Then they returned in a canoe, going down the river to their village. But as they came near it the girl grew sad, for she had thrown out her soul to their home, though they knew it not, by meelahbi-give. [Footnote: Passamaquoddy: Clairvoyance, or state of vision.] And suddenly she said, as they came to a point of land, "Here I must leave. I can go no further. Say nothing of me to your parents, for your father would have but little love for me." And the young men sought to persuade her, but she only answered sorrowfully, "It cannot be." So they came home with their furs, and the elder was so proud of their luck and their strange adventure that he could not hold his peace, but told all.

Then his father was very angry, and said, "All my life have I feared this. Know that this woman was a devil of the woods, a witch of the Mitche-hant, a sister of the Oonahgamess [Footnote: P. Goblins and ghosts.] and of the Ke'tahks." And he spoke so earnestly and so long of this thing that they were afraid, and the elder, being persuaded by the sire, went forth to slay her, and the younger followed him afar. So they sought her by the stream, and found her bathing, and, seeing them, she ran up a little hill. And, as she ran, the elder shot an arrow at her. Then there was a strange flurry about her, a fluttering of scattered feathers, and they saw her fly away as a partridge. Returning, they told all this to their father, who said, "You did well. I know all about these female devils who seek to destroy men. Verily this was a she Mikumwess." [Footnote: P. The Mikumwess is a Robin Goodfellow, who plays pranks on people, or treats them kindly, according to his caprice.]

But the younger could not forget her, and longed to see her again; so one day he went into the woods, and there he indeed found her, and she was as kind as before. Then he said, "Truly it was not by my goodwill that my brother shot at you." And she answered, "Well do I know that, and that it was all by your father; yet I blame him not, for this is an affair of N'karnayoo, the days of old; and even yet it is not at an end, and the greatest is to come. But let the day be only a day unto itself; the things of to-morrow are for to-morrow, and those of yesterday are departed." So they forgot their troubles, and played together merrily all day long in the woods and in the open places, and told stories of old times till sunset. And as, the Kah-kah-goos, or Crow, went to his tree, the boy said, "I must return;" and she replied, "Whenever you would see me, come to the woods. And remember what I say. Do not marry any one else. For your father wishes you to do so, and he will speak of it to you, and that soon. Yet it is for your sake only that I say this." Then she told him word by word all that his father had said; but he was not astonished, for now he knew that she was not as other women; but he cared not. And he grew brave and bold, and then he was above all things. And when she told him that if he should marry another he would surely die, it was as nothing to him.

Then returning, the first thing his father said was, "My son, I have provided a wife for you, and the wedding must be at once." And he said, "It is well. Let it be so." Then the bride came. For four days they held the wedding dance; four days they feasted. But on the last day he said, "This is the end of it all," and he laid him down on a white bear-skin, and a great sickness came upon him, and when they brought the bride to him he was dead.

Truly the father knew what ailed him, and more withal, of which he said nothing. But he liked the place no longer, and he and his went away therefrom, and scattered far and wide.

This strange story recalls the Undine of La Motte Fouque. There is in it an element of mystery and destiny, equal in every way to anything in German literature. The family secret, touched on but never explained, which ends in such a death, is, speaking from an artistic point of view, very skillfully managed. It must be borne in mind that in this, as in most of these tales, there are associations and chords which make as gold to an Indian that which is only copper, or at best silver, to the civilized reader of my translations.

There is a characteristic feature of this story superior to anything in Undine. It is the growth in the hero, when he knows the worst to come, of that will, or stoicism, or complete indifference to fate, which the Indians regard as equivalent to attaining m'teoulin, or magic power. When a man has in him such courage that nothing earthly can do more than increase it, he has attained to what is in one sense at least Nirvana. From an Algonquin point of view the plot is perfect.

I have given this story accurately as it was told to me by Tomah Josephs, a Passamaquoddy Indian.



How one of the Partridge's Wives became a Sheldrake Duck, and why her Feet and Feathers are Red.

N'karnayoo, of the old time, there was a hunter who lived in the woods. He had a brother, [Footnote: The word brother is so generally applied in adoption or friendship that it cannot here be taken in a literal sense. The brother in this case seems to have been a goblin or spirit.] who was so small that he kept him in a box, and when he went forth he closed this very carefully, for fear lest an evil spirit (Mitche-hant) should get him.

One day this hunter, returning, saw a very beautiful girl sitting on a rock by a river, making a moccasin. And being in a canoe he paddled up softly and silently to capture her; but she, seeing him coming, jumped into the water and disappeared. On returning to her mother, who lived at the bottom of the river, she was told to go back to the hunter and be his wife; "for now," said the mother, "you belong to that man."

The hunter's name was Mitchihess, the Partridge. When she came to his lodge he was absent. So she arranged everything for his return, making a bed of boughs. At night he came back with one beaver. This he divided; cooked one half for supper and laid by the other half. In the morning when she awoke he was gone, and the other half of the beaver had also disappeared. That night he returned with another beaver, and the same thing took place again. Then she resolved to spy and find out what all this meant.

So she laid down and went to sleep, wide awake, with one eye open. Then he quietly rose and cooked the half of the beaver, and taking a key (Apkwosgehegan, P.) unlocked a box, and took out a little red dwarf and fed him. Replacing the elf, he locked him up again, and lay down to sleep. And the small creature had eaten the whole half beaver. But ere he put him in his box he washed him and combed his hair, which seemed to delight him.

The next morning, when her husband had gone for the day, the wife sought for the key, and having found it opened the box and called to the little fellow to come out. This he refused to do for a long time, though she promised to wash and comb him. Being at length persuaded, he peeped out, when she pulled him forth. But whenever she touched him her hands became red, though of this she took no heed, thinking she could wash it off at will. But lo! while combing him, there entered a hideous being, an awful devil, who caught the small elf from her and ran away.

Then she was terribly frightened. And trying to wash her hands, the red stain remained. When her husband returned that night he had no game; when he saw the red stain he knew all that had happened; when he knew what had happened he seized his bow to beat her; when she saw him seize his bow to beat her she ran down to the river, and jumped in to escape death at his hands, though it should be by drowning. But as she fell into the water she became a sheldrake duck. And to this day the marks of the red stain are to be seen on her feet and feathers. [Footnote: Related to me by Noel Josephs, a Passamaquoddy. Notwithstanding its resemblance to Blue Beard, it is probably in every detail a very old Indian tradition. It bears a slight resemblance to several far western legends, which refer to peculiarities in the duck. It is partly repeated in a Lox legend.]



THE INVISIBLE ONE.

(Micmac.)

There was once a large Indian village situated on the border of a lake,—Nameskeek' oodun Kuspemku (M.). At the end of the place was a lodge, in which dwelt a being who was always invisible. [Footnote: In this Micmac tale, which is manifestly corrupted in many ways, the hero is said to be "a youth whose teeomul (or tutelary animal) was the moose," whence he took his name. In the Passamaquoddy version nothing is said about a moose. A detailed account of the difficulty attending the proper analysis of this tradition will be found at the end of this chapter.] He had a sister who attended to his wants, and it was known that any girl who could see him might marry him. Therefore there were indeed few who did not make the trial, but it was long ere one succeeded:

And it passed in this wise. Towards evening, when the Invisible One was supposed to be returning home, his sister would walk with any girls who came down to the shore of the lake. She indeed could see her brother, since to her he was always visible, and beholding him she would say to her companions, "Do you see my brother?" And then they would mostly answer, "Yes," though some said, "Nay,"—alt telovejich, aa alttelooejik. And then the sister would say, "Cogoowa' wiskobooksich?" "Of what is his shoulder-strap made?" But as some tell the tale, she would, inquire other things, such as, "What is his moose-runner's haul?" or, "With what does he draw his sled?" And they would reply, "A strip of rawhide," or "A green withe," or something of the kind. And then she, knowing they had not told the truth, would reply quietly, "Very well, let us return to the wigwam!"

And when they entered the place she would bid them not to take a certain seat, for it was his. And after they had helped to cook the supper they would wait with great curiosity to see Him eat. Truly he gave proof that he was a real person, for as he took off his moccasins they became visible, and his sister hung them up; but beyond this they beheld nothing not even when they remained all night, as many did.

There dwelt in the village an old man, a widower, with three daughters. The youngest of these was very small, weak, and often ill, which did not prevent her sisters, especially the eldest, treating her with great cruelty. The second daughter was kinder, and sometimes took the part of the poor abused little girl, but the other would burn her lands and face with hot coals; yes, her whole body was scarred with the marks made by torture, so that people called her Oochigeaskw (the rough-faced girl). And when her father, coming home, asked what it meant that the child was so disfigured, her sister would promptly say that it was the fault of the girl, herself, for that, having been forbidden to go near the fire, she had disobeyed and fallen in.

Now it came to pass that it entered the heads of the two elder sisters of this poor girl that they would go and try their fortune at seeing the Invisible One. So they clad themselves in their finest and strove to look their fairest; and finding his sister at home went with her to take the wonted walk down to the water. Then when He came, being asked if they saw him, they said, "Certainly," and also replied to the question of the shoulder-strap or sled cord, "A piece of rawhide." In saying which, they lied, like the rest, for they had seen nothing, and got nothing for their pains.

When their father returned home the next evening he brought with him many of the pretty little shells from which weiopeskool (M.), or wampum, was made, [Footnote: In Passamaquoddy wampum is called waw-bap. It is said that a single bead required a full day's work to make and finish it. It is not many years since it was made much more expeditiously in certain New York villages.] and they were soon engaged napawejik (in stringing them). That day poor little Oochigeaskw', the burnt-faced girl, who had always run barefoot, got a pair of her father's old moccasins, and put them into water that they might become flexible to wear. And begging her sisters for a few wampum shells, the eldest did but call her "a lying little pest," but the other gave her a few. And having no clothes beyond a few paltry rags, the poor creature went forth and got herself from the woods a few sheets of birch bark, of which she made a dress, putting some figures on the bark. [Footnote: Probably by scraping. Birch bark (moskwe) peeled in winter can have the thin dark brown coat scraped away, leaving a very light yellowish-brown ground. Tornah Josephs and his niece Susan, of Princeton, Maine, are experts at this work.] And this dress she shaped like those worn of old. [Footnote: This remark indicates the lateness of the Micmac version of this very old myth.] So she made a petticoat and a loose gown, a cap, leggins, and handkerchief, and, having put on her father's great old moccasins,— which came nearly up to her knees,—she went forth to try her luck. For even this little thing would see the Invisible One in the great wigwam at the end of the village.

