Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3

FRONTISPIECE. Vol. 3.
Designed & Etched by W. H. Brooks A. R. H. A.
In a moment multitudes of bright beings start up—"He is ours"!!! page 110.
London, Published by Colburn & Bentley—April 1830.

TRADITIONS

OF THE

NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS:

BEING

A SECOND AND REVISED EDITION

OF

"TALES OF AN INDIAN CAMP."

BY

JAMES ATHEARN JONES.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

———

LONDON:

HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY,

NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1830

LONDON:
F. SHOBERL, JUN., LONG ACRE.

CONTENTS
OF
THE THIRD VOLUME.

TALES OF AN INDIAN CAMP.

THE LAKE OF THE WHITE CANOE.

Wo! Wo! Wo
Wo to the sons of the far-off land,
Weak in heart and pale in face,
Deer in battle, moose in a race,
Panthers wanting claw and tooth
Wo to the red man, strong of hand,
Steady of purpose, lithe of limb,
Calm in the toils of the foe,
Knowing nor tears nor ruth
Wo to them and him,
If, cast by hard fate at the midnight damp,
Or an hour of storm in the dismal swamp,
That skirts the Lake of the White Canoe!

Wo to him and them,
If, when the night's dim lamps are veil'd,
And the Hunter's Star is hid,
And the moon has shut her lid,
For their wearied limbs the only birth
Be the cold and frosty earth,
And their flesh be burnt by the gum exhal'd
From the cedar's poisonous stem,
And steep'd in the blistering dew
Of the barren vine in the birchen copse,
Where rear the pines their giant tops
Above the Lake of the White Canoe!

My brother hears—'t is well—
And let him shun the spot,
The damp and dismal brake,
That skirts the shallow lake,
The brown and stagnant pool[1],
The dark and miry fen,
And let him never at nightfall spread
His blanket among the isles that dot
The surface of that lake;
And let my brother tell
The men of his race that the wolf hath fed
Ere now on warriors brave and true,
In the fearful Lake of the White Canoe.

Wo! Wo! Wo!
To him that sleeps in those dark fens!
The she-wolf will stir the brake,
And the copper-snake breathe in his ear,
And the bitterns will start by tens,
And the slender junipers shake
With the weight of the nimble bear,
And the pool resound with the cayman's plash,
And the owl will hoot in the boughs of the ash,
Where he sits so calm and cool;
Above his head, the muckawiss[2]
Will sing his gloomy song;
Frogs will scold in the pool,
To see the musk-rat carry along
The perch to his hairy brood;
And, coil'd at his feet, the horn-snake will hiss,
Nor last nor least of the throng,
The shades of the youth and maid so true,
That haunt the Lake of the White Canoe.

And, if he chance to sleep,
Still will his okki whisper wo,
For hideous forms will rise:
The spirits of the swamp
Will come from their caverns dark and deep,
Where the slimy currents flow,
With the serpent and wolf to romp,
And to whisper in the sleeper's ear
Of wo and danger near;
And mist will hide the pale, cold moon,
And the stars will seem like the sparkling flies
That twinkle in the prairie glades,
In my brother's month of June—
Murky shades, dim, dark shades,
Shades of the cypress, pine, and yew,
In the swamp of the Lake of the White Canoe.

Wo! wo! wo!
He will hear in the dead of the night—
If the bittern will stay his toot,
And the serpent will cease his hiss,
And the wolf forget his howl,
And the owl forbear his hoot,
And the plaintive muckawiss,
And his neighbour the frog, will be mute—
A plash like the dip of a water-fowl,
In the lake with mist so white;
And two forms will float on his troubled view,
O'er the brake, with a meteor light,
And he'll hear the words of a tender song,
Stealing like a spring-wind along
The Lake of the White Canoe.

That song will be a song of wo,
Its burthen will be a gloomy tale;
It will cause the rain to flow;
It will tell of youthful love,
Fond but blighted love;
It will tell of father's cruelty;
It will cause the rain to flow;
It will tell of two lovely flowers
That grew in the wilderness;
And the mildew that touch'd the leaf;
And the canker that struck the bud;
And the lightning that wither'd the stem;
And 't will speak of the Spirit-dove,
That summon'd them away,
Deeming them all too good and true,
For aught save to paddle a White Canoe

With these wild stanzas, preliminary to a tradition current among the tribes of that region, Walk in the Water, a Roanoke chief of great celebrity, commenced his tale. Undoubtedly most of the Indians present were as well acquainted with the story as the narrator, but that circumstance seemed to abate nothing of the interest with which it was listened to; it certainly did not diminish the attention of the audience. In this respect, these wild foresters deserve to become a pattern for careful imitation. They never interrupt a speaker. However incongruous or ill put together his tale, or insulting the matter or manner of his speech, or revolting his opinions to their preconceived notions and prejudices, he is heard patiently until he has said all that he has to say. And, after he has seated himself, sufficient time is given him to recollect whether he has left unsaid any thing in his opinion of importance to the correct interpretation of his views.

It will be seen from the specimens interspersed through these volumes, that the poetry of the Indians is in general of the warlike, or of the tender and pathetic kind. Their only poetry is found in their songs. They are sung in a kind of measure, always harmonious to an Indian ear, and frequently to ours. The music is well adapted to the words. It would be idle to attempt to give an idea of it by means of our musical notes, as has been done by other writers; I should probably meet with the fate of those who have tried in the same manner to describe the melodies of the ancient Greeks. They sing it in short lines or sentences, not always the whole at once, but most generally in detached parts, as time permits, and as the occasion or their feelings prompt them. Their accent is very pathetic and melancholy; a by-stander unacquainted with their language would suppose that they were details of some great affliction: both sexes sing in chorus, first the men and then the women. At times the women join in the general song, or repeat the strain which the men have just finished. It seems like two parties singing in questions and answers, and is, upon the whole, very agreeable and enlivening. After thus singing for about a quarter of an hour, they conclude each song with a loud yell, not unlike the cat-bird, which closes its pretty song with mewing like a cat. The voices of the women are clear and full, and their intonations generally correct.

The Dismal Swamp, which gave rise to this genuine Indian tradition, is one of the gloomiest spots on the face of the earth. It is situated in the state of Virginia, and covers a very large space. On the south side of this wild and gloomy region the marshy border is thickly overgrown with immense reeds, and, as far as the eye can take in, waves slowly and heavily one dark green sea. Then, on all the other skirts of the forest itself, the lofty trees are covered to their summits by the yellow jessamine, and other quick-growing creepers, breathing odour, and alive with the chirping of insects and the melody of birds. In the open and less marshy skirts of the vast forest, gigantic tulip-trees shoot up their massy and regular-built trunks, straight and pillar-like, until they put forth their broad arms covered with the magnificent foliage of their glossy deep green leaves, interspersed with superb white and yellow tulip-shaped flowers. Under their shade are sheltered, like shrubs, trees which elsewhere would be the pride of the forest, or the park—the stately gum-tree, and the magnolia, with its broad shining leaves and beautiful white flowers; whilst at their feet you force your way through tangles of the honeysuckle, or thickets of the moisture-loving bay, rich with its large rose-coloured clusters. But, the moment you penetrate beyond the sun's cheering influence into the deeper recesses of the swamp itself, how solemn is the change! There, the cypress and the juniper, rising without a branch to interrupt the regularity of their tall trunks for a hundred feet, stand thick and close together, like so many tall columns reared to support the roof of a vast temple. All is silent as the grave. Not an insect buzzes or chirps about you; no cry or song of bird or beast is heard. You seem to have penetrated beyond the bounds not only of human society and existence but of animal life, and to be passing through the still and dark valley of the shadow of death.

As the traveller pushes his doubtful way along, he will come upon some broad, lake-like sheet of water, still, silent, and sluggish, calmly reflecting the quiet solemnity of the forest. I say still and silent, but these little lakes are visited at certain seasons of the year by myriads of wild fowl, the clapping of whose wings, as they rise from the water, may be heard to a great distance. The water of all those lakes is of the same colour as the roots and bark of the juniper and cedar-trees, from which it receives its hue. And, when the sun flashes on the amber-coloured lake, and the cypress forest throws its gloomy shade over its face, the traveller becomes thrilled with awe and astonishment. He fancies that he has never seen any spot so fitted to be the residence of spirits of a malignant influence, and expects to see evil eyes cast upon him from every copse. The bird and bat, as they flit through the shades of night, magnified by the misty exhalations, seem the envious demons of the spot; and, foolish man! he more regards the dangers which are unreal than those which are real—is more afraid of the spirits which cannot harm, than of the ravenous beasts and poisonous serpents with which he is environed, and whose fangs are death in its most hideous shape.

Having introduced this not altogether gratuitous description of a spot celebrated in America for its picturesque situation and horrors, I resume the rhythmical tale of the chief of the Roanokes.

It was many seasons ago,
How long I cannot tell my brother,
That this sad thing befell;
The tale was old in the time of my father,
To whom it was told by my mother's mother.
My brother hears—'tis well—
Nor may he doubt my speech;
The red man's mind receives a tale
As snow the print of a mocassin;
But, when he hath it once,
It abides like a footstep chisell'd in rock,
The hard and flinty rock.
The pale man writes his tales
Upon a loose and fluttering leaf,
Then gives it to the winds that sweep
Over the ocean of the mind;
The red man his on the evergreen
Of his trusty memory(1).
When he from the far-off land would know
The tales of his father's day,
He unrolls the spirit-skin[3],
And utters what it bids:
The Indian pours from his memory
His song, as a brook its babbling flood
From a lofty rock into a dell,
In the pleasant summer-moon.—
My brother hears.—

He hears my words—'tis well—
And let him write them down
Upon the spirit-skin,
That, when he has cross'd the lake,
The Great Salt Lake,
The lake, where the gentle spring winds dwell,
And the mighty fishes sport,
And has called his babes to his knee,
And his beauteous dove to his arms,
And has smok'd in the calumet
With the friends he left behind,
And his father, and mother, and kin,
Are gather'd around his fire,
To learn what red men say,
He may the skin unroll, and bid
His Okki this tradition read[4]—
The parting words of the Roanoke,
And his tale of a lover and maiden true,
Who paddle the Lake in a White Canoe.

There liv'd upon the Great Arm's brink[5],
In that far day,
The warlike Roanokes,
The masters of the wilds:
They warr'd on distant lands,
This valiant nation, victors every where;
Their shouts rung through the hollow oaks,
That beetle over the Spirit Bay[6],
Where the red elk comes to drink;
The frozen clime of the Hunter's Star
Rang shrill with the shout of their bands,
And the whistle of their cress[7];
And they fought the distant Cherokee,
The Chickasaw, and the Muscogulgee,
And the Sioux of the West.
They liv'd for nought but war,
Though now and then would be caught a view
Of a Roanoke in a White Canoe.

Among this tribe, this valiant tribe,
Of brave and warlike Roanokes,
Were two—a youth and maid,
Who lov'd each other well,
Long and fondly lov'd,
Lov'd from the childish hour,
When, through the bosky dell,
Together they fondly rov'd,
In quest of the little flower,
That likes to bloom in the quiet shade
Of the tall and stately oaks.
The pale face calls it the violet—
'Tis a beautiful child when its leaves are wet
With the morning dew, and spread
To the beam of the sun, and its little head
Sinks low with the weight of the tear
That gems its pale blue eye,
Causing it to lie
Like a maiden whose heart is broke.—
Does my brother hear?

He hears my words—'tis well—
The names of this fond youth and maid
Tell who they were,
For he was Annawan, the Brave,
And she Pequida, the girl of the braid,
The fairest of the fair.
Her foot was the foot of the nimble doe,
That flies from a cruel carcajou,
Deeming speed the means to save;
Her eyes were the eyes of the yellow owl,
That builds his nest by the River of Fish;
Her hair was black as the wings of the fowl[8]
That drew this world from the great abyss.
Small and plump was her hand;
Small and slender her foot;
And, when she opened her lips to sing,
Ripe red lips, soft sweet lips,
Lips like the flower that the honey-bee sips,
The birds in the grove were mute,
The bittern forgot his toot,
And the owl forbore his hoot,
And the king-bird set his wing,
And the woodpecker ceas'd his tap
On the hollow beech,
And the son of the loon on the neighbouring strand
Gave over his idle screech,
And fell to sleep in his mother's lap.

And she was good as fair,
This maid of the Roanokes;
She was mild as a day in spring;
Morning, noon, and night,
Young Pequida smil'd on all,
But most on one.
She smil'd more sweet if he were there,
And her laugh more joyous rung,
And her step had a firmer spring,
And her eye had a keener light,
And her tongue dealt out blither jokes,
And she had more songs to spare,
And she better mock'd the blue jay's cry,
When his dinner of maize was done;
And better far, when he stood in view,
Could she paddle the Lake in her White Canoe.

And who was he she lov'd?
The bravest he of the Roanokes,
A leader, before his years
Were the years of a full-grown man;
A warrior, when his strength
Was less than a warrior's need;
But, when his limbs were grown,
And he stood erect and tall,
Who could bend the sprout of the oak
Of which his bow was made?
Who could poise his choice of spears,
To him but a little reed?
None in all the land.
And who had a soul so warm?
Who was so kind a friend(2)?
And who so free to lend
To the weary stranger bed and bread,
Food for his stomach, rest for his head,
As Annawan, the Roanoke,
The valiant son of the chief Red Oak?

They liv'd from infancy together;
They seem'd two sides of a sparrow's feather;
Together they roam'd o'er the rocky hill,
And through the woody hollow,
And by the river brink,
And o'er the winter snows;
And they sat for hours by the summer rill,
To watch the stag as he came to drink,
And to see the beaver wallow;
And when the waters froze,
They still had a sport to follow
O'er the smooth ice, for, full in view,
Lay the glassy Lake of the White Canoe.

The youth was the son of a chief,
And the maiden a warrior's daughter;
Both were approv'd for deeds of blood;
Both were fearless, strong, and brave:
One was a Roanoke,
The other a captive Maqua boy,
In battle sav'd from slaughter(3)—
A single ear from a blighted sheaf,
Planted in Aragisken land[9];
And these two men were foes.
When they to manhood came,
And each had skill and strength to bend
A bow with a warrior's aim,
And to wield the club of massy oak
That a warrior-man should wield,
And to pride themselves on a blood-red hand,
And to deem its cleanness shame,
Each claim'd to lead the band,
And angry words arose,
But the warriors chose Red Oak,
Because his sire was a Roanoke.

Then fill'd the Maqua's heart with ire,
And out he spoke:
"Have his deeds equall'd mine?
Three are the scalps on his pole[10]—
In my smoke are nine;
I have fought with a Cherokee;
I have stricken a warrior's blow,
Where the waves of Ontario roll;
I have borne my lance where he dare not go;
I have looked on a stunted pine
In the realms of endless frost,
And the path of the Knisteneau
And the Abenaki crost.
While the Red Oak planted the land,
It was mine to lead the band."

Then fiercely answer'd the rival Brave,
And bitter strife arose;
Loud and angry words,
Noisy boasts and taunts,
Menaces and blows,
These foolish men each other gave;
And each like a panther pants
For the blood of his brother chief;
Each himself with his war-club girds,
And forth he madly goes,
His wrath and ire to wreak;
But the warriors interpose.
Thenceforth they met as two eagles meet,
When food but for one lies dead at their feet,
And neither dare be the thief:
Each is prompt to show his ire;
The eye of each is an eye of fire,
And trembles each hand to give
The last and fatal blow;
And thus my brother may see them live
With the feelings that wolf-dogs know.

And when each of these brave men
Had built himself a lodge,
And each had a bird in his nest,
And each had a babe at his knee,
Their hate had no abatement known,
Still each was his brother's enemy.
And thirsted for his blood.
And when those babes had grown,
The one to be a man
In stature, years, and soul,
With a warrior's eye and brow,
And his poll a shaven poll[11],
And his step as a wild colt's free,
And his voice like the winter wind,
Or the roaring of the sea;
The other a maiden ripe,
With a woman's tender heart,
Full of soft and gentle wishes,
Sighs by day and dreams by night,
Their hostile fathers bade them roam
Together no more o'er the rocky dell,
And through the woody hollow,
And by the river brink,
And o'er the winter snows,
Nor sit for hours by the summer rill,
To watch the stag as he came to drink,
And to see the beaver wallow,
Nor when the waters froze,
Have a pleasant sport to follow,
O'er the smooth ice; they bade them shun,
Each other as the stars the sun.

What did they then—this youth and maid?
Did they their fathers mind?—
I will tell my brother.—
They met—in secret met'Twas
not in the rocky dell,
Nor in the woody hollow,
Nor by the river brink,
Nor o'er the winter snows,
Nor by the summer rill,
Watching the stag as he came to drink,
And to see the beaver wallow,
That these two lovers met,
Nor when the waters froze,
Giving good sport to follow:
But, when the sky was mild,
And the moon's pale light was veil'd,
And hushed was every breeze,
In prairie, village, and wild,
And the bittern had stayed his toot,
And the serpent had ceased his hiss,
And the wolf forgot his howl,
And the owl forbore his hoot,
And the plaintive wekolis[12],
And his neighbour, the frog, were mute—
Then would my brother have heard
A plash like the dip of a water-fowl,
In the lake with mist so white,
And the smooth wave roll to the bank,
And have seen the current stirr'd
By something that seemed a White Canoe,
Gliding past his troubled view.

And thus for moons they met
By night on the tranquil lake,
When darkness veils the earth;
Nought care they for the wolf,
That stirs the brake on the bank;
Nought that the junipers shake
With the weight of the nimble bear,
Nor that bitterns start by tens,
Nor to hear the cayman's plash,
Nor the hoot of the owl in the boughs of the ash,
Where he sat so calm and cool:
And thus each night they met,
And thus a summer pass'd.

Autumn came at length,
With all its promised joys,
Its host of glittering stars,
Its fields of yellow corn,
Its shrill and healthful winds,
Its sports of field and flood.
The buck in the grove was sleek and fat,
The corn was ripe and tall;
Grapes clustered thick on the vines;
And the healing winds of the north
Had left their cells to breathe
On the fever'd cheeks of the Roanokes,
And the skies were lit by brighter stars
Than light them in the time of summer.
Then said the father of the maid,
"My daughter, hear—
A bird has whispered in my ear,
That, often in the midnight hour,
They who walk in the shades,
The murky shades, dim, dark shades,
Shades of the cypress, pine, and yew,
That tower above the glassy lake,
Will see glide past their troubled view
Two forms as a meteor light,
And will note a white canoe,
Paddled along by two,
And will bear the words of a tender song,
Stealing like a spring-wind along;
Tell me, my daughter, if either be you?"

Then down the daughter's cheek
Ran drops like the summer rain,
And thus she spoke:
"Father, I love the valiant Annawan;
Too long have we roam'd o'er the rocky dell,
And through the woody hollow,
And by the river brink,
And o'er the winter snows,
To tear him from my heart:
Too long have we sat by the summer rill,
To watch the buck as he came to drink,
And to see the beaver wallow,
To live from him apart—
My father hears."

"Thou lov'st the son of my foe,
And know'st thou not the wrongs
That foe hath heap'd on me?
The nation made him chief—
Why made they him a chief?
Had his deeds equall'd mine?
Three were the scalps on his pole,
In my smoke were nine:
I had fought with a Cherokee;
I had struck a warrior's blow,
Where the waves of Ontario roll;
I had borne my lance where he dare not go;
I had look'd on a stunted pine,
In the realms of endless frost,
And the path of the Knisteneau,
And the Abenaki crost;
While the Red Oak planted his land,
It was mine to lead the band.
Since then we never spoke,
Unless to utter reproach,
And bandy bitter words;
We meet as two hungry eagles meet,
When a badger lies dead at their feet—
Each would use a spear on his foe,
Each an arrow would put to his bow,
And bid its goal be his foeman's breast,
But the warriors interpose,
And delay the vengeance I owe.
Thou hear'st my words—'t is well.

