The Salt Witch

The Salt Witch

edited by S.E. Schlosser

A pillar of snowy salt once stood on the Nebraska plain, about forty miles above the point where the Saline flows into the Platte, and people used to call it the Salt Witch. A tribe was for a long time quartered at the junction of the rivers, its chief a mighty man in whom his people gloried, but so fierce, withal, that nobody made a companion of him except his wife, who alone could check his rages.



At that moment, the chief gained a view of the face of the younger woman-it was that of his dead wife. With a snarl of wrath, he leaped upon the hag and buried his own hatchet in her brain, but before he could catch his wife in his arms the earth had opened and both women disappeared. A pillar of salt stood where he had seen this vision.

After hearing his report, the tribe devised a sacred ceremony which they performed whenever they went to the column to gather salt, to keep the Salt Witch from working any more other evil.

Citation: Skinner, Charles M. Myths and Legends of Our Own Land. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1896. This article is in the public domain and is part of the cited work.