Truly her luck had a most inauspicious beginning, for there was one long storm of ridicule and hisses, yells and hoots, from her own door to that which she went to seek. Her sisters tried to shame her, and bade her stay at home, but she would not obey; and all the idlers, seeing this strange little creature in her odd array, cried "Shame!" But she went on, for she was greatly resolved; it may be that some spirit had inspired her.

Now this poor small wretch in her mad attire, with her hair singed off and her little face as full of burns and scars as there are holes in a sieve, was, for all this, most kindly received by the sister of the Invisible One; for this noble girl knew more than the mere outside of things as the world knows them. And as the brown of the evening sky became black, she took her down to the lake. And erelong the girls knew that He had come. Then the sister said, "Do you see him?" And the other replied with awe, "Truly I do,—and He is wonderful." "And what is his sled-string?" "It is," she replied, "the Rainbow." And great fear was on her. "But, my sister," said the other, "what is his bow-string?" "His bowstring is Ketaksoowowcht" (the Spirits' Road, the Milky Way). [Footnote: The Spirits' or Ghosts' Road, so called because it is believed to be the highway by which spirits pass to and from the earth. The Micmac version, belittled and reduced in every way, limits this reply to "a piece of a rainbow." There is a grandeur of conception in the Passamaquoddy myth which recalls the most stupendous similes in Scripture.]

"Thou hast seen him," said the sister. And, taking the girl home, she bathed her, and as she washed all the scars disappeared from face and body. Her hair grew again; it was very long, and like a blackbird's wing. Her eyes were like stars. In all the world was no such beauty. Then from her treasures she gave her a wedding garment, and adorned her. Under the comb, as she combed her, her hair grew. It was a great marvel to behold.

Then, having done this, she bade her take the wife's seat in the wigwam,—that by which her brother sat, the seat next the door. And when He entered, terrible and beautiful, he smiled and said, "Wajoolkoos!" "So we are found out!" "Alajulaa." "Yes," was her reply. So she became his wife. [Footnote: This is the true end of this Indian Cupid and Psyche legend. But the Micmacs having, for no apparent reason, made the Stupendous Deity of the Heavens a moose (Team), have added to it another for the sake of the name, and which I give in due succession simply as an illustration of the manner in which tales are tacked together. I have very little doubt that the story as here given is an old solar myth, worked up, perhaps, with the story of Cinderella, derived from a Canadian-French source. There are enough of these French-Indian stories in my possession alone to form what would make one of the most interesting volumes of the series of the Contes Populaires. The Passamaquoddy version is to this effect: "There was a great being, a mighty hunter, who had a wife, of wonderful magic gifts, and a boy; and the child became blind. After a long time his sight returned, and he said so; but his mother was suspicious, and did not believe him." It is evident that she suspected that he saw by clairvoyance, not by literal vision. "So one day she bade her husband put on certain things which no one could behold who did not see them in truth. Then she asked the boy, 'What has your father for a sled-string?' (literally for a moose-runner haul). And he replied, 'The rainbow to haul by.' Then she asked him yet again, 'What has he for a bow-string?' And he answered, 'Ke'taksoo wowcht;' 'The Spirits' or Ghosts' Road.' And once more she inquired, 'What has he on his sled?' To which he said, 'A beaver.' Then she knew that he could indeed see." (T. Josephs.)

We can perceive by shreds and patches such as these the all but loss of an early and grand mythology which has undergone the usual transmutation into romantic and nursery legends. By great exertion we might recover it, but the old Indians who retain its fragments are passing away rapidly, and no subject attracts so little interest among our literati. A few hundred dollars expended annually in each State would result in the collection of all that is extant of this folk-lore; and a hundred years hence some few will, perhaps, regret that it was not done.

It may be observed that in the Edda the rainbow is the heavenly road over which the gods pass. The rainbow is not the Milky Way, but it may be observed that in this tale the two are curiously compared, or almost identified. But according to Charles Francis Keary (Mythology of the Eddas, London, 1882), "there is small hint in the Edda of the use of the rainbow as a path for souls, save where Helgi says to his wife,—

"''Tis time for me to ride the ruddy road, And on my horse to tread the path of flight,'"

which is more applicable to the Milky Way than the rainbow. "We owe," he says, "to the learned Adalbert Kohn some researches which have traced the path of the Milky Way as a bridge of souls from its first appearance in Eastern creeds to its later appearance in mediaeval German tradition." (Zeitschrift f. v. Sp.l.c.) In the Vedas the Milky Way is called the Gods' Path. The American Indians firmly believe that the Spirits' Road is one of their very earliest traditions, and I believe with them that they had it long before Columbus discovered this country.

Since the foregoing remarks were written, Mrs. W. Wallace Brown has obtained the following fragment, which was given as a song, and declared to be very ancient:—

"Then was woman, long, long ago: She came out of a hole. In it dead people were buried. She made her house in a tree; She was dressed in leaves, All long ago. When she walked among the dry leaves Her feet were so covered The feet were invisible. She walked through the woods, Singing all the time, 'I want company; I'm lonesome!' A wild man heard her: From afar over the lakes and mountains He came to her. She saw him; she was afraid; She tried to flee away, For he was covered with the rainbow; Color and light were his garments. She ran, and he pursued rapidly; He chased her to the foot of a mountain. He spoke in a strange language, She could not understand him at first. He would make her tell where she dwelt. They married, they had two children. One of them was a boy, He was blind from his birth, But he frightened his mother by his sight. He could tell her what was coming, What was coming from afar What was near he could not see. He could see the bear and the moose Far away beyond the mountains, He could see through everything."

The old Indian woman ended this story by saying abruptly, "Don't know any more. Guess they all eat up by mooin" (the bear). She said that it was only a fragment. "If you could have heard her repeat this," adds Mrs. Brown, "in pieces, stopping to explain what the characters said, and describing how they looked, and anon singing it again, you would have got the inner sense of a wonderfully weird tale. The woman's feet covering and the man's dress like a rainbow, yet not one, which made their bodies invisible, seemed to exercise her imagination strangely; and these were to her the most important part of the story." The fragment is part of a very old myth; I regret to say a very obscure one.]



STORY OF THE THREE STRONG MEN.

(Micmac.)

There was a chieftain in the days of yore. He had a great desire for a poor girl who was a servant, and who worked for him. To win this girl he first I most lose his wife. He took his wife afar into the woods to gather spruce-gum, and then left her there.

She soon found out that she had lost her way, and, wandering, she lost it more and more for many days, until she came at last to a bear's den, where, going in, she found the Chief of all the bears, who welcomed her, provided for her wants, and furnished her with pleasant food; but as the meat was raw he went into a neighboring town for fire. And as she lived with him she was to him in all things as he wished, and as a wife.

So that it came to pass, as time went on, that a new-comer was expected, and she bade the Bear provide the baby's clothes. And when the long-expected infant came it was a boy, large, beautiful, and strong; he was in everything beyond all other boys.

And as the child was born in a strange way, he very soon displayed a magic power. No baby ever grew so rapidly: when four months old he wrestled with the Bear and threw him easily upon the floor. And so the mother saw that he would be a warrior, and the chief of other men.

She loathed the life she led, and wished to leave, and live as she had done in days of old. To this the Bear would in nowise consent, and as her son was human, like herself, he loved his mother best, and thought with her.

One day he said, "Now I can wrestle well and throw the Bear as often as I choose. When I next time cast him upon the ground, catch up a club; the rest remains for you!"

They waited yet a while till he had grown so strong that the Bear was nothing in his grasp. One day they wrestled as they ever did, and then the woman, with a vigorous blow, strengthened by hate and famishing desire of freedom and a better human life, laid him in death upon the mossy floor.

They went their way back to the chieftain's town, and found him married to the servant-girl. The mother only spoke, and the wild boy tore down the wigwam of the Indian chief just with a blow, and then he called aloud unto the Lightning in the sky above, "Come down to me and help me in my need! Build a grand wigwam such as man ne'er saw! Build it, I say, and for my mother here!"

The Lightning came, and with a single flash built such a home as man had never seen.

And then he said, "Mother, I mean to go and travel everywhere, until I find another man who is as strong as I. When he is found I will return to thee."

So on he went afar until he saw a man who lifted up a vast canoe with many people in it. This he did, raising it in the water; but the boy bore it ashore, and lifted it on land.

And so the two agreed that they would go on together until they found a third equal to them in strength, if such a man were living anywhere in all the world.

So traveling by hill and lake, they went, until one day, far in a lonely land, they saw a man rolling a mighty rock, large as the largest wigwam, up a hill. But the Bear's son, lifting the stone with ease, threw it afar over the mountain-top,—threw it afar beyond the rocky range; they heard it thunder down the depths below.

Then the three strong men went to hunt the moose. He who had tossed the ship remained in camp to do the cooking, while the others went with bow and spear afar to find their game.

Now when the sun was at the edge of noon, just balancing to fall, there came a boy, a little wretched, elfish-looking child, as sad and sickly as a boy could be, who asked the man for food. He answered him, "Poor little fellow! there, the pot is full of venison, so go and eat your fill."

He ate, indeed, the dinner for the three. When he had done he did not leave a scrap; then walked into the stony mountain-side, as any man might walk into the fog, and in a second he was seen no more.