"Then listen to my words—
The soul of a Maqua never cools;
His ire can never be assuag'd,
But with the smell of gore
I thirst for the Red Oak's blood;
I live but for revenge;
Thou shalt not wed his son;
Choose thee a mate elsewhere,
And see that ye roam no more
By night o'er the rocky dell,
And through the woody hollow,
But when the sun its eye-lids closes,
See that thine own the example follow."

And the father of the youth
Spake thus unto his son:
"A bird has whispered in my ear,
That when the stars have gone to rest,
And the moon her eye-lids hath clos'd,
Who walk beside the lake
Will see glide past their troubled view
Two forms as a meteor light,
And will note a white canoe
Paddled along by two,
And will hear the words of a tender song.
Stealing like a spring wind along.
Tell me, my son, if either be you?"

Then answer'd the valiant son,
"Mine is a warrior's soul,
And mine is an arm of strength;
I scorn to tell a lie;
The bird has told thee true.
And, father, hear my words:
I now have come to man's estate;
Who can bend the sprout of the oak,
Of which my bow is made?
Who can poise my choice of spears,
To me but a slender reed?
I fain would build myself a lodge,
And take to that lodge a wife:
And, father, hear thy son—
I love the Red Oak's daughter."

"Thou lov'st the daughter of my foe;
And know'st thou not the taunts
His tongue hath heap'd on me:
The nation made me chief,
And thence his ire arose;
Thence came foul wrongs and blows,
And neither yet aveng'd.
He boasted that his fame exceeded mine:
Three, he said, were the scalps on my pole,
While in his lodge were nine—
He did not tell how many I struck,
Nor spoke of my constancy,
When the Nansemonds tore my flesh,
With burning pincers tore;
And he said he had fought with a Cherokee,
And had struck a warrior's blow,
Where the waves of Ontario roll,
And had borne his lance where I dare not go,
And had look'd on a stunted pine,
In the realms of endless frost;
And the path of the Knisteneau
And the Abenaki crost:
While—bitter taunt!—cruel taunt!
And for it I'll drink his blood,
And eat him broil'd in fire—
The Red Oak planted his land,
It was his to lead the band.

"And listen further to my words—
My wrath can never be assuag'd;
Thou shalt not wed his daughter,
Choose thee a wife elsewhere;
Choose thee one any where,
Save in the Maqua's lodge.
The Nansemonds have maidens fair,
With bright black eyes, and long black locks,
And voice like the music of rills;
The Chippewa girls of the frosty north
Have feet like the nimble antelopes'
That bound on their native hills;
And their voice is like the dove's in spring—
Take one of those doves to thy cage;
But see no more, by day or night,
The Maqua warrior's daughter."
And haughtily he turn'd away.

Night was abroad on the earth;
Mists were over the face of the moon,
And the stars were like the sparkling flies
That twinkle in the prairie glades,
In my brother's month of June:
And hideous forms had risen;
The spirits of the swamp
Had come from their caverns dark and deep,
Where the slimy currents flow,
With the serpent and wolf to romp,
And to whisper in the sleeper's ear
Of death and danger near.

Then to the margin of the lake
A beauteous maiden came;
Tall she was as a youthful fir,
Upon the river's bank;
Her step was the step of the antelope;
Her eye was the eye of the doe;
Her hair was black as a coal-black horse;
Her hand was plump and small;
Her foot was slender and small;
And her voice was the voice of a rill in the moon,
Of the rill's most gentle song.
Beautiful lips had she,
Ripe red lips,
Lips like the flower that the honey-bee sips,
When its head is bow'd by dew.

She stood beneath the shade
Of the dark and lofty trees,
That threw their image on the lake,
And waited long in silence there.
"Why comes he not, my Annawan,
My lover, brave and true?
He knows his maiden waits for him
Beneath the shade of the yew,
To paddle the lake in her White Canoe."
But Annawan came not:
"He has miss'd me sure," the maiden said,
"And skims the lake alone;
Dark though it be, and the winds are high,
I'll seek my warrior there."
Then lightly to her white canoe
The fair Pequida sprung,
And is gone from the shore alone.

Loud blew the mighty winds,
The clouds were dense and black,
Thunders rolled among the hills,
Lightnings flash'd through the shades;
The spirits cried aloud
Their melancholy cries,
Cries which assail the listening ear
When danger and death are near:
Who is he that stands on the shore,
Uttering sounds of grief?
'Tis Annawan, the favour'd youth,
Detain'd so long lest envious eyes
Should know wherefore at midnight hour
He seeks the lake alone.
He finds the maiden gone,
And anguish fills his soul,
And yet, perchance in childish sport,
She hides among the groves.
Loudly he calls, "My maiden fair,
Thy Annawan is here!
Where art thou, maid with the coal-black hair?
What does thy bosom fear?
If thou hast hid in playful mood
In the shade of the pine, or the cypress wood,
If the little heart that so gently heaves
Is lightly pressing a bed of leaves;
Tell me, maiden, by thy voice
Bid thy lover's heart rejoice;
Ope on him thy starry eyes;
Let him clasp thee in his arms,
Press thy ripe, red lips to his.
Come, my fair Pequida, come!"

No answer meets the warrior's ears,
But glimmering o'er the lake appears
A solitary, twinkling light—
It seems a fire-fly lamp;
It moves, with motion quick and strange,
Over the broad lake's breast.
The lover sprung to his light canoe,
And swiftly followed the meteor spark,
But the winds were high, and the clouds were dark,
He could not find the maid,
Nor near the glittering lamp.

He went to his father's lodge,
And laid him on the earth,
Calmly laid him down.
Words he spoke to none,
Looks bestow'd on none.
They brought him food—he would not eat—
They brought him drink—he would not drink—
They brought him a spear and a bow,
And a club, and an arrowy sheaf,
And shouted the cry of war,
And prais'd him, and nam'd him a Chief,
And told how the treacherous Nanticokes
Had slain three Braves of the Roanokes;
That a man of the tribe who never ran
Had vow'd to war on the Red Oak's son—
But he show'd no signs of wrath;
His thoughts were abroad in another path.

Sudden he sprung to his feet,
Like an arrow impell'd by a vigorous arm.
"You have dug her grave," said he,
"In a spot too cold and damp,
All too cold and damp,
For a soul so warm and true.
Where, think ye, her soul has gone?
Gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long by a fire-fly lamp
She paddles her White Canoe.
And thither I will go!"
And with that he took his quiver and bow,
And bade them all adieu.

And the youth returned no more;
And the maiden returned no more;
Alive none saw them more;
But oft their spirits are seen
By him who sleeps in that swamp.
When the night's dim lamps are veil'd,
And the Hunter's Star is hid,
And the moon has shut her lid,
And the she-wolf stirs the brake,
And the bitterns start by tens,
And the slender junipers shake
With the weight of the nimble bear,
And the pool resounds with the cayman's plash,
And the owl sings out of the boughs of the ash,
Where he sits so calm and cool,
And above his head the muckawiss
Sings his gloomy song,
And croak the frogs in the pool,
And he hears at his feet the horn-snake's hiss;
Then often flit along
The shades of the youth and maid so true,
That haunt the Lake of the White Canoe.

NOTES.

(1) Trusty memory.—p. 9.

The memory of the Indians is as astonishing as their native sagacity and penetration. They are entirely destitute of those helps which we have invented to ease our memory, or supply the want of it; yet they are never at a loss to recall to their minds any particular circumstance with which they would impress their hearers. On some occasions, they do indeed make use of little sticks to remind them of the different subjects they have to discuss; and with ease they form a kind of local memory, and that so sure and infallible, that they will speak for a great length of time—sometimes for three or four hours together—and display twenty different presents, each of which requires an entire discourse, without forgetting any thing, and even without hesitation.

(2) Kind Friendship.—p. 14.

Every Indian has a friend nearly of the same age as himself, to whom he attaches himself by the most indissoluble bonds. Two persons, thus united by one common interest, are capable of undertaking and hazarding every thing in order to aid and mutually succour each other; death itself, according to their belief, can only separate them for a time: they are well assured of meeting again in the other world never to part, where they are persuaded they shall have occasion for the same services from one another. Charlevoix tells of an Indian who was a christian, but who did not live according to the maxims of the gospel, and who, being threatened with hell by a Jesuit, asked this missionary whether he thought his friend who was lately departed had gone into that place of torment; the father answered him that he had good grounds to think that the Lord had had mercy upon him, and taken him to heaven. "Then, I won't go to hell, neither?" replied the Indian, and this motive brought him to do every thing that was desired of him; that is to say he would have been full as willing to go to hell as heaven, had he thought to find his companion there.

It is said that these friends, when they happen to be at a distance from each other, reciprocally invoke one another in all dangers. The assistance they promise each other may be surely depended upon.

(3) A Maqua saved from slaughter.—p. 15.

The following is the practice and ceremony of adoption: A herald is sent round the village or camp, to give notice that such as have lost any relations in the late expedition are desired to attend the distribution which is about to take place. Those women, who have lost their sons or husbands, are generally satisfied in the first place; afterwards, such as have been deprived of friends of a more remote degree of consanguinity, or who choose to adopt some of the youth. The division being made, which is done as in other cases without the least dispute, those who have received any share lead them to their tents or huts, and, having unbound them, wash and dress their wounds if they happen to have received any; they then clothe them, and give them the most comfortable and refreshing food their store will afford.

Whilst their new domestics are feeding, they endeavour to administer consolation to them; they tell them they are redeemed from death, they must now be cheerful and happy; and, if they serve them well without murmuring or repining, nothing shall be wanting to make them such atonement for the loss of their country and friends as circumstances will allow of.

If any men are spared, they are commonly given to the widows that have lost their husbands by the hands of the enemy, should there be any such, to whom, if they happen to prove agreeable, they are soon married. The women are usually distributed to the men, from whom they do not fail of meeting with a favourable reception. The boys and girls are taken into the families of such as have need of them. The lot of their conquerors becomes in all things theirs.

A LEGEND OF THE BOMELMEEKS.

Twenty-four men, and twenty-four women, from the twenty-four tribes of the wilderness, were met upon the top of the hill Gerundewagh. There were none upon the earth but those twenty-four tribes, and none upon the hill but these twice twenty-four people. They were all friends, and as brothers. There was no strife in the land; no blood deluged the beautiful vales of the wilderness; no cry of war shook the hills. Bows and arrows, and spears, were used for the destruction of bears, and wolves, and panthers; and the ochre, which now stains the brow of the Indian with the red hue of war, was used for the ornamenting of pipes. There was but one language upon the earth—all the tribes understood each other. If a Bomelmeek said to an Algonquin, "Give me meat or drink," he brought him meat or drink—if he said, "Smoke in my pipe," he smoked in the proffered pledge of peace, or he refused. If an Iroquois youth said to a girl of the Red Hurons, "Give me thy heart, and become the star of my cabin," she gave him her heart, and became the star of his cabin, or she bade him think of her no more. It was not then as it is now, that men fell out, and came to blows, because they mistook the words that were spoken. "Yes" was "yes," and "no" was "no," with all the tribes of the land, and interpreters were a thing unknown. So these twice twenty-four people from the twenty-four tribes of the earth sat down upon the top of the hill Gerundewagh, and smoked their pipes.

Whilst they were puffing out clouds of smoke, and enjoying greatly the pleasure which an Indian so covets, one of them, whose sight was keener than the rest, casting his eye far over the western wilderness, cried out, that he saw two somethings whose heads peered far above the woods. Very soon the rest of the people assembled at the hill Gerundewagh were able to see the same somethings, which resembled much the trunks of trees which have been divested of their branches, and look out in the blush of the morning through the vapours of a damp valley. What they were no human tongue could tell, but it was seen that they were approaching the hill Gerundewagh. As the heads came nearer, people were seen flying before them, and the heads following in quick pursuit. At length the twice twenty-four on the hill were able to see that the heads belonged to two enormous snakes, which were moving in devious paths about the land, devouring the inhabitants as fast as they were able to discover and swallow them. Seeing this, and the danger to which they were exposed of becoming also food for the monsters, they set about fortifying the high hill Gerundewagh, that their lives might be safe from the appalling danger, and within their fortification they collected all sorts of defensive materials. Having made themselves tolerably secure, they had leisure to view the war of extermination, which the snakes waged with the sons of the land who were not thus protected.

In the mean time, the snakes, having discovered by their acute power of smelling distant objects that the hill Gerundewagh contained human bodies, with whose flesh they were now become much in love, they immediately bent their course to it. In coming thither, they were compelled to cross, or rather to come down the river Mohawk, which, upon their thus getting lengthways of it, diverted from its natural course, overflowed its banks, sweeping away every impediment, and forming those beautiful meadows which have remained ever since covered with a robe of green. Having at length reached the hill, around whose base they threw themselves in many coils, they commenced the work of death by poisoning the air with their pernicious breath. Soon the atmosphere, which before had been pure, was changed in its nature; appearances resembling the motions of the waves of the great lake Superior when slightly agitated in the hot mornings of summer were seen in the horizon, and have never left it. Before, the rains descended in soft showers in the pauses of gentle winds, now they fell in torrents, accompanied with howling tempests and cold hurricanes. Lightnings, which before only played across the horizon, as the red light of autumn evenings streaks the northern sky, now rent asunder the flinty rock, and rived the knotty oak. Men, who had before died only of old age, now poisoned by the breath of the monsters, fell sick in the morning of life, with the brightness of youthful hope in their eye, and the down of unripe years on their cheek. The hair now often grew grey ere the knee became feeble; the teeth rotted out while there was enough to put between them; the eye often failed to see the beautiful objects, and the ear to drink in the soft sounds, which the Great Master of all created for the food of each. The heart now grew sometimes to be trembling and irresolute, and the soul to have its visions of infelicity. But I speak of after-time; first let me talk of that which is first.

The twice twenty-four, who were of a very bold and courageous nature, and feared nothing more than to be thought cowards, attacked the serpents with their bows and arrows. It was fruitless, however, to wage war with creatures covered with an impenetrable coat of scales. The serpents were not even startled by the arrows, so that no resource but death remained to the twice twenty-four. Their food being soon gone, they were compelled to venture out in quest of the means of sustaining life. As fast as they came out at the gate of the fortification, the one or other of the monsters snapped them up at a mouthful, until there remained of all those who occupied it at first but ten women and eleven men. What was to be done? I could not have told had I been there, but the eleventh man had the art and cunning to deliver the land from the assaults of the venomous serpents. He said to his brothers, "One of the serpents is a woman. I know it by her eyes, which are very bright, and beguiling, and roving, and treacherous. I know it by her sputtering, if all does not go right, and her frequent viewing herself in the waters of Lake Canandaigua, and the noisy chatter she is continually making about nothing. These are signs which cannot be misunderstood; she is a woman, I know. Now, if I can but catch the old man, asleep, I will make love to her, and it shall go hard but I will get her to assist in his destruction." So the Eleventh Man—who was a curious creature for making love to women, and knew all the arts necessary to be used, and all the nonsense proper to be uttered, knew when to look, and when to shut his eyes, when to be passionate, and when to be cold, and all that sort of thing—set about winning the love of the frail wife of the Great Snake. Whenever the old man took a nap, which was very often, then of a certainty would you see the Bomelmeek on the top of the fortification, winking and blinking, ogling and sighing, and doing other fooleries, at the Squaw-Snake. And soon could it be seen that she had noticed his declarations of love, and was not disposed to be very cruel or "ridiculous." Oh, it was a curious sight to see the courtship, though not more curious than I have seen other courtships. When he winked, she winked; when he ogled her, she ogled him; when he sighed, she—taking care to turn her head the other way, for her breath was not the myrtle's or the orange blossom's—sighed also, and very loud. So foolery was exchanged for foolery, and the thing throve well. Still the Eleventh Man dared not, for some time, venture out of the fortification, for he had remarked her taste for human flesh, and her dexterity in snapping off heads, and did not know but her love for him might extend to a wish to try the flavour of his meat, and that she might, in a moment of soft dalliance, practise on him her skill in unjointing necks. Women have been known to inflict a greater evil than either on the man they have pretended to love. At least, so the Eleventh Man said, and, as I have before told my brother, he was a knowing man in these matters. It soon became plain that something must be done. There was no food remaining in the fort, and the speedy death of all must ensue, unless it were procured. The Eleventh Man, who was as courageous in war as he was in peace, with the high-mindedness which belongs to an Indian(1), said he would go and submit himself to the good will of the pretty creature. So, taking his spear, and his bow and arrow, for he knew that women like to be wooed by warriors, and delight in the handsome bearing and gay dress of lovers, and often die and perish of a fever for feathers and gewgaws, he chose the moment when the old man was wrapped in a deep sleep, and ventured out. A woman can hear the lightest step of a lover when she is fast asleep, and when the thunder of the western hills would not awake her. And so it was with the Squaw-Snake, who, though very drowsy with watching the stars, and squinting at the moonas folks always do when they are in love—had no sooner heard the step of her beloved on the green sod than she advanced to meet him. Now comes the perilous moment! Bomelmeek, beware! She is raising her tail, at whose end is a horrible sting to clasp thee as with a pair of arms. And look, see her jaws, white with foam, and larger than the largest tree of the forest, are extended to kiss thy cheek, or scarcely worse to snap off thy head. Brave man! With what undaunted firmness he suffers himself to be taken to her arms—no, not to her arms, but her tail—and how patiently he suffers his cheeks that have felt the breath of sweet lips to be slabbered by a nasty snake! Oh! if he fall a victim to his love for his nation, he will deserve to live as long in the remembrance of the Bomelmeeks, as their great founder, the Earwig.

Fond and long continued were the caresses of the Eleventh Man and the Squaw-Snake, and luckily they were not interrupted by the old man, who, unlike many husbands I have known, contrived to sleep just as long as they wished he should. Before he awaked, it had been agreed between them that the death of the old man should be accomplished. So she bade him dip in the poison of her sting the points of two arrows, both intended to be put to a good use. He did so, and then retired within the fortification. Drawing his bow to his ear, and pointing an arrow at the head of the aged husband, he let fly with unerring skill. This done, he levelled the other arrow with the same precision at the head of the faithless wife. Wounded to death by the poisoned darts, the horrid monsters rolled down the hill in great agony, sweeping away, in their descent, all the trees upon the side to its very bottom, and amidst their contortions disgorging the heads of the Indians they had swallowed. Those heads rolled into Lake Canandaigua, where they were converted into stones, and are to be found there to this day. The Indian, as seated in his canoe he glides over the lake, frequently sees them lying on its pebbly bottom, and the larger bark of the white man is often dashed to pieces against them. So the eleven men and the ten women were freed from the serpents.

But now it was that the strangest circumstance was revealed to the survivors. The poison which the serpents had poured on the earth with their pernicious breath had so operated that a confusion of tongues had taken place, and different nations no longer understood each other. The Iroquois could no longer speak in the dialect of the Natchez; the Bomelmeeks of the land of Frost no longer sung their war-songs in the tongue of the Walkullas of the land of Flowers. The Senecas attempted in vain to make known their wishes to the Red Hurons of the Lakes, who were alike puzzled to converse with the Narragansetts of the Land of Fish. A youth of one nation, if he wished to take a woman of another nation to wife, had now to talk with his eyes, whereas before he made use of his tongue to tell his lies with.

So the land was re-peopled from the survivors of the hill Gerundewagh, and the confusion of tongues went on increasing, and has done so to this day. The Bomelmeeks have faded from the land; the descendants of the Eleventh Man, of whom there were very many, alone remaining, one of whom now tells this story, which is certainly true.

NOTE.

(1) High-mindedness of the Indian.—p. 39.

The Indians very frequently evince a pride and greatness of mind which would not have disgraced the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome. "The greatest part of them," says Charlevoix, "have truly a nobleness and an equality of soul which we cannot arrive at with all the helps we can obtain from philosophy and religion." Always master of themselves, in the most sudden misfortunes, we cannot perceive the least alteration in their countenances. A prisoner who knows not in what his captivity will end, or which is perhaps still more surprising, who is still uncertain of his fate, does not lose on this account a quarter of an hour's sleep. Even the first emotions do not find them at fault. The following well attested stories shew their high-mindedness, and one of them their singular chivalry of character.

