[Footnote A: The genuine tradition imputed but a part of the labour of
ploughing out Coatuit Brook to the lover of Awashanks. It was
commenced, according to the Indians, from a motive of benevolence
rather than love. The Indians were much in want of fresh water--a very
large trout, with the intention of supplying it, forced his way from
the sea into the land. It proved too much for his strength, however,
and he died in the attempt. It was finished by the heroine of this
legend, who ploughed the sward through to Sanctuit Pond.]
There was once amongst the Marshpees--a small tribe who have their
hunting-grounds on the shores of the Great Lake, and near the Cape of
Storms[A]--a woman whose name was Awashanks. She was rather silly and
remarkably idle. For days together she would sit doing nothing, while
the other females of the village were busily employed in weeding the
corn, or bringing home fuel from the distant wood, or drying the fish,
or thatching the cabins, or mending the nets, or their husbands'
apparel, or preparing the weapons of the chace. Then she was so very
ugly and ill-shapen that not one of the youths of the village would
have aught to say to her by way of courtship or marriage. She squinted
very much; her face was very long and thin; her nose excessively large
and humped; her teeth crooked and projecting; her chin almost as sharp
as the bill of a loon, and her ears as large as those of a deer and
similarly shaped. Her arms, which were very long, were nothing but
fleshless bones; and the legs upon which she stood seemed like two
pine poles stript of their bark. Altogether she was a very odd and
strangely formed woman, and wherever she went never failed to excite
much laughter and derision among those who thought that ugliness and
deformity were fit subjects for ridicule.
[Footnote A: Cape Cod.]
Though exceedingly ugly, as I have told my brother, there was one
faculty she possessed in a more remarkable degree than any woman that
had ever lived in the tribe--it was that of singing. Nothing--unless
such could be found in the land of spirits--could equal the sweetness
of her voice, or the beauty of her songs. Her favourite place of
resort was a small hill, a little removed from the river of her
people, and there, seated beneath the shady trees, she would while
away the hours of summer with her charming songs. So soft and
beautiful were the things she uttered, that, by the time she had sung
a single sentence, the branches above her head would be filled with
the birds that came thither to listen, and the thickets around her,
and the waters rolling beside her, would be crowded with beasts and
fishes attracted to the nearest brink or covert by the same sweet
sounds. From the minnow to the porpoise, from the sparrow to the
eagle, from the snail to the lobster, from the mouse to the mole--all
hastened to the spot to listen to the charming songs of the hideous
Marshpee maiden. And various, but sufficiently noisy and dissonant,
were the means by which the creatures testified the delight and
admiration produced by the sounds which had drawn them thither.
Amongst the fishes, who repaired every night to the vicinity of the
Little Hillock, which was the chosen resting-place of the ugly
songstress, was the great war-chief of the Trouts, a tribe of fishes
inhabiting the river near by, and who, as my brother knows, generally
make the cold and pebbly stream their place of residence. It is a
chosen sport of theirs to hide among the roots of trees which stand
near the brink of their favourite streams. They are a very cunning and
shy people, and seldom fail, by their cunning and shyness, to escape
all the snares laid for them by their enemies. The chief of the
tribe, who dwelt in the river of the Marshpees, and who was also their
guardian spirit, was of a far larger size than the people of his
nation usually are, being as long as a man, and quite as thick, which
my brother knows is a size that few of his people attain. But, to
enable my brother to account for his great size, it is only necessary
to tell him that the mother of this great trout was a monstrous
flounder.
