Part 25
When he arrived on the other shore, toward the village he saw a herd of deer. Fixing his bow he shot and the arrow went through seven deer killing them all. He then ran on toward the village. He showed his uncle the finger and told the people to go for the game, but they returned in fright saying that there were sounds of giants on the other side of the stream.
Skunniwundi and his uncle then went to the river and saw the giant women on the other side. “Oh Skunniwundi, give back the finger,” cried the women. “We will not molest you any more.”
“Give it to them,” said the uncle. “They will be friends with us if we appease them.”
Skunniwundi then took the finger and held it way out over the water and the giant women leaned over from the cliff on the other side and just as they were about to grasp the finger Skunniwundi drew back his hand and the women were overbalanced and fell in the river, falling head first. Down they went to the bottom, and the river froze as hard as stone, killing the stone coated women.
After that time, Skunniwundi had the finger for a hunting charm and he supplied game for the village.
55. THE STONE GIANT’S BATTLE.[50]
The stone giants had conquered all the tribes of the north and had grown tired of such easy combats.
So they came toward the south and heard of the fame of the Six Nations and right away desired to fight with them. In order to present a formidable force they sent messengers back to their own north country with orders to bring back a fresh party of warriors. These crossed the north ocean and coming to the Niagara river made a path of rocks across it and walked over without even wetting the soles of their moccasins.
Now the Six Nations knew all these things because Gwä gwä having seen them flew up to the clouds and told the sun and the sun told Soñgwayadĭ’´sä’ĕ’, the Great Ruler. Then Soñgwayadĭ’´sä’ĕ’ instructed Gwä gwä to nip off a grass-hopper’s big leg and dangle it from the sky over a village while screaming his cry. So Gwä gwä obeyed.
An old man was crossing a clearing. In the air above him he heard what seemed a death cry and looking upward he saw a human leg writhing as it bled from the clouds. The old man dropped his head down and away from the sight and walked on pondering over the wonder, and he never knew that it was only Gwä gwä with a grass-hopper’s big leg. The old man lay down to sleep and as he slept he dreamed the interpretation of the sign and knew that the stone giants were coming.
On the following day the old man took two friends and hid on the summit of a high mountain. For two days the men camped there listening to the war songs of the on-marching foe, and at evening on the second day they saw the vast war party of giants march into sight far down the valley and pitch camp on the shores of a lake. Then a spirit came out of a tree and revealed to the men that the Creator had planned to save them. He instructed them to choose a messenger from among themselves and dispatch him for a few more people to witness the battle with the giants.
Accordingly, a runner was sent to the village and a small party was guided back to the mountain top, where all found shelter beneath a great rock.
A terrible storm burst from the sky—He’´no^n roared from the heavens and sent down his fire upon the camp of stone giants. Then the earth trembled and the mountains on either side of the valley slid down upon the giants below.
It seemed that all were killed.
56. THE BOY AND THE FALSE FACE.[51]
There was a certain tribe that had been almost exterminated by a hostile people in the west. The western warriors would swoop down on the settlements on the Lake (Ontario) and carry off many captives and scalps.
Now there was a boy who had no settled home. His parents were dead and his grandmother also. He was a wanderer and showed no special ability in anything.
Now this boy was named No´gwăgwă and he began to have dreams. He dreamed that a great false face came to him and said, “You must lead a war party beyond the Mississippi.” Then again he had a dream and the false face said, “You must lead a war party beyond the Mississippi. You must hold a war dance and gather your warriors.”
Now again he dreamed that the false face came to him in his sleep and said, “You must lead a war party across the Mississippi. You must hold a war dance and gather your warriors. Go in a fleet of canoes.” Now moreover he dreamed again that the false face said, “You must lead a war party beyond the Mississippi. You must hold a dance and gather your warriors. Go in a fleet of canoes. Sit in the first canoe but do not allow anyone to pass the middle for I will be in the front of the first canoe and give your expedition success. You can not fail.”
Now when the poor boy had heard the false face speak four times he believed his dream and proclaimed himself a war chief. Then all the people laughed. Now he notified all the boys of the village that he was a chief and would lead a party against the hostile nation in the west. Now many of the boys came and danced. The Nogwagwa said, “I have a power and can not fail. I have a magic friend.” After a while the people ceased to scoff and all the men joined his party. Now there were many canoes and Nogwagwa sat in the middle of the first canoe and would not allow anyone to pass by him. Now after seven days they reached the country of the enemy. The warriors wondered when the “friend” was to appear and could not believe that he sat in the prow of the first canoe. Now the enemy appeared and immediately there rose into view in the prow of the first canoe a gigantic false face. Now he was the mark of the enemy and they shot at him. He had a great shield and caught all the arrows and no one was killed but when Nogwagwa’s party shot their arrows they killed many people. Then the party disembarked and pursued the enemy far inland. The giant false face and Nogwagwa led the party and they killed the entire tribe of men and took their scalps. Then the false face disappeared and Nogwagwa led the party home. After that the boy, Nogwagwa, was his name, was a great chief and he was an influential man. So it is said this day that orphan boys without homes may become great chiefs.
