keen,\nNow she wished to slay the red-deer\n  As the hunters she had seen.\n\nBeautiful she was, and graceful,\n  Like the young fawn she pursued,\nGayly decked with beads and wampum,\n  For her mother fond endured\nWith great worth this only daughter;\n  As her sire a chief had been,\nE'en the boyish pranks and pastime\n  For her no reproof could win.\n\nTiny moccasins, so dainty,\n  Well her little feet encased,\nAnd her long braids streamed behind her\n  As down woodland paths she raced.\n\"I will go alone and find them,\n  Then the red-deer I will kill.\"\nSo she went, for all she minded\n  Was her own caprice and will.\n\nWarm and smoky Indian summer\n  Lent the earth a russet glow,\nAnd the hazel nuts dropped softly\n  'Mong the rustling leaves below.\nFar she wandered, but no creature\n  Caught her ear or crossed her path,\nSave the blue-jay in the treetop\n  Screaming oft in seeming wrath.\n\nSuddenly she heard a roaring,\n  Crackling sound. In sickening dread\nLooked and saw the forest burning\n  With a lurid flame and red.\nFast she flew; the flames spread faster,\n  Caught her in their fierce embrace;\nMinneopa, never, never,\n  Will you now the wild deer chase.\n\nAshes gray and failing cinders\n  Made for her a lonely grave.\nBut with springtime came the verdure,\n  And the kindly grasses waved;\nPeeping up came gorgeous blossoms,\n  Never seen on earth before,\nShaped and colored like the moccasins\n  That the Indian maiden wore.\n\nSome there were of heavenly coloring,\n  Such as clouds at sunset wear,\nWhite and rosy; they were emblems\n  Of the new ones waiting where\nIn the spirit land she wanders\n  With her father strong and brave;\nAnd the mother, when she saw them,\n  Knew they marked her daughter's grave.\n\n                IDA SEXTON SEARLS.\n\n\nTHE END.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nNOTES.\n\n\nWINONA.\n\n[Footnote 1: The name given by the Dakotas to the first-born, if a\nfemale.]\n\n[Footnote 2: Tipi, skin tent.]\n\n[Footnote 3: An edible root found on the prairies.]\n\n[Footnote 4: The Crow Indians, hereditary foes of the Dakotas, call\nthemselves Absaraka, which means crow in their language.]\n\n[Footnote 5: Each Indian guest at a banquet carries with him his own\nwooden bowl and spoon.]\n\n[Footnote 6: Many Indians believe in the transmigration of souls, and\nsome of them profess to remember previous states of existence.]\n\n[Footnote 7: A renowned chief, formerly living on Lake Pepin.]\n\n[Footnote 8: A supernatural monster inhabiting the larger rivers and\nlakes, and hereditary foe of the Thunder Bird.]\n\n[Footnote 9: The Falls of St. Anthony.]\n\n[Footnote 10: The name given to a first-born, if a male. Upon becoming\na warrior or performing some feat of arms, the youth is permitted to\nselect another name.]\n\n[Footnote 11: Hereditary foe of the Dakotas.]\n\n[Footnote 12: The Dakotas formerly disposed of their dead by fastening\nthem to the branches of trees or to rude platforms. This is still\npracticed to some extent.]\n\n[Footnote 13: The Indians paint and adorn a body before sepulture.]\n\n\nHIAWATHA.\n\n[Footnote 14: \"On the mountains of the prairie.\" (Mt. Catlin, etc.)\nLocated near the boundary between Minnesota and Dakota, near the head\nwaters of the Mississippi.]\n\n[Footnote 15: This quarry, located near the hills or mountains, was\nvery famous among the Indians, who by common consent had made the\nadjacent territory neutral ground. Here they came and provided\nthemselves with pipes, very necessary to the Indian's happiness. To\napply the stone to any other use than that of pipe-making would have\nbeen sacrilege in the native's mind. From similarity in color, they\neven fancied it to have been made, at the great deluge, from the flesh\nof the perishing Indian.]