Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1888 — YONNONDIO. [ARTICLE]

YONNONDIO.

A. song, a poem of it<.plf—the worff ileslf "ATttTge Amid the wilds, the rocks, the storm and wintry nights; , . f. To me such misty, strange tableaux the syllables: calling up; Yonnondio* I see, far in the west or north, a limitless ravine, with plains and mountains dark, I see swarms of stalwart chieftains, medicine men and warriors, As flitting by like clouds of ghosts, they pass and are gone in the twilight. (Race of the woods, the landscapes free and the frails! .. . TL___ No picture, poem, statement, passing them to the future;) Yonnondlo! yonnondio! uniimtied they disappear; Today gives place and fades—the cities, farms, factories fade; A muffled, sonorous sound, a wailing word is borne through the air for a moment Then blank and gone and still-and utterly lost. —Walt Whitman in the. Critic. [♦The sense of the word is a lament for the aborigines. It is an Iroquois term and has been used for a personal name.—W. W.J