she rushed with the Braves to battle. When
she saw half of the men of her nation lying dead around, then she
fled, and not till then. Though badly wounded, she succeeded in
effecting her escape to the hills. Weakened by loss of blood, she had
not strength enough left to hunt for a supply of food; she was near
perishing with hunger.

[Illustration: _Designed & Etched by W. H. Brooks, A. R. E. A._
The Spirit breathed on her & she became Stone.
_page 104._
_London, Published by Colburn & Bentley, April 1830_]

While she lay in this languishing state beneath the shade of a tree,
there came to her a Being, who was not of this world. He said to her,
in a gentle and soothing voice, "Shenanska! thou art wounded and
hungry, shall I heal thee and feed thee? Wilt thou return to the lands
of thy tribe, and live to be old, a widow and alone, or go now to the
land of departed spirits, and join the shade of thy husband? The
choice is thine. If thou wilt live crippled, and bowed down by wounds
and disease, thou mayest; if thou better likest to rejoin thy
friends in the country beyond the Great River, say so." Shenanska
replied, that she wished to die. The Spirit then took her in his arms,
and placed her in one of the recesses of the cavern, overshadowed by
hanging rocks. He then spoke some low words, and, breathing on her,
she became stone. Determined that a woman so good and so beautiful
should not be forgotten by the world, nor be deprived of the ability
of protecting herself from mutilation, he imparted to her statue the
power of killing suddenly any Indian that approached near it. For a
long time the statue relentlessly exercised this power. Many an
unconscious Indian, venturing too near, fell dead without wound or
bruise. At length, tired of the havoc it had made, the guardian Spirit
took away the power he had given. At this day the statue may be
approached with safety. Yet the Indian people hold it in fear and
veneration, and none passes it without paying it the homage of a
sacrifice. This is my story.

THE MOUNTAIN OF LITTLE SPIRITS.

At the distance of a woman's walk of a day from the mouth of the river
called by the pale-faces the Whitestone, in the country of the Sioux,
in the middle of a large plain, stands a lofty hill or mound. Its
wonderful roundness, together with the circumstance of its standing
apart from all other hills, like a fir-tree in the midst of a w