Chapter 9

Now it chanced that these things were said in the hour which, when it passes over the world, all the wishes uttered by men are granted. And so it was with these Indians. For the first became a Leech, the second a Spotted Frog, the third a Crab, which is washed up and down with the tide, and the fourth a Fish. Ere this there had been in all the world none of the creatures which dwell in the water, and now they were there, and of all kinds. And the river came rushing and roaring on, and they all went headlong down to the sea, to be washed into many lands over all the world. [Footnote: This was told by Tomah Josephs. It is given much more imperfectly in the tale of Kitpooseagunow in the Rand manuscript, and in the Anglo-Indian "Storey of Glooscap." I have taken very great pains in this, as in all the tales written down from verbal narration, to be accurate in details, and to convey as well as I could the quaint manner and dry humor which characterized the style of the narrator. Even white men do not tell the same story in the same way to everybody; and if Tomahquah and others fully expressed their feelings to me, it was because they had never before met with a white man who listened to them with such sympathy. It may be observed that the Indians commonly say that wherever the bull-frog is to be found in summer there is always water. It is not to be understood, in this tale, that the bull-frog is supposed to have merely drunk up the river. It is the river which has become incarnate in him. It is the ice of winter penetrated by the spear of the sun; that is, Glooskap. Thus, in another tale, a frozen river tries, as a man, to destroy the hero, but is melted by him. The conception of _the hour_ when all wishes are granted, and the abrupt termination of the whole in a grand transformation scene, are both very striking. There is something like the former in Rabelais, in his narrative of the golden hatchet; as regards the latter, it is like the ending of a Christmas pantomime. Indeed, the entire tale is perfectly adapted to such a "dramatization."

I have been told by an old Passamaquoddy woman that the name of the monster who swallowed the stream was _Hahk-lee-be-mo_.]

_How the Lord of Men and Beasts strove with the Mighty Wasis, and was shamefully defeated._

(Penobscot.)

Now it came to pass when Glooskap had conquered all his enemies, even the _Kewahqu'_, who were giants and sorcerers, and the _m'teoulin_, who were magicians, and the _Pamola_, who is the evil spirit of the night air, and all manner of ghosts, witches, devils, cannibals, and goblins, that he thought upon what he had done, and wondered if his work was at an end.

And he said this to a certain woman. But she replied, "Not so fast, Master, for there yet remains One whom no one has ever conquered or got the better of in any way, and who will remain unconquered to the end of time."

"And who is he?" inquired the Master.

"It is the mighty _Wasis_," she replied, "and there he sits; and I warn you that if you meddle with him you will be in sore trouble."

Now _Wasis_ was the Baby. And he sat on the floor sucking a piece of maple-sugar, greatly contented, troubling no one.

As the Lord of Men and Beasts had never married or had a child, he knew naught of the way of managing children. Therefore he was quite certain, as is the wont of such people, that he knew all about it. So he turned to Baby with a bewitching smile and bade him come to him.

Then Baby smiled again, but did not budge. And the Master spake sweetly and made his voice like that of the summer bird, but it was of no avail, for Wasis sat still and sucked his maple-sugar.

Then the Master frowned and spoke terribly, and ordered Wasis to come crawling to him immediately. And Baby burst out into crying and yelling, but did not move for all that.

Then, since he could do but one thing more, the Master had recourse to magic. He used his most awful spells, and sang the songs which raise the dead and scare the devils. And Wasis sat and looked on admiringly, and seemed to find it very interesting, but all the same he never moved an inch.

So Glooskap gave it up in despair, and Wasis, sitting on the floor in the sunshine, went _goo! goo!_ and crowed.