A Huron Captain was one day insulted and struck by a young man. Those who were present would have punished this audaciousness on the spot. "Let him alone," said the Captain, "Did you feel the earth tremble? He is sufficiently informed of his folly."—Charlevoix, ii. 64.

This passion of the Indians, which I have called pride, but which might perhaps be better denominated high-mindedness, is generally combined with a great sense of honour, and not seldom produces actions of the most heroic kind. An Indian of the Lenape nation, who was considered a very dangerous person, and was much dreaded on that account, had publicly declared that as soon as another Indian, who was then gone to Sandusky, should return from thence, he would certainly kill him. This dangerous Indian called in one day at my house on the Muskingum, to ask me for some tobacco. While this unwelcome guest was smoking his pipe by my fire, behold! the other Indian whom he had threatened to kill, and who at that moment had just arrived, also entered the house. I was much frightened, as I feared the bad Indian would take that opportunity to carry his threat into execution, and that my house would be made the scene of a horrid murder. I walked to the door, in order not to witness a crime that I could not prevent, when, to my great astonishment, I heard the Indian whom I thought in danger address the other in these words: "Uncle, you have threatened to kill me—you have declared that you would do it, the first time we should meet. Now I am here, and we are together. And I take it for granted that you are in earnest, and that you are really determined to take my life as you have declared. Am I now to consider you as my avowed enemy, and, in order to secure my own life against your murderous designs, to be the first to strike you, and imbrue my hands in your blood? I will not, I cannot do it. Your heart is bad, it is true, but still you appear to be a generous foe, for you gave me notice of what you intended to do; you have put me on my guard, and did not attempt to assassinate me by surprise; I therefore will spare you until you lift up your arm to strike, and then, uncle, it will be seen which of us shall fall." The murderer was thunderstruck, and, without replying a word, slunk off, and left the house.—Heckew. 161, 2.

Mr. Heckewelder relates another instance of Indian heroism and magnanimity, not below the preceding. In the year 1782, a young white prisoner had been sent by the war-chief of the Wyandots of Lower Sandusky as a present to another chief, who was called the Half-King of Upper Sandusky, for the purpose of being adopted into his family in the place of one of his sons, who had been killed the preceding year, while at war with the people on the Ohio. The wife of the Half-King refused to receive the prisoner in lieu of her son, and this amounted to a sentence of death. The young man was therefore taken away for the purpose of being tortured and burnt on the pile. While the dreadful preparations were making near the village, the unhappy victim being already tied to the stake, and the Indians arriving from all quarters to join in the cruel act, or to witness it, two English traders, Messrs. Arundel and Robbins, shocked at the idea of the cruelties which were about to be perpetrated, and moved by feelings of pity and humanity, resolved to unite their exertions to endeavour to save the prisoner's life, by offering a ransom to the war-chief, which he, however, refused, because he said it was an established rule among them, that when a prisoner, who had been given as a present, was refused adoption, he was irrevocably doomed to the stake, and it was not in the power of any one to save his life. The two generous Englishmen, however, were not discouraged, and determined to try a last effort. They well knew what effects the high-minded pride of an Indian is capable of producing, and, to this strong and noble passion they directed their attacks. "But," said they in reply to the answer which the chief had made them, "among all those chiefs whom you have mentioned, there is none who equals you in greatness; you are considered not only as the greatest and bravest, but as the best man in the nation." "Do you really believe as you say?" said the Indian, looking them full in the face. "Indeed we do." Then, without saying another word, he blackened himself, and, taking his knife and tomahawk in his hand, made his way through the crowd to the unhappy victim, crying out with a loud voice, "What have you to do with my prisoner?" and at once cutting the cords with which he was tied, took him to his house.—Heckew. 162, 3.

Nutall, in his Travels through the Arkansa territory, says, among the most extraordinary actions which they (the Arkansas) performed against the Chickasaws is the story which has been related to me by Major Lewismore Vaugin, one of the most respectable residents in this territory. The Chickasaws, instead of standing their ground against the Quapaws (a band of Arkansaws) were retreating before the Quapaws, whom they had descried at a distance, in consequence of the want of ammunition. The latter, understanding the occasion, were determined to obviate the excuse, whether real or pretended, and desired the Chickasaws to land on an adjoining sand-beach of the Mississippi, giving them the unexpected promise of supplying them with powder for the contest. The chief of the Quapaws then ordered all his men to empty their powder-horns into a blanket, after which he divided the whole with a spoon, and gave the half to the Chickasaws. They then proceeded to the combat, which terminated in the killing of ten Chickasaws, and the loss of five prisoners, with the death of a single Quapaw.—Page 85.

THE KING OF THE ELKS.

When the Great Beaver, the spirit who next to Michabou had the greatest share in the creation and government of men and things, made the animals, he endowed certain of them with wisdom, and all with the powers of speech. The black bear could then converse with the cayman, and the whispers of the porpoise in the ears of the walruss and the flounder expressed the thoughts which were passing in his mind. The wants which the heron and the goosander now express by nods and winks, were then conveyed by plain, straightforward words; and the grunts and squeaks of the hog, and the bleating of the kid, and the neighing of the horse, and the howl of the dog, and the crowing of the cock, and the cackling of the hen, and the other means by which beasts, and birds, and other creatures, at this day make known their wants and wishes, were then unknown. If the ox was hungry, or the dog wished to visit a cousin, he said so, and if the hog wanted his belly scratched, he spoke out like a man. If the cock felt proud, instead of jumping upon a pole, and flapping his wings, and uttering a senseless cock-a-doodle-doo, as the vain thing does now, he asked the pullet "if she did not think he was a handsome fellow," and she replied ay or no, as she thought. The panther told his mother, in plain intelligible words, if he wanted a wife; and when the hen had excluded her egg, instead of cackling, she said, "There!" There was then no difficulty in understanding the beasts, for they told their wants and wishes in good plain Indian, which was far better than it is now, when you are obliged to guess at half they say. And not only could they convey their meaning better, but their meaning was worth more when you knew it. In truth the beasts at that time were much wiser and more cunning than men, and where the Indian caught one beaver in his trap, the beaver caught ten Indians in his. In war and peace their schemes and stratagems were better devised, and more successfully executed, and their talks[13] were as full of sweet and wise words as the sky is of wild pigeons in the season of their flight from the rigours of approaching winter. What a pity that the folly of the Great Chief of the Elks should have lost the beasts the most important faculties conferred upon them by the Great Hare, and led to the withdrawing of the all-glorious gift of speech.

There was among the Ottawas, that lived on the banks of the Lake of the Great Beaver(1), a young man whose origin none knew with certainty, but who was supposed by all to be a son of the god. Sixteen snows before the time of which I am speaking, there was found in the great village of our people, upon the morning of a warm day in the Frog-Moon, a little boy who might have seen the flowers bloom twice—older he could not have been. None knew whence he came, nor could he tell them, or give any information whereby it could be ascertained who were his parents, or what the place of his birth, or why he was abandoned. He did not belong to the tribe—of that they were certain; nor did the features of his face resemble those of any of the surrounding nations, nor were his words, or the tones of his voice, such as ever had been listened to by Ottawa ears. Indeed there were evidences that he owed his being to the love of the god of the lake for one wearing the human form. He was shaped like a man—that is, he stood upright, and his feet and hands, and legs and arms, were fashioned like those of an Ottawa, save that the former were flat, and webbed and clawed like the paws of a white beaver(2). The head, which was placed upon a pair of shoulders similar to those of a man, resembled more nearly those heads which the hunter sees looking out of the cabins of the cunning little people[14] than the heads of men. It was shaped very nearly like the head of a mountain-rat; the nose was long, the eyes little and red, the ears short and round, hairy on the outside, and smooth within. Then to the form the boy added the habits of the beaver. Every day he would repair to the lake, and sport for half a sun in its clear, cool bosom. The food he preferred further indicated from whom he sprung. He would undertake a journey of half a sun to find a crawfish; he would climb with great labour, and at the risk of his neck, the tallest poplar of the forest for its juicy buds, and the slender tree for its frightened and bashful leaves, that wither and die if one do but so much as touch them. He had much cunning and subtlety, as well he might have, if the blood of the god whom Indians adore ran in his veins.

This boy, if boy it was, or young beaver, if my brothers think it was a beaver—let them settle the matter for themselves—grew up with the form of a man, tall as a man, and with the speech of a man, but endowed with many of the attributes of a beaver—indeed he bore in his faculties a greater resemblance to that animal than to man, and his actions were more nearly patterned after the four-legged animal than the two-legged. His temper was very mild and good, and his industry equalled that of the cunning little people from whom he derived his origin. He was always doing something; night, noon, morning, wet or dry, he was at work for himself or others. While the lazy Ottawas were sleeping on the sunny side of their cabins, he was fetching home wood for the fire, or mending the nets, or weeding the corn. And then he was so peaceable that, for the eighteen snows that he lived in the great village of the Ottawas, none had ever beheld him angry, or seen disquietude in his eye, or heard repining from his lips. He coveted not distinction in war, he never spoke of the field of strife, nor sang a war-song, nor fasted to procure bloody dreams, nor shaved his crown to the gallant scalp-lock, nor painted his cheeks and brow with the ochre of wrath, nor taught himself to dance the war-dance—his actions and pursuits were those of a woman, and his thoughts and wishes all for peace. Among a people so valiant, and so fond of eating their foes[15], as the Ottawas, a disposition so feeble and woman-like as that possessed by the Child of the Hare would have drawn down great anger and contempt upon its possessor. But, believing that the youth had their favourite god for his father, they never reproached him for his cowardice and preference of peace to war, but contented themselves with saying that "he was a very, very good boy, but he would never become a chief of a people more warlike than the wren or the prairie dog." The laugh that would follow these speeches had nothing of ill-nature in it, for all loved the boy, cowardly and ugly as he was, and each would have shielded him from harm at the risk of his own life. And thus lived the Child of the Hare till the snows of the seventeenth winter had melted and gone to the embrace of the Great Lake.

It was then that the boy, who had become a man in stature, was seen to absent himself from the village, and to shun the toils which had once been pleasures to him. No one knew whither he went, or for what purpose. Usually, at the going down of the sun, he would repair to the forest, and be absent for the greater portion of the period of darkness. Sometimes his journeys were undertaken by daylight. The aged men asked him whither he went—he made no answer; the young maidens, always famous for coming at the bottom of secrets, and tracking mysteries as one tracks a badger, sought to win the secret, but with no greater success. At last, a cunning old woman found out—what will not a cunning old woman find out—the secret.

Upon a large plain, which stretched from very near the great village of the Ottawas, a full day's journey towards the land of the rising sun, there dwelt a people, with whom the Ottawas had always been at peace. They were a set of very awkwardly-shaped beings, of a stature not exceeding the stubborn little beast's which our white brother rode hither, with four legs, and a beard upon the neck as long as that worn by the people one sees at the City of the Rock. Their heads were very long, their muzzles very thick, their nostrils very wide, and each wore upon his head, even before he was married, a pair of long and wide-spreading horns. They were covered with long hair, the colour of which was a mixture of light gray, and dark red. Though they were apparently a very heavy, clumsy, unwieldy people, the Ottawas, when they joined them on hunting expeditions, or assisted them in their wars against their enemies, found it no small labour to keep at their side, so long and steady was their trot. It was only when there had been a deep snow, which, melting somewhat, and being afterwards frozen, would not bear their weight, that our people proved a match for them in speed of travelling. For the foot of the strange people, being forked, broke through the crust which the frost had formed on the surface of the snow, and they went plunging and plunging with little progress till their strength was exhausted.

The Elks—for this was the name of these odd neighbours of the Ottawas—were upon the whole a very good-tempered, friendly people. But, when they were once angered, it was a great deal best to keep out of their way till they had cooled—a course one should pursue at all times with passionate folks. Whenever an Elk was enraged with an Ottawa, the latter hid himself till he had become pleased again. So upon the whole the two nations rubbed their noses together with more sincerity than any two nations of the wilds. It was not for the interest of either people to throw down the hatchet; they were of great and frequent service to each other. Whenever an Ottawa woman was hard to do with the pains of travail[16], she sent for a wise Old Elk, who speedily delivered her; and, when the Carcajous picked quarrels, as they were always doing with their pacific neighbours, the Ottawas became either mediators, or the allies of the Elks. There could be no doubt that but for our Braves, the Carcajous and the Foxes, who always make war in company(3), would have destroyed the Elks from the face of the Great Island. But the Ottawas joined the weaker party, which made them more than a match(4) for any thing breathing, as doubtless our brother knows. And it is because our people rescued the good Elks from the fangs of their cruel and merciless ancestors that the Carcajous have been, and to this day are, such bitter enemies to our people, and open their jugulars, and take their scalps whenever they can.

I am not able to tell my brother in what moon it was that a woman of our nation, determined to learn why the Child of the Hare absented himself so frequently from the village, followed him at early nightfall into the thick and gloomy forest which adjoined the lands of the Ottawas. It was a dark, and wild, and thickly wooded, dell, into which this fearless woman precipitated herself at early nightfall, but she had a powerful motive to encounter danger—there was a secret to be caught, a mystery to be unravelled, and she went with alacrity and pleasure. It is much that a woman will do to come at the bottom of a mystery, which has for some time baffled her and put her nose at fault; and many dangers and inconveniences, and much toil and trouble, must that journey promise, whose danger and inconvenience, and toil and trouble, shall deter her from attempting it when its object is the learning what, in spite of her, has long remained hidden. So the curious woman followed the Child of the Hare into the deep dell at early nightfall.

They travelled onward, he ahead, and she behind, keeping him constantly in view for a long time, until they came, all at once, just as the sun was rising, to a deep valley surrounded by high hills, through which there was but one path—a beaten and travelled path—that in which they came. But what most surprised this adventurous woman was, that though this valley lay but a little boy's journey of half a sun from the Ottawa village, and though she had, as she supposed, visited every part of the contiguous wilderness, she had never beheld it till now, nor heard it spoken of by her people. But that circumstance did not prevent her from admiring the beautiful spot—it was indeed the most lovely ever beheld by mortal eyes, and well did it deserve the many fond epithets she heaped upon it. Stretched out as far as the eye could reach, this valley lay green and glossy as a grove of oaks in the Buck-Moon, when their leaves are fully expanded to meet the warm and cheering rays of the great star of day. In the centre of this valley was a small lake fringed with willows, alders, pemines, and grape-vines. It was not altogether bare of trees, though they were few and scattered as a party of shamefaced warriors straggling home from a beaten field. Here perhaps stood a lofty pine with several little ones around it, resembling a happy father with his children at his knee partaking of the fruits of his hunt—yonder, a cedar, lone and solitary as a man whose friends have all been killed by an unskilful autmoin(5) in the Fever-Moon. Well did the woman deem that the cold breath of the boisterous and stormy Matcomek[17] had never reached the spot—it seemed as if it had never been visited by anything more rough than the south wind in the time of spring.

As this woman, who had followed the child of the Hare into the woods at early nightfall, stood chewing a piece of the hot root which takes away the crying sin of barrenness, and renders women fruitful and beloved[18], there came to her ears a sound as of many angry voices mingling their accents together. Filled with a womanly curiosity to know what it was, and anxious to behold the combat which it promised, she stepped quickly over the small hillock which intercepted her view of a part of the valley. What a scene burst upon her eyes! Upon a grassy knoll, shaded from the beams of the rising sun by the range of hills I have spoken of, were assembled a greater number of Elks than even my brother could count by the aid of his great medicine[19]. In the centre of the assembled nation, stood an Elk of wondrous stature, the great chief, or as my brother would call it, the King of the Valley. He was so large, that the biggest of his people seemed but musquitoes by the side of a buffalo. His legs were so long, that the deepest snow-drift was no impediment to his running his blithest race; and his skin, which was covered with red and grey hair, was proof against the utmost fury of the Ottawa bender of the bow. From each of his shoulders proceeded an arm, which well supplied the place, and performed the uses, of the same limb among our people. His eyes were of the size of the largest bison-hide, and the antlers, which towered above his head, resembled an oak which decay has stricken to the disrobing of its leaves, and the dismantling of its smaller, but not its larger limbs. Not the mighty animal which strode down from the mountains of thunder to slaughter the buffaloes of the prairies[20], was at all to be compared with him for size. At least, so said the woman, who followed the Child of the Hare into the deep dell at early nightfall.

"What brought you here?" demanded one of the Elks, a very elderly one, who was named the Broadhorns, of the woman, as she approached the outside of the circle. "Do you not know that it is death for any one to come into the camp of the Great Chief of the Elks, unless he is sent for? What brought you here?"

"I followed the Child of the Beaver."

"Oho, and so you have come to the marriage, but you are too late."

"What marriage?" demanded the woman, straining her eyes still wider than my pale-faced brother does at this moment. "Who? How? What! Who's to be married?"

"Oh, you know nothing of the matter I see," answered the Elk Broadhorns. "Why, the youth, whom the Ottawas call the Child of the Hare, but whom the Elks call the Pig-faced Boy of the Ottawas, has married the daughter of a wise old man, who is akin to the Great Elk."

"Oho, and is that the cause of the hubbub?" demanded the woman.

"Not altogether," answered the Broadhorns; "you see gathered together but the usual number that attend the steps of our great chief, running of his errands, and doing him homage. But, come along, you must go and spread the blanket of friendship before the great man, whom all the Elks, no matter where found, as well as the inhabitants of the valley, worship and obey."

With that, the old Elk, who appeared to be an Elk of authority, spoke to the crowd, commanding them to make way for the woman who had come from the camp of their friends, the Ottawas, to visit the Great Chief. Immediately an opening was made in the crowd, through which the woman and her conductor reached the presence of the mighty king of the valley. Behold her, then, before the being of whom she had heard her people talk morning, noon, and night, but whom no Ottawa had ever beheld till now. She was beginning to deprecate his anger at her intrusion on his dominions, when, in a tone intended to be very kind, but which, nevertheless, was louder than the loudest tones of the manza ouackanche[21], he spoke, and bade her say, "why she had come uninvited to the marriage-feast of the Pig-faced boy of the Ottawas."

The woman, gathering boldness from the mild and gentle behaviour of the questioner, answered, that, for a long time, the young man, whom the Ottawas called the Child of the Hare, but whom the Elks, it appeared, knew by another name, had wandered at the beginning of night, often continuing absent for days together, without their being able to discover what became of him; and that curiosity had induced her to follow his footsteps, with the idea of finding out the cause of his absence. This was all, and here she was.

The reason she gave seemed to content the Great Chief, who merely laughed a little, and said something about "curiosity"—"a woman napping"—"a weazel asleep." Then, calling to him the old man, who had assisted her through the crowd, he bade him bring the Pig-face and the Little Maiden before him. The old man, making a very low bow after the fashion of the white people, which is also the fashion of the bear, and the "child of the Evil Spirit," who are both very mannerly—especially the last, unless you provoke him, when he is a very naughty fellow—departed immediately on the mission, leaving the adventurous Ottawa woman surrounded by the whole nation of the Elks. Does not my brother suspect that she began to regret that she followed the Pig-face into the glen at early nightfall?

