Indian Legends of Minnesota

by Unknown

As in olden time the zealots who would build unto their God,
Sacred temples for his worship, chose a "high place," and the sod
Of the consecrated mountain was made holy by the rites Of footsore and weary pilgrims who had sought the sacred heights,
So instinctively the red-men, roaming o'er the boundless main,
Looked for their Manitou above the low level of the plain;
Sought and found him on the summit of the green wave's swelling crest
Rising upward like a mountain, in the valley of the West.

Not to him they founded temples, gilded fanes and altars fair;
Looking up, they saw already Manitou enthronèd there
In the fastness of the mountain, with his sphynx-like, stony face
Watching like a guardian spirit, o'er the dusky lawless race
Who regarded not each other, and their deadly hatred slaked
In the blood of friends and foemen, when their slumbering ire was waked.

"Gitche Manitou, the Mighty," the Great Spirit throned above,
Was a God of truth and wisdom, was a God of peace and love;
And as God upon Mount Sinai, stooping from his heavenly throne,
Gave the law unto his people, deeply graven into stone, "Gitche Manitou, the Mighty," in compassion for the race
Of unlettered, untaught heathen who knew not his god-like face
Save they saw it in the tempest or the lightning's livid glare,
Or in some familiar emblem they could see, or feel, or wear,
Taught them peace and love to kindred, through an emblem formed of stone,
Fashioned in the well-known outlines of a thing they called their own.
In the caverns of his store-house, deeply sunken in the ground,
Lay the mystical red pipe-stone, never yet by sachem found.
With his strong right hand almighty, rent he now the ground in twain,
Broke the red stone of the quarry, and, resounding o'er the plain,
Came this message to the warriors:—"Let this be to you a sign:
Make you calumets of pipe-stone, pledge you peace and love divine,
By the smoking of this signet. Let it pass from hand to hand.
Cease you from your wars and wrangling, and be brothers in the land."

The Great Spirit's words were heeded, and the calumet, the pipe
Which they often smoked together in their councils, was the type Of good-will and peace thereafter, and upon the quarry's site,
Hostile tribes and tongues and races meeting, never meet to fight.

Many legends and traditions cluster round this sacred spot;
Many histories and records deep with hidden meaning fraught,
Have been chiseled on the ledges at the ancient bowlders' base,
Who, like strangers in the valley, drifted to a resting place.

Here, ere Manitou had given to the tribes the pipe of peace,
Saw he mighty war and bloodshed, saw the tribes of men decrease,
Until fleeing from destruction, come three maidens to the rocks—
The last remnant of all women, hiding from the fearful shocks Of the deadly fight and carnage which was raging through the air,
Driven to these three large bowlders, as a refuge in despair.
Now in memory of the conflict and the part the bowlders bore,
They are named in weird tradition, "The Three Maidens," evermore.

Here the thunder-bird portentous, Wakan, terrible in might,
Made his home in awful grandeur on the cliff's mysterious height.
Here the flapping of his pinions brought the fierce, hot lightning's glare,
Glazing all the fissured surface like enamel smooth and fair;
Melting all the red rock's substance till a foot-print of the bird,
Plastic then, took form and hardened for a witness of the word.