THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 249 



pipe, which has blown its fumes of peace and war to the remotest corners of the con- 

 tinent, which has visited every warrior and passed through its reddened stem the ir- 

 revocable oath of war and desolation. And here, also, the peace-breathing calumet 

 was born and fringed with the eagle's quills, which has shed its thrilling fumes over 

 the land and soothed the fury of the relentless savage. 



<l The Great Spirit at an ancient period here called the Indian nations together, and 

 standing on the precipice of the red pipestone rock, broke from its wall a piece, and 

 made a huge pipe by turning it in his hand, which he smoked over them, and to the 

 north, the south, the east, and the west, and told them that this stone was red — that 

 it was their flesh — that they mnst use it for their pipes of peace — that it belonged to 

 them all, and that the war-club and scalping-knife must not be raised on its ground. 

 At the last whiff of his pipe his head went into a great cloud, and the whole surface 

 of the rock for several miles was melted and glazed ; two great ovens were opened 

 beneath and two women (guardian spirits of the place) entered them in a blaze of 

 fire; and they are heard there yet (Tso-mec-cos-tee and Tso-me-cos-te-tvon-dee), answer- 

 ing to the invocations of tho high, priests or medicine men, who consult them when 

 they are visitors to this sacred place." 



Near this spot, also, on a high mound, is the " Thunder's Nest" (Nid-du-Tonnere), 

 where " a very small bird sits upon her eggs during fair weather and the skies are 

 rent with bolts of thunder at the approach of a storm, which is occasioned by the 

 hatching of her brood ! 



"This bird is eternal and incapable of reproducing her own species ; she has often 

 been seen by the medicine men, and is about as large as the end of the little finger ! 

 Her mate is a serpent, whose fiery tongue destroys the young ones as soon as they are 

 hatched, and the fiery noise darts through the skies." 



Such are a few of the stories of this famed land, which of itself, in its beauty and 

 loveliness, without the aid of traditionary fame, would be appropriately denominated 

 a paradise. Whether it has been an Indian Eden or not, or whether the thunderbolts 

 of an Indian Jupiter are actually forged here, it is nevertheless a place renowned in 

 Indian heraldry and tradition, which I hope I may be able to fathom and chronicle, as 

 explanatory of many of my anecdotes and traditionary superstitions of Indian his- 

 tory which I have given and am giving to the world. 



With my excellent companion I am encamped on and writing from the very rock 

 where u the Great Spirit stood when he consecrated the j>ipe of peace by molding it 

 from the rock and smoking it over the congregated nations that were assembled about 

 him." 



Lifted up on this stately mound, whose top is fanned with air as light to breathe 

 as nitrous gas, and bivouacked on its very ridge (where nought on earth is seen in 

 distance save the thousand treeless, bushless, weedless hills of grass and vivid green, 

 which all around me vanish into an infinity of blue and azure), stretched on our 

 bears' skins, my fellow-traveler, Mr. Wood, and myself, have laid and contemplated 

 the splendid orrery of the heavens. With sad delight that shook me with a terror 

 have I watched the swollen sun shoving down, too fast for time, upon the mystic hor- 

 izon, whose line was lost, except as it was marked in blue across his blood-red disk. 

 Thus have we laid night after night (two congenial spirits who could draw pleasure 

 from sublime contemplation) and descanted on our own insignificance; we have 

 closely drawn our buffalo robes about, talked of the ills of life, of friends we had 

 lost, of projects that had failed, and of the painful steps we had to retrace to reach 

 our own dear native lands again. We have sighed in the melancholy of twilight, 

 when the busy winds were breathing their last, the chill of sable night was hovering 

 around us, and naught of noise was heard but the silvery tones of the howling wolf 

 and the subterraneous whistle of the busy gophers that were plowing and vaulting 

 the earth beneath us. Thus have we seen wheeled down in the west the glories of 

 day, and at the next moment, in the east, beheld her silver majesty jutting up above 

 the horizon, Avith splendor in her face that seemed again to fill the world with joy 