While he was absent, which was not long, the Great Chief amused himself with talking to the woman. He asked her a great many questions about her people, and praised them much for their singular courage and valour, and their great sagacity, and their coolness and resolution in bearing the torments inflicted by their enemies. He talked of the wisdom of his own nation, and told her all about the fits they were so subject to, and how they cured themselves by rubbing their ears with their hind feet, till the blood came, and how their hoofs were a medicine to drive away all kinds of falling sickness, except that occasioned by drinking the strong water that is made of women's tongues and warriors' hearts[22]. He was going on to relate long stories of the wars of the Elks with their inveterate enemies, the Carcajous, when there arose, upon the outside of the camp, a great noise, which prevented his proceeding. The sound was like that of a dozen old women, engaged in scolding their husbands for their lack of good fortune in the hunt. Soon a space was cleared, and that which made the noise appeared in the midst, in the shape of a mighty hare, whose tongue went faster than the wings of a wild duck escaping from a fowler. Awe, and fear, and trembling, seized on the Ottawa woman, for she knew that she stood in the presence of the god of her people, the Great Michabou. Nor was that awe and fear diminished, when the angry god spoke in a voice of thunder to the Great Elk, demanding why he had enticed the son whom he loved into a marriage with the daughter of a paltry Elk.

The Great Chief, notwithstanding his seeming courage, trembled like a leaf, while he answered, that it was not a match of his making.

"Now you lie," answered the god. "You know that you have dared to do it, because it was told you by a wise Ottawa priest—no thanks to him—that from the marriage of the Pig-face with a maiden Elk a being should spring, who should destroy his father's father, and make the Great Chief of the Elks a spirit to rule in his place."

The Great Elk, caught with a lie in his mouth, continued silent, as a warrior who is stealing on his sleeping foe, while the Great Hare continued:

"I cannot prevent the marriage, for that is accomplished, and what is done cannot be undone, even by a god. But I can prevent the consequences which you hoped would ensue. I can take away from the beasts, particularly the Elks, the wisdom to devise stratagems to effect their purpose of usurping my power; and I can take away their speech, which will further spoil their sport."

Turning to the Ottawa woman, he bade her draw a thread from her robe of woven mulberry-bark, which she did, and gave it to him. Then, going up to the Great Elk, he bade him, in a very angry voice, hold out his tongue. The trembling monster obeyed, displaying a tongue which would have furnished the whole tribe of Ottawas with food for a season. The god then made, with the sharp point of a thorn, a hole in the under part of his tongue, half way between the root and the end, and another in the skin upon the inner side of his jaw, and passing through these holes the thread obtained from the Ottawa woman, he tied down the tongue effectually. When he had done this, patting the Ottawa woman on the shoulder, he bade her run, like a good woman, as she was, to the nearest grove, and fetch him some black mushrooms, some pemine berries, a handful of leaves from the squaw maple[23], and a small quantity of the flowers of the dog-wood. She did as she was directed, and brought them and laid them at his feet. These he caused to be pounded, beaten together, moistened with the spittle of the Great Elk, and fashioned into many little balls about the bigness of the eye-balls of a humming-bird[24]. When the mass had been all made into balls, he commanded all to be silent. When the camp had become so hushed, that the chirp of a grasshopper or the hum of a bee might have been heard from limit to limit, he cried with a loud voice:—

"Ruling spirits of the beasts, and birds, and fishes, come hither! Presiding Manitous of all, save man, that inhabit the earth, the air, the water, hear and obey the voice of Michabou."

He had scarcely done speaking, when the air was darkened with wings of Manitous hastening to the spot, and, but that the footsteps of spirits are lighter than the shade which falls upon the earth at sun-set, the valley had shaken with the weight of the hoofs and feet which pressed it. There were the spirits of all the fish in the waters, and fowls and birds in the air, and beasts and four-legged or more-legged creatures on or in the earth, and some very strange-looking creatures there were(6). To each of these spirits, as he presented himself, the Great Hare gave one of the little round balls, commanding him to swallow it. All obeyed readily, except the Manitou of the Mocking-Birds and the Manitou of the strange bird with a hooked nose, which Ononthio's[25] people have taught to cry, "Damn the Indians." The last bit off only a small piece of this ball, and the first, after chewing his, spat it all out with great disdain. That is the reason that these two still retain a portion of their speech—all the other creatures swallowed their balls, and thenceforth never spoke with the tongues of men.

The Great Hare, having deprived the beasts of the faculty of speech, and taken from them a principal portion of the wit and wisdom which they were about to make such bad use of, turned to the Ottawa woman, and kindly offered her all the little balls that were left. She took them, and carefully wrapped them up in a corner of her robe. Before she died, which was not till her years were more than the years of a tortoise, she called her eldest daughter to the side of her couch and gave her the balls, telling her to bestow them upon her eldest daughter, with such directions as would ensure their remaining among the Ottawas as long as grass shall grow and water run. They have been handed down from daughter to daughter, and son to son, till the present time. And that my brother may not think that I have a forked tongue, but speak the words of truth, I will show him the little balls. There they are, wrapped up in a piece of the robe which was worn at the time by the Ottawa woman, to whom they were given by the Great Hare.

So saying, the Ottawa story-teller unrolled a piece of dressed deer skin, and took from thence a number of small balls, about the size of pills sold by apothecaries, which he gave to M. Verdier.

NOTES.

(1) Lake of the Great Beaver.—p. 49.

Among the Ottawas, the Great Beaver is, next to Michabou, the chief deity. He it was who formed lake Nipissing; and all the rapids or currents, which are found in the river Ottawa, are the remains of the causeway which he built in order to complete his design. They also add, that he died in the same place, and that he is buried under a mountain which you perceive on the northern shore of lake Nipissing. It has been observed that this mountain, viewed from one side, naturally enough represents the figure of a beaver, which circumstance has, no doubt, occasioned all these tales. The Indians, however, stoutly maintain that it was the Great Beaver who gave this form to the mountain after he had made choice of it for his burial-place, and they never pass by it without rendering him their homage by offering him the smoke of their tobacco.

(2) White Beaver.—p. 49.

It has been asserted by travellers, that there is a species of the beaver perfectly white. I doubt the story much. If there were white beavers they would be found in the polar regions, yet it is a fact that there they are quite black. Their colour, in temperate countries, is brown, and it becomes lighter and lighter in proportion as they approach toward the south, yet no where becomes white.

(3) Carcajous and Foxes make war in company.—p. 55.

The carcajou, or wild cat, is the natural enemy of the elk, which, by the by, has become almost as rare an animal on the western continent as the mastodon or mammoth. As soon as he comes up with the elk, he leaps upon him, and fastens upon his neck, about which he twists his long tail, and then cuts his jugular. The elk has no means of shunning this disaster, but by flying to the water the moment he is seized by this dangerous enemy. The carcajou, who cannot endure the water, quits his hold immediately; but, if the water happen to be at too great a distance, he will destroy the elk before he reaches it. As this hunter does not possess the faculty of smelling with the greatest acuteness, he carries with him three foxes, which he sends on the discovery. The moment they have got scent of an elk, two of them place themselves by his side, and the third takes post behind him. They manage the matter with so much adroitness, that they compel him to go to the place where they have left the carcajou, with whom they afterwards settle about dividing the prey. At least so say the Indians.

(4) Made them more than a match.—p. 55.

The North American Indians are the vainest people living. "As ignorant as a white man," "as foolish as a white man," are common expressions with them. As they only value physical greatness, their low opinion of us proceeds from their observing how very deficient we are in the qualities which confer that species of superiority. They value, beyond every other acquirement, that of apparent insensibility to pain—we start, perhaps cry out, at the twinge of a tooth; in war we become the dupes of the commonest stratagem, while they can never be surprised. They see that they excel us in hunting—in endurance of pain—in the power of encountering the fatigues and perils of savage life—indeed, in every kind of knowledge which is deemed by them of value—by their standard they are our superiors. "You are almost as clever as an Indian," "You are as stupid as a white man," are common expressions with them. They consider themselves as created for the noblest of purposes. The Great Spirit made them, that they should live, hunt, and prepare medicines and charms, in which they fancy they excel. White men, on the other hand, were doomed to the drudgeries of manufacturing cloths, guns, &c., for the use of the Indians.

The Five Nations called themselves Ougwe-hohougwe, that is, men surpassing all others. This opinion, which they took care to instil into their children, gave them that courage which made them so terrible to their neighbours, and, indeed, to distant nations, for their hostile incursions extended as far as Florida.

(5) Unskilful Autmoin.—p. 57.

The Indian physicians possessed great skill as far as simples were concerned. But it was their practice to profess to cure diseases, rather by jugglery and witchcraft, than by those means which were simple and near at hand. Could they be brought to look upon a disease as purely natural, which they cannot, and treat it accordingly, their materia medica would possess wonderful efficacy in their hands. The great use which they make of their simples is for the cure of wounds, fractures, dislocations, luxations, and ruptures. It is certain that they are in possession of secrets and remedies which are admirable. A broken bone is immediately set, and is perfectly solid in eight days' time. It is related by a traveller, that a French soldier, who was in garrison in a fort in Acadia, was seized with the epilepsy, and the fits were become almost daily, and extremely violent; an Indian woman that happened to be present at one of his fits, made him two boluses of a pulverised root, the name of which she did not disclose, and desired that one might be given him at his next fit, predicting certain consequences and his complete cure by the second bolus, which actually took place, and he ever after enjoyed a perfect state of health.

In Acadia, the quacks or physicians were called by the name in the text, Autmoin; it was commonly the chief of the village who was invested with this dignity. The ceremonies and practices observed by the Acadian jugglers being common to the "profession" throughout the Indian nations, I shall insert an account of them from Charlevoix.

When they visited a patient, they first inspected him for a considerable time, after which they breathed upon him. If this produced nothing, "of certainty," said they, "the devil is in him; he must, however, very soon go out of him; but let every one be upon his guard, as this wicked spirit will, if he can, out of spite, attack some here present." They then fell into a kind of rage, were shaken with agony, shouted aloud, and threatened the pretended demon; they spoke to him, as if they had seen him with their eyes, made several passes at him, as if they would stab him, the whole being only intended to conceal their imposture.

On entering the cabin, they take care to fix into the ground a bit of wood, to which a cord is made fast. They afterwards present the end of the cord to the spectators, inviting them at the same time to draw out the bit of wood, and as scarce any one ever succeeds in it, they are sure to tell him it is the devil who holds it; afterwards making as if they would stab this pretended devil, they loosen, by little and little, the piece of wood, by raking up the earth round it, after which they easily draw it up, the crowd shouting the while. To the under part of this piece of wood was fastened a little bone, or some such thing, which was not at first perceived, and the quacks, shewing it to the company, "Behold," cried they, "the cause of the disease; it was necessary to kill the devil to get at it."

This farce lasted three or four hours, after which the physician stood in need of rest and refreshment. He went away, assuring them that the sick person would infallibly be cured, provided the disease had not already got the better, that is to say, provided the devil, before his retreat, had not given him his death-wound. The business was to know, whether he had or not. This the autmoin pretended to discover by his dreams, but he took care never to speak clearly, till he saw what turn the disease took. On perceiving it incurable, he went away; every one likewise, after his example, abandoned the patient. If, after three days were expired, he were still alive, "The devil," said he, "will neither allow him to be cured, nor suffer him to die; you must, out of charity, put an end to his days." Immediately the greatest friend of the patient brought cold water, and poured it on his face till he expired.

In a note, vol. i., pages 141, 142, there is an account of the ceremonies practised by the Delaware jugglers.

(6) Spirits of beasts.—p. 66.

Every species has its presiding genius, and to these the Indians frequently address their prayers. Some of them are held in great estimation, some are little valued. The genius of the beavers is much respected. They were formerly of opinion that beavers were endued with reason, and had a government, laws, and language, of their own; that they had officers who assigned to each his task, and placed sentries to give the alarm at the approach of an enemy, and to punish the lazy. A volume would scarcely afford sufficient space to relate their traditions about this animal.

The bear is also a venerated animal—it is not, however, deemed so auspicious to dream of the bear as of the beaver. Before setting out upon an expedition in search of him, a fast is necessary in order to induce his guardian genius to discover where the greatest number can be found. They also, at these fasts, invoke the spirits of the bears they have killed in their former huntings. The skins of bears are commonly worn by the jugglers while performing their feats of pretended witchcraft, and their teeth, &c., are held to be powerful amulets or charms.

They endeavour, on all occasions, to propitiate the spirits of the beasts, being persuaded that every species of animals has a genius that watches for their preservation. A Frenchman having one day thrown away a mouse he had just taken, a little girl took it up to eat it; the father of the child, who perceived it, snatched it from her, and fell to caressing the dead animal. The Frenchman asked him the reason of it. "It is," answered he, "in order to appease the guardian spirit of the mice, that they may not torment my child after she has eaten it." After which he restored the animal to the girl, who ate it.

An Indian came to Mackenzie, requesting him to furnish him with a remedy that might be applied to the joints of his legs and thighs, of which he had, in a great measure, lost the use for five winters. This affliction he attributed to his cruelty about that time, when having found a wolf with two whelps, in an old beaver lodge, he set fire to it and consumed them.—Mackenzie's Journal of a Voyage, &c. 4to. London, 1801.

THE DAUGHTERS OF THE SUN.

In the southern part of the lands which were once occupied by the Creeks, the Walkullas, and other tribes of Indians, lies the marsh Ouaquaphenogan. On one side of it is the river Flint; on the other, the Oakmulgee. This marsh is of very great extent, so great that it takes several moons to travel around it. In the wet season, and when the great rains of the southern sky are falling upon the earth, the whole surface of this marsh appears a vast lake. It is interspersed here and there with large islands and knolls of rich land, one of which, the largest island, situated in the centre of the lake, the present generation of Creeks represent to be a most blissful spot of earth. They term this little island, also, Ouaquaphenogan, and relate the following tradition of its discovery, which I will repeat to my brother.

Once upon a time, many ages ago, there were four young hunters in the nation of the Creeks, and these four young hunters upon the morning of a beautiful day in summer took their hunting spears, and their bows and arrows, and repaired to the forest. The hunting-ground to which they directed their steps lay upon the skirt of this marsh. It was the dry season of the year, and the surface of the lake was again a bog or morass. The four hunters, finding a narrow and crooked path, leading over the waste from the high grounds above the morass, determined, with a view to ascertain if no kind of game dwelt upon it, to thread this path for a short distance, but by no means to venture so far as to lose sight of the beacons which should guide their feet back to their village. They knew that very many hunters had been lost on this marsh, that there were many who had lived to tell the story of their bewilderment, and many who, never having returned from the chace, could only be supposed to have been tempted to the fatal morass, and perished in its mazes. Thus, armed with the knowledge of what had happened to many, and was supposed to have happened to more, the hunters ventured into the narrow and crooked path, which led to the island Ouaquaphenogan, in the lake of the same name.

The four hunters had not walked far, when one of them said to another, "Where are the hills which glitter in the morning sun, behind the cabins of our fathers?" The other answered, "I see them not, nor do I know which way they should be sought for. Deep fogs obscure the earth, and hide the sun from our eyes; the signs are wanting which should direct our feet in the path of our return; for the moss grows equally on every side of the tree; the waters lie dead, and sleeping, and stagnant, so that no one may gather from their flow a knowledge of his path; it is not the hour of the day for the Hunter's Star to shine upon the eyes of our judgment; no wind stirs to inform us whether it comes from the flowery land of the South, or the cold hills of the North—how then can I assist my bewildered brothers, who am myself bewildered? I see not whence we came, I know not where we are; I only know this—that we have ventured into a narrow and crooked path in the Lake Ouaquaphenogan, and are lost, as many of our nation have been before, in the intricate mazes into which it is death to venture." So concluded the young hunter.

The four bewildered hunters still continued their endeavours to retrace their path, but without success. Still more dark and dismal grew those mazes—more wet and miry the morass. Night came, but it brought no stars to enable them to find their road back to their dwellings, nor south nor north winds were abroad to direct their steps—the waters were still stagnant, and still did moss grow upon every side of the tree. No bird flew by, to direct by the course of his flight to his roosting-place, or to the nest of his beloved, on the dry hills beyond the waste—no plaint of animals, which love not the water or damp grounds, was heard in the distance. They knew no better than a child of the last moon the path which should lead them back to safety.

While they were wandering about in the mazes of the swamp, one said to another, "I hear the sound of voices." Listening, they were soon able to distinguish the sounds of music and merriment proceeding from a glade at a short distance, in the direction of the little path upon which they were entering. Pursuing that path, they soon came to a little knoll of high and rich land. Nothing could be more beautiful than the appearance of this little spot. Here and there were clumps of trees, covered with fruit in every stage of its growth, and blossoms scenting the air with their fragrance. The earth was covered with a robe of flowers; birds were singing on the boughs, and hopping about on the twigs, filling the air with sweet melody, and little rills were rattling away over the gentle slopes. Upon one side of the knoll lay a clear lake, in which swans, white as the lily, were disporting themselves, and the red-headed, and the green-winged duck, and many other beautiful feathered creatures. But the most beautiful objects remain to be painted. These were four tall and slender maidens, beautiful as the flower-clad trees and blossom-crowned hills of their own island, and sweet as the breath of a lemon-tree. Their eyes shone as bright as the beams of the morning sun; bright locks of surpassing beauty clustered around their lovely brows; and their garments were woven of many colours as brilliant as the rainbow. Their bosoms swelled like the heavings of the billows on a little lake, when it is but slightly stirred by the breezes of spring. Their step—what can be compared to it? A bird skimming the fields; a wind slightly stirring the bushes; an antelope bounding over a mountain crag; a deer a little alarmed at the whoop of the hunter. Beautiful creatures! The Great Spirit never formed any thing, not even the trees, nor the flowers of spring, nor the field of ripe grain, nor the sun of whom those four maidens were sisters, so beautiful as they were.

