ome to be composed of the last
syllables of _veritas_ and the first letters of _caput_, these
words-signifying "the true head"--being applied by early explorers as
showing that they were confident of having found the actual source of the
Mississippi.] Minnehaha lived near the fall in Minneapolis that bears her
name. The final apotheosis took place on the shores of Lake Onondaga, New
York, though Hiawatha lies buried under a mountain, three miles long, on
the east side of Thunder Bay, Lake Superior, which, from the water,
resembles a man lying on his back. The red man makes oblation, as he rows
past, by dropping a pinch of tobacco into the water. Some say that
Hiawatha now lives at the top of the earth, amid the ice, and directs the
sun. He has to live in a cold country because, if he were to return, he
would set the earth on fire with his footsteps.

THE INDIAN MESSIAH

The promise of the return to earth of various benign spirits has caused
much trouble among the red men, and incidentally to the white men who are
the objects of their fanatic dislike. The New Mexicans believed that when
the Emperor Montezuma was about to leave the earth he planted a tree and
bade them watch it, for when it fell he would come back in glory and lead
them to victory, wealth, and power. The watch was kept in secret on
account of the determination of the Spaniards to breakup all fealty to
tribal heroes and traditions. As late as 1781 they executed a sentence of
death on a descendant of the Peruvian Incas for declaring his royal
origin. When Montezuma's tree fell the people gathered on the house-tops
to watch the east-in vain, for the white man was there. In 1883 the
Sanpoels, a small tribe in Washington, were stirred by the teaching of an
old chief, who told them that the wicked would soon be destroyed, and
that the Great Spirit had ordered him to build an ark for his people. The
remains of this vessel, two hundred and eighty-eight feet long, are still
to be seen near one of the tributaries of the Columbia.

A frenzy swept over the West in 1890, inspiring the Indians by promise of
the coming of one of superhuman power, who was generally believed to be
Hiawatha, to threaten the destruction of the white population, since it
had been foretold that the Messiah would drive the white men from their
land. Early in the summer of that year it was reported that the Messiah
had appeared in the north, and the chiefs of many tribes went to Dakota,