And to this day when you see a babe well contented, going _goo! goo!_ and crowing, and no one can tell why, know that it is because he remembers the time when he overcame the Master who had conquered all the world. For of all the beings that have ever been since the beginning, Baby is alone the only invincible one. [Footnote: I am indebted for this "marchen" to Maria Saksis, a very intelligent Penobscot woman, a widow of a former governor, whom I met at North Conway, in the White Mountains, N. H. In her dialect Glooskap is invariably called _Glus-gah-be_. She told it with that admirable dry drollery, characteristic of a good story-teller in a race where there are no bad ones. The exquisite humor and humanity of this little legend, placed as a pendant to the stupendous successes of the giant hero, are such as to entitle its Indian author to rank as a genius. I have frequently asserted that these Wabanaki or Northeastern Algonquin tales bore to those of the West the apparent relation of originals to poor copies. Let the reader compare this, which is given as nearly word for word as was possible from the Indian narrative, with that of Manobozho-Hiawatha's effort to compete with a baby. The Cherokee account is that, seeing an infant sucking its own toe, he tried to do the same, and failed. It is in accounting for the unaccountable crowing of Baby that the point of the Penobscot story lies. Of this there is no mention made in the Western tale, which is utterly wanting in any feeling as to the power of childhood or its charm over the strongest. A real Indian tale may always be assumed to be ancient when it is told to set forth an _origin_. This gives the origin of a baby's crowing.]

_How the great Glooskap fought the Giant Sorcerers at Saco, and turned them into Fish._

(Penobscot.)

_N'karnayoo_, of old times: _Woodenit atok hagen_ _Glusgahbe_. This is a story of Glooskap (P.) There was a father who had three sons and a daughter: they were _m'teoulin_, or mighty magicians; they were giants; they ate men, women, and children; they did everything that was wicked and horrible; and the world grew tired of them and of all their abominations. Yet when this family was young, Glooskap had been their friend; he had made the father his adopted father, the brothers his brothers, the sister his sister. [Footnote: The Indians make formal adoptions of relatives of every grade, and in addition to this use all the terms of relationship as friendly greetings. This is in fact made apparent in all the stories in this collection.] Yet as they grew older, and he began to hear on every side of their wickedness, he said: "I will go among them and find if this be true. And if it be so, they shall die. I will not spare one of those who oppress and devour men, I do not care who he may be."

This family was at _Samgadihawk_, or Saco, on the sandy field which is in the Intervale or the summer bed of the Saco River, in the El-now-e-bit, the White Mountains, between Geh-sit-wah-zuch [Footnote: _Geh-sit-wah-zuch_, "many mountains" (Pen.). Mount Kearsarge, so called from the several lesser peaks around it.] and K'tchee penahbesk, [Footnote: _K'tchee penabesk_, "the great rock," a much more sensible and appropriate name than that of "Cathedral Rocks," which has been bestowed upon it; also _chee penabsk_.] and near Oonahgemessuk weegeet, the Home of the Water Fairies. [Footnote: Also called from a legend, _Oonahgemessuk k'tubbee_, the Water Fairies' Spring. This appropriate and beautiful name has been rejected in favor of the ridiculously rococo term "Diana's Bath." As there is a "Diana's Bath" at almost every summer watering place in America, North Conway must of course have one. The absolute antipathy which the majority of Americans manifest for the aboriginal names, even in a translation, is really remarkable.] Now the old man, the father of the evil magicians and his adopted father, had only one eye, and was half gray. [Footnote: This would directly connect him with the beings which are half stone, like the Oonahgemessuk, or water-goblins, the dwellers in Katahdin, and the Eskimo elves. This will be referred to again.] And Glooskap made himself like him,--there was not between them the difference of a hair; and having this form, he entered the wigwam and sat down by the old man. And the brothers, who killed everybody, not sparing one living soul, hearing a talking, looked in slyly, and seeing the new-comer, so like their father that they knew not which was which, said, "This is a great magician. But he shall be tried ere he goes, and that bitterly."

Then the sister took the tail of a whale, and cooked it for the stranger to eat. But as it lay before him, on the platter and on his knees, the elder brother entered, and saying rudely, "This is too good for a beggar like you," took it away to his own wigwam. Then Glooskap spoke: "That which was given to me was mine; therefore I take it again." And sitting still he simply _wished_ for it, and it came flying into the platter where it was before. So he ate it.

Then the brothers said, "Indeed, he is a great magician. But he shall be tried ere he goes, and that bitterly."

