The Wild Recesses Of These Hills, Like Those Of The Rocky
Mountains, Are Retreats And Lurking-Places For Broken And
Predatory Tribes, And It Was Among Them That The Remnants Of The
Cheyenne Tribe Took Refuge, As Has Been Stated, From Their
Conquering Enemies, The Sioux.
The Black Hills are chiefly composed of sandstone, and in many
places are broken into savage cliffs and precipices, and present
the most singular and fantastic forms; sometimes resembling towns
and castellated fortresses.
The ignorant inhabitants of plains
are prone to clothe the mountains that bound their horizon with
fanciful and superstitious attributes. Thus the wandering tribes
of the prairies, who often behold clouds gathering round the
summits of these hills, and lightning flashing, and thunder
pealing from them, when all the neighboring plains are serene and
sunny, consider them the abode of the genii or thunder-spirits
who fabricate storms and tempests. On entering their defiles,
therefore, they often hang offerings on the trees, or place them
on the rocks, to propitiate the invisible "lords of the
mountains," and procure good weather and successful hunting; and
they attach unusual significance to the echoes which haunt the
precipices. This superstition may also have arisen, in part, from
a natural phenomenon of a singular nature. In the most calm and
serene weather, and at all times of the day or night, successive
reports are now and then heard among these mountains, resembling
the discharge of several pieces of artillery. Similar reports
were heard by Messrs.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 278 of 615
Words from 75013 to 75262
of 165649
