The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1863-10-16
STEPHEN MILLER.
WheelOck,s Latin and his ChippeWs
Widow.

" AAONts
To tho Editor of tho Pioneer:
Most of your readers recollect reading,
perhaps many years ago, "There was an
old woman, she lived in shoe, she had
so many children she did not know what
to d." &C.. &c.
Now, our friend Wheelock, writing from
Red Lake Crossing, forcibly reminds us of
the old lady of our childhood, in most
extraordinary old woman, rara avis,
before whom the first old lady sinks into
insignifcance, Chippewa widow, one
hundred and twenty years old, being, in
the language of our classic and perspica-
cious friend, "the great great and thrice
great grandmother of an Indian and half
breed progeny numbering hundreds, the
gray progenitur and spring head Che can't
mean she had spring in her head) of the
American Red Lakers- uncouth and
Hyperborean (Phebus! what word,)
tribe who dwell beyond the farthest limits
of the Mississippi" &c.
Now what is most extraordinary about
this old woman, is the fact that notwith-
standing her immense age, her teeth must
have been in good condition, as her biog-
rapher found her cooking coon, and it
is to be hoped that the cookee was not
as old as the cooker, if so the "bouiNon,"
as he calls it, would not be very luscious.
This old classic squaw, like picture of
the old masters with the smoky adumbra-
ton of the ages that had grown upon her."
as he says "grew upon him." perhaps by
this time she had munched some of the
coon stew, and it had improved her ap-
pearance, for whereas, at first, she is COM
paired to the switch hays of Macbeth"
she now grows so classic that she seems to
her biographer "like the widow of Romu-
lus Eve don't admire Romulus' taste when
he could have picked out SO much better
looking damsel among the Sabines carried
off, risen from her ashes to claim her Sa-
bine dover in the seven hilled city,
But what is most extraordinary of all,
this old woman Cor her biographer, don't
know which; probably the old woman, as
she is the widow of Romulus,) spouts
Latin; and such Latin "7Imeo Dun
clos ct Dona ferventes.
Holy Moses! we should not be surpris-
ed if the shade of the injured Virgil should
step forth from his grave, and, in the Ian
guage of the pious Eneas, cry out
"Obstupui steterunt que com@ vox faucibus
haesit."
Which we, when boys, used to rather
freely translate: "Iwas dumb-foundered;
my hair stuck up like porcupine quilts,
and devil a word could spake."
We don't wcnderVirgils old bones ratified
at such perversion of his meaning, which
reads, Ismeo Danaos ct dona ferentes-
which might be translated, "you can't
humbug US into subscribing for mush-
room newspaper, and paying in advance
before the election, but actually and truly
translated means, 81 fear the Greeks even
when bringing presents.
We have been trying to construe the
old lady's latin; "1lneo Duncios" is
plain enough, 81 fear the dunces;" but
why fear them simiAina simillibus, or
like to ike-dunce to Ounce; .ferventes
dona, if it means anything, should be
translated "fervid and burning gifts -
that must be whisky, and ''forty-rod "too;
but we bet our head that the old lady
wasn't afraid of that; if she was, she was
the most extraordinary Indian of our &C
quaintance, and well worthy of SO illus
trious a biographer. By our conjectures
we have endeavored to throw light on
those mysterious words, but still the mat
ter remains in hyperborean darkness. Will
our biographer enlighten us if we are
wrong in our conjectures as to the mean
ing Of IImeo Dunci0s ct Dona terusntes.