| In publishing these "Myths of the
Sioux," I deem it proper to state that I am of one-fourth Sioux blood. My maternal
grandfather, Captain Duncan Graham, a Scotchman by birth, who had seen service in the
British Army, was one of a party of Scotch Highlanders who in 1811 arrived in the British
Northwest by way of York Factory, Hudson Bay, to found what was known as the Selkirk
Colony, near Lake Winnipeg, now within the province of Manitoba, Canada. Soon after his
arrival at Lake Winnipeg he proceeded up the Red River of the North and the western fork
thereof to its source, and thence down the Minnesota River to Mendota, the confluence of
the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, where he located. My grandmother, Ha-za-ho-ta-win,
was a full-blood of the Medawakanton Band of the Sioux Tribe of Indians. My father, Joseph
Buisson, born near Montreal, Canada, was connected with the American Fur Company, with
headquarters at Mendota, Minnesota, which point was for many years the chief distributing
depot of the American Fur Company, from which the Indian trade conducted by that company
on the upper Mississippi was directed. I was
born December 8, 1842, at Wabasha, Minnesota, then Indian country, and resided thereat
until fourteen years of age, when I was sent to school at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
I was married to Major James McLaughlin at Mendota,
Minnesota, January 28, 1864, and resided in Minnesota until July 1, 1871, when I
accompanied my husband to Devils Lake Agency, North Dakota, then Dakota Territory, where I
remained ten years in most friendly relations with the Indians of that agency. My husband
was Indian agent at Devils Lake Agency, and in 1881 was transferred to Standing Rock, on
the Missouri River, then a very important agency, to take charge of the Sioux who had then
but recently surrendered to the military authorities, and been brought by steamboat from
various points on the upper Missouri, to be permanently located on the Standing Rock
reservation.
Having been born and reared in an Indian community, I at an
early age acquired a thorough knowledge of the Sioux language, and having lived on Indian
reservations for the past forty years in a position which brought me very near to the
Indians, whose confidence I possessed, I have, therefore, had exceptional opportunities of
learning the legends and folk-lore of the Sioux.
Read her book in EText format here! |
