In publishing these “Myths of the Sioux,” I deem it proper to state that
I am of one-fourth Sioux blood. My maternal grandfather, Captain Duncan
Graham, a Scotchman by birth, who had seen service in the British Army,
was one of a party of Scotch Highlanders who in 1811 arrived in the
British Northwest by way of York Factory, Hudson Bay, to found what was
known as the Selkirk Colony, near Lake Winnipeg, now within the
province of Manitoba, Canada. Soon after his arrival at Lake Winnipeg he
proceeded up the Red River of the North and the western fork thereof
to its source, and thence down the Minnesota River to Mendota, the
confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, where he located. My
grandmother, Ha-za-ho-ta-win, was a full-blood of the Medawakanton Band
of the Sioux Tribe of Indians. My father, Joseph Buisson, born near
Montreal, Canada, was connected with the American Fur Company, with
headquarters at Mendota, Minnesota, which point was for many years the
chief distributing depot of the American Fur Company, from which the
Indian trade conducted by that company on the upper Mississippi was
directed.
I was born December 8, 1842, at Wabasha, Minnesota, then Indian country,
and resided thereat until fourteen years of age, when I was sent to
school at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
I was married to Major James McLaughlin at Mendota, Minnesota,
January 28, 1864, and resided in Minnesota until July 1, 1871, when I
accompanied my husband to Devils Lake Agency, North Dakota, then Dakota
Territory, where I remained ten years in most friendly relations with
the Indians of that agency. My husband was Indian agent at Devils Lake
Agency, and in 1881 was transferred to Standing Rock, on the Missouri
River, then a very important agency, to take charge of the Sioux who
had then but recently surrendered to the military authorities, and been
brought by steamboat from various points on the upper Missouri, to be
permanently located on the Standing Rock reservation.
Having been born and reared in an Indian community, I at an early age
acquired a thorough knowledge of the Sioux language, and having lived on
Indian reservations for the past forty years in a position which brought
me very near to the Indians, whose confidence I possessed, I have,
therefore, had exceptional opportunities of learning the legends and
folk-lore of the Sioux.
The stories contained in this little volume were told me by the older
men and women of the Sioux, of which I made careful notes as related,
knowing that, if not recorded, these fairy tales would be lost to
posterity by the passing of the primitive Indian.
The notes of a song or a strain of music coming to us through the night
not only give us pleasure by the melody they bring, but also give us
knowledge of the character of the singer or of the instrument from which
they proceed. There is something in the music which unerringly tells us
of its source. I believe musicians call it the “timbre” of the sound. It
is independent of, and different from, both pitch and rhythm; it is the
texture of the music itself.
The “timbre” of a people’s stories tells of the qualities of that
people’s heart. It is the texture of the thought, independent of its
form or fashioning, which tells the quality of the mind from which it
springs.
In the “timbre” of these stories of the Sioux, told in the lodges and
at the camp fires of the past, and by the firesides of the Dakotas of
today, we recognize the very texture of the thought of a simple, grave,
and sincere people, living in intimate contact and friendship with the
big out-of-doors that we call Nature; a race not yet understanding all
things, not proud and boastful, but honest and childlike and fair; a
simple, sincere, and gravely thoughtful people, willing to believe that
there may be in even the everyday things of life something not yet fully
understood; a race that can, without any loss of native dignity, gravely
consider the simplest things, seeking to fathom their meaning and to
learn their lesson--equally without vain-glorious boasting and trifling
cynicism; an earnest, thoughtful, dignified, but simple and primitive
people.
To the children of any race these stories can not fail to give pleasure
by their vivid imaging of the simple things and creatures of the great
out-of-doors and the epics of their doings. They will also give an
intimate insight into the mentality of an interesting race at a most
interesting stage of development, which is now fast receding into the
mists of the past.
MARIE L. McLAUGHLIN (Mrs. James McLaughlin).
McLaughlin, S. D., May 1, 1913.