They came—these four beautiful maidens—to the four bewildered travellers, whom they addressed thus, and their voice was sweeter than the music of the song-sparrow—"Who are ye?" The hunters replied that they were men of the Creek-nation who had ventured into the marsh Ouaquaphenogan, and were bewildered in its inextricable mazes. Two days, they said, they had been without food; they were faint and weary, and demanded refreshments, such as they would have given, had a hungry traveller come to their door, and said, "Food I have none, give me or I faint." The beautiful maidens replied, that the men of their nation, having long ages ago been driven with much bloodshed into the inaccessible fastnesses of the island Ouaquaphenogan, in the lake of the same name, by the ancestors of the present generation of Creeks, had retained so deeply in their bosoms the memory of their wrongs, that they were sure to inflict upon them most excruciating tortures, and to make them die a death of fire. Such, they said, would be the fate of the four bewildered hunters, should their fathers or brothers discover them now. They earnestly besought them to fly; but first, with that tender and compassionate nature which belongs to women when they see the other sex in distress, they brought from a little cabin which stood near, covered with beautiful vines in blossom, abundance of provisions, besides oranges, dates, and other fruit, sweet, ripe, and tempting, as their own beautiful selves. These they spread out on the flowery earth, and invited the four hunters to partake. Placed each by the maiden of his choice, they fed upon the repast prepared by the fair hands of the daughters of the sun, the while drinking in the passion of love from their large and lustrous eyes. Nor was the soft language of looks alone the medium of thought; words of the tongue were interchanged as sweet as those of the eyes. Wrought up at length to a phrenzy of passion, and emboldened by the melting glances of the dove-eyed girls, the youthful hunters besought them to bless them with their love—to become the wives of their heart. Faint was the shake of the head, and scarcely heard the breathing of the "No," and cast meekly down upon the blue flowers at their feet the soft and tender eyes, which could not have looked up and kept their secret. At length, one of the maidens, the eldest sister—for they were sisters—began thus:

"Young and amiable strangers, it is proper that we tell you who we are, that you may think whether you will dare the danger, that will attend the union of one of our race with one of yours. We are born of mothers, and are the children of fathers, who are governed by the influences of the sun, even as tides obey the commands of their mistress the moon, and stars perform their round of service in the sky, at the command of the Master of all. Our disposition—the disposition of our race—is as variable as that of the winds upon which our great father acts. Ye behold him fiery at times—even so are we—a change comes over him, his beams grow mild and soft, dispensing genial warmth and gladness; ours, like his, also soften, and, though they cannot possess his power, yet they are fashioned on his pattern, and we in our kind moments bestow all the happiness we can upon those we love. At those moments, were it possible to fill all the earth with love, to make bush, tree, flower, man, beast, bird, utter the language of the soft passion, and hill, dale, mountain, and valley, echo it, we would do it. Again do we change; and he that hath noted the quick obscuring of the sun in the Month of Buds, may estimate the variableness of our temper. Then tears fall from our eyes in torrents, as showers fall from a cloud, and as hastily as a mist is dissipated by a bright morning beam do smiles re-illumine our countenances, and our faces and hearts become filled with gladness. Tempest and fair weather, darkness and sunshine, are in us strangely blended. There is in our nature a strange jarring of the elements of being. Can ye take to your bosoms wives, who will afflict you with mutabilities as great, sudden, various, as those of the elements which surround you? Ye are pleased to think us beautiful, and it may be that we are; but remember that ye see us in one of our pleased, pleasant, and happy, moments. Wait till an accident or misfortune happens, till want or calamity come, or contradiction ensue, or some of the crosses which belong to human life, as clouds and tempests to the constitution of nature, assail us. But, if you think your love could survive the hurricanes which will visit your dwellings when we are stormy; if you can bear to see the lightnings of our eyes flashing wrath upon you, and our voices speaking thunder in your ears—I speak for myself and sisters—take us, and we will assure you of many moments of bright sunshine, many days of peace and happiness—uninterrupted sun, and cloudless skies." The beautiful daughter of the sun, who spoke for herself and her sisters, concluded thus, and the eldest of the four hunters rose, and replied in these words:

"Beautiful maiden, that speakest for thyself and sisters, do not think that what thou hast said will affright us. I speak for myself and brothers—we will take you with all your faults, with the chance of the hurricanes and stormy weather, linked with the hope of the moments of bright sunshine and days of peace and happiness. Believe me, dove-eyed maidens, that the women of the lake Ouaquaphenogan, in the island of the same name, are not alone in their disposition to be stormy at times. It need not be told the men of the Creek nation, that a woman's face, of whatever country, may justly be likened to an April day, alternately shining and showering, and that her soul is like a morning in the Variable Moon, which one moment may be dressed in a thick mantle of clouds, and the next in a glittering robe of solar glory. It need not be told the son of my mother, that a woman's voice is sometimes the voice of a gentle rill, and at others, that of a cloud charged with the poison of the heated and rarefied air. Are not the Creeks men, and shall they be frightened by what is a mere momentary delirium? No. Having looked upon a wintry storm and a summer tempest, and seen the bright stars succeeding one, and the warm and cheering sun the other, we can listen with calmness—even with pleasure—to the tempest of a woman's anger, and survey, without trembling, or hiding, or running away, the lightnings of her wrath, because we know that after a storm comes a calm. We know that the sun shines most gloriously when his beams are first unveiled by the passing away of the clouds which have obscured him; we know that a woman's face is most beautiful, when she has wiped the tears of anger from her cheek, and dressed it in smiles to win back the love which her folly has endangered. We will take you, beautiful creatures, subject to the becoming passions of which you speak, filled with all the beautiful frenzies of woman's temper. We know that all women, whether they dwell among the Creeks, or in the island Ouaquaphenogan, in the lake of the same name, are alike in their dispositions. It hath long been taught, beautiful creatures, in our nation, and among all nations of which we have heard our fathers speak, that men should take them wives, but it is only now that we have recalled the maxim to our minds, it is only now that we acknowledge the wisdom of our teachers. Now, if men chose those only whose tempers never varied, one, two, may be three, among all the sons of men would take wives; if one sought for a maiden with a never clouded brow and soul, it might become the labour of a whole nation to furnish mocassins for the feet of one travelling in quest of the bride. Therefore we take you with all your faults, believing that you have them but in common with all your sex, and with no greater portion than belongs to others. And we bind on your fair brows the flowers which betoken affection and constancy, and we place in your soft and beautiful hands the emblems of the charge we confide to them when we make you the wives of our bosoms."

So these four beautiful daughters of the sun became the affianced brides of the four bewildered Creek hunters.

"But," said the beautiful maidens to their lovers, "we have told you of the ferocity of our fathers and brothers, and of the hatred of our nation towards the descendants of the men who overthrew and massacred our ancestors. We cannot expose you to the danger of their wrath; you must fly, but whithersoever that be, we will fly with you." So the four beautiful daughters of the sun left for ever the island Ouaquaphenogan, and the lake of the same name, and became the wives and mothers of hunters and warriors. They were at times very stormy in their tempers, but upon the whole not worse than other women. Their faces were at times those of April days, alternately shining and showery, but there were women in our nation, who were not at all akin to the sun, nor ever saw Ouaquaphenogan, that were as like them as if they had been sisters. Their eyes did, indeed, sometimes send out volleys of lightnings, and their tongues give forth heavy thunders, but neither were louder nor sharper than those of the women, who had for ages given the beam of the one and the music of the other to the men of the Creeks. And, if they did at times term their husbands "brutes," it was no more than other husbands had been called before. And if they did, in the moment of a hurricane, drive their husbands from their fire-sides, they were by no means the first who had done so. Upon the whole, the four hunters had no particular reason to regret their bewilderment in the marsh Ouaquaphenogan.

THE MAIDEN AND THE BIRD.

It cannot be new to my pale-faced brother, for he has been told it often enough, that, besides the Great Master of Life, the red men of the forest worship a great multitude of spirits with whom they believe every part of the world to be peopled. According to our belief, a Manitou dwells upon every hill, and in every valley; in every open glade and dark morass; in the chambers of every cavern, and the heart of every rock; in every fountain, and watery depth, and running stream. These spirits dislike white men very much, because they are always intruding upon their quiet, robbing both hill and valley of their stately trees, breaking up the bosom of the earth, penetrating into every dark morass and cavern, and polluting, by some means or other, every fountain, and watery depth, and running stream. Indians do not wish to provoke them, and so try to propitiate them by innocent and unbloody offerings. We spread on the mountain tops, or hang on the cliffs, or lay on the shelves of the caves, or drop into the waters, wreaths of flowers, belts of wampum, clusters of the wild grape, shining ears of maize, and other gifts which attach them to us. When an Indian child is born, whether it is a man-child or woman-child, a spirit is immediately chosen to protect it, and its future life is expected to be prosperous or not as the guardian spirit is powerful and well-disposed to his charge, or weak, and undertakes his task of protection with reluctance.

The Little White Bear of the Iroquois was reposing by night in his cabin, on the banks of his own pleasant river, in the month of ripe berries, when he beheld, by the light of the moon, a forest-chief in all his pride enter the lodge. The step of the stranger was noiseless as the fall of snow, and of word or sound uttered he none. The chief of the Tuscaroras arose, and took down his sinewy bow, and drew from his quiver a sharp and barbed arrow—the figure faded away like a morning mist before the beams of the sun, and was gone from his eyes. Tetontuaga woke his comrades, who lay scattered about in careless slumber—nothing had they seen, heard, or dreamed of. He lay down again, and, drawing his buffalo cloak closely around him, tried to close his eyes and ears, in oblivion of things, and to rein his fancy to look upon other shapes than those of air.

No sooner had he composed his limbs, and invoked the beneficent spirit who presides over sleep to grant him a slumber unvisited by hideous or frowning forms, than the shadowy warrior again arose and stood at his side. The Iroquois had now full opportunity to scan his form and features. Of gigantic frame he seemed, and his dress was of a texture and fashion such as the chief had never seen before—of an age and a nation none might guess. He was a half taller than the tallest man of the Five Nations, who are reputed the tallest of all the red men of the land, and his limbs, arms, legs, hands, feet, were of twice the ordinary size of an Iroquois warrior. His coal-black eyes were larger than the buffalo's, but they were lustreless as those of the dead; his teeth, large and of the colour of bones bleached by the sun and rain, chattered like the teeth of a man overpowered by the cold of the Bear-Moon. He wore over his shoulders a long robe of curiously dyed, or painted cloth, fastened at the throat by a piece of shining metal, and a fur cap made of the skin of an animal never seen by the Iroquois, above which rose a high plume of feathers of a bird unknown in Indian lands. The mocassins were of one piece, reaching with no visible seam to the knees, and he wore upon his sinewy thighs garments shaped like those worn by the white stranger. His language, when he spoke, was a strange and uncouth language, yet it was understood by the Iroquois warrior, who felt, as he heard the strange sound, its meaning seize his brain as a strong man seizes and binds him who is weak and powerless. Wondrous were the things which the fierce phantom related to the startled warrior of the Iroquois. He spoke of the wars of the Allegewi, and of the torrents of blood that ran into the Michigan, and the Erie, and the Huron, and the River of the Mountains[26], and the Næmesi Sipu, discolouring their once clear, and cresting with red foam, their once calm and peaceful waters. He told how the men of the Allegewi were beaten and driven no one but the Great Being, and the Manitous, and the spirits in the Blessed Shades, knew whither, by the ancestors of the Iroquois, who came from the far north, across an arm of the Frozen Sea, encountered the Allegewi, the primitive inhabitants of the soil, who were entrenched behind the stupendous mounds which still remain, and drove them into perpetual banishment. He described the pigmy people, and the giant tribes whose graves and mounds might yet be seen, exciting the wonder of the curious, and bringing men even from the City of the Rock[27] to view them, to open them, and to put down their thoughts about them upon the fair white skin[28]. A wild and unnatural song of triumph, in a tone as hoarse as the croakings of the raven or the bittern, burst from his lips, of the valiant exploits of his tribe, his own among the number, in times long since—when the oak tree now dying with age was a little child, and the huge rocks were within the strength of a full grown warrior to poise. He spoke of nations whose names till then had never reached the ears of the wondering Iroquois, and told of their loves, and their hatreds, and their forest warfare.

Then he changed the theme, and spoke of the land of souls, the bright region to which the spirits of the good retire when the body is to be changed to dust. He painted the pleasures which are the portion of its inhabitants, and told in the ears of the warrior what description of men were permitted to be received into it; what were the deeds which pleased and conciliated the Great Being, and what the crimes which shut the gates of the Bridge of Souls against the wanderer thither. He painted minutely the happy land appointed for the residence of the souls of the Iroquois—where the brave man's shade still pursues the forest herd, or clasps to his bosom the forms of the sunny-eyed maidens of his own clime; and the green and happy isles where the Huron lovers reside, and the frozen and verdureless heath appointed to the cowards of all the earth. When he had exhausted these subjects, he related to the warrior many traditions of the old time, tales of forest love, and of the valour of the men of ancient days. He continued to visit the lodge of the chief every night for the space of a moon, entertaining him, with the same fixed and lustreless eye, and in the same hoarse tone, with these old tales. The Little White Bear of the Iroquois locked up those things in the great store-house of his memory, and each day, when the sun returned to the earth, and with it the ghost of the ancient man had departed, he related to his wondering tribe the traditions poured into his ear by the phantom warrior. And this was the first.

The moon was shining brightly on tree and flower, on glade and river, on land and water; stars were twinkling, and the winds slept in the caverns of the earth, when a youth and a maiden—he, tall and straight as a forest tree; fierce as a panther to his enemies, but gentle as a kid to those he loved; she, little in stature as a sprout of a single season, but the mildest and most beautiful of all mortal things—came out of the forest. The horse upon whose back they had escaped from their enemies lay exhausted at the verge of the wood, and now they stood alone by the river of silver.

"Here rest thee, my beloved," said the youth, "we are safe. Our good steed has sped like an arrow through the thicket; our pursuers, my rival, thy father, thy brother, and all thy tribe, lie foiled and fainting far behind us. There is no longer footfall or shout in the wind; the voices of angry men, calling the Algonquin by names he never owned and whose ignominy he may not avenge, have long since expired on our ears like the voice of a dying cloud in the Moon of Thunder. Rest thee, my beloved!—as a young bird that is weary of flying reposes on the bough of a tree till its faintness has passed away, so must thou lie down on the green and verdant bank till thy strength returns. I go to yonder river, to seek a bark to bear us away to the lands of my nation, and to my pleasant cabin by the stream where I first drew breath." And he rose to go.

"Oh leave me not!" cried the maiden, her soft cheek bedewed with tears, and deep sighs proceeding from her oppressed heart. "When thou art away, I tremble with terror. When I see not the light of thine eyes, I am filled with dismay. My mother comes, in her anger, to chide me, and she does not spare; my stern brother storms like the winter's tempest; my sire rages and threatens; and then, like the panther that springs across the path of the lone hunter, comes thy hated rival, to oppress me with the tale of his love and the boast of his success."

"Nay, thou art dreaming, my beloved," said the young warrior. "If fancy must sway thee, let thy visions be tinted with the cheerful ray of hope. There is no peril near thee, and soon will I bear my beautiful bride to the lands of my nation, and to my pleasant cabin beside the beautiful river where I first drew my breath."

So saying, he sprung lightly to the shore, and was lost to her sight. At the moment of his disappearance, a cloud passed over the face of the bright moon, obscuring her blessed light. The maiden, deeming it an inauspicious omen, sat down upon the green bank, and, leaning her head upon her hand, suffered the tears to stream through her slender fingers. But vain was the presage—idle were her fears. The cloud has passed away from the face of the pale orb, and lo! there is her lover. He comes with a joyous step and a laughing eye, as though he had been successful in his search for the further means of flight. Cheer up, Mekaia[29]; it is indeed thy Moscharr[30].

"Now haste, my beloved one," said the Mountain Plant. "I have found the object of my search. Here is a canoe, and soon shall it convey my Star-flower over the rapid tide. Soon will my little bark shoot over the noisy current, and I and my beloved be altogether beyond the power of our pursuers."

So saying, he drew the unreluctant maiden swiftly forward. They gained the shore, placed themselves in the canoe, and committed it to the current. With her hand clasped in his, her head resting softly upon his shoulder, while his arm fondly encircled her slender waist, they glided down the rapid River of the Mountains. No sail was raised to catch the breeze; no oar was used to impel them through the water; yet, ere the maiden had time to breathe, the light canoe was gliding, rapid as thought, down the mid-waves of the current. Then the maiden spoke.

"Now say, O Moscharr, whither is it you are guiding the bark? Mark you not, love, how we are gliding down the stream towards the dreadful Oniagarah?"

"Be calm, my Mekaia," answered the lover, "I am but guiding you to yonder strand, upon which the current sets full and strong. Be calm, my Mekaia, we are safe."

The maiden held her tongue, for was she not with him she loved? Away then, away they went, and still onward, while faster, and fleeter, and more boisterous, the foaming waters flowed around them, and less distant every moment seemed the dreadful cataract. Its roar was like that of an approaching cloud from which thunders are issuing. Again the timid maiden addressed her lover:

"Now tell me, O Moscharr, whither is it you are guiding the bark? See, the shore is more distant, and hark! what awful noise is that which strikes mine ear from out of the black curtain ahead of us? It cannot be the thunders, for there is no cloud; it cannot be the voice of the Great Spirit, for he is the friend of the Ottawa girl."

"Be calm, my Mekaia," answered the lover, "there is no danger; it is thy lover that guides the bark, and he will be careful of the flower of the forest maidens. I see the shore—I see the rock—and whenever I will I can guide to either."

Away then, away goes their light bark, and still they speed onward with the swiftness of an arrow from a well drawn bow. The tall dark forests that rose above their starting-place are fast receding from view, and hark! pealing like the thunders of heaven, the roar of the mighty cataract, to come within whose influence is instant destruction.

"Now tell me, O Moscharr, what dreadful sound is that which breaks in so loud and angry a tone upon my ear from out of the black curtain?" demanded the maiden.

"It is the surge breaking on the sandy shore, or the night winds rushing through the forest," answered he.

"And tell me what are those lifting their white heads before us, as the snow, which has fallen in a calm, is swept about by the whirlwind which follows it?"

"Billows breaking on the shoals that surround yon little island."

Away then, away goes their little bark, dashing among the wild waves, like a leaf caught up into air by the summer whirlwind, till all at once burst upon the horror-stricken maiden, in their most tremendous and appalling aspect, the waters of the far-famed, the wondrous Oniagarah. See the white sheet of foam which rises in spray, mocking the soaring of the bird of morning. "It is only the Great Spirit that can save us now!" exclaimed the frantic maiden. "Lo, my Moscharr, we hasten to the land of souls!"

"Not the Great Spirit himself, did he will it, could save us," answered the lover in a tone which seemed to be that of impiety. "Were he here himself, with all the Manitous of the earth, and the air, and the flood, and the fire, gathered together from mountain, and valley, and wood, and prairie, he could not save us. Together, Mekaia, we shall sleep in the stormy cataract."

The maiden heard the dreadful words in silence. But even then she showed the depth of her affection. The love of a woman endures through all changes; she shrinks not at death, so the beloved one be at her side. When the beauteous flower of the forest saw her fate approaching, and so near, she sank into the arms of her Moscharr, as though it were pleasanter to die there than elsewhere; and a soft smile, for she smiled even in that dread moment, told that she was most happy to die, if she could die on the breast of him she loved.

But hark, what voice is that calling upon thee, wretched maiden! Did not he who won thy youthful heart, while yet it was little and fluttering, so pronounce the loved word "Mekaia?" Was not that the tone and accent which oft rang through the hollow beech woods, when together ye went to gather the ripened mast, and chanced to separate till the cry recalled? And look—see, one stands upon the beetling rock above thee, amidst the crash and thunder of the eddy into which thou art cast, his arms stretched towards thee, beautiful flower of the wilderness, and his look one of unutterable agony and despair. It is Moscharr, beautiful Mekaia, it is he who sat by thy side in the playful hours of infancy, and won thy little heart ere it knew wherefore it was beating. With the speed of the blast he has followed thy course down the shore of the cataract, and now he stands upon the edge of the terrible gulf, horror depicted in his countenance, his eyes cast upward in supplication to the Great Spirit, that thou mayst yet be preserved, and agony and doubt written on his face, lest the prayer he breathes may not be heard. And if that be thy lover who calls franticly upon thee from the beetling rock, who is he that sits at thy side, wearing the form and semblance of that lover, and speaking with the soft and kind tones which were ever his when addressing the flower of the forest maids? Alas! rose of the wilderness, it is the ruling spirit of the angry flood, the dreadful Manitou of the Cataract!

One tearful look the maiden bestows upon her agonised lover, ere the canoe glides over the precipice, and, swift as rocks hurled by spring rains down the side of the mountains, disappears in the horrid chasm below. One tearful look, one heart-rending shriek, which rises even above the roar of the cataract, as the canoe plunges through the foam, and she is gone from his eyes, like a feather caught up on the wings of a great wind.

What beautiful little bird is that which descends from yon silver-edged cloud, which is floating so high in the heavens that only the vulture may venture a flight thither, or the gray eagle sweep to it in his pride? Beautiful creature! beautiful bird(1)! not so large as the swallow, its neck a bright green, its wings scarlet, mottled with white, and having a train thrice as long as its body, in which are blended all the colours that adorn the rainbow. It came to the spot where the lover, unmanned by the dreadful catastrophe, stood mourning like a mother bereaved of her children, and, thrice circling his head, invited his attention by all the means which could be used by mortals, except that of speech. The lover sees at length the beautiful creature, and knows whose messenger it is. But why comes the herald of hope to him in his hour of despair? Can the Great Spirit, all-powerful as he is, succour him? Can joy be yet in store for him? It must be so, else why has he sent down his own messenger from the sky? That Being is too kind and too good to hold out false hopes; it is not in his nature to intimate an intention of succouring unless he actually entertains such intention. Be comforted, Mountain Plant, thou hast a friend!

And now commenced their toilsome journey down the side of the cataract. The spirit-bird led, and the bereaved lover followed. Poised on joyful wing, the little messenger fluttered before him, singing sweet songs of promise, until they had descended into the frightful abyss, and its secrets stood revealed before them. Terrific sight! tremendous sound! Their eyes were appalled by the view of billows which mount to the very skies—of huge volumes of water, dashing down the dreadful precipice into a vast basin, which seemed large enough to be the tomb of the giant Chappewee; and their ears were saluted with sounds, whose loudness and violence were a thousand times beyond those of the tempest, or the thunder, or the earthquake. Onward they groped their desperate way beyond the fiercest fall, until all at once they came to a dreadful cavern shrouded in the deepest night and gloom. Notwithstanding the whirl of waters, and the impetuous rush of the blast, and, though the earth rocked around them like a canoe on the stormy waves of the Spirits' Bay of Lake Huron(2), yet the brave and patient Moscharr, unwearied and fearless, followed through pass and pitfall, by stream and steep, the flight of his little conductor. Keeping the lamp carried by the spirit-bird in view, he regarded not the huge rocks toppling above his head, and each moment threatening him with instant destruction, but fought on his perilous course, till they had threaded the labyrinth, and found themselves in a cavern, as unlike the first, as the tranquil summer sky is unlike the blustering of the sky in the Moon of Storms.

The cavern, into which they now found entrance, was lit up by a blaze of effulgence, which seemed as great as would be that of a hundred suns shining at one time. So astonishing was the brightness, so surpassing the beauty of those things which served for the lamps of this vast hall, that the Iroquois warrior for a moment forgot the cause which brought him thither, and stopped to admire the glories which were scattered around him. It was, indeed, filled with all that might dazzle and ravish the sight. Above them glittered a firmament studded, it seemed, with stars, yet flashing a light far more brilliant than the stars of night ever gave. And the sides of the cavern glittered with the gorgeous hues reflected from the shining stones of many colours wherewith it was set.

But why halts the spirit-bird guide, and why does he veil his lamp? Why looks he with anxious eyes to yonder bright chambers in the cavern? What beings are those which appear in that chamber, and whose are those accents that fall on the eager ears of the lovers? I behold a couch formed of spar that glitters like icicles in the beams of the sun. It is covered with the softest grass that grows at the bottom of the torrent, and upon it is laid, panting with weariness and fright, a beautiful woman—it is the flower of the forest maidens, the lost Mekaia! At her side, no longer counterfeiting the Iroquois warrior, but showing himself in all his native ugliness, his body crooked and disproportioned, his hair coarse as the weeds that grow on the rocks of the great salt sea, his eyes green as a meadow in spring, his mouth of enormous size, and his ears like those of a buffalo, stands her persecutor and ravisher, the Fiend of the Cataract. And thus he wooed the fair helpless being that lay upon the couch of dazzling stone:

"Mekaia, beauteous Mekaia, the mighty Manitou of Oniagarah asks thy love. If thou wilt give it me, I will give thee in return all the treasures of earth and flood, the diamonds which lie in the depths of the cataract, and the bright ore, which, in other lands, buys both the bodies and souls of men. The thing that thou wishest shall be within the reach of thy hand as soon as wished; and, to please thee, my form shall again take the shape and appearance of him thou lovest. I go now, fair maiden, but soon will I return to thee and love. But, if thou again refusest me, the Manitou shall come to woo thee like himself, and, in his own proper form, of more hideous seeming than that which he now wears, and invested with thrice his present terrors, enforce his claim. His wishes gratified, he will spurn thee from him, and cast forth thy corse to the torrent."

With this heavy threat the Manitou vanished. And now seize, seize, ye lovers, the happy minute! 'Tis a moment of fate. Fly, fly! and look, the aërial messenger of Him who governs all things beckons them on. They obey the mute appeal, and with the fleetness of the mountain goat rush from the cavern. Their way is dark and dreadful, but fear lends them wings. They know from the lips of their beautiful guide, the Spirit-bird, which at length has opened its mouth to impart to them words of kind encouragement, that with the dawning of day the fiend of the flood is but mortal—that with the crowing of the cock his power is at an end; and they are urging their limbs to their utmost speed, for see, the gleam of red tells that day is nigh. The little messenger from the Great Spirit still points the pathway, and under his care and guidance they speedily gain the mid-height. Alas for the lovers! Heaven preserve them in this their hour of extreme peril, for see, the horrible fiend is on their track, straining every nerve in pursuit; and so rapidly does he gain upon them, that, unless aid be sent from some superior power, they will be soon in his grasp.

But the brave Moscharr still clung to hopes of escape, and still exerted himself with almost superhuman power to accomplish it. With one arm encircling the lifeless form of the maiden, he employed the other to draw himself, by means of the protruding shrubs, over the steep precipices. A sudden thought enabled him to baffle for a while the grim pursuer. His foot, applied to a loose rock, launched it in a tone of thunder upon the fiend, who was borne backward half the distance of an arrow's flight by the ponderous mass. During the time he was struggling to disengage himself from the weight that pinned him to the earth, the lover had nearly won the farthest bound of the Manitou's kingdom. And see, the purple and grey breaks out from the east. It is day, and the power of the Manitou, as far as regards his spiritual nature, is ended. Summon, O Moscharr, all your strength and fleetness, and by one desperate effort escape his personal strength, as the fortunate coming of the daylight's beam has placed you beyond the reach of his supernatural power! Hurry on! hurry on! The kingdom of the Manitou extends but to the lowest bubble of foam—it ends with the last billow of the rapids—the goal is before you; it is scarce half a bowshot from you—haste, and it is won. Hurry on! hurry on! the moment you have reached the boundary of the fiend-kingdom, multitudes of good spirits—friends to you, but deadly and implacable foes to your enemy—will start up to assist you.

With the maiden on his arm, all wounded and bleeding, his own body lacerated and torn, yet unyielding as ever, does the brave Moscharr pursue his flight. But he feels as if the moment of death was near at hand. Exhausted by his almost superhuman efforts to escape, he finds a weakness and trembling stealing over his limbs, and he faints, and falls with his lovely burthen to the earth, at the very moment of victory and safety. The Manitou has reached him, and, with a fiend-like laugh on his horrid face, bends exultingly forward to seize his helpless victims. One hand he lays upon the tender arm of the forest-flower, the other is in the hair of the lover. But, as he bends forward, a sudden jerk of the Iroquois, occasioned by returning life, draws him unwittingly over the line which marks the boundaries of his kingdom and sway. In a moment—in a breath—ere the eye could have winked, or the spirit thought—multitudes of bright beings start up from each nook, and dell, and dingle—from field and flood. The deep space, the rocks above them, below them, at their side, the air above and around them, as far as the eye can reach, is filled with beneficent spirits. "He is ours!" they shout; "he is ours! He has passed from the region over which he had sway; he has left the dominions and powers over which he held rule. He is ours! he is ours! Not in vain did we leave our verdant bowers in the distant Lake of the Thousand Islands, to hasten to the succour of the maiden flower of the forest and her brave and faithful lover. It was the Great Spirit that inspired us to come hither, that we might save from death, and what were far worse, the beautiful betrothed of the valiant Moscharr. He is ours! he is ours! the Manitou is ours! Now launch your light barks, brothers—launch your light barks! The skiffs that brought us hither must be moored in the calm bays of our dear island before the broad sun looks over the tops of the eastern hills. But first we must punish our ruthless foe. Let us inflict on him the fate he threatened to inflict on the beauteous maiden—let us bind him and throw him down these rugged rocks into the wave that rolls furiously below! He is ours! he is ours!"

At once—at the conclusion of their song of triumph—a thousand bright forms sprung upon the prostrate and powerless Manitou, and bound and dragged him to the steep. And while again arose their wild but melodious cry, "He is ours! he is ours!" they launched him into the thundering torrent below, which swept his mangled and lifeless body into utter oblivion.

When the destruction of the fiend was accomplished, the beautiful spirit-bird, which, while the deed of his death was doing, sat eyeing them intently from a broken crag above their heads, rose from its perch, and, after dropping upon the pair, from his radiant wings, showers of light as the tokens of the love of its Master for them, soared back to the skies whence it came. The happy Moscharr and his loved Mekaia then accompanied the friendly spirits, who had assisted in the overthrow of the bad Manitou, to their home in the beautiful Lake of the Thousand Islands. The pair were welcomed with songs and rejoicings to the spirit shores, and loud were the revels, and boisterous the mirth, of its little inhabitants. Triumphs were made for them, mingled with rejoicings, at the downfall of their long-feared and much hated foe. And when they had displayed their love for the pair, by all the means within their power—dancing, feasting, and kind speech—they dismissed them to their homes, with many blessings upon their heads, and invocations of the Good Spirit to protect and prosper them. The brave Moscharr and his beautiful bride soon reached the home of his people, and lived to see their children's children listen with mute astonishment to the tale of the escape of their father's parents from the Manitou of the Cataract.

NOTES.

(1) Beautiful bird.—p. 104.

The Spirit-Bird or the Wakon Bird is the Indian bird of paradise. It is held in the utmost veneration by the Indians as the peculiar bird of the Great Spirit. The name they have given it is expressive of its superior excellence, and the veneration they have for it; the Wakon Bird being, in their language, the bird of the Great Spirit. It is nearly the size of a swallow, of a brown colour, shaded about the neck with a bright green; the wings are of a darker brown than the body; its tail is composed of four or five feathers, which are three times as long as its body, and which are beautifully shaded with green and purple. It carries this fine length of plumage in the same manner as a peacock does, but it is not known whether it ever raises it into the erect position which that bird sometimes does. The Naudowessies consider it of superior rank to any other of the feathered creation.

(2) Louder than the thunder of the Spirits Bay of Lake Huron.—p. 105.

Nearly half-way between Saganaum Bay and the north-west corner of Lake Huron, lies a Bay, which is called Thunder Bay. The Indians, who have frequented these parts from time immemorial, and every European traveller that has passed through it, have unanimously agreed to call it by this name, on account of the continual thunder they have always observed here. Whilst Carver was making over it a passage which lasted near twenty-four hours—it thundered and lightened during the greatest part of the time to an excessive degree. It is difficult to account for the phenomenon—perhaps the organic structure of the neighbouring cliffs invites the concentration of the electric fluid at this spot.

THE ISLAND OF EAGLES.

At a short distance below the Falls of St. Anthony, there is a small rocky island, covered with huge trees, oak, pine, and cypress, its water-fretted shores and steep cliffs formed of ragged rocks, against which the waves of the cataract dash and foam in vain endeavours to overwhelm it. This little island, so annoyed by the mighty and wrathful fiends who sit in that surge, is famous throughout the Indian nations for being the abode of the spirits of the warriors of the Andirondacks—a tribe which no longer exist—who, once upon a time, many ages ago, warring against the spirits of the cataract, were completely overthrown, and by the power of their enemies transformed into eagles. As a punishment, they were bidden to dwell for ever on that misty, foggy, and noisy island; doomed to a nicer perception of hearing than belongs to mortals, that their fate might be the more awful. If my brother wishes to hear the tradition, let him open wide the doors of his understanding, and be silent.

The tribe of the Andirondacks were the mightiest tribe of the land—neither in numbers nor in valour had they their equal—their rule stretched from the broad Lake Huron to the river of the Osages, from the Alleghany to the Mississippi. All the tribes which dwelt in their neighbourhood were compelled to bow down their heads and pay them tribute. The Hurons sent them beaver-skins; the Eries wove them wampum(1); even the Iroquois, that haughty and warlike nation, who lorded it over their eastern neighbours with the ferocity of wolves, bowed to those mighty warriors, the Andirondacks, whose number was greater than that of the flights of pigeons in the month before the snows, and who wielded spears, and bent bows, and shouted their war-cry with more power than any other tribe or people in the land. Some of the more distant tribes, to secure themselves against invasion, sent ambassadors with the pipe of peace wrapped in soft furs as a present; others offered their most beautiful women for wives to the "lords of the land"—all, by various means, and in various ways, testified their inability to cope with them in war, and their anxiety to become friends and neighbours. If the proud Andirondacks granted the boon of peace, it was always with some hard condition annexed to it; not always did a favour granted by them prove a favour in the end.

So long and uninterrupted a course of prosperity begot pride and arrogance in the bosom of the Andirondacks, and they forgot the Being who had bestowed so many blessings upon them, making their wives fertile as a vine in a rich soil, giving them victory over all their enemies, and health, and bounteous harvests, and successful hunts. They paid no more worship to that Great Being; no more offered him the juicy fruits of their hunt; no more ascended the high hills at the rising or setting of the sun, with their heads anointed with clay, to pour out their souls in the song of gratitude for past, or in a prayer of supplication for future, favours; they no more scarified their bodies in deprecation of his anger, but, believing themselves—vain fools!—able to do without his aid, they shook off their duty and allegiance to him, and bade him, if not in words at least in their deeds, defiance. Pride now possessed their souls, and hardness their hearts.

It need not be told my brother that the Great Spirit is slow to anger. Knowing his power to crush with a wink of his eye every living creature; to rend asunder the mightiest hills, yea, shake to its centre the very earth with a puff of his breath; he is loth to put forth his powers or to call into action the whirlwinds of his wrath. He suffers men to revile him long before he attempts to punish them; he permits them to raise the finger of defiance many times before he strikes it down, and the tongue to utter many a scornful word before he dooms it to the silence of death. It is so with the creatures of this world, as my brother must know. The strongest man—he who feels most confident of his power to repel aggression, and to command respect and obedience, is slowest to provocation, and, when excited to anger, the easiest to be soothed and calmed. The prairie-dog oftener shows his teeth than the wolf; the imbecile adder than the death-dealing rattlesnake. And my pale-faced brother has told us the wondrous tale, that, in his own land beyond the Great Waters, the mighty animal which is called the King of Beasts is, save only when he lacks food, as mild as the dove or the song-sparrow. And thus it was with the Great Spirit, as regarded the scoffing and wickedness of the Andirondacks. Long he resisted the importunities of the subordinate Manitous, that the haughty tribe might be punished for their insolence; long he waited with the hope that their eyes might be opened, and repentance seize their hearts, and amendment ensue. He waited in vain, each day they grew worse, until at length they brought down upon their heads the vengeance which could be no longer delayed.

There was among the Andirondacks a youth who, from the moment of his birth, was the favourite of the being who rules the world. While yet an unfledged bird, his words were the words of grey-headed wisdom; while yet a boy his arm was the arm of a strong man, his eye the eye of a cool man, and his heart like the heart of a brave man. He was as cool as a warrior who has lived to be aged in scenes of war. While he sat in his cradle of woven willow, his father chanced to speak in his hearing of an expedition which the Braves were about to undertake against the distant Coppermines, who had their lodges on the skirts of the sea of eternal ice. The wise child bade the father call the chiefs and counsellors of the nation around him, and to them he said, "You will not succeed in this war. The Coppermines dwell in the regions of great cold; before they can be met, icy hills and frozen lakes, and stormy winds and bleak tempests, must be encountered. If you meet them, success would be doubtful, for they are on their own hills, with nerves fitted to endure the searching cold, and possessed of that which the Andirondacks want—a thorough knowledge of every path that crosses their snow-clad vales and ice-bound waters. Stay at home, Braves, help your women to plant corn, and cut up the buffalo-meat, rather than go upon an expedition from which you will never return. Do I not see the torturing fires lighted, and Braves wearing the Andirondack mocassins bound to the stake of death? Do not mine ears hear a death-song in the Andirondack tongue? And are not these fearless sounds which come to mine ears the cries of the vulture and the wolf, fighting for the remains of a human carcase, which hath the Andirondack tuft of hair? Stay at home, Andirondacks, help your women to plant corn, and cut up the buffalo-meat, rather than go upon an expedition from which you will never return."

But the young and ardent warriors said this was the speech of a boy, and they would not listen to them. They said that, were the words of Piskaret the words of a man, they might hearken to them, but was he, who sat in his willow cradle, a fit counsellor to gray-headed sages, or even to young Braves, who had eaten the bitter root, and put on new war-shoes, and fasted for six suns, and been made men. In vain did the boy assure them that his medicine, the Great White Owl, had revealed to him many strange things, and among others this—that if the Andirondacks engaged in a war against the Coppermines, the wrath of the Great Spirit, whose worship they had forsaken, would be upon them, and of those who went not one should ever return. They laughed at his words, treating them as they would the song of a bird that has flown over. They bound on their mocassins, and, taking their spears, and bows and arrows, bade adieu to the land of their fathers' bones. Did these valiant youths return, and did the words of the prophet-boy fall to the ground? Let the wolf, and the vulture, and the mountain-cat, answer the question. They will tell my brother that their voracious tribes held a feast in the far country of the Coppermines, and that the remains of that feast were a huge heap of human bones. Were they the bones of Andirondacks? They were, and thus were the prophetic words of the wise boy rendered true, and his reputation was established throughout the land.

And when years came over him, and the fire of early manhood beamed in his eye, the same signs of his being favoured of Heaven were displayed. He needed no practice to enable him to conquer in all the sports and exercises which are indulged in by the boys of his nation. He went beyond them in all which bespoke possession of the skill and courage necessary to make a patient and expert hunter, or a brave and successful warrior. In the game of archery, his arrow was ever nearest the clout, and in hurling the spear, his oftenest clove asunder the reed which was fixed as the mark. Ere he had seen fifteen harvestings of the maize, he could throw the stoutest man of the tribe in the wrestle, and his feet in the race were swifter than the deer in its flight from the steps of the red hunter. When grey-headed men assembled in the council to deliberate upon the affairs of the tribe, their invasions, or their projected removals to other hunting-grounds, they asked "Where is the wise boy?" If he were not present, he was sent for, and no determination was made till he came, and had delivered his thoughts. And thus grew up the young Piskaret, till he had reached his twentieth spring.

There was in the neighbouring nation of Ottawas a maiden who was as much celebrated for her beauty, and her charms, and her wit, as the Andirondack youth was for strength, and wisdom, and prudence. Her Indian name was Menana, which means the Daughter of the Flood. She had reached the sixteenth summer of her residence among the Ottawas, the gentlest and lightest hearted, the mildest and sweetest maiden, that ever gazed on the pale full moon, or the glittering stars, or listened to the song of the sparrow, or the waterfall. She knew how to do every thing that was beautiful, or useful. If you saw a piece of gorgeously dyed wampum, or a robe curiously plaited of the bark of the mulberry, or the feathers of the canieu or war-eagle, you needed not ask who did it—you might be sure it was Menana. Her voice was the sweetest thing ever heard, her face the most beautiful ever seen—the first had in it the melody of birds, with the expression they can never have till they are gifted with the reason given to man—the last—but what is so beautiful as the face of a beautiful woman! And then her laugh was as joyous as a dance of warriors after a great victory, and her foot was the speediest foot that ever brushed the dew from the grass. Every body loved her, and she loved every body. So kind, and so good, and so sweet-tempered, and so beautiful a maiden, was never known among the Ottawas, famed as they are throughout the land for kind, and good, and sweet-tempered, and beautiful maidens.

She was not the daughter of an Ottawa woman, or any other woman, nor was her father an Ottawa man, or any other man. She was the daughter of the mighty cataract. The moon in which she came to the land of the Ottawas was the moon in which the forest trees put forth their earliest buds, and the blooming takes place of the little blue flower, which our forest maidens love to twine with their hair, and our forest boys to gather as the harbinger of returning warmth, and joy, and gladness. She came not at first to the village of the Ottawas in the perfect shape of a human being. It was many years before that, one morning, as the head warrior of the nation went out, as was his wont, to look abroad on the early sky, he found sitting at his door a little creature of a form such as he had never beheld, nor ever dreamed of. Woman she seemed from her waist upward, but fish or rather two fishes below. Her face was that of a most beautiful maiden in the charming hours when she begins to dream of tall youths; her eyes were blue as the deepest tinge of the water, and mild as a summer morning, her teeth white as the teeth of a salmon, and her locks fell sweeping the very earth. Her hands and arms were perfectly shaped, but they were covered with scales, and here and there tinted with red, which glittered like the evening sun on the folds of a cloud. Her height was about that of a small child who is just beginning to use its feet. The strange little creature did not stir as the warrior approached it, but suffered him to survey it unmoved, and, when he kindly wiped the dew from its waving locks, bent its eyes upon him with the deepest gratitude depicted in its countenance. As an Indian believes that every thing, even trees, and rivers, and mountains, have souls, or spirits, and are all worthy to be adopted as his protecting okkis, the warrior addressed the strange creature, and besought it to become his intercessor with the Great Spirit, his okki in peace and war. What was his surprise when it made reply to him, in a tone very nearly like the tone of a human being, and in a dialect of the Ottawas, as follows!

