Before European exploration, the falls held cultural and spiritual significance for native tribes who frequented and lived in the area. The falls was an important and sacred site to the Mdewakanton Dakota and they called the Mississippi River, "hahawakpa", "river of the falls". The falls ("Haha") themselves were given specific names, "mnirara" "curling waters", "owahmenah" "falling waters", or "owamni," "whirlpool" ("mniyomni" in the Eastern Dakota dialect and "owamniyomni" in the Teton Dakota (Lakota) dialect). Dakota associated the falls with legends and spirits, including Oanktehi, god of waters and evil, who lived beneath the falling water. The sacred falls also enters into their oral tradition by a story of a warrior's first wife who killed herself and their two children in anguish and forlorn love for the husband who had assumed a second wife. The rocky islet where the woman had pointed her canoe toward doom thus was named Spirit Island which was once a nesting ground for eagles that fed on fish below the falls. Dakota also camped on Nicollet Island upstream of the falls to fish and to tap the sugar maple trees.