Part 15 (1/2)
”Machinitou! machinitou,” which means a G.o.d, but an evil G.o.d.
THE WOMAN OF STONE.
In one of the niches or recesses formed by a precipice in the cavern of Kickapoo Creek, which is a tributary of the Wisconsin, there is a gigantic ma.s.s of stone presenting the appearance of a human figure. It is so sheltered by the overhanging rocks and by the sides of the recess in which it stands as to a.s.sume a dark and gloomy character. Of the figure the following legend is related:--
Once upon a time there lived a woman who was called Shenanska, or the White Buffalo Robe. She was an inhabitant of the prairie, a dweller in the cabins which stand upon the verge of the hills. She was the pride of her people, not only for her beauty, which was very great, but for her goodness. The breath of the summer wind was not milder than the temper of Shenanska, the face of the sun was not fairer than her countenance.
At length the tribe was surprised in its encampment on the banks of the Kickapoo by a numerous band of the fierce Mengwe. Many of them fell fighting bravely, the greater part of the women and children were made prisoners, and the others fled to the wilds for safety. It was the fortune of Shenanska to escape from death or captivity. When the alarm of the war-whoop reached her ear as she was sleeping in her lodge with her husband, she had rushed forth with him and gone with the braves to meet their a.s.sailants. When she saw half of the men of her nation lying dead around, then she fled. She had been wounded in the battle, but she still succeeded in effecting her escape to the hills. Weakened by loss of blood, she had not strength enough left to hunt for a supply of food, and she was near peris.h.i.+ng with hunger.
While she lay beneath the shade of a tree there came to her a being not of this world.
”Shenanska,” said he, in a gentle voice, ”thou art wounded and hungry, shall I heal thee and feed thee? Wilt thou return to the lands of thy tribe and live to be old, a widow and alone, or go now to the land of departed spirits and join the shade of thy husband? The choice is thine. If thou wilt live, crippled, and bowed down by wounds and disease, thou mayest. If it would please thee better to rejoin thy friends in the country beyond the Great River, say so.”
Shenanska replied that she wished to die. The spirit took her, and placed her in one of the recesses of the cavern, overshadowed by hanging rocks. He then spoke some words in a low voice, and, breathing on her, she became stone. Determined that a woman so good and beautiful should not be forgotten by the world, he made her into a statue, to which he gave the power of killing suddenly any one who irreverently approached it. For a long time the statue relentlessly exercised this power. Many an unconscious Indian, venturing too near to it, fell dead without any perceptible wound. At length, tired of the havoc the statue made, the guardian spirit took away the power he had given to it. At this day the statue may be approached with safety, but the Indians hold it in fear, not intruding rashly upon it, and when in its presence treating it with great respect.
THE MAIDEN WHO LOVED A FISH.
There was once among the Marshpees, a small tribe who have their hunting-grounds on the sh.o.r.es of the Great Lake, near the Cape of Storms, a woman whose name was Awashanks. She was rather silly, and very idle. For days together she would sit doing nothing. Then she was so ugly and ill-shaped that not one of the youths of the village would have aught to say to her by way of courts.h.i.+p or marriage. She squinted very much; her face was 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.
Altogether she was a very odd and strangely formed woman, and wherever she went she never failed to excite much laughter and derision among those who thought that ugliness and deformity were fit subjects for ridicule.
Though so very ugly, there was one faculty she possessed in a more remarkable degree than any woman of 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 beautiful and melodious 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, the thickets around her would be crowded with beasts, and the waters rolling beside her would be alive with fishes, all attracted by the sweet sounds. From the minnow to the porpoise, from the wren 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.
Among the fishes which repaired every night to the vicinity of the Little Hillock, which was the chosen resting-place of the ugly songstress, was the great chief of the trouts, a tribe of fish inhabiting the river near by. The chief was of a far greater size than the people of his nation usually are, being as long as a man, and quite as thick.
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 so 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 worked his way a considerable distance into the land. 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 channel, and so effected his pa.s.sage from the river to the hill, a distance extending 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 singing to him, she soon began to listen to his voice. It was something so new and strange to her to hear the tones of love and courts.h.i.+p, a thing so unusual to be told she was beautiful, that it is not wonderful her head was turned by the new incident, and that she began to think the voice of her lover the sweetest she had ever heard. One thing marred their happiness. This was that the trout could not live upon land, nor the maiden in the water. This state of things gave them much sorrow.
They had met one evening at the usual place, and were discoursing together, lamenting that two who loved one another so should be doomed to always live apart, when a man appeared close to Awashanks. He asked the lovers why they seemed to be so sad.
The chief of the trouts told the stranger the cause of their sorrow.
”Be not grieved nor hopeless,” said the stranger, when the chief had finished. ”The impediments can be removed. I am the spirit who presides over fishes, and though I cannot make a man or woman of a fish, I can make them into fish. Under my power Awashanks shall become a beautiful trout.”
With that he bade the girl follow him into the river. When they had waded in some little depth he took up some water in his hand and poured it on her head, muttering some words, of which none but himself knew the meaning. Immediately a change took place in her. Her body took the form of a fish, and in a few moments she was a complete trout. Having accomplished this transformation the spirit gave her to the chief of the trouts, and the pair glided off into the deep and quiet waters. She did not, however, forget the land of her birth.
Every season, on the same night as that upon which her disappearance from her tribe had been wrought, there were to be seen two trouts of enormous size playing in the water off the sh.o.r.e. They continued these visits till the pale-faces came to the country, when, deeming themselves to be in danger from a people who paid no reverence to the spirits of the land, they bade it adieu for ever.
THE LONE LIGHTNING.
A little orphan boy, who had no one to care for him, once lived with his uncle, who treated him very badly, making him do hard work, and giving him very little to eat, so that the boy pined away and never grew much, but became, through hard usage, very thin and light. At last the uncle pretended to be ashamed of this treatment, and determined to make amends for it by fattening the boy up. He really wished, however, to kill him by overfeeding him. He told his wife to give the boy plenty of bear's meat, and let him have the fat, which is thought to be the best part. They were both very a.s.siduous in cramming him, and one day nearly choked him to death by forcing the fat down his throat. The boy escaped, and fled from the lodge. He knew not where to go, and wandered about. When night came on he was afraid the wild beasts would eat him, so he climbed up into the forks of a high pine-tree, and there he fell asleep in the branches.
As he was asleep a person appeared to him from the high sky, and said--