Now when the two returned and heard the tale they were right angry, being hungry men. The man; who rolled the stone stayed next in turn, but when the I little fellow came to him he seemed so famished and he shed such tears that this one also gave him leave to eat. Then, in a single swallow, as it seemed, he bolted all the food, and yelled aloud with an insulting laugh. The man, enraged, grappled him by the throat, but the strange boy flung him away as one would throw a not, and vanished in the mountain as before.

On the third day the mighty man himself remained at home, and soon the starveling child came and began to beg, with tears, for food. "Eat," said the chief, "as other people eat, and no more tricks, or I will deal with you." But as it was with him the day before, so it went now; he swallowed all the meat with the same jeering yell Then the strong man closed with the boy. It was an awful strife; they fought together from the early morn until the sun went down, and then the Elf—for elf he was—cried out, "I now give in!" So both his arms were tightly bound behind, and with a long, tough cord of plaited hide the strong man kept his prey, the lariat fast noosed about his neck. The child went on, the strong man ever following behind, holding the cord well twisted round his hand.

And so they went into the mountain-side, and ever on, a long and winding way, down a deep cavern, on for many a mile,—the light of sorcery shining from the elf made it all clear,—until at last the guide stopped in ins course, and said:—

"Now list to me. I am the servant of a frightful fiend, a seven-beaded devil, whom I deemed no man could ever conquer, he and I being of equal strength; but I believe that thou mayst conquer him, since I have found, by bitter proof, that thou canst conquer me. Here is a staff, the only thing on earth that man may smite him with and give him pain. Now, do your best; it is all one to me which of you gains, so one of you be slain, for well I wot 't will be a roaring fight."

In came the evil being with a scream, and clutched the Indian with teeth and claws. There, in the magic cavern, many a mile from the sun's rays, they fought for seven days, the stubborn devil and the stubborn man, whose savage temper gave him fresher strength with every fresh wound; the more his blood ran from his body all the more his heart grew harder with the love of fight, until he beat away the monster's seven heads. And so he slew him, and the watching elf burst into laughter at the victory.

"Now," said the Elf, "I have a gift for thee. I have three sisters: all are beautiful, and all shall be thine own if thou wilt but unbind my hands." The strong man set him free. And so he led the man to another cave, and there he saw three girls so strangely fair they seemed to be a dream. The first, indeed, was very beautiful, and yet as plump as she was lovely; then the second maid was tall, superb, and most magnificent, in rarest furs, with richest wampum bands, the very picture of a perfect bride; bet fairer than them both, as much more fair as swans outrival ducks, the youngest smiled. And the young chieftain chose her for his own.

With the three girls he went into the day. Far on the rocks above him he could see his two companions, and a sudden thought came to his mind, for he was quick to think, and so he called, "I say, let down a rope; I have three girls here, and they cannot climb." And so the two strong men let down a cord: then the first fairy-maid went up by it, and then the second. Now the chief cried out, "It is my turn; now you must pull on me!" And saying this, he tied a heavy stone, just his own weight, unto the long rope's end, then bid them haul. It rose, but as it came just to the top the traitors let it fall, as he supposed they would, to murder him.

And then the chieftain said unto the elf, "You know the mountain and its winding ways: bear me upon thy back, and that in haste, to where those fellows are!" The goblin flew, and in an instant he was by their side.

He found the villains in a deadly fight, quarreling for the maids; but seeing him they ceased to wrestle, upon which he said, "I risked my life to bring away these girls; I would have given each of you a wife: for doing this you would have murdered me. Now I could kill you, and you both deserve death at the stake, vile serpents that you are; but take your lives,—you are too low for me,—and with them take these women, if they wish to wed with such incarnate brutes as you!"

They went their way; the women followed them along the forest paths, and ever on. Into this story they return no more.

And then the strong man said to his young bride, "I must return unto my village; then I'll come again to you; await me here." But she, as one to elfin magic born, replied, "I warn you of a single thing. When you again are at your wigwam door a small black dog will leap to lick your hand. Beware, I say; if he succeed in it, you surely will forget me utterly." As she predicted so it came to pass.

And so she waited in the lonely wood beside the mountain till a month was gone, and then arose and went to seek her love. All in the early dawn she reached the town, and found the wigwam of the sagamore. She sought a neighboring hiding-place, where she might watch unseen, and found a tree, a broad old ash, which spread its stooping boughs over the surface of a silent pool.

An old black Indian had a hut hard by. His daughter, coming, looked into the spring, and saw a lovely face. The simple girl thought it was hers, her own grown beautiful by sorcery which hung about the place. She flung away her pail, and said, "Aha! I'll work no more; some chief shall marry me!" and so she went to smile among the men.

Then came the mother, who beheld the same sweet, smiling, also girlish face. She said, "Now I am young and beautiful again; I'll seek another husband, and at once." She threw her pail afar and went away, losing no time to smile among the men.

And then in turn the old black Indian came, and looking in the spring beheld the face. He knew right well that it was not his own, for in his youth he never had been fair. So looking up above he saw the bride, and bade her come to him; and then he said, "My wife has gone away; my daughter, too. You were the cause of it; it is but right that you should take the place my wife has left. Therefore remain with me and be my own."

He fares but ill who weds unwilling witch. When night came on they laid them down to sleep, and then the bride murmured a magic prayer, begging the awful Spirit of the Wind, the giant Eagle of the wilderness, to do his worst. A fearful tempest blew, and all night long the old black Indian was out-of-doors, working with all his power to keep the lodge from being blown away. As soon as he had pinned one sheet of bark into its place another blew away, and then a tent pole rattling in the rain bounded afar. It was a weary work, but all night long the young bride slept in peace, until the morning came, and then he slept.

Then she arose, and, walking to the wood, sat down beside a stream and sang a song:—

"There are many men in the world, But only one is dear to me. He is good and brave and strong. He swore to love none but me; He has forgotten me. It was a bad spirit that changed him, But I will love none but him."

And as she sat and sang, the sagamore her husband, paddling by in his canoe, heard the sweet song intoned in magic style, [Footnote: Not only the words, but the peculiar intonations of them, were essential to produce the proper effect of a magic song. An intelligent white man has left it on record that it required two years to learn one of these incantations of only a few lines.] and all at once recalled what had been lost,—the two strong giants, the cavern and the elf, the seven-headed monster and the fight, the sisters and the evil-minded men, and the black dog who leaped to lick his hand: it flashed upon him like some early dream brought out by sorcery. He saw her sit beside the stream, and still he heard her song, soft as a magic flute. He went to her, and in a minute he was won again.

And then she said, "This world is ever false. I know another, let us go to it." So then again she sang a magic spell, and as she sang they saw the great Culloo, the giant bird, broad as a thunder cloud, winging his way towards them. Then he came; they stepped upon him, and he soared away. But to this earth they never came again.

This very singular legend was obtained for me by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown. It is from the Micmac, and is in the original from beginning to end a song, or poem. For this reason I have given it a plain metrical form, neither prose nor poetry, such being quite the character of the original. But I, have not introduced anything not in the original.

This story consists of a very old Indian legend mingled with a European fairy tale drawn through a French-Canadian source. The incident of the Elf who eats the food of three men is to be found in another tale. In one version, the bride, finding that her husband, though utterly deprived by magic of his memory, has married again, sails away on the great bird, leaving him forever. I have naturally rejected this senseless termination in favor of one found in another form.

The calling on the Lightning to build a wigwam is probably a mistake. It is more likely that it was summoned to destroy the chiefs wigwam, but the narrator, confused with the subject of the hero's strength, changed the original. The invocations of Lightning, and subsequently of the Storm Bird are probably entirely Indian, though there are Norse invocations to Hroesvelgar, or the Eagle of the Northwest, as we read in Scott's Pirate.

The black whelp or small black dog is in this tale ominous of evil. It causes oblivion. In the Edda to dream of the same thing is the most evil of all Atli's bad dreams (vide the second lay of Gudrun, 41):—

"Seemed to me from my hand Whelps I let slip. Lacking cause of joy;"

and in the very same song (24) be takes a potion which causes oblivion. But there is even a third point in the Atlamal in Groenlenzku, which resembles one in the Indian tale. It is where the half enchantress Kostbera warns Hogni against leaving her:

"From home thou art going: Give ear to counsel; Few are fully prudent; Go another time."

In the Norse lay we are told that to dream of a white bear indicates a storm, but here it means a strange and terrible event. Long before I met with this, I observed that the introduction, or mention, of a white bear-skin in these Indian stories invariably intimates some strange magical change.

But it is most remarkable of all, that, while the poems of the Edda have nothing but a very few incidents in common with the traditions of the western tribes, they are inspired throughout with a strange and mysterious sentiment or manner wonderfully like that of the Wabanaki. As regards literal resemblance the following coincidences may here be noted.

In a widely spread Norse tale a very small goblin sustains a long and obstinate contest with an immense white bear.

The Norsemen invoked the Eagle Giant of the Winds, as Scott has shown in his song of the Reimkennar. The same being is invoked in this legend.

The whelp, as an omen of evil, is mentioned in the Edda. In this tale he causes forgetfulness. A potion of oblivion is also mentioned in the Norse poem in close connection with the omen of the dog.

If we accept the termination of this tale as given in the Micmac poem it amounts to this: A certain woman causes the whelp to lick the hero's hand. This causes forgetfulness. The hero marries her, and thereby loses his first wife. In the Edda, Brynhild, who has morally the first claim to Sigurd, says of Crymhild, "She presented to Sigurd the pernicious drink, so that he no more remembers me." In the saga of Thorstein, Viking's son the hero, is made by the witch Dis to utterly forget his bride Hunoor.