\n\n[Footnote 16: In Northern Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River, the\nscene of a terrible massacre by the Indians and Tories in 1778.\nCampbell wrote _Gertrude of Wyoming_ on the incidents of that July\n5th.]\n\n[Footnote 17: A section of Alabama, taking its name from the chief\ndefeated by De Soto in 1540.]\n\n\"The Falls of Minnehaha.\" (The Scenery about Fort Snelling, etc.)\n\n\nTHE DESCENDING STAR.\n\nThis legend is related by Kah-ge-ga-gah-bawh, chief of the Ojibway\nNation, or Chippewas, in his \"Traditional History of the Ojibway\nNation\" purporting to be the first volume of Indian history written by\nan Indian. In common with his forest brethren, he \"was brought up in\nthe woods.\" Twenty months passed in a school in Illinois constituted\nthe sum-total of his schooling. But he had learned the traditions of\nhis people, as was customary, from the lips of the chief, his father.\n\nThrough the stilted language of this somewhat unlettered Indian we\ncatch faint glimpses of the poetic beauty with which the tradition\nglowed when actually related at the wigwam door. An attempt has been\nmade to retain and crystallize this poetic beauty in the preceding\nmetrical version of the Indian legend.\n\n\nTHE TRAILING ARBUTUS.\n\nA new version of the beautiful and popular legend of the first spring\nflower, making the visitant to the old man's lodge a maiden, and\nidentifying the blossom as the trailing arbutus, was told by Hon. C.\nL. Belknap of Michigan before the Folk-Lore Society in Washington,\nDec., 1891.\n\n\nTHE SEA-GULL.\n\n[Footnote 18: _Kay-oshk_ is the Ojibway name for the sea-gull.]\n\n[Footnote 19: _Gitchee_--great,--_Gumee_--sea or lake,--Lake Superior\nalso often called Ochipwe Gitchee Gumee, Great Lake (or sea) of the\nOjibways.]\n\n[Footnote 20: _Ne-me-Shomis_--my grandfather. \"In the days of my\ngrandfather\" is the Ojibway's preface to all his traditions and\nlegends.]\n\n[Footnote 21: _Waub_--white--_O-jeeg_--fisher (a furred animal). White\nFisher was the name of a noted Ojibway chief who lived on the south\nshore of Lake Superior many years ago. Schoolcraft married one of his\ndescendants.]\n\n[Footnote 22: _Ma-kwa_ or _mush-kwa_--the bear.]\n\n[Footnote 23: The _Te-ke-nah-gun_ is a board upon one side of which a\nsort of basket is fastened or woven with thongs of skin or strips of\ncloth. In this the babe is placed and the mother carries it on her\nback. In the wigwam the _tekenagun_ is often suspended by a cord to\nthe lodge-poles and the mother swings her babe in it.]\n\n[Footnote 24: _Wabose_ (or _Wabos_)--the rabbit. _Penay_, the\npheasant. At certain seasons the pheasant drums with his wings.]\n\n[Footnote 25: _Kaug_, the porcupine. _Kenew_, the war-eagle.]\n\n[Footnote 26: _Ka-be-bon-ik-ka_ is the god of storms, thunder,\nlightning, etc. His home is on Thunder-Cap at Thunder-Bay, Lake\nSuperior. By his magic the giant that lies on the mountain was turned\nto stone. He always sends warnings before he finally sends the severe\ncold of winter, in order to give all creatures time to prepare for\nit.]\n\n[Footnote 27: _Kewaydin_, or _Kewaytin_, is the North wind or\nNorthwest wind.]\n\n[Footnote 28: _Algonkin_ is the general name applied to all tribes\nthat speak the Ojibway language or dialects of it.]\n\n[Footnote 29: This is the favorite \"love-broth\" of the Ojibway squaws.\nThe warrior who drinks it immediately falls desperately in love with\nthe woman who gives it to him. Various tricks are devised to conceal\nthe nature of the \"medicine\" and to induce the warrior to drink it;\nbut when it is mixed with a liberal quantity of \"fire-water\" it is\nconsidered irresistible.]\n\n[Footnote 30:\n\nTranslation: Woe-is-me! Woe-is-me!\n             Great Spirit, behold me!