Legends of the Northwest

Legends of the Northwest

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Title: Legends of the Northwest
Author: Hanford Lennox Gordon
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LEGENDS OF THE NORTHWEST. BY H. L. GORDON, Author of
Pauline.
CONTAINING
PRELUDE--THE MISSISSIPPI.
THE FEAST OF THE VIRGINS, A LEGEND OF THE DAKOTAS.
WINONA, A LEGEND OF THE DAKOTAS.
THE LEGEND OF THE FALLS, A LEGEND OF THE DAKOTAS.
THE SEA-GULL, THE OJIBWA LEGEND OF THE PICTURED
ROCKS OF LAKE SUPERIOR.
MINNETONKA.
* * * * *
PREFACE.
I have for several years devoted many of my leisure hours to the study
of the language, history, traditions, customs and superstitions of the
Dakotas. These Indians are now commonly called the "Sioux"--a name
given them by the early French traders and voyageurs. "Dakota"

signifies alliance or confederation. Many separate bands, all having a
common origin and speaking a common tongue, were united under this
name. See "_Tah-Koo Wah-Kan_," or "The Gospel Among the
Dakotas," by Stephen R. Riggs, pp. 1 to 6 inc.
They were, but yesterday, the occupants and owners of the fair forests
and fertile prairies of Minnesota--a brave, hospitable and generous
people,--barbarians, indeed, but noble in their barbarism. They may be
fitly called the Iroquois of the West. In form and features, in language
and traditions, they are distinct from all other Indian tribes. When first
visited by white men, and for many years afterwards, the Falls of St.
Anthony (by them called the Ha-Ha) was the center of their country.
They cultivated tobacco, and hunted the elk, the beaver and the bison.
They were open-hearted, truthful and brave. In their wars with other
tribes they seldom slew women or children, and rarely sacrificed the
lives of their prisoners.
For many years their chiefs and head men successfully resisted the
attempts to introduce spirituous liquors among them. More than a
century ago an English trader was killed at Mendota, because he
persisted, after repeated warnings by the chiefs, in dealing out
_mini-wakan_ (Devil-water) to the Dakota braves.
With open arms and generous hospitality they welcomed the first white
men to their land; and were ever faithful in their friendship, till years of
wrong and robbery, and want and insult, drove them to desperation and
to war. They were barbarians, and their warfare was barbarous, but not
more barbarous than the warfare of our Saxon and Celtic ancestors.
They were ignorant and superstitious, but their condition closely
resembled the condition of our British forefathers at the beginning of
the Christian era. Macaulay says of Britain, "Her inhabitants, when first
they became known to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the
natives of the Sandwich Islands." And again, "While the German
princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo, Arles and Ravenna listened with
reverence to the instructions of Bishops, adored the relics of martyrs,
and took part eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the
rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing savage rites in the

temples of Thor and Woden."
The day of the Dakotas is done. The degenerate remnants of that once
powerful and warlike people still linger around the forts and agencies
of the Northwest, or chase the caribou and the bison on the banks of the
Sascatchewan, but the Dakotas of old are no more. The brilliant defeat
of Custer, by Sitting Bull and his braves, was their last grand rally
against the resistless march of the sons of the Saxons and the Celts. The
plow-shares of a superior race are fast leveling the sacred mounds of
their dead. But yesterday, the shores of our lakes, and our rivers, were
dotted