[a] Little Rice River. It bears the name of Rice Creek to-day
and empties into the Mississippi from the east, a few miles above
Minneapolis.

Father Rene Menard [a]--it was he,
long lost to his Jesuit brothers,
Sent forth by an holy decree
to carry the Cross to the heathen.
In his old age abandoned to die,
in the swamps, by his timid companions,
He prayed to the Virgin on high,
and she led him forth from the forest;
For angels she sent him as men
--in the forms of the tawny Dakotas,
And they led his feet from the fen,
--from the slough of despond and the desert.
Half-dead in a dismal morass,
as they followed the red-deer they found him,
In the midst of the mire and the grass,
and mumbling "_Te Deum laudamus_."
"Unktomee [72]--Ho!" muttered the braves,
for they deemed him the black Spider-Spirit
That dwells in the drearisome caves,
and walks on the marshes at midnight,
With a flickering torch in his hand,
to decoy to his den the unwary.
His tongue could they not understand,
but his torn hands all shriveled with famine,
He stretched to the hunters and said:
"He feedeth his chosen with manna;