250 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



and gladness. We have seen hero, too, in all its sublimity, the blackening thunder- 

 storm, the lightning's glare, and stood amidst the jarring thunderbolts that tore and 

 broke in 'awful rage about us as they rolled over the smooth surface, with naught but 

 empty air to vent their vengeance on. There is a sublime grandeur in these scenes 

 as they are presented here which must be seen and felt to be understood. There is a 

 majesty in the very ground that we tread upon that inspires with awe and reverence, 

 and he must have the soul of a brute who could gallop his horse for a whole day over 

 swells and terraces of green that rise continually ahead and tantalize (where hills 

 peep o'er hills and alps on alps arise), without feeling his bosom swell with awe and 

 admiration, and himself as well as his thoughts lifted up in sublimity when he rises 

 the last terrace and sweeps his eye over the widespread blue and pictured infinity 

 that lies around and beneath him.* 



Man feels here, and startles at the thrilling sensation, the force of illimitable free- 

 dom. His body and his mind both seem to have entered a new element ; the former 

 as free as the very wind it inhales, and the other as expanded and infinite as the 

 boundless imagery that is spread in distance around him. Such is (and is feebly 

 told) the Coteau du Prairie. The rock on which I sit to write is the summit of a 

 precipice thirty feet high, extending two miles in length, and much of the way 

 polished as if a liquid glazing had been poured over its surface. Not far from ns, in 

 the solid rock, are the deep impressed " footsteps of the Great Spirit (in the form of 

 a track of a large bird), where he formerly stood when the blood of the buffaloes that 

 he was devouring ran into the rocks and turned them red." At a few yards from us 

 leaps a beautiful little stream, from the top of the precipice, into a deep basin below. 

 Here, amid rocks of the loveliest hues, but wildest contour, is seen the poor Indian 

 performing ablution ; and at a little distance beyond on the plain, at the base of five 

 huge granite bowlders, he is humbly propitiating the guar dian spirits of the place by 

 sacrifices of tobacco, entreating for permission to take away a small piece of the red 

 stone for a pipe. 



Farther along, and over an extended plain, are seen, like gopher hills, their exca- 

 vations, ancient and recent, and on the surface of the rocks, various marks and their 

 sculptured hieroglyphics — their wakons, totems, and medicines — subjects numerous. 

 a,nd interesting for the antiquary or the merely curious. Graves, mounds, and an- 

 cient fortifications that lie in sight — the pyramid or leaping rock, and its legends ; 

 together with traditions, novel and numerous, and a description graphical and geo- 

 logical, of this strange place, have all been subjects that have passed rapidly through 

 my contemplation, and will be given in future epistles. 



INDIAN TRADITIONS OF THE " COTEATT DES PKAIRIES," OR RED PIPE- 

 STONE QUARRIES. 



I had long ago heard many curious descriptions of this spot given by the Indians, 

 and had contracted the most impatient desire to visit it.t It will be seen by some 

 of the traditions inserted in this letter, from my notes taken on the Upper Missouri 



* The reader and. traveler who may have this book with him should follow the CAteau a few miles to 

 the north of the quarry for the highest elevation and greatest sublimity of view. — G-. C. 



tl have, in former epistles, several times spoken of the red pipes of the Indians, which are found in 

 almost every tribe of Indians on the continent, and in every instance have, I venture to say, been 

 brought from the Coteau des Prairies, inasmuch as no tribe of Indians that I have yet visited have 

 ever apprised me of any other source than this ; and the stone from which they are all manufactured 

 is of the same character exactly, and tlifferent from any known mineral compound ever yet discovered 

 in any part of Europe or other parts of the American continent. This may be thought a broad as- 

 sertion, yet it is one I have ventured to make (and one! should have no motive for making except 

 for the purpose of eliciting information, if there be any, on a subject so curious and so exceedingly 

 interesting). In my Indian museum there can always be seen a great many beautiful specimens of 

 this mineral, selected on the spot by myself, embracing all of its numeious varieties, and I challenge 

 the world to produce anything like it, except it be from the same locality. In a following letter will 

 be found a further account of it, and its chemical analysis.— G. C. 