The Kalmuk tale of How the Schimm-Khan was Slain contains striking analogies to this of the Three Strong Men. [Footnote: Sagas from He Far East, London, 1873.] In it the hero associates with three men, who take turns to cook. Their food is devoured, as in this tale, every day by a little old witch who is very strong. He overcomes her by craft. His companions, instead of drawing him up by the rope, as agreed on, leave him to perish, in order to possess themselves of a treasure. There can be no doubt as to the Hindoo origin of this and many more plots found among the red Indians. But a careful study of the Norse story convinces me that the tale did not come to the Wabanaki through any other than a Norse source.

Since writing out the foregoing poem, with the comment, I have received from Louis Mitchell the Penobscot version of it. It is about twice as long as the Micmac story, and differs from it very materially. In it the hero conquers the goblin by getting possession of his red cap. In the Norse tales the same incident occurs in different forms. He then fights with a copper demon; also with one of silver and another of gold. Each devil, while he is sharpening his sword, exclaims, "Hurry! hurry! I am hungry!" The last of the three, the Kche mitche-hant, or great devil, has three heads, which replace themselves when cut off; but the hero summons a lion (pee'tahlo) and an eagle, who devour each a head, when the demon, to save the last, surrenders. There are old "aboriginal" incidents in this Passamaquoddy tale, but the European elements predominate to such an extent as to call for the following remark from the Indian writer:—

"This story is ended. When Indians in it, as they do in many others, speak of kings and queens or ships and ivory, I think they got it all from Europe. But perhaps when the Indians came here from Asia they brought these stories with them. Thus they very often mention ivory, calling it white bone. They also mention cities. But these things are not new, for they were handed down from one generation to another."

I have to add that, while the story agrees with an universally spread Aryan fairy tale, it is very remarkable that it should add to these, several strictly Eddaic details, such as the white bear.



THE WEEWILLMEKQ'.

I. How a Woman Lost a Gun for Fear of the Weewillmekq'.

There was a man and his wife who had got together all they had for the fall hunt. They went up the St. John's River; they left the village of Foxerbica; they went twenty-five miles beyond it. They passed the falls on the upper side to get some game. They cooked and ate. They got ready to start again; they launched the canoe. [Footnote: This story and the preceding are taken word for word from the Indian narration. The singular precision of minute details is very characteristic of many of these legends.] They shoved the canoe twenty-five feet from the shore. The woman turned, and upset it. It went like lightning down the rapids. They had hard work to get ashore, and lost their gun, traps, kettle, and everything. They escaped with great trouble; they had trouble to save their canoe.

The man was in great grief at the loss of his gun. He sat down and sang:—

"Nici sigi psach ke-yin, Dich m'djel mieol wagh nuch'."

I am sorry, I am in great trouble.

There came two Indians down to the portage where the man and his wife sat. They asked him why he was so sad. He told them all. One of them was a m'teoulin. He asked of them, "Could you tell your gun if you saw it?" The woman cried quickly, "I could!" He was not pleased at her forwardness, but put the question again; when she as pertly answered, "Yes," for her husband. He looked sternly at her, and said, "Are you sure?" To which she cried, "Yes, yes!" Then he said, "If you are very bold, and not afraid of anything, you may get it again." And this, too, she took on herself, saying, "Oh, yes, I'm not afraid; I'll get it," making no account of her husband.

Then, by the order of the man, she went to a ledge just below the falls, where they are seventy-five feet high. There was a little projecting rock on which she could just sit,—a horrible place. Below it was a dreadful eddy, in which nothing could live. He helped her down to it, and she was in mortal terror, as such glib-tongued women generally are when there is the least danger. Then the man went away.

And as she sat there, trembling and half dead with fright, she saw Something come up out of the eddy,—even out of the worst of it. It rose; it was an awful sight,—a kind of monstrous head, with great forked horns and terrible eyes. She was stiff as a stone with fear. The lost gun lay crosswise on the prongs of the horns. It moved slowly on through the eddy, glaring at her. It came nearer and nearer; the gun was within her reach, but she was too frightened to touch it. Then the monster passed by and sank into the water, and was seen no more, nor was the gun.

They got her back with trouble from the place where she sat. The m'teoulin was furious with rage at her, that he had taken such pains for nothing. He said, "This serves you right for your impudence and forwardness. Learn your proper place, and never undertake to do what is none of your business." He then condoled with the husband, but said, "If you could give me all you could think of, I could never get your gun again."

By this women may learn not to speak too quickly, or propose to do men's duties, "Hu 'sami n'zama wiuch wee lel n'aga samee n'gamma wiool petin'l." (P. "Too quick with the tongue, slow with the hands.") [Footnote: Though the Weewillmekq' is a worm inhabiting the forest and found in dry wood, it is certainly identified, or confused, by the Passamaquoddy Indians with the alligator, or some kind of a horrible water-goblin, which appears to have many points in common with the Chepitchcalm, or dragon of the Micmacs. This story was related to me by Tomah Josephs, now Indian governor at Princeton, Maine.

Among various notes I find the following:—

"The weewillmekq' becomes human at times, even now."

"Six years ago," said T. J., "I was in the woods collecting boughs, and I saw a weewillmekq' on a tree. The thunder kept approaching the tree on which it was, and finally struck it. It seemed to me as if the worm had attracted the lightning." (August 26, 1883.)

"The Weewillmekq' is a small worm, sometimes two or three inches long. It is seen sometimes in the water as large as a horse. Then it has horns. It is a very horrible-looking little worm."]



II. Muggahmaht'adem, the Dance of Old Age, or the Magic of the Weewillmekq'. [Footnote: This mysterious being is called Wee-wil-li-ah-mek in Penobscot The correct pronounciation is very nearly Wee-wil-'l-mekqu' for both Penobscot and Passamaquoddy, but this would be a difficult utterence for any one who has never listened to the Algonquin soft gutturals.

Mrs. W. Wallace Brown informs me that "the Weewillmekqu' is a snail." This would account for its being thought to inhabit both land and water.]

(Passamaquoddy.)

Of old times. There lived in a village many Indians. Among them was a handsome young man, very brave, a great hunter. And there was a beautiful girl. What was her name? Mahli-hahn-sqwess, or Kaliwahdazi,— I don't remember which. But she was proud and high-tempered, and, what was worse, a great witch, but nobody knew it. She wanted the young man to marry her, but he was very busy getting ready for the fall and winter hunt, and had no time to attend to such a thing; and told her so very plainly.

Yes, he must have been very plain with her, for she was very angry, and said to him, "You may go; but you will never return as you went." She meant that, he would be ill or changed. He gave no heed to her words; he did not care for her nor fear her. But far away in the woods, far in the north, in midwinter, he went raging mad. The witch had struck him, when far away, with her magic.

He had with him an elder brother, a great brave, a very fierce man. He, not being able to do aught else, did the most desperate thing a Wabanaki Indian can do. He went down to the river, and sang the song which calls the Weewillmekq'.

"We que moh wee will l'mick, We que moh m'cha micso, Som'awo wee will l'mick! Cardup ke su m'so wo Sawo!"

I call on the Wee-will-l'mick! I call on the Terrible One! On the One with the Horns! I dare him to appear!

It came to him in all its terrors. Its eyes were like fire; its horns rose. It asked him what he wanted. He said that he wished his brother to be in his right mind again.

"I will give you what you want," said the Weewillmekq', "if you are not afraid."

"I am not afraid of anything," said the Indian.

"Not of me?"

"Not of you nor of Mitche-hant, the devil himself."

"If you dare take me by my horns and scrape somewhat from one of them with your knife," said the monster, "you may have your wish."

Now this Indian was indeed as savage and brave as the devil; and he had need to be so to do this, for the Weewillmekq' looked his very worst. But the man drew his knife and scraped from the horn till he was told that he had enough.

"Go to your camp," said the Worm. "Put half the scrapings into a cup of water. Make your brother drink it."

"And the other half?" asked the Indian.

"Give it to the girl who made all this trouble. She needs medicine, too."

He returned to camp, and gave the drink to his brother, who recovered. When the hunt was at an end they went home.

They arrived at night. There was an immense lodge in the town, and a dance was going on. The younger brother had prepared a cool drink,— sweet with maple-sugar, fragrant with herbs,—and in it was the powder of the horn of the Weewillmekq'. The witch, warm and very thirsty from dancing, came to the door. He offered her the cup. Without heeding who gave it, she drank it dry, and, turning to her partner, went on in the dance.

And then a strange thing happened. For at every turn of the dance she grew a year older. She began as a young girl; when at the end of the room she was fifty years of age; and when she got back to the door whence she started she fell dead on the floor, at the feet of him who gave her the drink, a little, wrinkled, wizened-up old squaw of a hundred years.

Aha, yes? wood enit atokhahyen, muggoh mah't adem. This is the story of the Dance of Old Age. But you may call it Sektegah, the Dance of Death, if you like it better. [Footnote: This extraordinary story was related to me by Noel Joseph, at Campobello, August 26, 1883. I am indebted to Mrs. W. Wallace Brown for the incantation song. The Weewillmekq' has, as it appears in several tales, an extraordinary resemblance to the Norse dragon. It cures mental diseases. It seems to be the same with the Chepitchcalm.]



III. Another Version of the Dance of Old Age.

(Passamaquoddy.)

It was in the autumn, the time when Indians go up the rivers to their hunting-grounds, that two young men left home. They ascended the stream; they came to a branch, where they parted: one going alone, another with his married brother. This latter, with the brother, had left in the village a female friend, a witch, who had forbidden him to go hunting, but he had not obeyed her.

And she had cause to keep him at home, for, when he was afar in the woods, and alone, he met one day with a very beautiful girl, who fascinated him, and gave herself to him. And when he said that he did not know how to conceal her from his friends she told him that she was a fairy, and could make herself as small as a newly born squirrel, and that all he need do was to wrap her up in a handkerchief and carry her in his pocket. When alone, he could take her out, enjoy her company, and then reduce and fold her up and put her away again.

He did so, but from that hour, while he carried the fairy near his heart, he began to be wicked and strange. This was not caused by her, but by the girl at home. He was entirely changed; he grew devilish; he refused to eat, and never spoke. His sister-in-law began to fear him. When she offered him food he cried out, "Unless I can devour one of your children I will have nothing!"

