I live in the depths of brine,
Where grows the green grass slim and tall,
Among the coral rocks;
And I drink of their crystal streams, and eat
The year-old whale, and the mew;
And I ride along the dark blue waves
On the sportive dolphin's back;
And I sink to rest in the fathomless caves,
Beyond the sea-shark's track.
I hide my head, in the pitiless storm,
In caverns dark and deep;
My couch of ooze is pleasant and warm,
And soft and sweet my sleep.
I rise again when the winds are still,
And the waves have sunk to rest,
And call, with my conch-shell, strong and shrill,
My mate to the Salt Lake's breast.
"And there he would sit for hours, his fish-legs coiled up under him,
singing to the wondering ears of the Indians upon the shore the
pleasures he experienced, and the beautiful and strange things he saw,
in the depths of the ocean, always closing his strange stories with
these words, shouted at the top of his lungs: "Follow me, and see what I
will show you!" Every day, when the waves were still, and the winds had
gone to their resting-place in the depths of the earth(1), to get sleep
that they might come out refreshed for their race over the green vales
and meadows, the monster was sure to be seen near the shore where our
tribe dwelt. For a great many suns, they dared not adventure upon the
water in quest of food, doing nothing but wander along the beach,
watching the strange creature as he played his antics upon the surface
of the waves, and listening to his charming songs, and to his
invitation, "Follow me, and see what I will show you!" But the longer he
stayed, the less they feared him. They became used to him, and as, the
oftener the tiger glares upon you from the thicket, the oftener you hear
the whoop of death, the more you come to despise them, so in time they
began to think him a spirit who was neither made for harm, nor wished to
injure the poor Indian. Then they grew hungry, and their wives and
little ones cried for food. And as hunger does away all fear, except
that which relates to the satisfying it, in a few days three canoes,
with many men and warriors, no longer decorated with war-paint, no
longer armed with bows and arrows and sharp spears, but with the pale
cheeks of men of peace, and bearing the implements of fishermen,
ventured off to the rocks in quest of the finny brood.
"When our fathers reached the fishing-place, they heard, as before, the
voice shouting, "Follow me, and see what I will show you!" Presently the
Man-Fish appeared, sitting on the water, with his legs, or the fins
which served for legs, folded under him, and his arms crossed on his
breast, as they had usually seen him. There he sat, eyeing them
attentively, while they tried to bring up the fat things of the deep.
When they failed to draw in the fish they had hooked, he would make the
very water shake, and the deep echo with shouts of laughter, and would
clap his hands with great noise, and cry, "Ha! ha! my boy, there he
fooled you!" When they caught any he was very angry, and would scold
like an old woman when her husband returns from hunting and brings no
meat. When they had tried long and patiently, and taken little, and the
sun was just hiding himself behind the dark clouds which skirted the
Region of Warm Winds,[A] the strange creature, popping up his head
within a few paces of the canoe, cried out still stronger than before,
"Follow me, and see what I will show you!" Kiskapocoke, who was the head
man of the tribe, asked him what he wanted, but he would make no other
answer than "Follow me!" Kiskapocoke said, "Do you think I will be such
a fool as to go, I don't know with whom, and I don't know where?"
[Footnote A: Region of Warm Winds--the South and South-west.]
""Ah! but see what I will show you," cried the Man-Fish, throwing up one
of his odd legs, and flirting the water all over the speaker in the
boat.
""Can you show us any thing better than we have yonder?" asked the
warrior, pointing to their cabins on the shore--"good wives, good
children, good dogs--plenty of deer, plenty of train-oil, plenty of
every thing?"
""Yes, and plenty of storms in the moons of falling leaves and melting
ice, and plenty of snow in the time between them; and oftentimes plenty
of hunger, and always plenty of danger from bears, and wolves, and
painted warriors. But go with me, and see what I will show you--a land
where there is a herd of deer for every one that skips over your
ice-bound hills, where there are vast droves of creatures larger than
your sea-elephants, called, in the language of the people of the land,
_bisons_, where there is no cold to freeze you, where the glorious sun
is always soft and smiling, where the trees and the fields are always in
bloom, where the men always grow tall as stately pines, and the women
beautiful as the stars of night."
"Our fathers began now to be terrified, and wished themselves on the
land. But, the moment they tried to paddle towards the shore, some
invisible hand would seize their canoes, and draw them back, so that an
hour's labour did not enable them to gain the length of their boat in
the direction of their parted friends and relatives. Then there was much
laughing all around them, and fins of all sizes, shapes, and colours,
flirted the water over them, till they were as wet as if they had been
swimming. At last Kiskapocoke said to his companions, "What shall we
do?"
""Follow me!" said the Man-Fish, popping up his head as before.
"Then Kiskapocoke said to his companions, "Let us follow him, and see
what will come of it." So they followed him, he swimming and they
paddling, until night came. Then a great wind and deep darkness
prevailed, and the Great Serpent commenced hissing in the depths of the
ocean. They were terribly frightened, and thought not of living till
another sun, but of perishing in the great deep, far from the lands of
their fathers, and without glory. But the Man-Fish kept close to the
boat, and bade them not be afraid, for nothing should hurt them, if they
only followed him and saw what he would show them. And thus they
continued, amidst the raging of the winds and the waves, and the
thunders and the lightnings, to paddle their slender canoes till the sun
arose.
