My children, my children,
Here is the river of turtles,
Here is the river of turtles,
Where the various living things,
Where the various living things,
Are painted their different colors,
Are painted their different colors.
Our father says so,
Our father says so.
This song has a very pretty tune. The Cheyenne claim to have lived originally in the north on a stream known to them as the “River of Turtles.” Reverend H. R. Voth, former missionary among the Cheyenne and Arapaho, states that the Indians say that along the banks of this stream were clays of different colors which they used for paint. In a letter of October 1, 1891, he says: “I have now in my possession some red and some gray or drab paint that Black Coyote brought with him from the north, which he claims came from that ancient Turtle river, and which the Indians are now using to paint themselves. They say there are more than two kinds of color at that river, or at least used to be.” According to [Clark] (Indian Sign Language, page 99) the oldest traditions of the Cheyenne locate their former home on the headwaters of the Mississippi in Minnesota, about where Saint Paul now is. Other facts corroborate this testimony, and the traditional “Turtle river” would seem to be identical with the Saint Croix, which is thus described by Coxe in 1741: