Part 58 (2/2)
This pride and haughtiness angered the uncle and the spirits of the lake, who raised a great storm on the water. The tossing waves broke the string, and the box with the girl floated off through the straits to Lake Huron. It was there cast on sh.o.r.e and found by an old spirit who took the beautiful girl to his lodge and married her.
The mother, when she found her daughter gone, raised loud cries, and continued her lamentations for a long time. At last, after two or three years, the spirits had pity on her and raised another storm, greater even than the first. When the water rose and encroached on the lodge where the daughter lived, she leaped into the box, and the waves carried her back to her mother's lodge. The mother was overjoyed, but when she opened the box she found that her daughter's beauty had almost all departed. However, she still loved her because she was her daughter, and she now thought of the young man who had made her the offer of marriage. She sent a formal message to him, but he had changed his mind, for he knew that she had been the wife of another.
”_I_ marry your daughter?” said he; ”_your_ daughter! No, indeed! I shall never marry her.”
THE HUMPBACK MAGICIAN
Bokwewa and his brother lived in a secluded part of the country. They were considered as Manitoes who had a.s.sumed mortal shapes. Bokwewa was a humpback, but had the gifts of a magician, while the brother was more like the present race of beings. One day the brother said to the humpback that he was going away to visit the habitations of men, and procure a wife. He travelled alone a long time. At length he came to a deserted camp, where he saw a corpse on a scaffold. He took it down and found it was the body of a beautiful young woman. ”She shall be my wife,” he exclaimed.
He took her and carried her home on his back. ”Brother,” he exclaimed, ”cannot you restore her life? Oh! do me that favor.”
The humpback said he would try, and, after performing various ceremonies, succeeded in restoring her to life. They lived very happily for some time. But one day when the humpback was home alone with the woman, her husband having gone out to hunt, a powerful Manito came and carried her off, though Bokwewa used all his strength to save her.
When the brother returned and heard what had happened he would not taste food for several days. Sometimes he would fall to weeping for a long time, and appear almost beside himself. At last he said he would go in search of her. His brother, finding that he could not dissuade him, cautioned him against the dangers of the road; he must pa.s.s by the large grape-vine and the frog's eggs that he would come across.
But the young husband heeded not his advice. He started out on his journey and when he found the grapes and the frog's eggs he ate them.
At length he came to the tribe into which his wife had been stolen.
Throngs of men and women, gaily dressed, came out to meet him. As he had eaten of the grapes and frog's eggs--snares laid for him--he was soon overcome by their flatteries and pleasures, and he was not long afterward seen beating corn with their women (the strongest proof of effeminacy), although his wife, for whom he had mourned so much, was in that Indian metropolis.
Meanwhile Bokwewa waited patiently for his brother, but when he did not return he set out in search of him. He avoided the allurements along the road and when he came among the luxurious people of the South he wept on seeing his brother beating corn with the women. He waited till the stolen wife came down to the river to draw water for her new husband, the Manito. He changed himself into a hair-snake, was scooped up in her bucket, and drunk by the Manito, who soon after was dead. Then the humpback resumed his human shape and tried to reclaim his brother; but the brother was so taken up with the pleasures and dissipations into which he had fallen that he refused to give them up.
Finding he was past reclaiming, Bokwewa left him and disappeared forever.
THE BUFFALO KING
AgG.o.dagauda was an Indian who lived in the forest. Though he had accidentally lost the use of one of his two legs he was a famous hunter. But he had a great enemy in the king of buffaloes, who frequently pa.s.sed over the plain with the force of a tempest. The chief object of the wily buffalo was to carry off AgG.o.dagauda's daughter, who was very beautiful. To prevent this AgG.o.dagauda had built a log cabin, and it was only on the roof of this that he permitted his daughter to take the open air and disport herself. Now her hair was so long that when she untied it the raven locks hung down to the ground.
One day, when her father was off on a hunt, she went out on top of the house and sat combing her long and beautiful hair, on the eaves of the lodge, when the buffalo king, coming suddenly by, caught her glossy hair, and winding it about his horns, tossed her onto his shoulders and carried her to his village. Here he _paid every attention to gain her affections_, but all to no purpose, for she sat pensively and disconsolate in the lodge among the other females, and scarcely ever spoke, and took no part in the domestic cares of her lover the king.
He, on the contrary, _did everything he could think of to please her and win her affections_. He told the others in his lodge to give her everything she wanted, and to be _careful not to displease her_. They set before her the choicest food. They _gave her the seat of honor in the lodge_. The king himself went out hunting to obtain the most dainty bits of meat. And not content with these proofs of his attachment _he fasted himself_, and would often take his flute and sit near the lodge indulging his mind in repeating a few pensive notes:
My sweetheart, My sweetheart, Ah me!
When I think of you, When I think of you, Ah me!
How I love you, How I love you, Ah me!
Do not hate me, Do not hate me, Ah me!
In the meantime AgG.o.dagauda had returned from his hunt, and finding his daughter gone, determined to recover her. During her flight her long hair had caught on the branches and broken them, and it was by following these broken twigs that he tracked her. When he came to the king's lodge it was evening. He cautiously peeped in and saw his daughter sitting disconsolately. She caught his eye, and, in order to meet him, said to the king, ”Give me a dipper, I will go and get you a drink of water.” Delighted with this token of submission, the king allowed her to go to the river. There she met her father and escaped with him.
THE HAUNTED GROVE
Leelinau was the favorite daughter of an Odjibwa hunter, living on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior. From her earliest youth she was observed to be pensive and timid, and to spend much of her time _in solitude and fasting_. Whenever she could leave her father's lodge she would fly to the remote haunts and recesses of the woods, or _sit upon some high promontory of rock overhanging the lake_. But her favorite place was a forest of pines known as the Sacred Grove. It was supposed to be inhabited by a cla.s.s of _fairies who love romantic scenes_. This spot Leelinau visited often, _gathering on the way strange flowers or plants_ to bring home. It was there that she fasted, supplicated, and strolled.
The effect of these visits was to make the girl melancholy and dissatisfied with the realities of life. She did not care to play with the other young people. Nor did she favor the plan of her parents to marry her to a man much her senior in years, but a reputed chief. No attention was paid to her disinclination, and the man was informed that his offer had been favorably received. The day for the marriage was fixed and the guests invited.
The girl had told her parents that she would never consent to the match. On the evening preceding the day fixed for her marriage she dressed herself in her best garments and put on all her ornaments.
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