Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian Part 15

"Machinitou! machinitou," which means a G.o.d, but an evil G.o.d.

THE WOMAN OF STONE.

In one of the niches or recesses formed by a precipice in the cavern of Kickapoo Creek, which is a tributary of the Wisconsin, there is a gigantic ma.s.s of stone presenting the appearance of a human figure. It is so sheltered by the overhanging rocks and by the sides of the recess in which it stands as to a.s.sume a dark and gloomy character. Of the figure the following legend is related:--

Once upon a time there lived a woman who was called Shenanska, or the White Buffalo Robe. She was an inhabitant of the prairie, a dweller in the cabins which stand upon the verge of the hills. She was the pride of her people, not only for her beauty, which was very great, but for her goodness. The breath of the summer wind was not milder than the temper of Shenanska, the face of the sun was not fairer than her countenance.

At length the tribe was surprised in its encampment on the banks of the Kickapoo by a numerous band of the fierce Mengwe. Many of them fell fighting bravely, the greater part of the women and children were made prisoners, and the others fled to the wilds for safety. It was the fortune of Shenanska to escape from death or captivity. When the alarm of the war-whoop reached her ear as she was sleeping in her lodge with her husband, she had rushed forth with him and gone with the braves to meet their a.s.sailants. When she saw half of the men of her nation lying dead around, then she fled. She had been wounded in the battle, but she still succeeded in effecting her escape to the hills. Weakened by loss of blood, she had not strength enough left to hunt for a supply of food, and she was near perishing with hunger.

While she lay beneath the shade of a tree there came to her a being not of this world.

"Shenanska," said he, in a gentle voice, "thou art wounded and hungry, shall I heal thee and feed thee? Wilt thou return to the lands of thy tribe and live to be old, a widow and alone, or go now to the land of departed spirits and join the shade of thy husband? The choice is thine. If thou wilt live, crippled, and bowed down by wounds and disease, thou mayest. If it would please thee better to rejoin thy friends in the country beyond the Great River, say so."

Shenanska replied that she wished to die. The spirit took her, and placed her in one of the recesses of the cavern, overshadowed by hanging rocks. He then spoke some words in a low voice, and, breathing on her, she became stone. Determined that a woman so good and beautiful should not be forgotten by the world, he made her into a statue, to which he gave the power of killing suddenly any one who irreverently approached it. For a long time the statue relentlessly exercised this power. Many an unconscious Indian, venturing too near to it, fell dead without any perceptible wound. At length, tired of the havoc the statue made, the guardian spirit took away the power he had given to it. At this day the statue may be approached with safety, but the Indians hold it in fear, not intruding rashly upon it, and when in its presence treating it with great respect.

THE MAIDEN WHO LOVED A FISH.

There was once among the Marshpees, a small tribe who have their hunting-grounds on the sh.o.r.es of the Great Lake, near the Cape of Storms, a woman whose name was Awashanks. She was rather silly, and very idle. For days together she would sit doing nothing. Then she was so ugly and ill-shaped that not one of the youths of the village would have aught to say to her by way of courtship or marriage. She squinted very much; her face was long and thin, her nose excessively large and humped, her teeth crooked and projecting, her chin almost as sharp as the bill of a loon, and her ears as large as those of a deer.

Altogether she was a very odd and strangely formed woman, and wherever she went she never failed to excite much laughter and derision among those who thought that ugliness and deformity were fit subjects for ridicule.

Though so very ugly, there was one faculty she possessed in a more remarkable degree than any woman of the tribe. It was that of singing.

Nothing, unless such could be found in the land of spirits, could equal the sweetness of her voice or the beauty of her songs. Her favourite place of resort was a small hill, a little removed from the river of her people, and there, seated beneath the shady trees, she would while away the hours of summer with her charming songs. So beautiful and melodious were the things she uttered, that, by the time she had sung a single sentence, the branches above her head would be filled with the birds that came thither to listen, the thickets around her would be crowded with beasts, and the waters rolling beside her would be alive with fishes, all attracted by the sweet sounds. From the minnow to the porpoise, from the wren to the eagle, from the snail to the lobster, from the mouse to the mole,--all hastened to the spot to listen to the charming songs of the hideous Marshpee maiden.

Among the fishes which repaired every night to the vicinity of the Little Hillock, which was the chosen resting-place of the ugly songstress, was the great chief of the trouts, a tribe of fish inhabiting the river near by. The chief was of a far greater size than the people of his nation usually are, being as long as a man, and quite as thick.

Of all the creatures which came to listen to the singing of Awashanks none appeared to enjoy it so highly as the chief of the trouts. As his bulk prevented him from approaching so near as he wished, he, from time to time, in his eagerness to enjoy the music to the best advantage, ran his nose into the ground, and thus worked his way a considerable distance into the land. Nightly he continued his exertions to approach the source of the delightful sounds he heard, till at length he had ploughed out a wide and handsome channel, and so effected his pa.s.sage from the river to the hill, a distance extending an arrow's-flight. Thither he repaired every night at the commencement of darkness, sure to meet the maiden who had become so necessary to his happiness. Soon he began to speak of the pleasure he enjoyed, and to fill the ears of Awashanks with fond protestations of his love and affection. Instead of singing to him, she soon began to listen to his voice. It was something so new and strange to her to hear the tones of love and courtship, a thing so unusual to be told she was beautiful, that it is not wonderful her head was turned by the new incident, and that she began to think the voice of her lover the sweetest she had ever heard. One thing marred their happiness. This was that the trout could not live upon land, nor the maiden in the water. This state of things gave them much sorrow.

They had met one evening at the usual place, and were discoursing together, lamenting that two who loved one another so should be doomed to always live apart, when a man appeared close to Awashanks. He asked the lovers why they seemed to be so sad.

The chief of the trouts told the stranger the cause of their sorrow.

"Be not grieved nor hopeless," said the stranger, when the chief had finished. "The impediments can be removed. I am the spirit who presides over fishes, and though I cannot make a man or woman of a fish, I can make them into fish. Under my power Awashanks shall become a beautiful trout."

With that he bade the girl follow him into the river. When they had waded in some little depth he took up some water in his hand and poured it on her head, muttering some words, of which none but himself knew the meaning. Immediately a change took place in her. Her body took the form of a fish, and in a few moments she was a complete trout. Having accomplished this transformation the spirit gave her to the chief of the trouts, and the pair glided off into the deep and quiet waters. She did not, however, forget the land of her birth.

Every season, on the same night as that upon which her disappearance from her tribe had been wrought, there were to be seen two trouts of enormous size playing in the water off the sh.o.r.e. They continued these visits till the pale-faces came to the country, when, deeming themselves to be in danger from a people who paid no reverence to the spirits of the land, they bade it adieu for ever.

THE LONE LIGHTNING.

A little orphan boy, who had no one to care for him, once lived with his uncle, who treated him very badly, making him do hard work, and giving him very little to eat, so that the boy pined away and never grew much, but became, through hard usage, very thin and light. At last the uncle pretended to be ashamed of this treatment, and determined to make amends for it by fattening the boy up. He really wished, however, to kill him by overfeeding him. He told his wife to give the boy plenty of bear's meat, and let him have the fat, which is thought to be the best part. They were both very a.s.siduous in cramming him, and one day nearly choked him to death by forcing the fat down his throat. The boy escaped, and fled from the lodge. He knew not where to go, and wandered about. When night came on he was afraid the wild beasts would eat him, so he climbed up into the forks of a high pine-tree, and there he fell asleep in the branches.

As he was asleep a person appeared to him from the high sky, and said--

"My poor lad, I pity you, and the bad usage you have received from your uncle has led me to visit you. Follow me, and step in my tracks."

Immediately his sleep left him, and he rose up and followed his guide, mounting up higher and higher in the air until he reached the lofty sky. Here twelve arrows were put into his hands, and he was told that there were a great many manitoes in the northern sky, against whom he must go to war and try to waylay and shoot them. Accordingly he went to that part of the sky, and, at long intervals, shot arrow after arrow until he had expended eleven in a vain attempt to kill the manitoes. At the flight of each arrow there was a long and solitary streak of lightning in the sky--then all was clear again, and not a cloud or spot could be seen. The twelfth arrow he held a long time in his hands, and looked around keenly on every side to spy the manitoes he was after, but these manitoes were very cunning, and could change their form in a moment. All they feared was the boy's arrows, for these were magic weapons, which had been given to him by a good spirit, and had power to kill if aimed aright. At length the boy drew up his last arrow, took aim, and let fly, as he thought, into the very heart of the chief of the manitoes. Before the arrow reached him, however, he changed himself into a rock, into which the head of the arrow sank deep and stuck fast.

