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[A] 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.
[Footnote A: _Talk_--oration, also synonimous with "cabinet council,
or general meeting, with a view to matters of high importance."]
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[A] 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.
[Footnote A: _Cunning little people_, the common Indian appellation
for those sagacious animals, the beavers.]
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[A], 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.
[Footnote A: As I have remarked in a note (vol. i, page 305.) this is
a metaphorical expression, signifying nothing more than that they will
wage a bloody and destructive war.]
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[A], 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.
[Footnote A: The Indians affirm that the Elk has a bone in his heart,
which, being reduced to powder, and taken in broth, facilitates
delivery, and softens the pains of child-bearing.--_Charlevoix._]
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[A] 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.
[Footnote A: The God of the winter.]
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[A], 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[B]. 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[C],
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.
[Footnote A: Ginseng, called by the Potowatomies _Abesoatchenza_,
which signifies a child. I presume it has acquired its name rather
from the figure of its root than from the tradition. They make great
use of it in medicine.]
[Footnote B: The implements of writing, especially paper, are esteemed
by the Indians as medicines, or spirits, of great power. Books are
viewed in the same light. Singing hymns from a book delights them
much, as they conceive, that the book is a spirit, which teaches the
singer to sing for their diversion.]
[Footnote C: The Mammoth. See note, vol. ii, p. 111.]
"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_[A], he spoke, and bade her say, "why she had come
uninvited to the marriage-feast of the Pig-faced boy of the Ottawas."
[Footnote A: "Iron possessed by an evil spirit;" their name for a gun
or rifle.]
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[A]. 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.
[Footnote A: An Ottawa, who was a great drunkard, on being asked by
one of the French governors of Canada what he thought the brandy of
which he was so fond was made of, replied: "Of women's tongues and
warriors' hearts; for," said he, "after I have drunk of it, I can talk
for ever, and fight the devil."]
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[A], 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[B]. 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:--
[Footnote A: The female maple, distinguished from the male by having
its wood paler and more streaked.]
[Footnote B: Called by the French Canadians, _l'Oiseau Mouche_, or the
fly-bird. The name has two derivations; the first, from the smallness
of the animal; the second, from the humming noise it makes with its
wings. Its body is not larger than an ordinary May-bug.]
"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 sunset, 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[A] 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.
[Footnote A: _Great Mountain_, a name given to one of the early French
governors, and continued to be used generally for the French as long
as they held Canada. The story means a parrot probably.]
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.