In Indian mythology may be found the richest poetic materials. An
American Author is unworthy of the land that gave him birth if he passes
by with indifference this well-spring of inspiration, sending liberally
forth a thousand enchanted streams. It has given spiritual inhabitants
to our valleys, rivers, hills and inland seas; it has peopled the dim
and awful depths of our forests with spectres, and, by the power of
association, given our scenery a charm that will make it attractive
forever. The material eye is gratified by a passing glimpse of nature's
external features, but a beauty, unseen, unknown before, invests them if
linked to stories of the past, in the creation of which fabling fancy
has been a diligent co-worker with memory.
The red man was a being who delighted in the mystical and the wild--it
was a part of his woodland inheritance. Good and evil genii performed
for him their allotted tasks. Joyous tidings, freedom from disease and
disaster--success in the chase, and on the war path were traceable to
the Master of Life and his subordinate ministers:--blight that fell upon
the corn was attributed, on the contrary, to demoniac agency, and the
shaft that missed its mark was turned aside by the invisible hand of
some mischievous sprite. Deities presided over the elements. The
Chippewas have their little wild men of the woods, that remind us of
Puck and his frolicsome brotherhood, and the dark son of the wilderness,
like our first parents
--"from the steep
Of echoing hill or thicket often heard
Celestial voices."
My tent is pitched on the hunting grounds of the Senecas, (or
So-non-ton-ons) and I deem it not inappropriate to select for my theme
the Legend of their origin.
Different versions of the story are in circulation, but I have been
guided mainly, in the narrative part of my poem, by notes taken down
after an interview with the late Captain Horatio Jones, the Indian
Interpreter of the Six Nations.
The great hill at the head of Canandaigua Lake, from whence the Senecas
sprung, is called Genundewah. Tradition says that it was crowned by a
fort to which the braves of the tribe resorted at night-fall, after
waging war with a race of giants. These giants were worshippers of
Ut-co, or the Evil Spirit, who sent, after their extermination, a great
serpent to destroy the conquerors. Quitting its watery lair in
Canandaigua Lake, the monster encircled their fortification. The head
and tail completed a horrid _ring_ at the gateway, and, when half
famished, the wretched inmates vainly attempted to escape. All were
destroyed with the exception of a pair, whose miraculous preservation is
related in the poem that follows. Ever after Genundewah was a chosen
seat of Iroquois Council, and wrinkled seers were in the habit of
climbing its sides for the purpose of offering up prayers to the Great
Spirit.