|GREAT good luck once happened to a young woman who was living all alone
in the woods with nobody near her but her little dog; for she found
fresh meat every morning at her door. She was much surprised and
very curious to know who it was that supplied her. So she watched one
morning, just as the sun had risen, and saw a handsome young man gliding
away into the forest. Having seen her, he became her husband, and they
had a son.
One evening not long after this, he did not return as usual from
hunting. She waited till late at night, but he came not at all.
The next day she swung her child to sleep in its cradle, and then said
to her dog, "Take care of your brother while I am gone, and when he
cries, halloo for me."
The cradle was made of the finest wampum, and all its bandages and
ornaments were of the same precious stuff.
After a short time, the woman heard the cry of the dog, and running
home as fast as she could, she found her child gone, and the dog too. On
looking around, she saw scattered upon the ground pieces of the wampum
of her child's cradle, and she knew that the dog had been faithful and
had striven his best to save the babe from being carried off.
Now the thief was an old woman from a distant country, called Mukakee
Mindemoea, or the Toad-Woman. The mother hurried off at full speed in
pursuit of her. As she flew along, she came from time to time to lodges
inhabited by old women, who told her at what time the child-thief had
passed; they also gave her shoes that she might follow on. A number of
these old women seemed to be prophetesses, and knew what was to come
long beforehand. Each of them would say to her that when she had arrived
at the next lodge, she must set the toes of the moccasins they had given
her pointing homeward, and that they would then return of themselves.
The young woman was very careful to send back in this manner all the
shoes she borrowed.
She thus followed in the pursuit, from valley to valley, and stream to
stream, for many months and years, and at length came to the lodge of
the last of the friendly old grandmothers, as they were called, who gave
her final instructions how to proceed. She told the mother that she was
near the place where her son was to be found; and she directed her to
build a lodge of cedar-boughs hard by the old Toad-Woman's lodge, and
to make a little bark dish, and to fill it with the juice of the wild
grape.
"Then," she said, "your first child (meaning the dog) will come and find
you out."
These directions the young woman followed just as they had been given to
her, and in a short time she heard her son, now grown up, going out
to hunt. The dog was following and she called out to him,
"Pee-waubik--Spirit-Iron--Twee! Twee!"
The dog came into the lodge, and she set before him the dish of
grape-juice.
"See, my child," she said, addressing him, "the pretty drink your mother
gives you."
Spirit-Iron took a long draught, and immediately left the lodge with
his eyes wide open; for this was the drink which teaches one to see the
truth of things as they are. He rose up when he got into the open air,
stood upon his hind-legs, and looked about.
"I see how it is," he said; and marching off, erect as a man, he sought
out his young master.
Approaching him in great confidence, he bent down and whispered in
his ear, having first looked cautiously around to see that no one was
listening:
"This old woman here in the lodge is no mother of yours. I have found
your real mother, and she is worth looking at. When we come back from
our day's sport, I'll prove it to you."
They went out into the woods, and at the close of the afternoon they
brought back a great spoil of meat of all kinds. Then the young man, as
soon as he had laid aside his weapons, said to the old Toad-Woman, "Send
some of the best of this meat to the stranger who has arrived lately."
The Toad-Woman answered, "No! Why should I send to her, the poor widow!"
But the young man would not be refused; and at last the old Toad-Woman
consented to take something and throw it down at the door.
"My son gives you this," she called out. But, being bewitched by Mukakee
Mindemoea, the meat was so bitter and distasteful that the young woman
immediately cast it out of the lodge after her.
In the evening the young man paid the stranger a visit at her lodge of
cedar-houghs. She then told him that she was his real mother, and
that he had been stolen away from her by the old Toad-Woman, who was a
child-thief and a witch. As the young man appeared to doubt, she said
to him: "Feign yourself sick when you go home to her lodge; and when the
Toad-Woman asks what ails you, say that you wish to see your cradle;
for your cradle was of wampum, and your faithful brother the dog, in
striving to save you, tore off these pieces which I show you."
They were real wampum, white and blue, shining and beautiful; and the
young man, placing them in his bosom, set off. He did not seem quite
steady in his belief of the strange woman's story. But the dog,
Spirit-Iron, taking his arm, kept close by his side and gave him many
words of encouragement as they went along. They entered the lodge
together; and the old Toad-Woman saw, from something in the dog's eye,
that trouble was coming.
"Mother," said the young man, placing his hand to his head and leaning
heavily upon Spirit-Iron, as if a sudden faintness had come upon him,
"Why am I so different in looks from the rest of your children?"
"Oh," she answered, "there was a very bright, clear blue sky when you
were born; that is the reason."
He seemed to be so very ill that the Toad-Woman at length asked what she
could do for him. He said that nothing could do him good but the sight
of his cradle. She ran immediately and brought a cedar cradle; but he
said:
"That is not my cradle."
She went and got another of her own children's cradles, of which there
were four; but he turned his head and said:
"That is not mine; I am as sick as ever."
When she had shown the four, and they had all been rejected, she at
last produced the real cradle. The young man saw that it was of the same
stuff as the wampum which he had in his bosom. He could even see the
marks of the teeth of Spirit-Iron left upon the edges, where he had
taken hold, striving to hold it back. So he had no doubt, now, which was
his mother.
To get free of the old Toad-Woman, it was necessary that the young man
should kill a fat bear; and, being directed by Spirit-Iron, who was
very wise in such a matter, he secured the fattest in all that country.
Having stripped a tall pine of all its bark and branches, he perched
the carcass in the top, with its head to the east and its tail due west.
Then returning to the lodge, he informed the old Toad-Woman that the
fat hear was ready for her, but that to get it she would have to go very
far, even to the end of the earth. She answered:
"It is not so far but that I can get it!" For of all things in the
world, a fat bear was the delight of the old Toad-Woman.
She at once set forth; and she was no sooner out of sight than the young
man and his dog, Spirit-Iron, blew a strong breath in the face of the
Toad-Woman's four children (who were all bad spirits, or bear-fiends),
and so put out their life. Then setting them up by the side of the door,
they thrust a piece of the white bear-fat in each of their mouths.
The Toad-Woman spent a long time in finding the bear which she had been
sent after, and she made at least five and twenty attempts before she
was able to climb to the carcass. She slipped down three times where she
went up once. But at last she succeeded and returned with the great bear
on her back. As she drew near her lodge she was astonished to see
the four children standing up by the door-posts with the fat in their
mouths. She was angry with them, and called out:
"Why do you thus insult the pomatum of your brother?"
She was still more angry when they made no answer to her complaint; but
when she found that they were stark dead and had been placed in this way
to mock her, her fury was very great indeed. She ran after the tracks of
the young man and his mother as fast as she could; so fast, indeed, that
she was on the very point of overtaking them, when the dog, Spirit-Iron,
coming close up to his master, whispered to him--"Snake-berry!"
"Let the snakeberry spring up to detain her!" cried out the young man.
And immediately the berries spread for a long distance like scarlet all
over the path, and the old Toad-Woman, who was almost as fond of these
berries as she was of fat bears, could not avoid stooping down to pick
and eat.
[Illustration: 0165]
The old Toad-Woman was very anxious to get forward, but the
snakeberry-vines kept spreading out on every side; and they grew and
grew, and spread and spread. And to this day the wicked old Toad-Woman
is busy picking the berries. She will never be able to get beyond to the
other side, to disturb the happiness of the young hunter and his mother,
who still live, with their faithful dog, in the shadow of the beautiful
wood-side where they were born.
[Illustration: 0164]