"Now your gifts are all expended," cried the enraged manito, "and I will make an example of your audacity and pride of heart for lifting your bow against me."

So saying, he transformed the boy into the Nazhik-a-wa wa sun, or Lone Lightning, which may be observed in the northern sky to this day.

AGGO-DAH-GAUDA.

Aggo-dah-gauda had one leg hooped up to his thigh so that he was obliged to get along by hopping. He had a beautiful daughter, and his chief care was to secure her from being carried off by the king of the buffaloes. He was peculiar in his habits, and lived in a loghouse, and he advised his daughter to keep indoors, and never go out for fear she should be stolen away.

One sunshiny morning Aggo-dah-gauda prepared to go out fishing, but before he left the lodge he reminded his daughter of her strange lover.

"My daughter," said he, "I am going out to fish, and as the day will be a pleasant one, you must recollect that we have an enemy near who is constantly going about, and so you must not leave the lodge."

When he reached his fishing-place, he heard a voice singing--

"Man with the leg tied up, Man with the leg tied up, Broken hip--hip-- Hipped.

Man with the leg tied up, Man with the leg tied up, Broken leg--leg-- Legged."

He looked round but saw no one, so he suspected the words were sung by his enemies the buffaloes, and hastened home.

The girl's father had not been long absent from the lodge when she began to think to herself--

"It is hard to be for ever kept indoors. The spring is coming on, and the days are so sunny and warm, that it would be very pleasant to sit out of doors. My father says it is dangerous. I know what I will do: I will get on the top of the house, and there I can comb and dress my hair."

She accordingly got up on the roof of the small house, and busied herself in untying and combing her beautiful hair, which was not only fine and shining, but so long that it reached down to the ground, hanging over the eaves of the house as she combed it. She was so intent upon this that she forgot all ideas of danger. All of a sudden the king of the buffaloes came dashing by with his herd of followers, and, taking her between his horns, away he cantered over the plains, and then, plunging into a river that bounded his land, he carried her safely to his lodge on the other side. Here he paid her every attention in order to gain her affections, but all to no purpose, for she sat pensive and disconsolate in the lodge among the other females, and scarcely ever spoke. The buffalo king did all he could to please her, and told the others in the lodge to give her everything she wanted, and to study her in every way. They set before her the choicest food, and gave her the seat of honour in the lodge. The king himself went out hunting to obtain the most delicate bits of meat both of animals and wild-fowl, and, not content with these proofs of his love, he fasted himself and would often take his pib-be-gwun (Indian flute) and sit near the lodge singing--

"My sweetheart, My sweetheart, Ah me!

When I think of you, When I think of you, Ah me!

How I love you, How I love you, Ah me!

Do not hate me, Do not hate me, Ah me!"

In the meantime Aggo-dah-gauda came home, and finding his daughter had been stolen he determined to get her back. For this purpose he immediately set out. He could easily trace the king till he came to the banks of the river, and then he saw he had plunged in and swum over. When Aggo-dah-gauda came to the river, however, he found it covered with a thin coating of ice, so that he could not swim across nor walk over. He therefore determined to wait on the bank a day or two till the ice might melt or become strong enough to bear him. Very soon the ice was strong enough, and Aggo-dah-gauda crossed over. On the other side, as he went along, he found branches torn off and cast down, and these had been strewn thus by his daughter to aid him in following her. The way in which she managed it was this. Her hair was all untied when she was captured, and as she was carried along it caught in the branches as she pa.s.sed, so she took the pieces out of her hair and threw them down on the path.

When Aggo-dah-gauda came to the king's lodge it was evening. Carefully approaching it, he peeped through the sides and saw his daughter sitting there disconsolately. She saw him, and knowing that it was her father come for her, she said to the king, giving him a tender glance--