"When morning came, nothing could be seen of the shore they had left. The
winds still raged, the seas were very high, and the water ran into their
canoes like melted snows over the brows of the mountains in the months
of spring. But the Man-Fish handed them large shells, wherewith they
were enabled to bale it out. As they had brought neither food nor water
with them, and had caught neither fish nor rain, they had become both
hungry and thirsty. Kiskapocoke told the strange creature they wanted to
eat and drink, and that he must enable them to do both. "For," said he,
"since you brought us here, you would be a very bad fish to let us
starve or die of thirst."
""Oh! very well," answered the Man-Fish; "stop where you are then, while
I go down, and get you victuals and water; and be sure, this time, that
you do _not_ follow me." With that he made a plunge into the depths of
the wave. Down he went, how far our fathers could not say, only this
they knew that, when he came back again, he puffed and blew like a
whale, and said, he was very tired. He brought with him a great bag full
of parched corn, not at all wet, a great shell full of good sweet water,
and a big piece of roasted fish. "I am confoundedly tired, and I got
scorched into the bargain," said he, muttering to himself. "So much for
having a cross wife."
"Thus they went on paddling and paddling, day and night, wet, cold, and
sometimes hungry, for two moons and a half, till at last, one morning,
the Man-Fish cried out "Look there!" Upon that they rubbed up their
eyes, and, looking sharp in the direction he pointed, saw land, high
land, covered with great trees, and glittering as the sand of the
Spirit's Island(2). Behind the shore rose tall mountains, from the tops
of which issued great flames, which shot up into the sky as the forks of
the lightning cleave the clouds in the Hot Moon. The waters of the Great
Salt Lake broke into small waves upon its shores, which were covered
with seals sporting, and wild ducks pluming themselves, in the beams of
the warm and gentle sun. Upon the shore stood a great many strange
people, but, when they saw our warriors step upon the land, and the
Man-Fish coming up out of the water, and heard his cry, "Follow me!"
they all ran into the woods like startled deer, and our fathers saw no
more of them.
"When our fathers were all safely landed, the Man-Fish told them to let
the canoe go, "for," said he, "you will never need it more." They had
travelled but a little way into the woods when he bade them stay where
they were, while he told the Spirit of the land that the strangers he
had promised were come, and with that he descended into a deep cave near
them. Soon he returned, and with him a creature as strange as himself,
or still stranger. His legs and feet were those of a man; he had
leggings and mocassins like an Indian's, tightly laced, and beautifully
decorated with wampum; but his head was like a goat's, even to the huge
horns and long beard; his hands were a goat's fore-feet, and the upper
part of his body was covered with moss-coloured hair, soft and shining,
like that of the goats which browse upon the steeps of the Spirit's
Backbone. Yet he talked like a man, though his voice was the voice of a
goat, and his language was one well understood by our fathers. He stood
up, with his feet or hands, whichever they might be called, resting upon
a little rock before him, like a goat which clambers up to nip the
loftier buds, and made them a long speech.
""You are going to a beautiful land," said he, "to a most beautiful
land, men from the Clime of Snows. There you will find all the joys
which an Indian covets. The beasts you will see will be fat, tame, and
numerous as the trees of the forest, and the fowls and birds which will
cover your waters and people your woods will be sleek as the forehead of
a young girl. Then, how lovely and kind are its maidens, how green and
gay its hills and valleys, how refreshing the winds which sweep over the
bosom of the great lake on its border, how sweet, clean, and cool, the
beautiful streams which wind along its corn-littered vales! Oh, it is a
lovely land, and the strangers have done well to leave the misery which
awaited them in the regions of the star that never sets, for the peace
and happiness which will be theirs in the land of unceasing summer."
"Brothers and chiefs! our ancestors travelled many moons under the
guidance of the Man-Goat into whose hands the Man-Fish had put them when
he retraced his steps to the Great Lake. They came at length to the land
which the Shawanos now occupy. They found it, as the strange spirits had
described it, a fit abode for the Great Spirit, a land of good and happy
enjoyments to his creatures. They married the beautiful and affectionate
maidens of the land, and their numbers increased till they were so many
that no one could count them. They grew strong, swift, and valiant, as
panthers, bold and brave in war, keen and patient in the chace. They
overcame all the tribes eastward of the River of Rivers,[A] and south to
the further shore of the Great Lake[B]. The dark-skin, whose eye beheld
their badge of war, fawned on them, or fled, became women before them,
or sought a region where neither their war-cry nor the twanging of their
bows was heard breaking the silence of the dark night.
[Footnote A: River of Rivers. Mississippi.]
[Footnote B: Great Lake, the ocean.]
"Brothers, we are called _Shawanos_ from the name of the river which runs
through our hunting-grounds. This is all I have to say."