The Eureka Springs Story

BY Otto Ernest Rayburn
DIAMOND JUBILEE EDITION 1954
Drawings by Gloria Morgan Bailey
Original Printing by THE TIMES-ECHO PRESS Eureka Springs, Arkansas
Second Printing, 1982, by Wheeler Printing, Inc. Eureka Springs, Arkansas
To my friend SAM A. LEATH who has served Eureka Springs as guide and historian for more than a half century.
Legendary lore concerning the visitation of northern Indian tribes to what is now Eureka Springs, Arkansas is badly mixed and it is difficult to separate truth from fiction. It is difficult to prove the authenticity of a legend. The stories we hear may have original pedigree or they may be mere fabrications by imaginative writers. In history, we have something to tie to, but this is not always the case with traditional lore that is handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. It may be true or it may be a hoax. Tribal lore from the Indians themselves is usually accepted as authentic for the redman was noted for his veracity and had the habit of repeating the tale without variation, but in recent years numerous legends have been “cooked up” by white men and passed off as legitimate tradition. Stories are told that the Indians never heard of. The reliable legends are those that come from the Indians themselves, properly documented.
There are at least three legends of visits of redmen to the “Magic Healing Springs,” as they called them, before white men settled the region. They go back about four hundred years and each of the stories has similar motif. The beautiful daughter of a famous chief, living in the cold north, is stricken with some dreadful disease or has lost her eyesight. The chief tries all the medicine men available but without success. He hears of the healing springs far to the south and treks thousands of miles through the wilderness to get his daughter to the coveted spot. The girl bathes in the water and is healed. Sometimes she falls in love with a handsome brave of the local tribe and marries him. In one case the girl is Mor-i-na-ki, daughter of a Siouian chief. Another story features her as the daughter of Red Cloud, a Delaware. Still another gives Noawada of the Dakotas as the chief and his daughter is Minnehaha (Laughing Water). Each of these legends runs about the same gamut of hardship and privation and ends with the same climax of healing. It is easy to assume that they all originated from the same source, but this may not be true. The historian finds in them sufficient evidence to conclude that the northern Indians did make long trips to the springs, and that the water was widely known for its curative properties and healing powers. But there is no way of separating the chaff from the whole grain except from documented material.