224 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Indiana. 8 But if the reference of the tradition to a " Yellow " Eiver 

 be not to the Missouri, as has been supposed by some, there is a Yellow 

 Eiver in Minnesota, if another is needed, viz., that now called Ver- 

 milion Eiver, entering the Mississippi below Hastings, which, indeed, 

 has a stoneless soil. From there southward extends the " driftless 

 region " on the east of the Mississippi, and in that vicinity are the first 

 of the effigy mounds, i. e., in the Cannon Valley and in Goodhue and 

 Wabasha counties and extending southward, while on the east side of 

 the Mississippi is the central and most characteristic region of effigy 

 mounds. It is not at all improbable that the migrating Lenape made 

 a long halt in the valley of the Vermilion, contiguous to these mound- 

 builders before they entered upon the great war. 



This is the first of the great legends to which I called your atten- 

 tion. The second is that which brought the Dakota tribes into Minne- 

 sota, and it doubtless pertains to a time nearly cotemporary with that 

 which refers to the Lenape. It comes to us from the other party to 

 the great conflict, and it no doubt refers to the consequences of the 

 Lenape invasion. This legend is found amongst several of the Dakota 

 tribes, and even amongst the later Algonquian who returned westward 

 to the Mississippi Valley. I will not dwell on the details with those 

 separate tribes, but simply mention the tribes with which it has been 

 handed down from generation to generation, viz., Osage, Omaha, Man- 

 dan, Kansa and Akansea, and Ponca. These tribes concur in saying 

 that they formerly dwelt in the Ohio and Wabash valleys, and that 

 they moved down the Ohio Valley, where they were separated into two 

 divisions at the mouth of the Ohio Eiver, some of them going down 

 the Mississippi and some of them up the same river. They repeated 

 such segregation at the Missouri, where, as it appears from the pres- 

 ervation of the name, the Mantane divided into two parties, one of 

 which became the Mandans and the other the Mantanton, the latter 

 being one of the tribes of the Issanti at Mille Lac in 1701 when these 

 tribes were enumerated by Le Sueur, at Fort L'Huillier. The name 

 Issati or Isanti, is itself, apparently, another form of a name of the 

 Siouan South Carolinan Santee, and sometimes, even now, it reverts 

 to the original spelling. If so, they preserved their name during their 

 long residence in the Ohio Valley as moundbuilders. 



This tradition is linked in with some historic data in about the 

 same manner that the Lenape migration is linked, and verified by some 

 scant connection with historic events. With this migration the terri- 

 tory of Minnesota was almost wholly occupied by the Siouan stock, and 



8 According to Leverett's late description of the valley ol Yellow River in 

 Indiana, the lower reaches of the valley have a sandy loam soil in which the 

 drainage is very imperfect, and the valley for fifteen miles above its union with 

 the Kankakee is narrow. Above that point the Yellow River drains a stony 

 region comprised in the Maxinkuckee moraine. Ill Glac. Lobe, p. 507 ; Mem. 

 U. S. G. 8., XXXVIII. 



