Indian Legends and Other Poems | Page 3

The Indian name for the Falls of St. Anthony signifies "Laughing
Water," and here tradition says that a young woman of the Dahcotah
tribe, the father of her children having taken another wife, unmoored
her canoe above the fall, and placing herself and children in it, sang her
death-song as she went over the foaming declivity.
The sun went down the west
As a warrior to his grave,
And touched
with crimson hue
The "Laughing Water's" wave;
And where the
current swept
A quick, convulsive flood,
Serene upon the brink

An Indian mother stood.
With calm and serious gaze
She watched the torrent blue
And then
with skilful hand
Unmoored the birch canoe,
Seized the light oar,
and placed
Her infants by her side,
And steered the fragile bark

On through the rushing tide.
Then fitfully and wild
In thrilling notes of woe
Swept down the
rapid stream
The death-song sad and low;
And gathered on the
marge,
From many a forest glen,
With frantic gestures rude,
The
red Dahcotah men.
But onward sped the bark
Until it reached the
height,
Where mounts the angry spray
And raves the water's might

And whirling eddies swept
Into the gulf below
The smiles of
infancy
And youth's maturer glow;
The priestess of the rock
And
white-robed surges bore
The wronged and broken heart
To the far
off Spirit Shore.
And often when the night
Has drawn her shadowy veil,
And solemn
stars look forth
Serenely pure and pale,
A spectre bark and form

May still be seen to glide,
In wondrous silence down
The Laughing
Water's tide.
And mingling with the breath
Of low winds sweeping
free,
The night-bird's fitful plaint,
And moaning forest tree,
Amid
the lulling chime
Of waters falling there,
The death-song floats
again
Upon the laden air.

THE LAST OF THE RED MEN.
Travellers in Mexico have found the form of a serpent invariably
pictured over the doorways of the Indian Temples, and on the interior
walls, the impression of a red hand.
The superstitions attached to the phenomena of the thunderstorm and
Aurora Borealis, alluded to in the poem, are well authenticated.
I saw him in vision,--the last of that race
Who were destined to
vanish before the Pale-face,
As the dews of the evening from
mountain and dale,
When the thirsty young Morning withdraws her
dark veil; Alone with the Past and the Future's chill breath,
Like a
soul that has entered the valley of Death.
He stood where of old from the Fane of the Sun,
While cycles
unnumbered their centuries run,
Never quenched, never fading, and
mocking at Time,
Blazed the fire sacerdotal far o'er the fair clime;

Where the temples o'ershadowed the Mexican plain,
And the hosts of
the Aztec were conquered and slain;
Where the Red Hand still glows
on pilaster and wall,
And the serpent keeps watch o'er the desolate
hall.
He stood as an oak, on the bleak mountainside,
The lightning hath
withered and scorched in its pride
Most stately in death, and refusing
to bend
To the blast that ere long must its dry branches rend; With
coldness and courage confronting Life's care,
But the coldness, the
courage, that's born of despair.
I marked him where, winding through harvest-crowned plain, The
"Father of Waters" sweeps on to the main,
Where the dark mounds in
silence and loneliness stand, And the wrecks of the Red-man are strewn
o'er the land: The forests were levelled that once were his home,
O'er
the fields of his sires glittered steeple and dome; The chieftain no
longer in greenwood and glade
With trophies of fame wooed the
dusky-haired maid,
And the voice of the hunter had died on the air


With the victor's defiance and captive's low prayer;
But the winds and
the waves and the firmament's scroll, With Divinity still were instinct
to his soul;
At midnight the war-horse still cleaved the blue sky,
As
it bore the departed to mansions on high;
Still dwelt in the rock and
the shell and the tide
A tutelar angel, invisible guide;
Still heard he
the tread of the Deity nigh,
When the lightning's wild pinion gleamed
bright on the eye, And saw in the Northern-lights, flashing and red,

The shades of his fathers, the dance of the dead.
And scorning the
works and abode of his foe,
The pilgrim raised far from that valley of
woe
His dark, eagle gaze, to the sun-gilded west,
Where the fair
"Land of Shadows" lay viewless and blest.
Again I beheld him where swift on its way
Leaped the cataract,
foaming, with thunder and spray,
To the whirlpool below from the
dark ledge on high,
While the mist from its waters commixed with
the sky.
The dense earth thrilled deep to the voice of its roar, And the
"Thunder of Waters" shook forest and shore,
As he steered his frail
bark to the horrible verge,
And, chanting his death-song, went down
with the surge.
"On, on, mighty Spirit!
I welcome thy spray
As the prairie-bound
hunter
The dawning of day;
No shackles have bound thee,
No
tyrant imprest
The mark of the Pale face
On torrent and crest.
"His banners are waving
O'er hill-top and plain,
The stripes of
oppression
Blood-red with our slain;
The stars of his glory
And
greatness and fame,
The signs of our weakness,
The signs of our
shame.
"The hatchet is broken,
The bow is unstrung;
The