Maiden Rock is associated with a story that has several versions. Mary Eastman published one version in 1849 after hearing it from an old Indian friend, Checkered Cloud, who firmly believed the event happened around 1700. Margaret A. Persons wrote a more romantic version in verse. James Duane Doty, who accompanied the Henry Schoolcraft expedition into this area, recorded in his journal on June 3, 1820, that a young Sioux woman loved a young man of her band and would have married him if her relatives had not intervened. They insisted that she marry another man whom she despised, kept her from the man she loved for nearly a year, and after sending him away compelled her to marry their choice. Less than an hour after the marriage, she disappeared from the lodge, and by morning she was found at the foot of the precipice, down which she had probably thrown herself.