When his brother returned and heard all this, he, too, offered him meat, but met with a refusal and the reply, "Give me one of your little children." To which he answered, "The child is so small that it will not satisfy you. Let me go and get a larger one." Then he ran to the village and informed his friends of what had come over the brother. And as they knew that he was about to become a kewahqu' (chenoo) they resolved to kill him.

But there was a young man there, a friend of the sufferer, who said that he could save him. So all who were assembled bade him try.

And when night came he went apart, and began to sing his m'teoulin, or magic song. When it ended there was a loud sound as of some heavy body falling and striking the earth, which fairly shook. The next morning he called all his friends and the married brother, and showed them a human corpse. "Now leave me," he said. "Go to my friend and tell him that I have food for him." The Indians did so, and in horror left the two cannibals to devour their disgusting meal. When the insane youth was satisfied, his friend asked, "Have you had enough?" He replied that he had. [Footnote: The human body which supplied the meal was probably in reality a deer, or some such animal.] Then the magician said, "You are bewitched by the girl who forbade you to go hunting; she knew you would find a maid better than she is. Now come with me."

They went to a small lake; they sat down by its side; the sorcerer began his magic song. And as he sang the waters opened; from the disturbed waves rose a huge Weewillmekq', a creature like an alligator, with horns. And, as the terrible being came ashore, the magician said, "Go and scrape somewhat from his horn and bring it here!" The young man had become fearless; he went and did as he was bid: he scraped the horn, and brought the scraping.

"Now, my friend," said the magician, "let us try this on a tree." There was a large green beech growing by them. It was simply touched with the fragment from the horn when another color spread all over the bark as rapidly as the eye could follow it: in an instant it was dead, and in a few minutes more it fell to the ground, utterly rotten, as if it were a century old.

"Now," said the sorcerer, "we will experiment with this on the witch who wishes to destroy you." So as it was night they went to the village. A dance was being held, and the beautiful tall witch having paused to rest, the two men approached her. The young man placed his hand on her head; he held in it a scraping of the horn of the weewillmekq'. As he did so she grew older in an instant,—she became very old; a pale color rippled all over her; she fell, looking a hundred years, dead on the floor, shriveled, dried, and dropped to powder.

"She will not trouble you any more," said the sorcerer. "Her dance is over."

This is the same story as the preceding; but I give it to show now differently a tale may be told by neighbors. In one it is the spretae injuria formae, the wrath of rejected love, which inspires the witch to revenge; in the other it is jealousy. In one she inflicts madness; in the other she turns him into a cannibal demon, as Loki, when only half bad, was made utterly so by getting the "thought-stone" or heart of a witch. This legend was sent to me by Louis Mitchell. It is written not by him, but by some other Passamaquoddy, in Indian-English.



TALES OF MAGIC.

M'teoulin, or Indian Magic.

The study of magic as it is believed in or understood by the Indians of America is extremely interesting, for it involves that of all supernaturalism or of all religion whatever. But if we, declining all question as to the origin of monotheism, limit ourselves definitely to what is known of Shamanism alone, we shall still have before us an immense field for investigation. Shamanism is the belief that all the events and accidents of life are caused or influenced by spirits, and as fear of suffering is in all men, but particularly the savage, the strongest moral emotion, the natural consequence is a greater fear of evil invisible beings. The result of it is a faith that everything which is obscure or invisible is supposed to be the work of mysterious agents, generally evil. Thus all disease whatever, all suffering, pain, loss, or disaster, or bad weather, is at once attributed either to a spirit or to some enemy who practices witchcraft. The Shaman is the priest or doctor, who professes to be able, by his counter-charms, to counteract or neutralize this devil's work.

It will be long ere the scholar definitely determines whether Shamanism as it now exists originated spontaneously in different countries where the same causes were to be found, or whether it is historical; that is, derived from a single source. I believe that while darkness, hunger, fear, and similar causes could not fail to create a rude religion anywhere, as Moncure Conway has shown, yet that the derivation from one beginning, or at least later modifications from it, has been very great indeed. Investigation indicates that it was in Assyria, at a very remote age, that Shamanism had, if not its origin, at least its fullest development. The reader who will consult Lenormant's work on Chaldean magic will learn from it that the fear of devils and the art of neutralizing their power were never carried to such an extent elsewhere as in the Land of Bel. Now as Shamanism has at the present day its stronghold among the Turanian races of Central Asia, it may greatly strengthen the theory, somewhat doubted of late, of the early Accadian predecessors of the Chaldeans and their Turanian origin, if we can only prove that their magical religion was the same as that of the Tartars. So far as my reading has aided me, I am inclined to believe that they are identical. "Magic" went so far among the former that, while they discovered natural remedies for natural ills, they never doubted that one was as much the result of sorcery as the other. This theory spread everywhere.

Shamanism, or a vague fear of invisible evils and the sorcerer, may indeed have sprung up independently in Tartary, Central Africa, Finland, and North America. But it is almost incredible that the use of a drum inscribed with magical figures, the spirit flight of the angakok or Shaman, and twenty other characteristics of the art should have become, without transmission, common to all these countries. Shamanism has probably been at the root of all religions; there was a great deal of it in all those of the Semitic races, and, admitting this, it is not difficult to see how from Chaldea and Babylon it may have found its way into Africa, where black savages, who would have rejected a higher religion, would grasp greedily at what they sympathized with. The only real difference between the Voodoo and Pow-wow practices is that the former is, so to speak, the blacker and more revolting. This is because a low state of culture has induced the believers in it to retain more of the coarse witchcraft on which Shamanism was based, or out of which it grew.

For wherever Shamanism exists, there is to be found, in company with it, an older sorcery, or witchcraft, which it professes to despise, and against which it does battle. As the Catholic priest, by Bible incantations or scriptural magic, exorcises devils and charms cattle or sore throats, disowning the darker magic of older days, so the Shaman acts against the real wizard. Rink tells us that among the heathen Eskimo the Shaman is sacred, and witchcraft a deadly crime, but that the latter is the secret survival of a more ancient religion. Voodoo, whether practiced, as it is to-day, in Philadelphia, New York, Havana, or Senegambia, deals with alleged devils, poisons, chicken bones, the ivory root, unnatural orgies,—all, in short, that can startle and astonish ignorant natures; it is the combination of the oldest faith with its successor. Far higher forms are those of the magic of the black Takowri whom one meets divining about the streets of Cairo, or of the Arab proper, which brings us fairly to the Cabala and the Jew, Cornelius Agrippa and Eliphas Levi.

It is not difficult to understand how Shamanism with its drums and darkened rooms, its conjuring of evil-doers and extraction of diseases in tangible forms, should have spread from Central Asia to the Laplanders and Eskimo, and thence to the red Indians. Very little attention has been paid to the intercourse actually existing at the present day between these races. I have met with a Passamaquoddy Indian who spoke French well, who had been educated at a mission school, and who had been among the Eskimo. As regards legends and folk-lore, no one can read the Eskimo tales and those of this volume and not feel that the Algonquin is to the man of the icy north what the gypsy is to the Hindoo. As regards the early religion of both races, it is simply identical, and it is far too peculiar in its many similar details to have simply sprung up, as many might assume, from the common likeness in customs of all savages. For there is in both a great deal of "literary" culture, especially in the Algonquin, and it would be little less than miraculous that this too should have assimilated by chance. It does not help the "opposition" to point out that Algonquin legends, declare that their ancestors came from the west. Even so, they came from the Pacific coast, where Eskimo Shamanism exists in its most decided forms. But in any case it cannot be denied that in the red Indian mythology of New England, and of Canada and New Brunswick, we have a collection of vigorous, icy, powerful legends, like those of a strong northern race, while those of the middle continent, or Chippewa, are far feebler and gentler. Hiawatha-Manobozho is to Glooskap as a flute to a war trumpet.

It is absurd to laugh at or pity the Indian for believing in his magic. Living as he does in the woods, becoming familiar with animals, and learning how much more intelligent and allied to man they are than civilized man supposes, he believes they have souls, and were perhaps originally human. Balaam's ass spoke once for every Christian; every animal spoke once for the Indian. If a child can be put to sleep by singing to it, why cannot insensibility to pain or a cure be caused by the same process? He is told that the wafer becomes the body of Christ; this may confirm his belief that the Indian god Manobozho turned bits of his own flesh or his wife's into raccoons, for food. If it is difficult for any educated or cultivated man to conceive how, if any condition or phase of supernaturalism be admitted, any other can be denied, how can the Indian be logically blamed for believing anything? But the greatest cause of all for a faith in magic is one which the white man talks about without feeling, and which the Indian feels without talking about it. I mean the poetry of nature, with all its quaint and beautiful superstitions. To every Algonquin a rotten log by the road, covered with moss, suggests the wild legend of the log-demon; the Indian corn and sweet flag in the swamp are the descendants of beautiful spirits who still live in them; Meeko, the squirrel, has the power of becoming a giant monster; flowers, beasts, trees, have all loved and talked and sung, and can even now do so, should the magician only come to speak the spell. And there are such magicians. Why should he doubt it? If the squirrel once yielded to such a power in man, it follows that some man may still have the power, or that he himself may acquire it. And how much of this feeling of the real poetry of nature does the white man or woman possess, who pities the poor ignorant Indian? A few second-hand scraps of Byron and Tupper, Tennyson and Longfellow, the jingle of a few rhymes and a few similes, and a little second-hand supernaturalism, more "accepted" than felt, and that derived from far foreign sources, does not give the white man what the Indian feels. Joe, or Noel, or Sabattis may seem to the American Philistine to be a ragged, miserable, ignorant Indian; but to the scholar he is by far the Philistine's superior in that which life is best worth living for.

