XX. THE PRAIRIE DANDELION
(Algonquin)
n the Southland, flat upon the ground, lies the spirit of the south wind. He is a very fat and very lazy old man. His eyes are always toward the cool north, but he will not stir from his resting place.
When he sighs the air is filled with warm breezes. In the autumn his breath is filled with the odor of apples and all manner of fruits. He sends the golden Indian Summer to the Northland. Shawondasee is the name of this spirit of the south wind.
One day, while looking toward the prairies of the north, he saw a beautiful girl with yellow hair standing on the plains in the west. Every morning for days he saw this maiden, and she seemed more lovely each day.
But another morning when he opened his sleepy eyes and looked, the yellow locks on the maiden’s head were changed to fleecy white.
“Ah! my brother, the strong north wind, has been more swift than I, as he ever is. He has put his frost crown on the maiden’s head. I will mourn for her.” [[140]]
Shawondasee heaved a number of warm sighs, and as the pleasant south breezes reached the maiden the air seemed filled with tiny feathers. The maiden had vanished with her crown.
It was no Indian maiden. It was only the prairie dandelion, and the crown that Shawondasee thought the north wind had given her was only her crown of feathery seeds; but the lazy Shawondasee never knew the secret, and mourned for his loss and envied his brother.
Schoolcraft. [[141]]
XXI. THE SHADOW CANOE
A Legend of Minnehaha Falls
(Dakota)
In a wigwam by the Falls of Minnehaha lived an Indian brave with his family. Ampata was his wife, and two happy children played in the sunshine around his wigwam. The little family went in the winter with their tribe farther south, and the smoke of their village fires could be seen for many miles.
Here Ampata embroidered the moccasins with colored quills and grasses; these moccasins were for her husband and her children. Here she made the buckskin suit for her hunter. She sewed it with strings of sinew saved from the deer whose skin she had carefully tanned.
They all went back to the north in the summer time, back to the fall of waters in the Great Father of Waters and to the Falls of Minnehaha. There was good fishing in these waters, and their wigwam stayed there all the summer. [[142]]
In the north she wove baskets of willows and baked dishes of clay. She found the red clay and the yellow for her husband’s war paint; he was a great warrior and wore two eagle feathers in his scalp lock.
The braves of her tribe had a great battle with the Ojibways. Her husband was like two men; he helped drive the Ojibways back to their own fishing grounds. There was a great feast after the battle; the warriors sang and told how brave they had been. Her husband sang a long song and made a great speech.
After this he told her that he was a great warrior now and must have two wives; he was going to marry the chief’s daughter. Ampata mourned, but he forgot her.
Ampata fled to her father’s tent and took her two children with her. She went to the south with her father when winter came; in the spring she came back to the Falls of Minnehaha with her tribe.
Her husband did not come for her, and she was alone with her children. All the warriors went to hunt the buffalo on the prairie.
There had been much rain, and the river was wide and deep. Ampata put her two children into a canoe, and taking the paddle got in herself and pushed far out into the river. The women called to her to come back, but she pushed away faster toward the falls. The canoe leaped over the falls, and Ampata and her [[144]]two children passed to the Happy Hunting Ground of the other world.
Minnehaha Falls in Summer
From a Photograph
Every spring the Indians say that on moonlit nights they can see the shadow canoe of Ampata leaping over the falls. They say white elk and white deer watch it from the shore. [[145]]