



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 through the night
not only give us pleasure by the melody they bring, but also give us
knowledge of the character of the singer or of the instrument from which
they proceed. There is something in the music which unerringly tells us
of its source. I believe musicians call it the "timbre" of the sound. It
is independent of, and different from, both pitch and rhythm; it is the
texture of the music itself.

The "timbre" of a people's stories tells of the qualities of that
people's heart. It is the texture of the thought, independent of its
form or fashioning, which tells the quality of the mind from which it
springs.

In the "timbre" of these stories of the Sioux, told in the lodges and
at the camp fires of the past, and by the firesides of the Dakotas of
today, we recognize the very texture of the thought of a simple, grave,
and sincere people, living in intimate contact and friendship with the
big out-of-doors that we call Nature; a race not yet understanding all
things, not proud and boastful, but honest and childlike and fair; a
simple, sincere, and gravely thoughtful people, willing to believe that
there may be in even the everyday things of life something not yet fully
understood; a race that can, without any loss of native dignity, gravely
consider the simplest things, seeking to fathom their meaning and to
learn their lesson--equally without vain-glorious boasting and trifling
cynicism; an earnest, thoughtful, dignified, but simple and primitive
people.

To the children of any race these stories can not fail to give pleasure
by their vivid imaging of the simple things and creatures of the great
out-of-doors and the epics of their doings. They will also give an
intimate insight into the mentality of an interesting race at a most
interesting stage of development, which is now fast receding into the
mists of the past.


MARIE L. McLAUGHLIN (Mrs. James McLaughlin).

McLaughlin, S. D., May 1, 1913.




THE FORGOTTEN EAR OF CORN

An Arikara woman was once gathering corn from the field to store away
for winter use. She passed from stalk to stalk, tearing off the ears and
dropping them into her folded robe. When all was gathered she started to
go, when she heard a faint voice, like a child's, weeping and calling:

"Oh, do not leave me! Do not go away without me."

The woman was astonished. "What child can that be?" she asked herself.
"What babe can be lost in the cornfield?"

She set down her robe in which she had tied up her corn, and went back
to search; but she found nothing.

As she started away she heard the voice again:

"Oh, do not leave me. Do not go away without me."

She searched for a long time. At last in one corner of the field, hidden
under the leaves of the stalks, she found one little ear of corn. This
it was that had been crying, and this is why all Indian women have since
garnered their corn crop very carefully, so that the succulent food
product should not even to the last small nubbin be neglected or wasted,
and thus displease the Great Mystery.





THE LITTLE MICE

Once upon a time a prairie mouse busied herself all fall storing away a
cache of beans. Every morning she was out early with her empty cast-off
snake skin, which she filled with ground beans and dragged home with her
teeth.

The little mouse had a cousin who was fond of dancing and talk, but who
did not like to work. She was not careful to get her cache of beans and
the season was already well gone before she thought to bestir herself.
When she came to realize her need, she found she had no packing bag. So
she went to her hardworking cousin and said:

"Cousin, I have no beans stored for winter and the season is nearly
gone. But I have no snake skin to gather the beans in. Will you lend me
one?"

"But why have you no packing bag? Where were you in the moon when the
snakes cast off their skins?"

"I was here."

"What were you doing?"

"I was busy talking and dancing."

"And now you are punished," said the other. "It is always so with lazy,
careless people. But I will let you have the snake skin. And now go, and
by hard work and industry, try to recover your wasted time."






THE PET RABBIT

A little girl owned a pet rabbit which she loved dearly. She carried it
on her back like a babe, made for it a little pair of moccasins, and at
night shared with it her own robe.

Now the little girl had a cousin who loved her very dearly and wished to
do her honor; so her cousin said to herself:

"I love my little cousin well and will ask her to let me carry her pet
rabbit around;" (for thus do Indian women when they wish to honor a
friend; they ask permission to carry about the friend's babe).

She then went to the little girl and said:

"Cousin, let me carry your pet rabbit about on my back. Thus shall I
show you how I love you."

Her mother, too, said to her: "Oh no, do not let our little grandchild
go away from our tepee."

But the cousin answered: "Oh, do let me carry it. I do so want to show
my cousin honor." At last they let her go away with the pet rabbit on
her back.

When the little girl's cousin came home to her tepee, some rough boys
who were playing about began to make sport of her. To tease the little
girl they threw stones and sticks at the pet rabbit. At last a stick
struck the little rabbit upon the head and killed it.

When her pet was brought home dead, the little rabbit's adopted mother
wept bitterly. She cut off her hair for mourning and all her little girl
friends wailed with her. Her mother, too, mourned with them.

"Alas!" they cried, "alas, for the little rabbit. He was always kind and
gentle. Now your child is dead and you will be lonesome."