When he had eaten, they brought in a mighty bone, the jaw of a whale, and the eldest brother, with great ado, and using both his arms and all his strength, bent it a little. Then he handed it to Glooskap, who with his thumb and fingers, snapped it like a pipe-stem. And the brothers said again, "Truly, this is a great magician. But he shall for all that be tried ere he goes, and that bitterly."

Then they brought a great pipe full of the strongest tobacco; no man not a magician could have smoked it. And it was passed round: every one smoked; the brothers blew the smoke through their nostrils. But Glooskap filled it full, and, lighting it, burnt all the tobacco to ashes at one pull, and blew all the smoke through his nostrils at one puff. Then the brothers said again in anger, "This is indeed a great magician. Yet he shall be tried again ere he goes, and that bitterly." But they never said it again.

And they still tried to smoke with him, and the wigwam was closed; they hoped to smother him in smoke, but he sat and puffed away as if he had been on a mountain-top, till they could bear it no longer. And one said, "This is idle; let us go and play at ball." The place where they were to play was on the sandy plain of Samgadihawk, or Saco, on the bend of the river. [Footnote: I have an Indian stone pestle, or hominy pounder, which I picked up on the site of this ball-play.] And the game begun; but Glooskap found that the ball with which they played was a hideous skull; it was alive and snapped at his heels, and had he been as other men and it had bitten him, it would have taken his foot off. Then Glooskap laughed, and said, "So this is the game you play. Good, but let us all play with our own balls." So he stepped up to a tree on the edge of the river-bed and broke off the end of a bough, and it turned into a skull ten times more terrible than the other. And the magicians ran before it as it chased them as a lynx chases rabbits; they were entirely beaten. Then Glooskap stamped on the sand, and the waters rose and came rushing fearfully from the mountains adown the river-bed; the whole land rang with their roar. Now Glooskap sang a magic song, which changes all beings, and the three brothers and their father became the _chinahmess_, a fish which is as long and large as a man, and they went headlong down on the flood, to the deep sea, to dwell there forever. And the magicians had on, each of them, a wampum collar; wherefore the _chinahmess_ has beneath its head, as one may say, round its neck, the wampum collar, as may be seen to this day. And they were mighty _m'teoulin_ in their time; but they were tried before they went, and that bitterly.

Yes, _seewass_, my brother, this is a true story. For Glus-gah-be was a great man in his day, and the day will come when I shall go to him and see him. [Footnote: This legend is from a single authority, Maria Saksis.]

_How Glooskap went to England and France, and was the first to make America known to the Europeans_.

(Passamaquoddy.)

There was an Indian woman: she was a Woodchuck (Mon-in-kwess, P.). She had lost a boy; she always thought of him. Once there came to her a strange boy; he called her mother.

He had a pipe with which he could call all the animals. He said, "Mother, if you let any one have this pipe we shall starve."

"Where did you get it?"

"A stranger gave it to me."

One day the boy was making a canoe. The woman took the pipe and blew it. There came a deer and a _qwah-beet_,--a beaver. They came running; the deer came first, the beaver next. The beaver had a stick in his mouth; he gave it to her, and said, "Whenever you wish to kill anything, though it were half a mile off, point this stick at it." She pointed it at the deer; it fell dead.

The boy was Glooskap. He was building a stone canoe. Every morning he went forth, and was gone all day. He worked a year at it. The mother had killed many animals. When the great canoe was finished he took his (adopted) mother to see it. He said that he would make sails for it. She asked him, "Of what will you make them?" He answered, "Of leaves." She replied, "Let the leaves alone. I have something better." She had many buffalo skins already tanned, and said, "Take as many as you need."

He took his pipe. He piped for moose; he piped for elk and for bear: they came. He pointed his stick at them: they were slain. He dried their meat, and so provisioned his great canoe. To carry water he killed many seals; he filled their bladders with water.

So they sailed across the sea. This was before the white people had ever heard of America. The white men did not discover this country first at all. Glooskap discovered England, and told them about it. He got to London. The people had never seen a canoe before. They came flocking down to look at it.

