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Writers have pretended, too, that the heroine of the rock was a Winnebago. It is a mistake, the maiden was a Dahcotah. It was from the Dahcotahs that I obtained the incident, and they believe that it really occurred. They are offended if you suggest the possibility of its being a fiction. Indeed they fix a date to it, reckoning by the occurrences of great battles, or other events worthy of notice.

It was in the month of April, or as the Dahcotahs say in "the moon that geese lay," that Red Earth took her place by the side of her husband, thus asserting her right to be mistress of his wigwam. While she occupied herself with her many duties, she never for a moment forgot the threat of Shining Iron. But her cares and anxieties for her husband's safety were soon over.

In short, the study of Indian character is the study of the unregenerate human heart; and the writer of these sketches of the Dahcotahs presents it as such, with express and solemn reference to the duty of those who have "the words of eternal life" to apply them to the wretched condition of the red man, who is, perhaps, with all his ignorance, quite as well prepared to receive them as many of those who are already wise in their own eyes.

She smiles as she tells you that her "face is dark, but that she hopes her heart has been changed; and that she will one day sing in heaven, where the voices of the white people and of the converted Dahcotahs, will mingle in a song of love to Him 'who died for the whole world." His village is on the Mississippi river, 1,800 miles from its mouth.

The Giant was going northwards, and did not notice the Indian or stop; he says he watched the Giant; and, as he went forward, the trees and bushes seemed to make way for him. The visit was one of good luck, the Indians say, for there was excellent hunting that season. The Dahcotahs believe firmly the story of Iron Members. He was one of their wisest men.

The thunder has ceased to roll, the wind has died away, and the golden streaks that bound the horizon promise a brighter morning. So with Checkered Cloud, the storm and strife of the earth have ceased; the "battle of life" is fought, and she has conquered. For she hopes to meet the beloved of earth in the heaven of the Dahcotahs. And who will say that our heaven will not be hers?

This caused much suffering among the Dahcotahs; fever was making great havoc among them, and to deprive them of their flour and other articles of food was only enfeebling their constitutions, and rendering them an easy prey for disease.

We shall not detain the narrative, to relate the quaint morals with which he next endeavoured to cheer the drooping spirits of his more sensitive companion, or the occasional pithy and peculiar benedictions that he pronounced, on all the bands of the Dahcotahs, commencing with those whom he accused of stealing or murdering, on the banks of the distant Mississippi, and concluding, in terms of suitable energy, with the Teton tribe.

Often beaten, they were never conquered, and have always occupied the ground which they had selected from the beginning. Unlike the great families of the Dahcotahs and Algonquins, who yet retain the predominant characteristics of the wandering nations of South-west Asia, the Shoshones seem to have been in all ages a nation warlike, though stationary.

Near the source of the St. Peters is a place called Thunder-tracks where the footprints of the thunder-bird are seen in the rocks, twenty-five miles apart. The Dahcotahs believe in an evil spirit as well as a good, but they do not consider these spirits as opposed to each other; they do not think that they are tempted to do wrong by this evil spirit; their own hearts are bad.