The magic of the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot, like the magician himself, is called meteowlin, m'deoolin or m'teoulin. It is the same effectively as meda, which is from the same root. It is a power, but opinions differ as to how it is acquired. It is certain, as I was told by an old Passamaquoddy Indian, of Sebayk, near Campobello, that some children are born m'teoulin. They manifest it, even while babes, by being capricious, eccentric, and malicious. Others acquire the art as they grow older. From all that I have heard I infer that m'teoulin takes two forms,—one of witchcraft, the other of magic. The former is innate, or may be acquired; the latter, for aught I know, may be sometimes inborn, but is generally acquired by fasting, abstinence of other kinds, and ceremonies. The two are distinctly different. Rink found in Greenland and Labrador that the Eskimo, as I have said, made this difference.

I will now give, word for word, the remarks of certain Indians on this subject, beginning with those of an intelligent and prosperous old man, who is certainly enlightened and Christianized very much beyond the average, of his race. I had asked him if there were any m'teoulin, or magicians, living. He replied:—

"There are. Many at St. John and Sebayk are still m'teoulin. I saw this myself thirty-five years ago at St. John's. There was a deaf Indian there. The white men were abusing him. They spat on him. By and by a m'teoulin from St. John's came, a man of thirty-five or forty. I saw this. The m'teoulin asked them not to abuse the deaf and dumb Indian. They turned on the m'teoulin. Then he screamed so horribly, so awfully, and looked so like a devil that the men were frightened. They fell on their knees, and could not move. They let the man go."

This is precisely what is narrated by many writers of the Shaman screaming and distorting of the features. Very few people know of what the human, voice is capable. It can not only be trained to divine song, but to such demoniacal howling as to deafen and appall even the guardians of a lunatic asylum. In Lapland, Central Asia, or on Nootka Sound the initiated are trained in remote solitudes to these utterances, to which no one can listen without terror. My informant continued:—

"Two or three weeks after I was in another place. We spoke of the m'teoulin. The white folks ridiculed them. I said there was one in Fredericton, and I said I would bet ten dollars that he would get the better of them. And they bet that no Indian could do more than they could. So the m'teoulin came. And first of all he screamed so that no one could move. It was dreadful. Then he took seven steps through the ground up to his ankles, just as if it had been light snow. When I asked for the ten dollars, the white men paid. I gave it to the m'teoulin."

Among the Greenland Eskimo the sorcerer, writes Rink, "after meeting with tomassuk, or guardian spirits, sometimes manifests it by his feet sinking into the rocky ground just as if in snow." He uses the very words of the Indian who described the same thing to me. And very recently in Philadelphia, in fact while I was writing the preceding remarks, a spiritualist named Gordon performed the very same trick. Having been detected, a full account of the manner of action appeared in the Press of that city. It was done by a peculiar method of stooping, and of concealing the stoop behind a skirt. It was a very odd coincidence that the explanation should thus present itself while I was seeking it.

This Shaman Eskimo trick was known to the Norsemen. In the Saga of Thorstein it is said that Ogantun, a noted sorcerer, when stabbed at, "thrust himself down into the ground, so that only the soles of his feet could be seen;" and of Kol it was said that "he could pass through the earth as well as walk upon it."

"Women are sometimes m'teoulin. There is one at Psesuk (Bar Harbor) now, this summer. You have met her. She is —-'s wife. [Footnote: I am acquainted with all the parties, but for obvious reasons suppress their names.] If you offend her she can hurt you in strange ways.

"She is a good doctor. Once she cured a man. When he got well he could not pay her for the medicine. His name is Louis —-. She asked for her money; she asked many times; she could not get it. He was going to the woods, far away, to trap; he said he would pay her when he returned, but she wanted it then. She said, 'I will never forget this; I will be revenged.' He went far up the St. John River with his traps; he set them in the stream for beaver. All that he caught that winter was sticks, and sometimes an eel. Then at the end of the day he would say to his man, 'It is of no use.' And then they could hear the witch laughing behind the bushes, and tittering when he came home. So it went on long. Then he was sorry, and said, 'I wish I had paid that woman what I owed her.' And at once they heard a voice from the bushes, or rocks, say, 'Louis, that will do. It is enough.' And the next day they caught two beaver, and every day two, and so on, till the season was over.

"This happened in 1872, in Miramichi Waters."

There does not appear to be any single approved method of acquiring m'teoulin. Some, as I have said, are born to it, but they appear to be wizards or witches. Others are formally trained from boyhood by the experienced magicians. Others acquire certain gifts by certain ceremonies or penances. Of this kind was the power obtained in the manner narrated in the following story, which I heard from an old Passamaquoddy:—

"There was once a young man who wished to become a very wise and brave warrior, like his father. And his father said to him, 'I get all my luck of every kind from my dreams. You can have such dreams; any man can, if he will do a certain thing; but that thing is not easy for a young man like you. You must sleep seven nights with a virgin, and never touch her.'

"The young man thought this over for a few days, and then asked his father how it could be arranged or managed.

"'I will tell you,' replied the old man. 'Find a girl; the more beautiful she is and the more you want her, the stronger the magic will be. Go to the parents for their daughter as a wife. Cheat them so. Before you marry get seven bear-skins, and let no man except one know anything about it. Make him clean them. One skin should be cleaned every twenty-four hours. Seven days must pass so.'

"The young man was accepted by the parents; he sent the seven bear-skins to the young woman; they were married; they went to their wigwam. He lay on the bear-skins; he directed his wife to make another bed and sleep on it. They lay apart. The bride thought this was strange; she told her mother of it. The mother said, 'Never mind. By and by it will be all right.' The wife thought it was all wrong. When seven nights had passed the bridegroom disappeared. He was not seen in his village for twenty-five or thirty years. Then he returned to his father. He could divine all things by dreams. He had but to take the magic bear-skin and sleep on it, and dream. He could tell where to find good hunting or fishing. He foredreamed war with the Mohawks. Can any man do this? They say so, and I have known many who tried it in vain. They could not pass the trial successfully."

"There are stones in the forest with names on them. They give great power to dream. I have seen in my dreams the m'teoulin of ancient times,—the magicians, my father told me, of long ago. I have seen them diving under the waters from one island to another. I have seen them dive ten miles.

"When I was, young, J. N., who was a great m'teoulin, offered to teach me the art. I could have become one, but I would not. I did not think it was right.

"Once old J. N. and my grandfather hunted in the woods. It was near Katahdin, the Great Mountain. [Footnote: Katahdin, like the Intervale near North Conway, is haunted and enchanted ground, abounding in fairies and other marvelous beings. But there is not a mile square of New England which has not its legends.] And they wanted everything. They had got out of everything. One night old N. said, 'I can bear this no longer. Would you like a nice pipe of tobacco? We have had nothing but meat for four weeks.' So he went away for a short time; perhaps it was an hour. He returned with a box. There was in it three pounds of tobacco; there was cheese, rice, and sugar; there was fifty pounds of provision in all."

This famous m'teoulin was long a popular governor of the Passamaquoddies. I have a curious old brass candlestick, said to be one hundred and fifty years old, which he owned all his life. The following remarkable reminiscences of this very clever old sagamore were given to me by Marie Sakis, a Penobscot:

"The old governor was a great m'teoulin. He had got it among the Chippewas. He said that it would come to pass that he would die before the next snow-storm. No, he did not care himself, but my husband's mother did, when she heard this, and she cried. Then he said, 'Well, I will try to live, or else die in a month; but it will be a hard fight.' So he made him a bow, and strung it with his wife's hair; [Footnote: In a Chippewa legend a boy confers magic power on a bow by stringing it with his sister's hair.] and having done this, he shot an arrow through the smoke-hole of his wigwam. [Footnote: This is also mentioned in a legend where it is said that every arrow killed a supernatural enemy.]

All this was at Nessaik, near Eastport. Then he said to his wife, 'Take one of your leggins and put it on my head.' She did so. Then he took medicine. A rainbow appeared in the sky, and a great horse-fly came out of his mouth, and then a large grasshopper. He cried to his wife, 'Do not kill it!' And then came a stone spear-head. [Footnote: This is all in detail perfectly Shamanic. The smell of the fresh fish after such a fight is the same in an Eskimo legend. The horse-fly (gan) is Lapp.]

'Now,' said the governor, 'this is all right so far, but the great struggle is yet to come. It is a wee-wilmekq' who has done this.' (You know what that is: the Passamaquoddies call it weewilmekq'. It is a worm an inch long, which can make itself into a horrid monster as large as a deer; yes, and much larger. It is m'teoulin; yes, it is a great magician.) 'I am going to fight it. You must come with a small stick to hit it once, and only a mere tap.' [Footnote: In the legend of Partridge, a mere tap stuns the water-fairy.] But she would not go. So he went and fought with the Weewillmekq'. He killed it. It was a frightful battle. When he returned he smelt like fresh fish. His wife bade him go and wash himself; but let him bathe as much as he could, the smell remained for days. The pond where he fought has been muddy, and foul ever since.

The governor could with a gimlet bore a hole in any tree in the woods, and draw from it as he pleased; any kind of wine or other liquor. Once he was far in the forest with some white gentlemen; he wished to entertain them. He did this, to their astonishment. He produced tobacco in a miraculous manner when it was wanted. Then, returning to Eastport, he went to Mr. Pearce, who kept a store, and showed him that a certain amount of wine had disappeared from his barrels, and paid him for it. He never drank wine or spirits himself.

He once went hunting. He took his wife with him; she was enceinte. It was in midwinter. She had a great yearning for green corn. He put a dish on the ground, and there fell from above ears of fresh-boiled green corn into it. 'There,' said he, 'as I promised, you have it.'

She had a silver cross and beads. One day she lost it, and grieved very much. He said, 'Put that wooden dish upside down, near the fire.' It was done, and when she turned it up the cross was under the dish. And he said the Ketawks, or Spirits, had brought it."

The following legend, told me by Tomah Josephs, sets forth another manner by which m'teoulin may be acquired.

