"
Ah, birch canoe, and hunter, too, have long forsaken lake and shore;
He bade his fathers' bones adieu and turned away forevermore.
But still, methinks, on dusky brinks the spirit of the warrior moves;
At crystal springs the hunter drinks, and nightly haunts the spot he loves.
For oft at night I see the light of lodge-fires on the shadowy shores,
And hear the wail some maiden's sprite above her slaughtered warrior pours.
I hear the sob, on Spirit Knob,[BZ] of Indian mother o'er her child;
And on the midnight waters throb her low _yun-he-he's_[CE] weird and wild:
And sometimes, too, the light canoe glides like a shadow o'er the deep
At midnight when the moon is low, and all the shores are hushed in sleep.
Alas,--Alas!--for all things pass; and we shall vanish too, as they;
We build our monuments of brass, and granite, but they waste away.
[BZ] Spirit-Knob was a small hill upon a point in the lake in full view
from Wayzata. It is now washed away by the waves. The spirit of a Dakota
mother, whose only child was drowned in the lake during a storm many
years ago, often wailed at midnight (so the Dakotas said), on this hill.
So they called it _Wa-na-gee Pa-zo-dan_--Spirit-Knob.
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