"Please to be seated, ladies, and you shall hear the whole story; although it is many years since I received it from a Sister of Charity at Montreal."
"But I insist upon it that a lover must be introduced," said lady number two.
"We can not promise," said I; "for the story will come to my recollection only by degrees, as I go along. What shall we call it?"
"Call it," said the first lady, hesitatingly, "call it
"We-no-na's Rock."
"We-no-na's Rock it shall be."
Know, then, that many years ago, shortly before the indefatigable Jesuit missionaries had penetrated this country, or given to this beautiful lake the name of that old king of the Franks, which it bears, the Dahcotahs or Sioux Indians occupied the region now partly included within the limits of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
The Dahcotahs were confederated bands, sub-divided into clans, and they differed from the Indians east of the Mississippi in relying more exclusively for their support upon hunting the bison. They were a fierce, aggressive people, and so improvident, that periods of famine among them were quite common. On such occasions they would suddenly break up their settlements and move to distant hunting-grounds, leaving their infirm old men, who were unable to travel, behind to perish.
On a cold day in January, on the edge of the clump of trees which you see a short distance back from the Maiden's Rock, an old Indian might have been seen cowering about a fire. Ish-te-nah had been left to die. His people, driven by hunger, had gone west in search of the bison. A small pile of wood, some morsels of food, a hatchet, a birchen vessel, filled with water, and a bow and arrows, were by his side; and a few stakes, covered with deerskins, disposed in a cone-like shape, formed the wigwam for his shelter and repose. The ground was covered with snow, and the wind blow keenly from the north-west.
"Go, my children," the old man had said, when some seemed to hesitate in their net of desertion; "go where you can get food. Leave me to the Great Spirit's care. At the best I have but a brief while