"There were two Indian families camped away at some distance from the main village. In one lived a young man, and every night he would go to the other wigwams to see some girls. His mother warned him that he would come to harm, for there was danger abroad, but he never minded her.

Now, one night at the end of winter, when the ground was bare of snow, as he was walking along he heard something come after. It had a very heavy, steady tramp. He stopped, and saw a long figure, white, but without arms or legs. It looked like a corpse rolled up. He was horribly frightened, but when it attacked him he grew angry. The object, though it had no arms, fought madly. It twined round him; it struck itself against him, and thrashed itself, bending like a fish all about. And he, too, fought as if he was crazy. He was one of those whose blood and courage go up, but never down; he could die, but never give in till dead. Before daylight the Ghost suggested a rest, or peace; the Indian would not hear of it, but fought on. The Ghost began to implore mercy, but the youth just then saw in the north Kival lo kesso, the break of day. Then he knew that if he could but endure the battle a little longer he should indeed get a great victory.

Then the Ghost implored him, saying, 'Let me go, and whatever you may want you shall get, and good luck all your life.' Yet for all this he would not yield, for he knew that by conquering he would win all the Spirit had to give. And as the first sun-ray shone on him he became insensible, and when he awoke it was as from a sleep. But by his side lay a large, old, decayed log, covered with moss. He remembered that during the fight he had seemed once to plunge his fist, by a violent blow, completely into the enemy up to his elbow, and there was a hole in it corresponding to this wound. He had torn away the other's scalp-lock, stripping the skin down to the waist; he found a long, hairy-looking piece of moss ripped from the end of the log to the middle. And all about lay pieces of moss and locks of his own hair, testifying to the fury of the fight.

He was terribly bruised and torn, but that he did not heed, for now he was another man, and a terrible one. His mother said, 'I warned you of danger:' but he had conquered the danger. He had all the strength of five strong men, and all the might and magic of the Spirit; yes, the Spirit itself was now in him. After this he could do anything, and find game where no one else could. To conquer a ghost gives power."

To conquer the dead, or to fight terrible spirits, to thereby absorb their power, and finally to keep them in a struggle until the day shines on them, is both Norse and Celtic, if not, indeed, world-wide. But the grim spirit of this narrative is Norse; it is that of the hero wresting from a corpse's hold the sword of victory.

"Farewell, daughter! Fleet give I thee, Five men's bane, If thou it believe."

But the great element or chief cause of magic power among, the Indians is that of Will. It manifests itself in many forms, mere courage being one. Thus the Weewillmekq' confers supernatural ability or other favors only on those who are not afraid of it. The demon Log, as we have just seen, gives strength and prosperity to a man for simply fighting like a bull-dog. Beyond courage, pluck or bottom is with these Indians as nearly allied to magic as poetry was among the Greeks, or with an Eschenwaya. When the true magician "gets mad," and continues to get madder till the end, he is invincible. Allied to this is perseverance. The Rabbit is rewarded with skill as an enchanter merely for continuing to try. His very failures have this in them, that he keeps on resolutely, though in a wrong road. No one can fail to be struck, in these legends of the Northeast Algonquins, how often a boy, or adult, when asked if he can do a difficult thing, replies, "I can try." All of this apotheosis of pluck, perseverance, and patience is far more developed among these legends than in those of the Chippewas or other western and southern tribes, at least so far as I am familiar with them. It exists wherever there are red Indians, but the Eastern Algonquin seems to have thought it out more and made more of it than others have done. Therefore his cycle of myths, or his Edda, occupies a higher place. It is less chaotic; it is more consistent; it is a chorus in which every voice is trained to respond to or correspond with the leader. In this respect it has a remarkable resemblance to the Scandinavian myths and poems. In its theory that magic power may be obtained by "penitence,"—I do not mean here "repentance,"—that is by self-inflicted pain, it agrees with the Hindoo, and in fact more or less with all religions. But it is only, I believe, in the red Indian and Hindoo creeds that it is distinctly admitted that man can attain the power to do both good and evil, or whatever he pleases, if he will only pay for it by suffering. The doctrine of power through penance is so simple and obvious in its origin that it would long precede monotheism. A man exercises himself with great exertion in lifting stones, as in an Eskimo tale, till he is strong; he practices shooting arrows and running after them, as in the story of the Chief's Son, till he can outrun them. Then the secret of such marvelous deeds is supposed to exist in the bow, and it becomes a fetich.

A very important part of m'teoulin is the materials employed. In Old World magic these are exclusively objects which startle or disgust, parts of the human body, dead reptiles, or things singular and rare. Among the Indians, very commonplace articles are employed indifferently with those of the former kind. The magic consists not in them, but in the magician and his methods. He has had, let us say, his dreams, or received, while alone in the forest, his inspirations, which have told him what to do. He takes the objects suggested, and with them performs his wonder works. Sometimes he tells others to do the same with the same things, but in this case he is still the motive force; it is his enchantment. In illustration of this I give the following legend:—

Far in the woods was an Indian town; near it lived two old people, who had two beautiful daughters, and no son. The girls were very shy. They seldom let themselves be seen. They would not listen to the young men.

The chief of the tribe had a fine son, a great hunter, and skilled in mysteries. [Footnote: In Passamaquoddy, N'paowlin: a man learned in mysteries, a scholar. This is my own Indian name. It is apparently the same with: boo-oin; that is, pow-wow man.] The young man wanted one of the girls. His father went to their parents and obtained their consent, but the girls refused to be married.

There lived in the village a young man who was neither strong, handsome, nor clever at any kind of work. Hearing that the chief's son had failed to get one of the shy or proud girls, he said—but all in jest, for he had but a poor opinion of himself—that he was the right kind of a man to get them. "If they had, for example, only seen me, now," he exclaimed, "they would have wished to be married at once!" Then they all laughed, and proposed that they should go that night and try to see the girls, and how they would receive the plain looking youth.

So they went quietly, about supper-time, and entered so suddenly that the girls had not time to hide behind the curtain, and so were obliged to receive the visitors. After supper they engaged in playing Mingwadokadjik. In this game a ring is hidden in the ashes or sand, and each player, with a pointed stick, makes a plunge until the ring is hit, and brought out. (This is Indian poker.—T. B.)

So the evening passed, and nothing was said of marriage; and at last the guests went away, and for some time the young man made a jest of his having gone courting. One day he was far and alone in the woods, when he met an old woman of very strange appearance. She was wrinkled and bent with extreme age, and her head was braided up with a very great number of sakalobeek, or hair-strings, which hung down to her heels. After greeting him civilly, she asked him if he was really anxious to marry one of the beauties whom he had visited. "O Nugumee" (grandmother), he replied, "I do not care about it." "Only if you did," she replied, "I can give you the one you want, if you will only say so."

Now the young man saw that the old woman was in earnest, and he replied that in fact he would be very glad to get one of the girls, but that no girl worth having would look at him. Then the old dame, taking one of her hair-strings, said, "Roll this up, and carry it in your pouch for a while; [Footnote: One of the infallible ancient methods to make anything into a fetich, or amulet, is to carry it a long time about the person. Familiarity, as Heine observes (Reisebilder), gives a silent life, or apparent sympathy, to even old clothes. Thus domestic well-known objects become fairies, and thus they talk to children.] and then go, and, catching an opportunity, toss the cord upon her back. But take care that she does not know that you have done this, and let it be indeed a secret to all."

So he took the sakalobe, and, visiting the girls once again, threw it on one of them, more hopeful of success this time. And the cast succeeded, though she said nothing then. But the next day, alone in the woods, he met her, for she had followed him. And she said, "Tamealeen?" "Where are you going?" "I am going hunting," he replied. "But, if you have not lost your way, what are you doing here?" "I am not lost in the woods," she replied, but said no more. Then he, seeing how it was, said, "It would be better, though, if I returned with you to your parents, and told them that I found you lost, and showed you the way home." And having done this, the girl's father, noting that she liked the young man, asked him if he wished to marry her; and as both were willing, and something more, the wedding feast was soon ready, the friends invited, and the couple settled down.

Some days after, the husband, seeing his wife wearing the magic hair-string, asked her, "Where did you get that pretty sakalobe?" "I found it," she replied, "in my 'ntuboonk" (usual sitting place in the wigwam). This caused the young man to reflect how kindly he had been treated by the old fairy or witch, and how easily he, without any merit, had won his wife, and then to think of the deserving young chiefs son who had failed. So, taking him into the woods, they found the old woman, who, kind as ever, did for the chief's son what she had already done for his friend, and gave him also a magic hair-string. And using it in the same way he in like manner won the other sister; and it was indeed well, for she was the one whom he wanted most. And the two men whose wives were sisters (wechoosjik), were on the best of terms and much together.

Now the young chief reflected that his brother-in-law had been very kind to him, for little cause, and thought how he could repay him. So he asked him one day if he would like to be a swift runner. "Truly I would," replied the other. "Then go and gather some feathers, and let them blow when the wind is high, and chase them. You will soon be able to outstrip the wind, and when the art comes it will never depart from you." Then he did this, and became so swift that no man or beast could escape him.

Yet again the chiefs son said, "Would you like to become strong and very active?" And as he of course said "Yes," the friend replied, "Dress yourself in the worst and raggedest garments, and attack the first man you find. He will catch you by the clothes; but do you slip out of them and run." This he did; the first man whom he met was a lunatic, who gladly grappled for a fight. So he slipped out of the clothes and ran; but the madman thought the apparel made the man, and beat it a long time, and left it for dead. But after he had done this with many men he indeed became strong and active.

Then the chief's son said, "I will teach you quickness of sight, so that you may perceive animals while hunting, though other men may not. Take a handful of moose's hairs; hold them firmly in a roll between your thumb and finger; hold them up in a high wind and let them go. So you will be able to perceive, in time, all the moose. And to see deer, or any other animal, you must take their hair and treat it in the same way." So he did; and by means of this magic became so keen of sight that he beheld every beast.