\n             Look, Father; have pity upon me!\n             Woe-is-me! Woe-is-me!\n\n]\n\n[Footnote 31: Snow-storms from the Northwest.]\n\n[Footnote 32: The Ojibways, like the Dakotas, call the Via Lactea\n(Milky Way) the Pathway of the Spirits.]\n\n[Footnote 33: Shinge-bis, the diver, is the only water-fowl that\nremains about Lake Superior all winter.]\n\n[Footnote 34: Waub-ese--the white swan.]\n\n[Footnote 35: _Pe-boan_, Winter, is represented as an old man with\nlong white hair and beard.]\n\n[Footnote 36: _Segun_ is Spring (or Summer). This beautiful allegory\nhas been \"done into verse\" by Longfellow in _Hiawatha_. Longfellow\nevidently took his version from Schoolcraft. I took mine originally\nfrom the lips of _Pah-go-nay-gie-shiek_--\"Hole-in-the-day,\"--(the\nelder), in his day head-chief of the Ojibways. I afterward submitted\nit to _Gitche Shabash-Konk_, head-chief of the _Misse-sah-ga-e-gun_\n--(Mille Lac's band of Ojibways), who pronounced it correct.\n\n\"Hole-in-the-day,\" although sanctioned by years of unchallenged use,\nis a bad translation of _Pah-go-nay-gie-shiek_, which means a _clear\nspot in the sky_.\n\nHe was a very intelligent man; had been in Washington several times on\nbusiness connected with his people, and was always shrewd enough to\nlook out for himself in all his treaties and transactions with the\nGovernment. He stood six feet two inches in his moccasins, was\nwell-proportioned, and had a remarkably fine face. He had a nickname--\n_Que-we-zanc_ (Little Boy)--by which he was familiarly called by his\npeople.\n\nThe Pillagers--_Nah-kand-tway-we-nin-ni-wak_--who live about Leech\nLake (_Kah-sah-gah-squah-g-me-cock_) were opposed to\n_Pa-go-nay-gie-shiek_, but he compelled them through fear to recognize\nhim as Head-Chief. At the time of the \"Sioux outbreak\" in 1862\n\"Hole-in-the-day\" for a time apparently meditated an alliance with the\nPo-ah-nuck (Dakotas) and war upon the whites. The Pillagers and some\nother bands urged him strongly to this course, and his supremacy as\nhead-chief was threatened unless he complied. Messengers from the\nDakotas were undoubtedly received by him, and he, for a time at least,\nled the Dakotas to believe that their hereditary enemies, the\nOjibways, would bury the hatchet and join them in a war of\nextermination against the whites. \"Hole-in-the-day,\" with a band of\nhis warriors, appeared opposite Fort Ripley (situated on the west bank\nof the Mississippi River between Little Falls and Crow Wing), and\nassumed a threatening attitude toward the fort, then garrisoned by\nvolunteer troops. The soldiers were drawn up on the right bank and\n\"Hole-in-the-day\" and his warriors on the left. A little speech-making\nsettled the matter for the time being and very soon thereafter a new\ntreaty was made with \"Hole-in-the-day\" and his head men, by which\ntheir friendship and allegiance were secured to the whites. It was\nclaimed by the Pillagers that \"Hole-in-the-day\" seized the occasion to\nprofit personally in his negotiations with the agents of the\nGovernment.\n\nIn 1867 \"Hole-in-the-day\" took \"another wife.\" He married Helen\nMcCarty, a white woman, in Washington, D. C., and took her to his home\nat Gull Lake (_Ka-ga-ya-skunc-cock_) literally, _plenty of little\ngulls_.\n\nShe bore him a son who is known as Joseph H. Woodbury, and now (1891)\nresides in the city of Minneapolis. His marriage with a white woman\nincreased the hatred of the Pillagers, and they shot him from ambush\nand killed him near _Ninge-ta-we-de-gua-yonk_--Crow Wing--on the 27th\nday of June, 1868.\n\nAt the time of his death, \"Hole-in-the-day\" was only thirty-seven\nyears old, but had been recognized as Head-Chief for a long time. He\ncould speak some English, and was far above the average of white men\nin native shrewdness and intelligence. He was thoroughly posted in the\ntraditions and legends of his people.