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HERE was once a merry young Indian who could jump so high, and who
played so many pranks, that he came to be known as Grasshopper. He was a
tall, handsome fellow, always up to mischief of one kind or another; and
though his tricks were sometimes amusing, he carried them much too far,
and so in time he came to grief.
Grasshopper owned all the things that an Indian likes most to have. In
his lodge were all sorts of pipes and weapons, ermine and other choice
furs, deer-skin shirts wrought with porcupine quills, many pairs of
beaded moccasins, and more wampum belts than one person could have
honestly come by.
The truth is, Grasshopper did not get these things by his skill and
courage as a hunter. He got them by shaking pieces of colored bone and
wood in a wooden bowl, then throwing them on the ground. That is to say,
Grasshopper was a gambler, and such a lucky gambler that he easily won
from others, with his game of Bowl and Counters, the things that they
had obtained by risking their lives in the hunt.
If people put up with his ways, and even laughed at some of his mad
pranks, it was because he could dance so well. Never had there been such
a dancer. Was there a wedding to be celebrated, or some feast following
a successful hunt--then who but Grasshopper could so well supply the
entertainment?
He could dance with a step so light that it seemed to leave no mark upon
the earth. He could dance as the Indian dances when he goes to war, or
as when he holds a festival in honor of the corn. But the dance in which
he excelled was a furious, dizzy dance, with leaps and bounds, that
fairly turned the heads of the beholders.
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It was then that Grasshopper became a kind of human whirlwind. As he
spun round and round, his revolving body drew up the dry leaves and the
dust, till the dancer all but faded from view, and you saw instead what
looked like a whirling cloud.
Once, when the great Manito, named Man-a-bo-zho, took a wife and came
to live with the tribe, that he might teach them best how to live,
Grasshopper danced at the wedding. The Beggar's Dance, he called it,
and such a dance! On the shores of the Big-Sea-Water, Gitche Gumee, are
heaps of sand rising into little hills known as dunes. Had you asked
Iagoo, he would have told you that these dunes were the work of
Grasshopper, who whirled the sands together, and piled them into hills,
as he spun madly around in his dance at Man-a-bo-zho's wedding.
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But though Grasshopper came to the wedding, and danced this crazy
Beggar's Dance, it seems probable that he did it more to please himself,
and to show his skill, than to honor the great Man-a-bo-zho. Grasshopper
really had no respect for anybody. When Iagoo's grandfather was in the
middle of some interesting story, and had come to the most exciting
part, Grasshopper likely as not would yawn and stretch himself, and
say in a loud whisper that he had heard it all before.
So, too, with Man-a-bo-zho. This great Manito, who was the son of the
West-Wind, Mud-je-kee-wis, had magic powers which he used for the good
of the tribe. It was he who fasted and prayed, that his people might be
given food other than the wild things of the woods; and whose prayer was
answered with the gift of the Indian corn. Then when Kah-gah-gee, King
of ravens, flew down with his band of black thieves, to tear up the seed
in the ground, it was Man-a-bo-zho who snared him, and tied him fast to
the ridge-pole of his lodge, to croak out a warning to the others.