Yet again the chief's son said, "Would you see birds where no other men can?" And he, assenting, was told to strip the feathery part from a bird's quills (chekakadega), and, blowing it into the air, look carefully in the direction in which it flew. And having practiced this also, he became very perfect in the art. [Footnote: The secret of these spells is very apparent. But the teacher would make the pupil believe that the successful result would greatly depend on the color and kind of the fur or feathers employed. It is curious to observe how, in the over-refinement of "sport" among gentlemen, the idea that this or that is "good form" and "the correct thing," which must be done, has had the effect of establishing much which is mere fetich. A fox in England and a bear in Canada must be killed in a certain way by men of caste.]

Now, having learned all these things, he asked the chief's son how he could learn to see the fishes of the sea. And being told that he must collect all kinds of fishes' bones, and burn them and pound them to dust, he did so; and, having blown them up into the wind, he could see all manner of fish and call them to him.

This young man went afar in his thoughts; for reflecting that the whales were giant-like in power, he wondered what might be done by magic with them. And his friend said that it was true that the whales could give to man unearthly power and exceeding long life. "For," said he, "they never die till they are killed, and by their aid one may live on till life borders on immortality." So burning a piece of whale-bone (pootup-awigun), he pounded it to powder, and, standing on a rock that jutted out into the sea, the sorcerer blew the dust seawards. And erelong he saw dark spots far away, and as they grew to be more numerous they became larger, and yet more numerous anon, and for every grain of dust which he blew there came a whale; and yet he blew again seven times. Then the whole school of immense creatures came towards him; and he that was largest, or the sagamore of the whales, swimming close to the man on the rock, said, "Why hast thou called me?" And he replied, "Make me strong."

And the Whale answered, "It is well. Put thy hand in my mouth!" And, doing this, he found and took out a golden key. [Footnote: This is a manifestly modern addition. There is every indication that the story itself is ancient, probably Eskimo.] "Keep that," said the Whale. "While you have it you will be safe against man, beast, or illness. The foe shall not harm you; the spirits which haunt the wilderness shall pass you by; hunger and pain shall not know you; death shall not be in your road."

So the young man thanked the great magician, and went home; and as it had been promised it came to pass. All was ever well with him; trouble and trial were with him no more. Those who were, in his village never knew hunger; the wild game abounded, and came to them when called; no enemy attacked them; the sun and moon smiled on them; they sang the songs of the olden time, and played the flute in peace.

In time the old chief drew near the end of his life, and his son asked the friend if his father's days could not be prolonged. But the magician thought it best to let him pass in peace; and he did so. Then the young chief offered his place and power to his brother-in-law (wechoosul); but he refused it, and passed his, life in aiding his friend in every way by his power and wisdom. Kespeahdvoksit (here the story ends).

This legend is little more than an enumeration of the recipes popularly employed to obtain certain powers. It may be observed that it is limited to all that a real Indian requires. It is very different from what a white man or an Asiatic savage would have wanted; and there is just enough truth and common sense in the methods recommended to make the whole plausible. The reader will observe that the magic hair-string and locks of hair play the same important part in m'teoulin that they did in Old World magic. This is hardly one of the coincidences which can be attributed to spontaneous development from similar causes. It may be such, but there may be also an Eskimo sidegate through which it entered from the other side.

Another magic means was the influencing high and mysterious powers. Of this the following is an admirable illustration:—



Tumilkoontaoo, or the Broken Wing.

(Micmac.)

An Indian family lived on the sea-shore. They had two sons; the eldest of these was married, and had many small children. They lived by fishing; they chiefly caught eels.

It came to pass that the weather was so stormy that they could not fish. The wind blew terribly night and day; the waves were like dancing hills. Hunger made them fierce. One day the father told his boys to walk along the shore and see if no fish had been cast on the beach.

A young man went; he went far along; and as he went the wind was ever worse; it blew so fiercely that he could hardly stand. It seemed to come from a point of land. He resolved to pass it, and when there he saw the cause of the tempest. Upon a kwesopskeak'—a high and rocky ledge, a bold cliff, but surrounded by the water—sat the Wind-Bird, or storm-sagamore himself, flapping his wings, and thereby raising all the wind.

Then the young man, who was brave and wise, resolved to outwit the wind-god. And approaching him and addressing him as Nikskamich, "My grandfather," he inquired, "are you cold!" And he answered, "Nay;" but the young man insisted that he must be suffering, and offered to carry him on his back to the main-land. [Footnote: It would appear that while the bird flapped his wings he did not fly. I believe this was the same with the Norse Hrosvelgar.] And the offer being accepted, he carried the mighty bird from one weedy, slippery rock to another, up and down, jumping anon, and wading through the pools. But at the last rock he, with full intention, stumbled and fell as if by accident, yet managed it so well as to break one of the wings of the eagle, as he indeed meant to do. Yet he made great show of being very sorry, and, having set the wing, bade the bird keep quiet, and not move his wings for many days; not till the wound was healed should he stir them. "Sit still, Nikskamich," he said, "and I will bring you food; I will be attentive; you shall want nothing." And the god sat still: there was a calm on the water; no leaves moved in the forest; there was no wind in all the world.

The young man went home; there was not a breeze, the canoe went smoothly over the sea, the eels could be seen in the depths, the Indians caught fish by thousands; never before had they caught so many. And the sagamore of the birds sat still; the Wind-Bird waited to get well; the young man fed him every day.

There can be too much of what is good; good turns to evil, sweet to sour. After many days of quiet calm the sea was covered with Ogokpegeak, a scum which is caused by sickness among the fish, and which is thrown off by them, for they suffer in still water. Then the fisherman can no longer look down into the sea; then he cannot use the spear.

Then the young man, examining the wing of the storm-bird, said, "Grandfather, it is much better; move it but a little now, that I may see!" So he moved it; he gave a flap, and lo! a slight ripple passed over the surface of the sleeping sea. And striking lightly with his wings, again there came a breeze, and the Ogokpegeak, or the scum, was blown away, and the Indians fished again, and all was well.

So they had the Wind-Bird for a friend, and the sea was smooth or stormy as they willed. But these Indians wished for more than they could manage. They grew tired of catching small fish; they wanted whales. "Let us go and catch the Bootup!" said the elder brother. "How will you take him?" asked the younger. "I will entice him with the peepoogwokan," said the elder, "with my pipe." So he sat by the sea; he played on the pipe; he played, but no whale came. So they went back to their small fishery.

This is manifestly the beginning and end of a very ancient Indian mythical tale. The Micmacs have tacked on to it a ridiculous fragment of an indifferent French nursery tale, without an end and without any connection with the Indian beginning. The tradition is probably entirely Eskimo. Among the Greenlanders there is a caste of whale-fishers, separate and apart, and this story, in its second stage, was applied to teach, Ne sutor ultra crepidam,—that all should stick to their trades, and that though a sorcerer might rule the winds it did not follow that he could win the whales.

I have spoken before of the curious identity of the Indian storm-king, or Wind-Bird, with that of the Norse Hrosvelgar. When among the Chippewas, west of Lake Superior, I met with a white man who had received the name of Thunder-Bird from the Indians still further west.

The magicians of all countries, be they of Africa, Asia, or North America, are invariably represented by travelers as holding their flock in subjection, and never being doubted as to power or skill. But there are skeptics or Agnostics among the men of the woods as well as among those of civilized cities. There are shrewd fellows who cannot only detect impostors, but turn their tricks to their own advantage. An amusing illustration of this is given in the following story:



Fish-Hawk and Scapegrace. [Footnote: Wiskumagwasoo and Mahgwis. The Mahgwis, or "Scapegrace," is a kind of sea-gull.]

(Micmac.)

Two men met and talked: one was Fish-Hawk, the other was Scapegrace. Now the Fish-Hawk can fly higher than any other ocean bird, and he is proud and particular as to his food; he is only beaten by the eagle. When he dives and takes a fish the eagle pursues him; he lets it drop; the great sagamore of the birds catches it; but to less than the chief he yields nothing. But the Scapegrace will eat anything he is heavy in flying; he is slow and of low degree.

So when the Scapegrace proposed to the Fish-Hawk that they should become partners the proud bird was angry in his heart, but said nothing, as he was crafty, and as it occurred to him that he could punish the other; and this he was the more willing to do because the Scapegrace actually proposed to fly a race with him! So he said, "Let us go together to a certain Indian village." And they went off together.

The Fish-Hawk arrived there far before the other. And on arriving he said, "Beware of him who will come after me. You will know him by these signs: he is ugly and heavy; he will bring with him his own food. It is coarse and common; in fact it is poison. He wishes to kill you; he will offer it. Do not eat of it, or you will die."

Then having been very well entertained himself, he took his departure. Scapegrace soon appeared, but was treated with great reserve. He offered his food, and the people pretended to eat it, but took good care to quietly throw it away. Then he told the chief that he was seeking a wife, and asked if there were girls to marry in the town. To which the chief replied, "Yes, there is a mother with several daughters, of the Amalchoogwech' or Raccoon tribe."

He went to see the girls. A bad name had gone before him. One of them stood before the lodge. She saw him, and cried, "Mahgwis wechooveet!" "Scapegrace is coming!" They received him as if he had been Sickness. He was welcomed like filth on fine clothes. They cried out, "Ulummeye!" "Go home!" He asked the mother if she had daughters. She answered, "Yes." He asked her if she would give him one. She replied, "I will not." So he went his way.

Now when he had gone Fish-Hawk came again, and asked if Scapegrace had been there. He inquired if all had passed as he predicted. They said it had. Then it occurred to him to pass himself off for a great prophet, a wise magician, well knowing that he could make much of it. So he said, "It is well. Remember that you would have all died but for my foresight. That wizard would have poisoned you all. But have no fear. In future I will watch over you."

Then, he said to a man of the people that if at any time he should see a large bird flying over the village it would be an omen of great coming danger. "Then," he said, "think of me; call on me, and I will come." So he departed.