The Woodchuck had lost her boy. This boy it was, who first discovered America (England?). This boy could walk on the water and fly up to the sky. [Footnote: This tale was taken down in very strange and confused English. The first part is in my notes almost unintelligible.] He took his mother to England. They offered him a large ship for his stone canoe. He refused it. He feared lest the ship should burn. They offered him servants. He refused them. They gave him presents which almost overloaded the canoe. They gave him an anchor and an English flag.

He and his mother went to France. The French people fired cannon at him till the afternoon. They could not hurt the stone canoe. In the night Glooskap drew all their men-of-war ashore. Next morning the French saw this. They said, "Who did this?" He answered, "I did it."

They took him prisoner. They put him into a great cannon and fired it off. They looked into the cannon, and there he sat smoking his stone pipe, knocking the ashes out.

The king heard how they had treated him. He said it was wrong. He who could do such deeds must be a great man. He sent for Glooskap, who replied, "I do not want to see your king. I came to this country to have my mother baptized as a Catholic." They sent boats, they sent a coach; he was taken to the king, who put many questions to him.

He wished to have his mother christened. It was done. They called her Molly. [Footnote: The Indians pronounce the word Marie Mahli or Molly. Mahlinskwess, "Miss Molly," sounds like Mon-in-kwess, a woodchuck. Hence this very poor pun.] Therefore to this day all woodchucks are called Molly. They went down to the shore; to please the king Glooskap drew all the ships into the sea again. So the king gave him what he wanted, and he returned home. Since that time white men have come to America.

* * * * *

This is an old Eskimo tale, greatly modernized and altered. The Eskimo believe in a kind of sorcerers or spirits, who have instruments which they merely point at people or animals, to kill them. I think that the Indian who told me this story (P.) was aware of its feebleness, and was ashamed to attribute such nonsense to Glooskap, and therefore made the hero an Indian named Woodchuck. But among Mr. Rand's Micmac tales it figures as a later tribute to the memory of the great hero.

One version of this story was given to me by Tomah Josephs, another by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown. In the latter Glooskap's canoe is a great ship, with all kinds of birds for sailors. In the Shawnee legend of the Celestial Sisters (Hiawatha Legends), a youth who goes to the sky must take with him one of every kind of bird. This indicates that the Glooskap voyage meant a trip to heaven.

_How Glooskap is making Arrows, and preparing for a Great Battle. The Twilight of the Indian Gods._

(Passamaquoddy.)

"_Is Glooskap living yet_?" "Yes, far away; no one knows where. Some say he sailed away in his stone canoe beyond the sea, to the east, but he will return in it one day; others, that he went to the west. One story tells that while he was alive those who went to him and found him could have their wishes given to them. But there is a story that if one travels long, and is not afraid, he may still find the great sagamore (_sogmo_). Yes. He lives in a very great, a very long wigwam. He always making arrows. One side of the lodge is full of arrows now. They so thick as that. When it is all quite full, he will come forth and make war. He never allows any one to enter the wigwam while he is making these arrows."

"_And on whom will he make war_?" "He will make war on all, kill all; there will be no more world,--world all gone. Dunno how quick,-- mebbe long time; all be dead then, mebbe,--guess it will be long time."

"_Are any to be saved by any one_?" "Dunno. _Me hear_ how some say world all burn up some day, water all boil all fire; some good ones be taken up in good heavens, but me dunno,--me just _hear_ that. Only hear so."

It was owing to a mere chance question that this account of the Last Day was obtained from an Indian. It was related to Mrs. W. Wallace Brown, of Calais, Maine, by Mrs. Le Cool, an old Passamaquoddy Indian. It casts a great light on the myth of Glooskap, since it appears that a day is to come when, like Arthur, Barbarossa, and other heroes in retreat, he is to come forth at a new twilight of the gods, exterminate the _Iglesmani_, and establish an eternal happy hunting-ground. This preparing for a great final battle is more suggestive of Norse or Scandinavian influence than of aught else. It is certainly not of a late date, or Christian, but it is very much like the Edda and Ragnarok. Heine does not observe, in the Twilight of the Gods, that Jupiter or Mars intend to return and conquer the world. But the Norsemen expected such a fight, when arrows would fly like hail, and Glooskap is supposed to be deliberately preparing for it.

