There are at least three legends of visits of redmen to the “Magic Healing Springs,” as they called them, before white men settled the region. They go back about four hundred years and each of the stories has similar motif. The beautiful daughter of a famous chief, living in the cold north, is stricken with some dreadful disease or has lost her eyesight. The chief tries all the medicine men available but without success. He hears of the healing springs far to the south and treks thousands of miles through the wilderness to get his daughter to the coveted spot. The girl bathes in the water and is healed. Sometimes she falls in love with a handsome brave of the local tribe and marries him. In one case the girl is Mor-i-na-ki, daughter of a Siouian chief. Another story features her as the daughter of Red Cloud, a Delaware. Still another gives Noawada of the Dakotas as the chief and his daughter is Minnehaha (Laughing Water). Each of these legends runs about the same gamut of hardship and privation and ends with the same climax of healing. It is easy to assume that they all originated from the same source, but this may not be true. The historian finds in them sufficient evidence to conclude that the northern Indians did make long trips to the springs, and that the water was widely known for its curative properties and healing powers. But there is no way of separating the chaff from the whole grain except from documented material. W. W. Johnson, M. D., who began his practice of medicine at Eureka Springs in 1879, the year the town was named, says, “The traditional history of the springs dates back to the days of Ponce de Leon, who had sought for a fountain of youth where he and his followers might bathe and quaff the waters and their age disappear, and they be clothed with the habiliments of youth.” He goes on further to say: “The Cherokee Indians, when in their southern home—previous to their removal to the Indian Territory—had a tradition that in the mountains far to the west of their country, and to the west of the Father of Waters, there were springs that their fathers visited and drank of their waters, and were healed of their maladies. This tradition was handed down from one generation to another. After the removal of the Cherokees to their present home in the Territory, many visited these springs, camped here, and drank these waters. Since the discovery by the white men the writer has conversed with members of the Cherokee tribe, and learned that these were the springs referred to in the tradition.”[1] One basic legend that appears to be a part of most of the traditional accounts is that of the carving of the basin at the Indian Healing Spring, now called Basin Spring. J. M. Richardson in a letter to Powell Clayton of Eureka Springs, dated May 18, 1884 at Carthage, Missouri, says: