"It always is a-raining!"



WATSEKA.

AN INDIAN LEGEND.

Many years ago there lived in the west a tribe of Indians who
called themselves Illinois. They were not savage and warlike, as
the tribes around them were, but they liked to live in peace,
hunting the deer in the great woods, and taking the fish from the
shallow streams.

On the bank of a pretty little river that flows into the great
Mississippi a small band of these Indians had built their
wigwams. All along the stream were tall oaks and spreading walnut
trees, with here and there a grove of wild plums or a thicket of
hazel bushes. But only half a mile away began the great prairie,
where there was neither tree nor bush, but only tall grass; and
it stretched like a green sea as far as the eye could reach.

What there was on the other side of the prairie the Indians did
not know. But they had been told that a fierce race of men lived
there who loved only war.

"We will live quietly in our own place," they said, "and then
these strangers will not molest us."

And so for many years they lived, in a careless, happy way by the