The little girl's mother called in her little friends and made a great
mourning feast for the little rabbit. As he lay in the tepee his adopted
mother's little friends brought many precious things and covered his
body. At the feast were given away robes and kettles and blankets and
knives and great wealth in honor of the little rabbit. Him they wrapped
in a robe with his little moccasins on and buried him in a high place
upon a scaffold.






THE PET DONKEY

There was a chief's daughter once who had a great many relations so that
everybody knew she belonged to a great family.

When she grew up she married and there were born to her twin sons. This
caused great rejoicing in her father's camp, and all the village women
came to see the babes. She was very happy.

As the babes grew older, their grandmother made for them two saddle bags
and brought out a donkey.

"My two grandchildren," said the old lady, "shall ride as is becoming
to children having so many relations. Here is this donkey. He is patient
and surefooted. He shall carry the babes in the saddle bags, one on
either side of his back."

It happened one day that the chief's daughter and her husband were
making ready to go on a camping journey. The father, who was quite proud
of his children, brought out his finest pony, and put the saddle bags on
the pony's back.

"There," he said, "my sons shall ride on the pony, not on a donkey; let
the donkey carry the pots and kettles."

So his wife loaded the donkey with the household things. She tied the
tepee poles into two great bundles, one on either side of the donkey's
back; across them she put the travois net and threw into it the pots and
kettles and laid the skin tent across the donkey's back.

But no sooner done than the donkey began to rear and bray and kick. He
broke the tent poles and kicked the pots and kettles into bits and tore
the skin tent. The more he was beaten the more he kicked.

At last they told the grandmother. She laughed. "Did I not tell you the
donkey was for the children," she cried. "He knows the babies are
the chief's children. Think you he will be dishonored with pots and
kettles?" and she fetched the children and slung them over the donkey's
back, when he became at once quiet again.

The camping party left the village and went on their journey. But the
next day as they passed by a place overgrown with bushes, a band of
enemies rushed out, lashing their ponies and sounding their war whoop.
All was excitement. The men bent their bows and seized their lances.
After a long battle the enemy fled. But when the camping party came
together again--where were the donkey and the two babes? No one knew.
For a long time they searched, but in vain. At last they turned to go
back to the village, the father mournful, the mother wailing. When they
came to the grandmother's tepee, there stood the good donkey with the
two babes in the saddle bags.






THE RABBIT AND THE ELK

The little rabbit lived with his old grandmother, who needed a new
dress. "I will go out and trap a deer or an elk for you," he said. "Then
you shall have a new dress."

When he went out hunting he laid down his bow in the path while he
looked at his snares. An elk coming by saw the bow.

"I will play a joke on the rabbit," said the elk to himself. "I will
make him think I have been caught in his bow string." He then put one
foot on the string and lay down as if dead.

By and by the rabbit returned. When he saw the elk he was filled with
joy and ran home crying: "Grandmother, I have trapped a fine elk. You
shall have a new dress from his skin. Throw the old one in the fire!"

This the old grandmother did.

The elk now sprang to his feet laughing. "Ho, friend rabbit," he called,
"You thought to trap me; now I have mocked you." And he ran away into
the thicket.

The rabbit who had come back to skin the elk now ran home again.
"Grandmother, don't throw your dress in the fire," he cried. But it was
too late. The old dress was burned.





THE RABBIT AND THE GROUSE GIRLS

The rabbit once went out on the prairie in winter time. On the side of a
hill away from the wind he found a great company of girls all with grey
and speckled blankets over their backs. They were the grouse girls and
they were coasting down hill on a board. When the rabbit saw them, he
called out:

"Oh, maidens, that is not a good way to coast down hill. Let me get you
a fine skin with bangles on it that tinkle as you slide." And away he
ran to the tepee and brought a skin bag. It had red stripes on it and
bangles that tinkled. "Come and get inside," he said to the grouse
girls. "Oh, no, we are afraid," they answered. "Don't be afraid, I can't
hurt you. Come, one of you," said the rabbit. Then as each hung back he
added coaxingly: "If each is afraid alone, come all together. I can't
hurt you _all_." And so he coaxed the whole flock into the bag. This
done, the rabbit closed the mouth of the bag, slung it over his back and
came home. "Grandmother," said he, as he came to the tepee, "here is a
bag full of game. Watch it while I go for willow sticks to make spits."

But as soon as the rabbit had gone out of the tent, the grouse girls
began to cry out:

"Grandmother, let us out."

"Who are you?" asked the old woman.

"Your dear grandchildren," they answered.

"But how came you in the bag?" asked the old woman.

"Oh, our cousin was jesting with us. He coaxed us in the bag for a joke.
Please let us out."

"Certainly, dear grandchildren, I will let you out," said the old
woman as she untied the bag: and lo, the grouse flock with
achuck-a-chuck-achuck flew up, knocking over the old grandmother and
flew out of the square smoke opening of the winter lodge. The old woman
caught only one grouse as it flew