Pomatare rose and said:--"Brothers, a very great while ago, the
ancestors of the Shawanos nation lived on the other side of the Great
Lake, halfway between the rising sun and the evening star. It was a land
of deep snows and much frost; of winds which whistled in the clear cold
nights, and storms which travelled from seas no eye could reach.
Sometimes the sun ceased to shine for moons together, and then he was
continually before our eyes for as many more. In the season of cold, the
waters were all locked up, and the snows overtopped the ridge of our
cabins; then he shone out so fiercely that men fell down stricken by his
fierce beams, and were numbered with the snow which had melted, and run
to the embrace of the rivers. It was not like the beautiful lands, the
lands blessed with soft suns and ever-green vales, where we now dwell.
Yet it was well stocked with deer, and the waters with fat seals and
great fish, which were caught just when the people pleased to go after
them. Still our nation were discontented, and wished to leave their
barren and inhospitable shores. The priests had told them of a beautiful
world beyond the Great Salt Lake, from which the glorious sun never
disappeared for a longer time than the duration of a child's sleep,
where snow-shoes were never wanted--a land clothed with eternal verdure,
and bright with never-failing gladness. The Shawanos listened to these
tales till their minds came to loathe their own simple comforts; they
even forgot the spot which contained the ashes of their ancestors; all
they talked of, all they appeared to think of, was the _land of the
happy hunting-grounds._[A]
[Footnote A: Place of souls after death--the Indian elysium.]
"Once upon a time, in the season of opening buds, and the singing of
birds, and the whistling of the breeze among the wild flowers, the
people of our nation were much terrified at seeing a strange creature,
much resembling a man, riding along the adjacent waves upon the back of
a fish. He had upon his head long green hair, much resembling the coarse
weeds which the mighty storms of the month of falling leaves root up
from the bottom of the ocean, and scatter along the margin of the
feathery strand where we now dwell. Upon his face, which was shaped like
that of a porpoise, he had a beard of the colour of ooze. Around his
neck hung a string of great sea-shells, upon his forehead was bound
another made of the teeth of the cayman, and in his hand was a staff
formed of the rib of a whale. But, if our people were frightened at
seeing a man who could live in the water like a fish or a duck, how much
more were they frightened when they saw, that from his breast down he
was actually a fish, or rather two fishes, for each of his legs was a
whole and distinct fish. And, when they heard him speak distinctly in
their own language, and still more when he sang songs sweeter than the
music of birds in spring, or the whispers of love from the lips of a
beautiful maiden, they thought it a being from the Land of Shades, a
spirit from the happy fishing grounds beyond the lake of storms, and ran
into the woods like startled deer. And this was his song: