TRADITION OF THE UPPER MISSOURI INDIANS

	In the time of a great freshet, which took place many centuries 
ago, and destroyed all the nations of the earth, all the tribes of the 
red men assembled on the Coteau des Prairie's to get out of the way of 
the waters. After they had all assembled here from all parts, the water 
continued to rise, until at length it covered them all in a mass, and 
their flesh was converted into red pipe-stone. Therefore, it has always 
been considered neutral ground -- it belonged to all tribes alike, and 
all were allowed to get it and smoke together. "While they were drowning 
in a mass, a young woman, Ke-wap-tah-wa (a virgin), caught hold of the 
foot of a very large bird that was flying over, and was carried to the 
top of a high cliff, not far off, that was above the water. Here she had 
twins, and their father was the war-eagle, and her children have since 
peopled the earth. The pipe-stone, which is the flesh of their 
ancestors, is smoked by them as a symbol of peace, and the eagle's quill 
decorates the head of the brave."

TRADITION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER INDIANS

"Many ages after the red men were made, when all the different tribes 
were at war, the Great Spirit sent runners, and called them all together 
at the red pipe. He stood on the top of the rocks, and the red people 
were assembled in infinite numbers on the plains below. He took out of 
the rock a piece of the red stone, and made a large pipe, and smoked it 
over them all; told them it was part of their flesh; that though they 
were at war, they must meet at this place as friends; that it belonged 
to them all; that they must make their calumets from it, and smoke them 
to him whenever they wished to appease him or get his good will. The 
smoke from his big pipe rolled over them all, and he disappeared in the 
cloud. At the last whiff of his pipe, a blaze of fire rolled over the 
rocks, and melted their surface, and at the same moment two squaws went 
in a blaze of fire under the two medicine rocks, where the remain to 
this day, and must be consulted and propitiated whenever the pipe-stone 
is to be taken away.

TRADITION OF THE INDIANS ON THE LOWER MISSOURI

Here happened the mysterious birth of the red pipe, soon after the 
creation of the red man, which has blown its fumes of peace and war to 
the remotes corners of the continent; which has visited every warrior, 
and passed through its reddened stem the irrevocable oath of war and 
desolation. And here, also, the peace-breathing calumet was born and 
fringed with eagles' quills, which has shed its thrilling fumes over the 
land, and soothed the fury of the relentless savage.

	"The Great Spirit, at an ancient period, here called the Indian 
nations together, and, standing on the precipice of the red pipe-stone 
rock, broke from its wall a piece, and made a huge pipe by turning it in 
his hand, which he smoked over them to the north, the south, the east 
and the west, and told them that this stone was red--that it was their 
flesh--that the war-club must not be raised on its ground. At the last 
whiff of his pipe, his head went into a great cloud, and the whole 
surface of the rock for several miles was heated and glazed' two great 
ovens were opened beneath, and two women (guardian spirits of the place) 
entered them in a blaze of fire, and they are heard there yet (Tso-me-
cos-too and Tso-me-cos-to-wan-dee,
answering to the invocations of the high priests, who consult them when 
they visit the sacred place."

	The Osage nation, which long ago had its habitations on the Lower 
Missouri, had a tradition that the first man was a snail, which the high 
floods swept out upon the dry sands of the Missouri, where the sun 
warmed it into a man. This man went wandering naked on the plain, and 
was soon overtaken by hunger and fatigue, when, happily, the Great 
Spirit appeared and gave him a bow and arrow, and showed him how to kill 
and cook deer, and to cover himself with the shin. The Osage then 
married a beaver, from which strange wedlock sprang all the people of 
the Osage nation.

	The reverend gentleman did not think the Dakotas were diminishing 
in his day; and his estimate (25,000) closely agrees with that of Major 
Long in 1823, 28,000, and it is the same as Governor Edmunds' estimate 
in 1883. Mr. Riggs thinks the apparent diminution is principally owing 
to overestimates in former years.