Myths and Legends of the Sioux
Mrs. Marie L. McLaughlin
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Sept. 8, 2013)
Stories told in the lodges and at the camp fires of the past. “This volume is written by Mrs. McLaughlin, wife of Colonel James McLaughlin, well known as one of the Indian’s best friends, who is herself one-quarter Sioux, the greater part of the stories she now publishes being learned at her mother’s knee. As a child, reared among Indians and speaking their language; as a woman, the wife of an Indian official and for forty years a resident of Sioux reservations, Mrs. McLaughlin has had peculiar advantages in knowing the folklore of her people, and of verifying the childish memories which would otherwise have been too hazy to record. The collection is an interesting one…with the charm of the primitive.” -The Southern Workman, January, 1917 “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. 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.” -Mrs. Marie L. McLaughlin The Forgotten Ear of Corn The Little Mice The Pet Rabbit The Pet Donkey The Rabbit and the Elk The Rabbit and the Grouse Girls The Faithful Lovers The Artichoke and the Muskrat The Rabbit, and the Bear with the Flint Body Story of the Lost Wife The Raccoon and the Crawfish Legend of Standing Rock Story of the Peace Pipe A Bashful Courtship The Simpleton's Wisdom Little Brave and the Medicine Woman The Bound Children The Signs of Corn Story of the Rabbits How the Rabbit Lost His Tail Unktomi and the Arrowheads The Bear and the Rabbit Hunt Buffalo The Brave Who Went on the Warpath Alone and Won the Name of the Lone Warrior The Sioux Who Married the Crow Chief's Daughter The Boy and the Turtles The Hermit, or the Gift of Corn The Mysterious Butte The Wonderful Turtle The Man and the Oak Story of the Two Young Friends The Story of the Pet Crow The "Wasna" (Pemmican Man) and the Unktomi (Spider) The Resuscitation of the Only Daughter The Story of the Pet Crane White Plume Story of Pretty Feathered Forehead The Four Brothers or Inyanhoksila (Stone Boy) The Unktomi (Spider), Two Widows and the Red Plums