"I cannot be thy guardian spirit, for I am about to throw off my spiritual nature, and to become as thou art, a mortal, or rather I am to assume my former nature and state. Though I wear a form which is neither fish nor flesh, yet have I not always been thus. Once, many years ago, I was a human being. Gazing one evening on the blue sky, filled with shining lights, a passion came over my soul to behold them nearer. I besought the Master of Life to suffer me to ascend to the land of those bright things, and to visit the beautiful rainbows which had been equally the objects of my fond contemplation. My prayer was heard; I fell asleep, and, when I awoke, found myself where I wished to be. I was among the stars, sailing with them as an eagle or a cloud is wafted along on the winds which sweep the lower world. I beheld them glorious as you behold them from the earth, bright, round, and twinkling balls of every size, all endued with life, and all busily engaged in dancing their intricate dances, to music which came from unseen hands. My words cannot describe the splendour of the scene. Yet shall I tell the Ottawa warrior that the scene and the dances soon ceased to give pleasure. Who would wish to gaze for ever on the sun, bright and dazzling though he be? What one of all the fair things of the earth may be looked on for ever with delight? Its lakes, its rivers, its mountains, its bold youths, and lovely maidens, and many other things, are very fair, but each would tire were the eye to be chained to that alone. I was soon tired of the splendour of the starry world, and wished myself again upon the earth. I asked the Master of all for permission to return. He said, 'Thou hast been disembodied, thy flesh is decayed—thou art but a spirit, it may not be.' 'May I not', said I, 're-animate some form from which the breath has just departed? may I not enter the corse of some child, and live out the remainder of the days of a favoured mortal?'

"The Great Spirit answered, 'It cannot be. But if thou art content to return to the earth and assume a form which shall be neither mortal nor immortal, neither man nor beast, be it so. Remember thou shalt not be endowed with the shape of a human being till thou shalt hear in the cataract, where I doom thee to dwell, the voice of one crying, 'Now is the time.' Then shalt thou leave the flood, repair to the land of my beloved people, the Ottawas, and there gradually return to the shape which once was thine. But, an immortal soul shalt thou not possess till thy bosom shall be lit up by the flame of love.'

"Thus spake the Great Being, and in a breath I found myself descending from the land of the stars upon the glorious rainbow. Speedy and uninterrupted was my descent, till I came to the mighty cataract; its capacious and stormy bosom received me, and there have I dwelt with the Spirits of the Flood, the adopted daughter of their chief, till now. Lo, Ottawa! I am at thy door, a strange creature, but demanding hospitality and protection from thee. Wilt thou give it me till I am permitted to take that form which shall give me the powers of a human being, and feel my bosom lit up by that flame which may give me one bound to feed and protect me?"

The Ottawa answered, that "his cabin had a quiet corner, and there should the strange maiden—if, indeed, she were a woman—rest; his house was always the abode of plenty, and of that should the stranger partake." So the creature, who was neither fish nor flesh, continued to reside in the cabin of the Ottawa warrior.

But each day was she observed to be assuming more and more the appearance of a mortal maiden. The scales fell from her arms and hands, which lost their red tints, and became soft and fair as the flesh of a new-born child. The two fishes gradually became two well proportioned legs. But though she had now become identified in form with the human race, she retained many of the propensities of that with which she had formerly dwelt. She loved to sport in the cataract, and lave herself in the lakes and rivers. Often would she fly from the company of the Ottawas to that of her old friends, the Spirits of the Flood. How her eyes would glow with childish delight, when the rain dashed from the clouds in torrents, and how mirthful she would be when the spring thaws swelled the noise and the volume of the cataract! And she better loved to feed on the ooze and the seeds of the grass, which were found in the torrent, and on those species of fish which are made the prey of the larger, than on the food prepared on the hearth of the Ottawa. Gradually, however, and at length fully, did her tastes conform to the tastes of those with whom she dwelt.

Yet she had no soul—the spirit of a fish was in her, but not the spirit of a mortal. She could not weep with the afflicted, nor laugh with the joyful. She knew indeed her Creator, for all things, whether animate or inanimate, know Him; but the worship paid by her was not the worship of one who has reason for what he does, but of one who follows the prompting of instinct. She still retained her passion for the evening, and the bright balls which light it, but better loved to see their reflection in the water, than to behold them dancing about in the blue sky.

At length, there arose a black cloud in the atmosphere—the Andirondacks and the Ottawas were no longer friends. A little thing breeds a quarrel among the sons of the wilderness. A word lightly spoken, a deer stricken an arrow's flight over a certain limit, an insult of old date, but unavenged, a woman borne away from an approved lover, are each deemed of sufficient importance to enlist all the energies of a nation in the purpose of revenge. A deputation of Andirondacks came to the chief village of the Ottawas, demanding satisfaction for a trespass on their hunting-ground, and for doing the foolish thing, so much reprobated by the red men of the forest as to occasion frequent wars—the slaying of beasts of venery out of season. Among the chiefs was the youth Piskaret, who, although he had but just reached his twentieth summer, was, as I have before said, counted the strongest, the wisest, and, by anticipation, the bravest, man of the nation. And with him came his aged father, the great chief of the Andirondacks.

The feast was made and eaten, the dance was concluded, and the chiefs, and counsellors, and warriors, were smoking in the great pipe of peace, when the beautiful maiden, who bore the name of Menana, entered the council cabin. She had now lost all traces of her origin from the waters, and to all appearance was a mortal woman. She entered without that timid step which mortal maidens have when they find themselves suddenly cast into a crowd of the other sex, with none of their own to give them countenance. But Menana was not versed in the ways of mortals, and had none of the feelings which send the blush to the cheek and trembling to the heart of the maidens of the world. After surveying the stern array of warriors for a moment, with a curious and enquiring look, she walked up to the youthful Piskaret, and said to him in a sweet and soft tone, "Thou art very beautiful. Tell me if I may not win thy love?"

The Brave, who was smitten with the charms of the fair creature, pressing to her side, whispered that he loved her better than all the world, and wished her to become the wife of his bosom. Then he painted, to her willing ear, the charms of his native land, and spoke of the tall old oaks which threw their giant shade over the banks of the gentle and placid river, and the many thick glades filled with lusty deer, and lakes stocked with delicious wild fowl, which were to be found within the hunting-grounds of his nation. He told her of the plenty that reigned in the cabins of the Andirondacks, and how much better their women fared than those of the surrounding tribes. The Daughter of the Flood smiled sweetly on the youth, and tears, the first she had ever shed—and sighs, the first she had ever breathed—proofs of her having acquired a human soul—stole to her heart and her eyes.

And now she had received a soul, and become possessed of those faculties which confer pleasure and pain, and create for their possessor happiness and misery, and joy and sorrow. She was now alive to the hopes and fears which exalt or depress existence—had tears for those that wept, and a laugh for those that laughed. She, who entered that assembly of warriors, fearless as an eagle seated on the top of a lofty pine, now at once, in the twinkling of an eye, became filled with trembling, and alarm, and apprehension, and strove to hide her blushes by half hiding her face in the bosom of him she loved.

But pride, which has often interrupted the course of love, as well as led to the downfall of nations, crept into the councils of the Andirondacks, and they refused to permit the young warrior to take to wife the maiden who was not of mortal parentage. They said that she was of the blood of the spirits of the cataract, of a race who had delighted to shed a cold and pestilential vapour over the villages of their nation, and had destroyed several Andirondacks, whose blood remained unrevenged. In vain did the youth plead his love; in vain did he show, that if the spirits of the flood warred on their neighbours, who were unable to inflict a wound on their adversaries, it furnished no reason why the beautiful maiden, so lovely and so inoffensive, should be banned. She had not injured, then why should she be spurned? But his argument availed not to influence the warriors, or to bend their stern hearts to pity. They drove the fair Menana from the arms of him she loved best, and, exerting the authority, so potent among the red men of the wilderness, of a father, and of chiefs, and of elders, they carried away the lover from the village of the Ottawas, thus dividing those whom the Great Being had so clearly created for each other.

But my brother asks what became of the beautiful maiden. Let him listen, and I will tell him. She pined away with grief at being separated from the man she loved. She sang not the sweet song which young maidens sing, who know neither love nor care—but her song was lonely and sad, as that of the bird of night. She wandered by herself in the dark and gloomy woods, as the bird flits when deprived of its mate, or the deer which carries its death-wound from the shaft of the hunter. Each day her eye lost a portion of its light, and her step of its buoyancy. She laughed no more, nor joined the dance of maidens, nor went with them to gather wild flowers; but her amusements, if amusements they could be called, were to weep and sigh, to wander alone with listless step, and to sit by the edge of the cataract, telling her sad story to the spirits of the flood. The Great Spirit, seeing her grief, and knowing that a heart that is broken hath no more business among the things of this world, bade her rejoin her friends in the surge of the cataract. She heard the well-known and well-remembered voice, and prepared to obey. Calling around her the friends whom her sweetness and good-humour had won her, she bade them a tearful adieu, and received the like tribute of kindness. The young Braves, who had before attempted to win her love, crowded around her to catch her last farewell, anxious yet fearing to attempt to change a resolution which had been dictated by the Great Spirit. They had tough spears in their hands, and well filled quivers at their shoulders, and their cheeks and brows were stained with the hue of wrath, for they were prepared to avenge on the haughty Andirondacks the slight and injury done the beauteous Menana. The maidens came to witness her departure, with tears bedewing their cheeks. All accompanied her to the brink of the cataract, and beheld her throw herself into its fearful bosom.

No sooner had she reached the waters of that boiling torrent, than uprose from its bosom the grisly heads of the fell spirits, who were its inhabitants. Rage filled their countenances, and horrid imprecations burst from their lips, as they vowed to be avenged on that arrogant and wicked people, the Andirondacks, who had inflicted misery upon an adopted and cherished daughter of the flood. The last the Ottawas saw of them, they were soothing and comforting the beautiful Menana, whom, after sustaining for a few moments upon the surface of the water, they bore to their crystal dwelling beneath the foaming torrent. They first, however, employed an Ottawa messenger to bear their defiance to their enemies, and to assure them of their eternal hatred.

It was not long after that a large war-party of the Andirondacks, composed of the flower of that nation, and headed by Piskaret, ascended the Mississippi, to make an incursion into the territories of a nation who dwelt upon its borders above the Falls. It is the custom of the tribes, when travelling upon the river, to approach to the verge of the cataract, and then transport their canoes around it. The Andirondacks were within a bow-shot of the cataract, when all at once the surface of the water became covered with grisly heads, which grinned hatred and defiance upon the Andirondacks, who, though filled with courage to dare encounter with men of their own form and nature, shook with a new sense of fear, as they beheld the hideous countenances and uplifted arms of the spirits of the flood. In the centre of the array of water spirits, they beheld the face of the beautiful Menana, still shining in all its former beauty, her eyes lit up by the fires of an unquenched and unquenchable love. Raising their dreadful shout of vengeance, the spirits now gathered about the canoes of the paralysed Andirondacks, and commenced their work of destruction. But one was protected by a being of their own order—the brave and youthful Piskaret found himself, ere an arrow had been impelled, or a thrust given by a spear, caught and shielded by the arms of his faithful Menana. While the water-spirits were employed in dealing death among their enemies, whose resistance availed not, the beautiful maiden drew her lover from his seat in his canoe, and disappeared with him beneath the waters. The moment the lovers had sunk into the flood, the spirits, with a dreadful shout, sunk also, leaving but few of the Andirondacks survivors of their attack. Nearly the whole had perished from the assaults of beings against whom human weapons were useless—who laughed at the puny resistance of mortals, and feared their battle less than the carcajou fears the mouse, or the canieu the humming-bird.

The Great Being, at the prayer of the water-spirits, bade the souls of the slaughtered Andirondacks assume the shape of eagles, commanding them to dwell for ever on the little island which stands just below the cataract, and within the full hearing of its incessant and tremendous roar. That they might receive the full reward of their arrogance, and pride, and cruelty, he so refined their sense of hearing, that the shaking of the wings of the bat was to them as loud as the thunder of the hills to a man having but the usual ear. What then must be the noise of the mighty cataract, which, leaping over a precipice of rocks, upon a stony bed, flies back again in foam and spray, higher than an arrow impelled by the toughest bow, bent by the strongest arm!

If my brother believes my story the song of a bird, let him visit the cataract, and use his own eyes and ears. If he do not behold that little island covered with eagles, whose wings never cleave any other air than its own; if he do not hear the angry voice of the spirits in the boiling waters, ay, and if he do not see them after night-fall; then let him call me a liar.

I have no more to say.

NOTE.

(1) Wampum.—p. 118.

Wampum is an Indian word signifying a muscle. A number of these muscles strung together is called a string of wampum, which when a fathom long is termed a belt of wampum, but the word string is commonly used whether it be long or short. Before the English came to North America, the Indians used to make their strings of wampum chiefly of small pieces of wood of equal size, stained either black or white. Few were made of muscles, which were esteemed valuable and difficult to make. But the Europeans soon contrived to make strings of wampum, both neat and elegant, and in great abundance. The Indians immediately gave up the use of the old wooden substitutes for wampum, and procured those made of muscles, which, though fallen in price, were always accounted valuable.

These muscles are chiefly found on the coast of Virginia and Maryland, and are valued according to their colour—which is brown, violet, and white. The former are sometimes of so dark a shade that they pass for black, and are double the price of the white. Having first sawed them into square pieces, about a quarter of an inch in length, and an eighth in thickness, they grind them round or oval upon a common grind-stone. Then, a hole being bored lengthways through each, large enough to admit a wire, whipcord or large thong, they are strung like beads, and the string of wampum is completed. Four or six strings joined in one breadth, and fastened to each other with a fine thread, make a belt of wampum, being about three or four inches wide, and three feet long, containing, perhaps, four, eight, and twelve fathoms of wampum, in proportion to its required length and breadth. This is determined by the importance of the subject which these belts are intended to explain or confirm, or by the dignity of the persons to whom they are to be delivered. Every thing of moment, transacted at solemn councils, either between the Indians themselves or with the Europeans, is ratified and made valid by strings and belts of wampum. Formerly they used to give sanction to their treaties by delivering a wing of some large bird, and this custom still prevails among the more western nations, in transacting business with the Delawares. Upon the delivery of a string, a long speech may be made, and much said upon the subject under consideration: but when a belt is given few words are spoken, but they must be words of great importance, frequently requiring an explanation. Whenever the speaker has pronounced some important sentence, he delivers a string of wampum, adding, "I give this string of wampum as a confirmation of what I have spoken." But the chief subject of his discourse he confirms with a belt. The answers given to a speech thus delivered must also be confirmed by strings and belts of wampum, of the same size and number as those received. Neither the colour nor the quality of the wampum is matter of indifference, but both have an immediate reference to those things which they are meant to confirm. The brown or deep violet, called black by the Indians, always means something of a severe or doubtful import, but white is the colour of peace. Thus, if a string or belt of wampum is intended to confirm a warning against evil, or an earnest reproof, it is delivered in black. When a nation is called upon to go to war, or war is declared against it, the belt is black, or marked with red, called by them the colour of blood, having in the middle the figure of a hatchet in white wampum.

The Indian women are very dexterous in weaving the strings of wampum into belts, and marking them with different figures, perfectly agreeing with the different subjects contained in the speech. These figures are marked with white wampum on the black, and with black upon the white belts. For example, upon a belt of peace, they very dexterously represent in black wampum two hands joined. The belt of peace is a fathom long, and of the breadth of a hand. To distinguish one belt from the other, each has its peculiar mark. No belt, except the war-belt, must show any red colour. If they are obliged to use black wampum instead of white, they daub it over with white clay, and, though the black may shine through, yet in value and import it is considered as equal to white. These strings and belts of wampum are also documents by which the Indians remember the chief articles of the treaties made between themselves, or with the white people. They refer to them as to public records, carefully preserving them in a chest made for that purpose. At certain seasons they meet to study their meaning, and to renew the ideas of which they were an emblem and a confirmation. On such occasions they sit down around the chest, take out one string or belt after the other, handing it about to every person present; and, that they may all comprehend its meaning, they repeat the words pronounced on its delivery in their whole connexion. By these means they are enabled to remember the promises reciprocally made by the different parties. And, as it is their custom to admit even young boys, who are related to the chiefs, to these assemblies, they become early acquainted with all the affairs of state; and thus the contents of their documents are transmitted to posterity, and cannot be easily forgotten.

LEGEND OF ATON-LARRE.[31]

When the Nansemonds occupied for their hunting-grounds the vast forests which lie between the Mountains and the Great Arm of the Sea[32], they were the lords and masters of the wilds, and ruled them according to their pleasure. Throughout the land there was none equal to them for swiftness and dexterity in the chase, and they were foremost amongst the nations for their prowess in war. When their shout was heard among the distant hills of the Lenapes, the craven cry of that timid people was, "A Nansemond! a Nansemond!"—when they launched their canoes upon the distant Mississippi, the men of that region fled, like a startled deer or elk from the growl of the carcajou.

Their numbers have now become thinned; many populous villages have disappeared—brother, the Nansemonds are not what they were, at least in numbers. But they have not lost their courage and valour, nor degenerated from the ancient renown of their fathers, nor has the thinning of their nation in the least tarnished the reputation of the few who yet live, or caused their enemies to deem them less than men. None can say that they ever turned their backs upon a foe, or shunned encountering one who wished for combat. Even the Iroquois, whose arms have always wielded a tomahawk against them, and who, in their turn, have encountered their deadly vengeance, confess them very brave, and, whenever they make them captives, honour them with the prolonged torture, which it is the right of the brave and valiant only to suffer.

There was once upon a time, in this tribe, formerly so potent and renowned, but now so few and feeble, a maiden, whose name was Aton-Larre, one of whose souls—that which speaks of things understood by all, and discourses in a language intelligible to all—had left its house of flesh to go to the Cheke Checkecame, or land of departed spirits. The other soul yet abode in the body, but it was the soul which takes care that the mouth has meat and drink, administering to the wants of the flesh which enshrouds it by supplying it with food and clothing, and protecting it from fire and frost. Yet, though the sensible soul had wandered out, it had not taken away her memory, nor her faculty of seeing things unseen by other mortals, or of relating entertaining stories.

She was very beautiful, but her beauty was of a strange character. Her form was very tall and commanding, and she was straight as a reed. Her dark eyes had, from the disordered state of her mind, received a very wild expression, but none that knew her feared her, for she was innocent and harmless as a child. Her long black hair, which swept the earth at her feet, was interlaced with gay beads and shells, and gayer wild flowers, and around her wrists and ancles were fastened strings of the teeth of the alligator. It was her greatest pleasure to enter her canoe, and commit it to the current of the river. Then, while drifting about, she would sing wild and melancholy songs, striking the water at irregular intervals with a long paddle which she held in the middle, and which formed a kind of concert with the song, as though two persons were singing.

It was strange, but her people declared that the sensible soul left her while she was worshipping the Great Spirit in the Quiccosan[33]. There, while performing the sacred dance around the carved posts[34], her soul was called away to the happy regions, and her mind became like a cloud in the time of a strong blast, or a dry leaf carried into the sky by a whirlwind. Others asserted that she had dared to spit upon a pawcorance[35], and for that had been punished by the Great Being with the loss of her senses. It matters little which was true, since one of them must have been; for it is only the Great Spirit who can take away the gift of reason which he bestows, and he only takes it away from those with whom he is angry. And thus lived the crazed Aton-Larre—strange that her bosom should have felt the pangs of love, and that for a being so ugly and misshapen as the little Ohguesse.

