eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex
and Mercia were still performing savage rites in the temples of Thor
and Woden."

The day of the Dakotas is done. The degenerate remnants of
that once powerful and warlike people still linger around the forts
and agencies of the Northwest, or chase the caribou and the bison on
the banks of the Sascatchewan, but the Dakotas of old are no more.
The brilliant defeat of Custer, by Sitting Bull and his braves, was
their last grand rally against the resistless march of the sons of
the Saxons and the Celts. The plow-shares of a superior race are fast
leveling the sacred mounds of their dead. But yesterday, the shores
of our lakes, and our rivers, were dotted with their tepees. Their
light canoes glided over our waters, and their hunters chased the deer
and the buffalo on the sites of our cities. To-day, they are not. Let
us do justice to their memory, for there was much that was noble in
their natures. In the following Dakota Legends I have endeavored to
faithfully represent many of the customs and superstitions, and some
of the traditions, of that people. I have taken very little "poetic
license" with their traditions; none, whatever, with their customs
and superstitions. In my studies for these Legends I have been greatly
aided by Rev. S. R. Riggs, author of the Grammar and Dictionary of
the Dakota language, "Tah-Koo Wah-Kan," &c., and for many years a
missionary among the Dakotas. He has patiently answered my numerous
inquiries and given me valuable information. I am also indebted to
Gen. H. H. Sibley, one of the earliest American traders among them,
and to Rev. S. W. Pond, of Shakopee, one of the first Protestant
missionaries to these people, and himself the author of poetical versions
of some of their principal legends; to Mrs. Eastman's "Dacotah." and
last, but not least, to the Rev. E. D. Neill, whose admirable "History