



Produced by Judith Boss





MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE SIOUX

By Mrs. Marie L. Mclaughlin


          In loving memory of my mother,
          MARY GRAHAM BUISSON,
          at whose knee most of the stories
          contained in this little volume
          were told to me, this book is
          affectionately dedicated




        TABLE OF CONTENTS

     Dedication
     Foreword
     The Forgotten Ear of Corn
     The Little Mice
     The Pet Rabbit
     The Pet Donkey
     The Rabbit and the Elk
     The Rabbit and the Grouse Girls
     The Faithful Lovers
     The Artichoke and the Muskrat
     The Rabbit, and the Bear with the Flint Body
     Story of the Lost Wife
     The Raccoon and the Crawfish
     Legend of Standing Rock
     Story of the Peace Pipe
     A Bashful Courtship
     The Simpleton's Wisdom
     Little Brave and the Medicine Woman
     The Bound Children
     The Signs of Corn
     Story of the Rabbits
     How the Rabbit Lost His Tail
     Unktomi and the Arrowheads
     The Bear and the Rabbit Hunt Buffalo
     The Brave Who Went on the Warpath Alone and
       Won the Name of the Lone Warrior
     The Sioux Who Married the Crow Chief's
       Daughter
     The Boy and the Turtles
     The Hermit, or the Gift of Corn
     The Mysterious Butte
     The Wonderful Turtle
     The Man and the Oak
     Story of the Two Young Friends
     The Story of the Pet Crow
     The "Wasna" (Pemmican Man) and the Unktomi (Spider)
     The Resuscitation of the Only Daughter
     The Story of the Pet Crane
     White Plume
     Story of Pretty Feathered Forehead
     The Four Brothers or Inyanhoksila (Stone Boy)
     The Unktomi (Spider), Two Widows and the Red Plums




FOREWORD

In publishing these "Myths of the Sioux," I deem it proper to state that
I am of one-fourth Sioux blood. My maternal grandfather, Captain Duncan
Graham, a Scotchman by birth, who had seen service in the British Army,
was one of a party of Scotch Highlanders who in 1811 arrived in the
British Northwest by way of York Factory, Hudson Bay, to found what was
known as the Selkirk Colony, near Lake Winnipeg, now within the
province of Manitoba, Canada. Soon after his arrival at Lake Winnipeg he
proceeded up the Red River of the North and the western fork thereof
to its source, and thence down the Minnesota River to Mendota, the
confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, where he located. My
grandmother, Ha-za-ho-ta-win, was a full-blood of the Medawakanton Band
of the Sioux Tribe of Indians. My father, Joseph Buisson, born near
Montreal, Canada, was connected with the American Fur Company, with
headquarters at Mendota, Minnesota, which point was for many years the
chief distributing depot of the American Fur Company, from which the
Indian trade conducted by that company on the upper Mississippi was
directed.

I was born December 8, 1842, at Wabasha, Minnesota, then Indian country,
and resided thereat until fourteen years of age, when I was sent to
school at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

I was married to Major James McLaughlin at Mendota, Minnesota,
January 28, 1864, and resided in Minnesota until July 1, 1871, when I
accompanied my husband to Devils Lake Agency, North Dakota, then Dakota
Territory, where I remained ten years in most friendly relations with
the Indians of that agency. My husband was Indian agent at Devils Lake
Agency, and in 1881 was transferred to Standing Rock, on the Missouri
River, then a very important agency, to take charge of the Sioux who
had then but recently surrendered to the military authorities, and been
brought by steamboat from various points on the upper Missouri, to be
permanently located on the Standing Rock reservation.

Having been born and reared in an Indian community, I at an early age
acquired a thorough knowledge of the Sioux language, and having lived on
Indian reservations for the past forty years in a position which brought
me very near to the Indians, whose confidence I possessed, I have,
therefore, had exceptional opportunities of learning the legends and
folk-lore of the Sioux.

The stories contained in this little volume were told me by the older
men and women of the Sioux, of which I made careful notes as related,
knowing that, if not recorded, these fairy tales would be lost to
posterity by the passing of the primitive Indian.

The notes of a song or a strain of music coming to us