A very curious point remains to be noted in this narration. When the Indians speak of Christian, or white, or civilized teachings, they say, "I heard," or, "I have been told." This they never do as regards their own ancient traditions. When Mrs. Le Cool said that she "had heard" that some were to be taken up into _good_ heavens, she declared, in her way, that this was what Christians said, but that she was not so sure of it. The Northeastern Algonquin always distinguish very accurately between their ancient lore and that derived from the whites. I have often heard French fairy tales and Aesop's fables Indianized to perfection, but the narrator always knew that they were not _N'Karnayoo_, "of the old time."

Glooskap is now living in a Norse-like Asa-heim; but there is to come a day when the arrows will be ready, and he will go forth and slay all the wicked. Malsum the Wolf, his twin brother, the typical colossal type of all Evil, will come to life, with all the giant cannibals, witches, and wild devils slain of old; but the champion will gird on his magic belt, and the arrows will fly in a rain as at Ragnarok: the hero will come sailing in his wonderful canoe, which expands to hold an army. Thus it will be on

"That day of wrath, that dreadful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away,"

with all things, in blood and death and fire. Then there will come the eternal happy hunting-grounds.

If this was derived from Christian priests, it must be admitted that it has changed wonderfully on the way. It is to me very heathen, grimly archaic, and with the strong stamp of an original. Its resemblance to the Norse is striking. Either the Norsemen told it to the Eskimo and the Indians, or the latter to the Norsemen. None know, after all, what was going on for ages in the early time, up about Jotunheim, in the North Atlantic! Vessels came to Newfoundland to fish for cod since unknown antiquity, and, returning, reported that they had been to Tartary.

It may be assumed at once that this Indian Last Battle of the Giants, or of the good hero giants against the Evil, led by the Malsum-Fenris Wolf, was not derived from the Canadian French. The influence of, the latter is to be found even among the Chippewas, but they never dealt in myths like this.

It is very remarkable indeed that the one great principle of the Norse mythology is identical with that of the Indian. So long as man shall make war and heroism his standard, just so long his hero god exists. But there will come a day when mankind can war no more,--when higher civilization must prevail. Then there will be a great final war, and death of the heroes, and death of their foes, and after all a new world.

"Then shall another come yet mightier, although I dare not his name declare.

Few may see further forth than when Odin meets the Wolf." (Hyndluloid, 42.)

The Norsemen may have drawn this from a Christian source; but the Indian, to judge by form, spirit, and expression, would seem to have taken it from the Norse.

_How Glooskap found the Summer._

In the long ago time when people lived always in the early red morning, before sunrise, before the _Squid to neck_ was peopled as to-day, Glooskap went very far north, where all was ice.

He came to a wigwam. Therein he found a giant, a great giant, for he was Winter. Glooskap entered; he sat down. Then Winter gave him a pipe; he smoked, and the giant told tales of the old times.

The charm was on him; it was the Frost. The giant talked on and froze, and Glooskap fell asleep. He slept for six months, like a toad. Then the charm fled, and he awoke. He went his way home; he went to the south, and at every step it grew warmer, and the flowers began to come up and talk to him.

He came to where there were many little ones dancing in the forest; their queen was Summer. I am singing the truth: it was Summer, the inmost beautiful one ever born. He caught her up; he kept her by a crafty trick. The Master cut a moose-hide into a long cord; as he ran away with Summer he let the end trail behind him.

They, the fairies of Light, pulled at the cord, but as Glooskap ran, the cord ran out, and though they pulled he left them far away. So he came to the lodge of Winter, but now he had Summer in his bosom; and Winter welcomed him, for he hoped to freeze him again to sleep. I am singing the song of Summer.

But this time the Master did the talking. This time his _m'teoulin_ was the strongest. And ere long the sweat ran down Winter's face, and then he melted more and quite away, as did the wigwam. Then every thing awoke; the grass grew, the fairies came out, and the snow ran down the rivers, carrying away the dead leaves. Then Glooskap left Summer with them, and went home.