\n\nThe Ojibways have for many years been cursed by contact with the worst\nelements of the whites, and seem to have adopted the vices rather than\nthe virtues of civilization. I once spoke of this to\n\"Hole-in-the-day.\" His reply was terse and truthful--\"_Madge\ntche-mo-ko-mon, madge a-nische-nabe: menoge tche-mo-ko-mon, meno\na-nische-nabe._--Bad white men, bad Indians: good white men, good\nIndians.\"]\n\n[Footnote 37: _Nah_--look, see. _Nashke_--behold.]\n\n[Footnote 38: _Kee-zis_--the sun,--the father of life. _Waubunong_--or\n_Waub-o-nong_--is the White Land or Land of Light,--the Sunrise, the\nEast.]\n\n[Footnote 39: The Bridge of Stars spans the vast sea of the skies, and\nthe sun and moon walk over on it.]\n\n[Footnote 40: The _Miscodeed_ is a small white flower with a pink\nborder. It is the earliest blooming wild flower on the shores of Lake\nSuperior, and belongs to the crocus family.]\n\n[Footnote 41: The _Ne-be-naw-baigs_, are Water-spirits; they dwell in\ncaverns in the depths of the lake, and in some respects resemble the\n_Unktehee_ of the Dakotas.]\n\n[Footnote 42: _Ogema_, Chief,--_Oge-ma-kwa_--female Chief. Among the\nAlgonkin tribes women are sometimes made chiefs. _Net-no-kwa_, who\nadopted Tanner as her son, was _Oge-ma-kwa_ of a band of Ottawas. See\n_John Tanner's Narrative_, p. 36.]\n\n[Footnote 43: The \"Bridge of Souls\" leads from the earth over dark and\nstormy waters to the spirit-land. The \"Dark River\" seems to have been\na part of the superstitions of all nations.]\n\n[Footnote 44: The _Jossakeeds_ of the Ojibways are soothsayers who are\nable, by the aid of spirits, to read the past as well as the future.]\n\n\nDEATH OF WINONA.\n\nMr. Gordon has taken for his theme the love of the beautiful maiden\nWinona for Du Luth the explorer. He leaves her to continue his\ntravels, and she, driven to desperation at the thought of marriage\nwith Tauedoka, whom she loathes, takes her life.\n\n[Footnote 45: The Dakota name for the Mississippi.]\n\n[Footnote 46: Wild geese.]\n\n[Footnote 47: Lake Pepin: by Hennepin called the Lake of\nTears.--Called by the Dakotas Pem-uee-chah-mday--Lake of the\nMountain.]\n\n[Footnote 48: The rock from which Winona leaped was formerly\nperpendicular to the water's edge and she leaped into the lake. The\nrock to-day is crumbled and the waters have receded to some distance\nfrom the rock. Winona's spirit is said to still haunt the lake.]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Notes\n\nOriginal variations in spelling, grammar, punctuation, diacritical\nmarks, and hyphenation have been retained, except for the following\nchanges:\n\nPage 5: CONTENTS: Changed some titles slightly to match the poem\ntitles.\n\nPage 48: relf-reliant changed to self-reliant\n  (Fearless and relf-reliant, she could go)\n\nPage 91: Period changed to comma after warriors\n  (Ah, no more such noble warriors.\n   Could be found on earth as they were!)\n\nPage 130: Illustration caption changed from LIMPED to LIMPID\n  (\"... AND ALIGHTED SOON ON THE WATERS' LIMPED BREAST.\")\n\nPage 149: whie changed to white\n  (Like the whie down of Waubese)\n\nPage 171: No footnote reference for pahin, so footnote anchor removed.\n  (There the fleet hunters followed the deer, and the thorny _pahin_\n   for the women.)\n\nPages 179-184: Notes renumbered sequentially.\n\nPage 182: \"Hold-in-the-day\" changed to \"Hole-in-the-day\"\n  (\"Sioux outbreak\" in 1862 \"Hold-in-the-day\" for a time)\n\nPage 184: WINONA changed to DEATH OF WINONA to match poem title.","title":"Indian Legends of Minnesota","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":31918}