This Ohguesse was a youth, whose feet wanted the fleetness, and whose arm lacked the strength, of a man's, but he was nevertheless the favourite of the Great Spirit. He was less in stature than a man, and crooked withal, his height being little more than that of the tall bird[36] which loves to strut along the sandy shore, picking up the fish as they flutter joyously along in the beams of the warm and cheering sun. But if he was diminutive in body he was great in his soul—what others lacked in wisdom he supplied. His name was Ohguesse, which signifies a Partridge. His brothers gave him this name because of his preferring peace to war—of his liking better to hunt the less dangerous animals, the makon than the mackwah[37], and to spear the fish that gave little trouble, and to snare peaceful birds—all sports unworthy of a man. But this tame and pacific spirit was forgiven in Ohguesse, because he was little and misshapen, and, withal, the favourite of the Great Spirit. None could call down rain from the clouds, or conjure them into a clear sky, or foretell the coming of storms, like him. If he bade the women plant the maize, they might be sure that a shower was at hand; if he bade the warriors depart on a distant expedition, they knew it would be successful. His blessing spoken over the seine was as good as its marriage[38]; his prayer to the Great Spirit in the cave, or on the hill-top, procured health and plentiful harvests for his people. And such was Ohguesse.

Singular were the means by which Aton-Larre testified the affection she bore the little man. She would wander for hours in search of sweet berries, because he loved them; and, when in the house of her father, they were cooking the juicy buffalo's hump, she always begged the most savoury parts to carry to him she loved. When the winter brought its snows and storms, she went morning and evening to the cabin in which he dwelt, to see that there was fire to keep him warm, and, if illness assailed him, and pain stretched him out on a bed of sickness, for his strength was little and his body feeble, who but the crazed Aton-Larre gave him the drink which took the cramp from his limbs, and restored him to health?

Nor was the little Ohguesse unmindful of her kindness—he met her love with equal return. If she procured for him ripe berries, he testified his gratitude in a way which repaid her fondness—and the meat she gave him, though it was ever so old and tough, was to him the juiciest that ever touched the lips of man. He would sit on the bank of the river for half a sun, watching her canoe, as she swept it over the current, and listening to her charming songs in which his own name was mentioned with so much love. And, when fatigued by her labour she guided her bark to the shore, Ohguesse was sure to meet her with outstretched arms, and assist her in the labour of carrying the canoe to its shed of pine branches. In the long evenings of the moons of snow and frost she would sit and relate to him—for her memory had not left her—tales of the goodness of the Great Spirit and the wickedness of the Evil Spirit; of the wars of the tribe, and of the journeys she had made to the land of souls, and of the dreams she dreamed, and of strange fishes she had seen in the depths of the sea, and strange fowls in the upper regions of the air, and strange beasts in the wild forests. Many indeed were the wonderful things she had beheld, if you believed what she said—and who could do otherwise, since her soul had travelled to the Happy Hunting-Grounds, and her eyes beheld with a double nature—the nature of a spirit and the nature of a mortal? It was in one of these long and stormy winter nights that she related to the tribe the story of the Maqua that married a Rattlesnake.

There was once upon a time, she began, in the tribe of the Maquas, the foes of my nation, a young warrior whose name was Cayenguirago. He was the bravest and most fearless of men—his deeds were the theme of every tongue, from the stormy shores of the wild Abenakis to the mountain clime of the fierce Naudowessies. While he was yet a boy his deeds were the deeds of a man—ere the suns of fifteen summers had beamed on his head, he had followed in the war-path of the full-grown Braves to the haunts of the Mohicans on the borders of the Great Salt Lake. And, before the snows of the succeeding winter had melted, he had become a Brave and a werowance[39]. But with his great strength and daring valour was mixed a bad and cruel disposition—his heart was very wicked and impious. When the priests spoke to him of the Great Spirit, he told them he should never believe there was such a spirit till he saw him—he omitted no opportunity of making scoff of that good being, and laughing at his thunders. His mocks of those wise and good men, the priests and prophets, whom the Great Spirit loves and honours, by making them acquainted with his wishes and will, were continually poured out. He paid no respect to aged people; he took the bison's meat from his father's famished mouth, and knocked the gourd of water from the lips of his thirsty mother. If he saw a man weaker than himself he took from him whatever he coveted, and made no restitution of the things he found. If he cast his eyes upon a maiden, and she listened to his false tongue, erelong her tears were sure to flow faster than those of a roebuck[40] that is hard pressed by a hunter. The brothers and sisters that were in the cabin of his father, if they crossed him, were beaten like a dog caught in a theft; if he gave a pledge to follow a chief(1) he was sure to forget it; if he made a vow to aid a friend in danger, he was sure to desert him, not from fear, but because it was a pleasure to him to do wrong and inflict injury. And thus lived Cayenguirago, the Great Arrow of the Maquas.

Once upon a time, as this brave but bad chief was hunting alone in the wilderness, in a spot which the Great Spirit had forgotten to level(2), he came to a great cave in the side of a hill. It was in the time of winter, and the hour of a fearful fall of rain and hail. To escape the wrath of the spirits of the air, he entered this deep cave in the side of the hill, carrying with him much wood, and the spoils he had won in the chase. As he entered it he heard many strange and fearful noises, but Cayenguirago was a warrior, though a wicked one, and, little troubled at any time by frightful sounds, he pursued his way into the interior of the cave. It was dark as a cloudy night in the time that follows the death of the moon, but he remarked that the cave was lit up and the darkness partially dispelled by what appeared to be little stars, exceedingly bright substances which resembled the eyes of a wolf, though smaller and far brighter, and which were continually shifting about the cave with a slow and uncertain motion. Then, for sound there was an incessant rattling, and hissing, and slapping, which almost stunned him with noise. As he moved on he found himself impeded by something into which his feet were continually settling, and which he judged to be loose sand. When he had gone far enough from the entrance to be free from the current of air which entered the cavern by it, he laid down the deer's flesh which he had brought upon his back, took out his flint and tinder-box, and struck fire. Having properly disposed of the wood he had brought, and kindled a flame, he raised himself to an upright posture to survey the cavern. Who shall describe the terror which filled the soul of Cayenguirago, stout and fearless as he was, when he found himself in the middle of an immense body of rattlesnakes, and perceived that it was among these deadly animals, of which there was a thick layer upon the floor of the cave, that he had been for some time wallowing? Their eyes it was that lit up the cavern, and theirs were the hissing, and rattling, and slapping, which saluted his ears. Under his feet and upon every side of him, as far as the eye could reach, were heads upreared with little fiery tongues projecting from green jaws, and moving with a motion more rapid than a flash of summer lightning. The heads about the cavern were thicker than the thievish ravens in a field of milky corn. The moment that the light of the fire he had kindled enabled them to see the intruder, all of them rushed towards him, though none attempted to inflict injury. The nearest approached within a step; those behind climbed over the backs of the more advanced, until they lay piled up on every side, as high as the shoulders of a tall man. Surrounded, as Cayenguirago was, by the most venomous and dreadful of all the animals formed by the Great Spirit, he did not forget to keep his fire burning, nor to draw out his pouch filled with good tobacco. Having recovered his coolness and composure, and become a man again, he filled his pipe with the beloved weed, and, lighting it, began to roll out clouds of smoke. Each time he puffed, he observed that the snakes retreated further from him, until at length they were seen gliding into the darkness which enshrouded the further part of the cavern.

While he lay thus warming himself at the fire, and emitting clouds of fragrant smoke, some one near him exclaimed, in a very sharp and shrill voice, "Booh!" Looking up, Cayenguirago beheld standing behind him a very ugly creature, but whether man or beast, he found it at first difficult to determine. His skin was black as soot, and his hair white as snow. His eyes, which were very large, were of the colour of the green far-eyes[41] with which the pale faces survey distant objects, and stood out so far from the head that, had one of them been placed in the middle of the forehead, a tear dropping from it would have hit the tip of the nose. His teeth, which were very large, were white as snow; his ears, which were yellow, were smaller than the leaf of the black walnut, and shaped exactly like it. His legs were not shaped like those of a human being, but were two straight bones without flesh or joint, and both black and glossy as charred birch. But what rendered him yet more horrible to look at was that snakes, poisonous rattlesnakes, were wreathing themselves around his legs, and body, and arms—leaping from him, and upon him, tying themselves in knots around his neck, and doing other feats of horrid agility. After surveying this uncouth being and his fearful companions for a few moments in deep silence, Cayenguirago addressed him thus:—

"Who art thou?"

"Thy master."

"The Maqua is a man," replied the warrior fiercely; "his knee was never bowed—he acknowledges no master."

"Thou hast served me long and well, Cayenguirago—I am Abamocho, the Spirit of Evil, and this is my dwelling-place."

"Thou hast chosen a dark abode, and strange companions," replied the warrior.

"They are not my companions, but my warriors, my braves, my tormentors," answered the Spirit of Evil. "It is with these that I torment bad people, as the Maquas use old women to torment the prisoners they take in battle. But fear not, Cayenguirago, thou hast been a faithful servant to me—I will not suffer my people to harm thee. Dost thou know that I design to bestow my daughter upon thee for a wife?"

"I did not know it?" answered the Maqua.

"She shall be thine," said the Evil Spirit. "But I warn thee that there have been very many pleasanter companions than she will make thee, for she is excessively irritable and passionate. Withal she is so fond of admiration, that I have no doubt she would give chace to the ugliest toad that ever devoured a worm, so she could captivate him. She is a true woman."

"What will the father give the Maqua that marries her?"

"Wampum, much wampum—"

"I will take her."

"Many beaver-skins, and much bear's meat—"

"Cayenguirago will make her his wife."

"Revenge against the Hurons who slew so many of his warriors in the last Beaver-Moon. He shall drink their blood in plentiful draughts, he shall eat their children roasted in the fire, and feed his men upon broth made of the flesh of their Braves[42]."

"She is mine!"

"Dost thou know that she is a rattlesnake?"

"I care not, so she bring me as her portion the rich presents and the sweet revenge thou hast spoken of. Shall the Maqua behold the maiden?"

"He shall, but the father bids him remember one thing. When the marriage has taken place, let not the husband forget to cut off his wife's tail. Upon his remembering this injunction his life depends. If he forget it the bride will be a widow ere she is a wife."

With this the Spirit departed into the inner part of the cavern. He soon returned, bringing with him a huge unwieldy rattlesnake. "This," said he, as he came up to the Maqua, "is the maiden I spoke of, and the wife I have long destined for thee. She is rather fatter than need be—she will eat the less, however. Take her, thou hast been a good servant, and I owe thee a reward. Cayenguirago!"

The warrior answered, "I hear."

"I warn thee once more that my daughter is very irritable and passionate, and withal so fond of admiration, that nothing in the shape of a leer comes amiss to her. She likes a good squeeze above all things. Evil, and the Father of Evil though I be, I am not so very wicked as to wish thee to marry a woman of that description without thy knowing what kind of treasure thou wilt possess."

"But thou hast promised me revenge against the Hurons, who slew so many of my warriors in the last Beaver-Moon: remember that." And the chief commenced his song, which ran thus:—

I shall taste revenge;
I shall dip my hands in purple gore;
I shall wet my lips with the blood of the men,
Who overcame my Braves;
I shall tinge the lake so blue
With the hue which it wore,
When I stood, like a mouse in a wild cat's den,
And saw the Hurons dig the graves
Of my Maquas good and true!

I shall build a fire
Of hickory branches dry,
And knots of the gum-exuding pine,
And cedar leaves and cones,
Dry stubble shall kindle the pyre.
And there shall the Huron die—
Flesh, and blood, and bones!
But first shall he know the pain
Of a red-hot stone on the ball of his eye,
And a red-hot spear in the spine.
And, if he murmur a grain,
What shouts shall rend the sky,
To see the coward Huron flinch,
As the Maquas rend him inch by inch?

The Maqua, having finished his song of blood, turned around to his bride, and spoke to her kindly, telling her how happy they should live, and many other things usually said in such cases, and proving true as often as larks fall from the skies. The Evil Spirit now spoke to Cayenguirago, bidding him follow him to an inner room in the cavern, and finish the marriage at once. He obeyed, leading his pursy bride by a string which he tied around her neck. The whole body of rattlesnakes followed the couple—hissing, and slapping, and rattling their tails, and running out their forked tongues; but, whether for joy or sorrow, Cayenguirago either cared nothing, or did not think it worth his while to enquire. At last they came to a small room, which was lighted up by a great blue fire burning in the centre. This, the Evil Spirit said, was his daughter's chamber, and there they would pass the night, upon which the maiden pretended to be much ashamed. The couple now went through the Indian form of marriage, and the Maqua became the husband of the rattlesnake—daughter of the Evil Spirit, Abamocho.

They spent the evening very pleasantly together, and so well was Cayenguirago entertained with the pleasant stories she told him, and her wit, and good humour, and the kisses she gave him, that he entirely forgot the advice of her father. So, after they had spent some time in talk and fondling, the bride crept to her bed of leaves, and the husband followed.

By and by the Maqua said to his wife, "Thy flesh is very cold—lie a little further off."

"My flesh is warm," answered the other; "but thou hast drawn to thy side all the covering, and the spirit of cold is breathing harshly upon me from the distant cavern."

Upon that they fell to disputing fiercely about love, and hatred, and cold, and many other things, which need not be mentioned here. Louder and louder rose their voices, and more violent grew the dispute, until the wife, losing the very little patience she possessed, applied the deadly sting, which dooms to instant death, to bring her husband to her side of the argument. A horrid shout told the creeping of the subtle poison through his veins. Few were the moments that elapsed before he lay a stiffened, and swollen, and blackened, corpse.

And thus perished the wicked Maqua, that married a rattlesnake and forgot to cut off her tail.

The rattlesnake figures very frequently in the Indian traditions. They suppose it to be endued with more sagacity than any other animal, except the owl, and to be peculiarly their intercessor with the Evil Spirit. Their Okki, or "Medicine-spirit," is more frequently the rattlesnake than any other animal—his teeth and rattles are invariably ingredients of their medicine-bags. They have a tradition that there was once a great talk, or council, held between the Mohawks and the Rattlesnakes, and a "firm peace established between the two nations," which lasted till the coming of the Whites.

NOTES.

(1) Pledge to follow a chief.—p. 153.

All those who enlist themselves on a war expedition give the chief a bit of bark with their mark upon it, and he who after that draws back is scarcely safe while he lives; at least he would be dishonoured for ever.

Once enlisted, to turn back is, in their opinion, a disgrace of so deep die that they encounter death rather than submit to it. They carry this chivalrous principle to an extent which finds no parallel in modern, and scarcely in ancient, history. Lewis and Clarke, in their Expedition up the Missouri, (vol. 1. p. 60, Philadelphia, 1814), speak of an association among the Yanktons, "of the most brave and active young men, who are bound to each other by attachment, secured by a vow never to retreat before any danger, or give way to their enemies. When the Yanktons were crossing the Missouri on the ice, a hole lay immediately in their course, which might easily have been avoided by going round. This, the foremost of the band disdained to do, but went straight forward, and was lost. The others would have followed his example, but were forcibly prevented by the rest of the tribe. There were twenty-two of these warriors at one time, but in a battle with the Kite Indians of the Black Mountains eighteen of them were killed; the remaining four were dragged from the field of battle by their companions."

(2) Spot which the Great Spirit had forgotten to level.—p. 153.

The Indians believe that the earth was at first very loosely thrown together, and not intended as a place of permanent occupation for any one. Their opinions respecting the roughness of the surface are various and amusing. I asked a Cherokee what occasioned the surface of the earth to be so very uneven. After a momentary hesitation he replied, "It was done in a wrestling and boxing-match between the Great Spirit and the Evil Spirit. While they were scuffling, the latter, finding himself moved about easily, occasionally worked his feet into the earth to enable him to stand longer. The valleys were the holes his feet occupied, and the hills and mountains the sand thrown out."

THE FIRE SPIRIT.

My brothers know, said a Nansemond warrior, that our tribe have a custom of burning over, every season, the great glade, or prairie, which lies beyond the hill, which the Great Spirit struck with his lightnings in the Hot-Moon. Yearly they see the flames devouring the dry and ripe grass, but they do not know what led to this custom; probably they have never heard that it is done in consequence of a solemn promise made by their fathers to the Spirit of Fire. Let them listen, and I will tell them the story.

Once upon a time, as the Nansemonds were warring against the Eries, who have their residence upon the shores of the lake of that name, they were caught in a narrow valley, or ravine, which lay between two high hills. One of the outlets to this valley opened into the lake; the other, that by which they had entered, had been occupied soon after their entrance into it, and, for a while, without their knowledge, by a strong party of their enemies. It may well be asked, why a band of warriors, cunning, sagacious, and experienced, as the Nansemonds were, should thus be caught like a foolish beaver in a trap. I will tell the warriors—they were decoyed into this dangerous valley by the roguish and wanton tricks of the Spirit of Fire.

This hasty and hot-tempered spirit, who is very good and kind when his master keeps him in due subjection, but who, when he escapes from his control, never fails to do a great deal of mischief, to burn up the maize, and frighten away the beasts which the Great Spirit has given to the Indians—or to destroy their food—sent Chepiasquit[43] to lead the Nansemonds—foolish men! they supposed it was to a camping-ground, where cool shade and sweet water should be found—and decoy them into a spot where they should fall an easy prey to their enemies. No thought had they of entering this dangerous valley. It was soon after the coming of the darkness that they saw this treacherous ball in the open space before them, and, believing it to be a lamp held out by a friendly spirit to conduct them, as I said before, to a place of rest and safety, they followed it without hesitation, and were thus placed completely in the power of their enemies. But they were good warriors—men tried and approved in many deadly conflicts, and such never feel the touch of fear, or show concern, even when they see the fire lighted and the tortures prepared for them. So, when they found themselves in the toils of their enemies, like a herd of buffaloes surrounded by a band of mounted hunters, they coolly sat down to think of the means and reckon the chances of escape.

While they sat talking, suddenly there appeared under the shade of a tree near them a man of singular shape and proportions. He was squat, and so very fat, that he looked like a skinned pig which has been reared in a plentiful season of nuts and mast. His face was far wider than it was long, and the flesh and fat fell in great folds, upon his body, legs, and arms, which were entirely naked, and of the colour of a bright fire; his hair stood out every way, like flames kindled in a brisk wind; and, when he opened his mouth, the breath which issued from it was felt scorching and searing at the distance of half a bowshot. His eyes, which were two coals of fire, emitted sparks like a piece of birch wood which has been steeped in bitter water[44]. The Nansemonds were stricken with great terror at the sight of this hideous Spirit, and it was a long time before they ventured to address him. When they had called up a sufficient stock of courage, they went towards him, and the leader of the band spoke to him thus:

"Who art thou?"

"The Spirit of Fire," he answered.

"Where is thy dwelling place?"

"I have my dwelling place in many and various places—in the caverns of the earth, and where-ever mortals dwell, there am I found."

"Why hast thou, Spirit, beguiled us into the toils of our enemies, the Eries? Behold us entrapped, as a wolf is entrapped by a cunning hunter."

"Then shall I taste revenge!" answered the Spirit, and broke into a hissing laugh. "Does not the chief of the Nansemonds remember that, when I had with my breath kindled a fire in the time of a high wind, and was enjoying the glorious prospect of giving the dry prairie to the devouring flame, the men of his nation assembled, and first repelled, and finally extinguished, that flame. From that moment I have sought revenge—I have found it—the bravest of the Nansemonds are enclosed like a partridge in a net, soon like that partridge to be food for the spoiler."

"Though we then sinned against thee," answered the chief, "yet have we not at all other times been thy true worshippers? When thy fiery meteors have been seen traversing the valleys, and shooting like stars over the prairies, we have bowed down our heads or retreated to our cabins till they had passed, and in both cases failed not to deprecate the anger of Him whom we deemed their master. And yet, Spirit, thou hast delivered us into the toils of our fierce enemies, the Eries!"