Of all the creatures which came to listen to the singing of Awashanks,
none appeared to enjoy it so highly as the Chief of the Trouts. As his
bulk prevented him from approaching as near as he wished, he, from
time to time, in his eagerness to enjoy the music to the best
advantage, ran his nose into the ground, and thus soon worked his way
a considerable distance into the greensward. Nightly he continued his
exertions to approach the source of the delightful sounds he heard;
till at length he had ploughed out a wide and handsome brook, and
effected his passage from the river to the hill whence that music
issued--a distance exceeding an arrow's flight. Thither he repaired
every night at the commencement of darkness, sure to meet the maiden
who had become so necessary to his happiness. Soon he began to speak
of the pleasure he enjoyed, and to fill the ears of Awashanks with
fond protestations of his love and affection. Instead of listening, it
was not long before he was listened to. It was something so new and
strange to the maiden to hear the tones of love and courtship; a thing
so unusual to be told that she was beautiful, and to be pressed to
bestow her heart upon a suitor; that it is not strange that her head,
never very strong, became completely turned by the new incident in her
life, and that she began to think the gurgling speech of the lover the
sweetest she had ever heard. There, upon the little hillock, beneath
the shade of lofty trees, she would sit for a whole sleep, listening
to the sweetest sounds her ears had ever heard; the while testifying
her affection for her ardent lover by feeding him with roots and other
food in which he delighted. But there were obstacles to the
accomplishment of their mutual wishes, which they knew not how to
overcome. He could not live on the land above two minutes at a time,
nor she in the water above thrice that period. This state of things
gave them much vexation, occasioning many tears to be shed by the
maiden, and perplexing much her ardent lover.
They had met at the usual place one evening, discoursing of these
things, and lamenting that two so fond and affectionate should be
doomed to live apart, when a slight noise at the shoulder of the
maiden caused her to turn her head. Terror filled her bosom when she
found that it proceeded from a little striped man, scarcely higher
than a tall boy of ten seasons. He wore around his neck a string of
glittering shells, and his hair, green as ooze, was curiously woven
with the long weeds which are found growing upon the rocks at the
bottom of the Great Lake. His hands and feet were shaped like the fins
of fish, and his head was that of a great haddock. His body was
covered with scales like any other scaly fish; indeed, except that he
walked erect like a human being, and had two legs, and two arms, and
that his eyes were not placed as the eyes of fish are, he might well
have been taken for a fish of a kind not before known. Having surveyed
the lovers for a short time in silence, he demanded "why they were so
gloomy and downcast."
The bashfulness of the maiden prevented her replying, but the Chief of
the Trouts answered that "they loved each other, and wished to live
together, but that the maiden could not exist in his element, nor he
in her's; and hence it appeared they were never to know the joys which
are tasted by those who have their dwelling in one cabin."
"Be not grieved nor hopeless," answered the Spirit; "the impediments
can be removed. I am the genius that presides over the fishes, and was
invested at the beginning with power to procure for them all the
enjoyments they are susceptible of tasting. I cannot transform a trout
into a man--that must be effected by a spirit of the earth--but I can
work the transformation of a man into a trout--under my charm the
Marshpee maiden shall become a beautiful fish of the same species with
the chief."
With that he bade Awashanks follow him into the river. When they had
waded in to a considerable depth, he took up a handful of water and
threw it upon the head of the maiden, pronouncing certain words of
which none but himself knew the meaning. Immediately a change
commenced upon her, attended with such pain and distress that the very
air resounded with her cries. Her body became in a few moments covered
with scales; her ears, and nose, and chin, and arms, disappeared, and
her two legs became joined, forming that part of a fish which is
called the tail--she became a complete trout. Having fully
accomplished the task of transformation, the Genius of the Fishes
delivered her to the Chief of the Trouts. The pair were soon observed
gliding side by side, very lovingly, into the deep and quiet waters.
But, though she had become a trout, she did not forget the land of her
birth. Every season, on the same night as that upon which her
disappearance from the tribe had been wrought, there would be seen two
trouts, of a magnitude surpassing fifty-fold any ever caught by the
Marshpees, busily employed in ploughing out the brook. They continued
the labour or sport, whichever it may be called, till the pale-faces
came to the country, when, deeming themselves in danger from a people
who paid no reverence to the spirits of the land, they bade adieu for
ever to _Coatuit, or the Brook of the Great Trout_.