57. HOW A BOY OUTWITTED A NIA’´GWAHE.
Great sickness had killed many men and Sondowĕk´owa, the beast of Death, had touched the father and mother of two children, who lived far back in a place in the forest away from the villages. The children, a boy and a little girl, were left alone to care for themselves.
The baby sister was swinging in a grapevine hammock one morning, when from over the hill came floating a song. The boy glanced out from the lodge and saw an old woman hobbling down hill and crooning as she went. He did not like the sounds in her song and turned uneasily back to his work.
Presently the old woman came up to the little girl and croaking an unfamiliar song held out a little bark bowl of pudding, inviting her to accept it. The child looked up and held out her hands to take it when her brother rushed out and forbade her.
“The woman is a witch,” he whispered to his sister. “If you eat her food it will charm you away!”
The old creature heard this exposure of her true self and fled vowing to return the next day. True to her promise, she came again and held out a delicious looking pudding on the top of which was a singing mocking-bird. The boy ran out from the lodge and stoned the old woman away and in anger she pointed her fingers toward him and screamed, “It does not matter for I will come again!”
The next day she returned and again was driven away by stones. She then departed with the same threatening words. But on one day she exclaimed, “Oh why do you not accept my beautiful gift! Do so now for I am hungry and wish to eat you. Oh, Oh—!”
The boy was frightened by her frank avowal but determined to be rid of the old witch and so drove her away once more.
“Tomorrow I will enter the lodge and eat her before your very eyes. Now remember my promise!” She screamed as she trampled back through the trees.
The boy was aroused and resolved to use every power to save his sister and himself, so that night he carved two dolls from chunks of rotten wood and placed them upright against the walls. Taking his sister he uttered certain magic words and made her very small. He placed her within a horn arrow-tip and then shot the arrow through the smoke hole. Leaping magically after the shaft, he followed and picking up the arrow followed the trail in the darkness.
The next morning the witch came again this time taking the form of a nīa’´gwahē. She tore down the hill and pawed before the lodge door.
“I have come, Oh I have come!” she said. “You cannot escape me now for I am nīa’´gwahē!”
“Oh please stay away, we are afraid,” wailed two tremulous voices inside. “Spare us for we are young. Oh choose some older ones!”
“Oh no!” snorted the witch, “I have been hungering too long for you two,” and bursting into the lodge prepared to seize the baby girl. She then was disappointed when she saw no trace of the children.
“I am nīa’´gwahē!” she screamed, “no one can escape me!”
“Dogĕs! Is that very true?” asked small voices on opposite sides of the lodge.
The witch-beast looked about, and then seeing the wooden dolls trampled down the entire lodge. Then, running in an ever increasing circle she found the boy’s tracks and following them with furious speed she screamed, “I am nīa’´gwahē, no one can escape me!”
A short distance behind him the boy heard her voice and unable to withstand her speed he planned to outwit her by changing his form. He took the guise of an old man. He kicked off his moccasins and bade them run on and make tracks to the end of the earth or until a hole appeared in the soles. Standing with his arrow fixed he gazed upward at an old robin’s nest that stuck upon a dead branch.
The witch-beast came crashing through the bushes.
“Kwē!” she screamed.
“Cii!” whispered the boy, “do you not see I am watching for game? Agē! I have been waiting three years for the bird to perch back on its nest and now you have warned it away with your yells. Oh now you must stay and help me kill it for I am very hungry.”
“Oh nonsense!” exclaimed the beast. “I am hungry too. Tell me now old man, did you see a boy running by here?”
“Cii!” whispered the boy, “you will frighten my bird. Go away. See those tracks? Follow them and leave me to my bird!”
The nīa’´gwahē struck the trail and followed the tracks of the moccasins through the forests and swamps and when many days had been spent she came to a log and on it were two moccasins with holes in the soles and no tracks beyond or around save those she had followed.
“Agī!” screamed the beast, overwhelmed with chagrin. “He has deceived me. Now I know he was the old man who gazed at the old nest and sent me away! Oh he shall not escape me for I am nīa’´gwahē!”
In the meantime the boy had been running as fast as his legs and his magic would bear him but after a time he heard a far away call. “I am nīa’´gwahē, he cannot escape!”
“Oh uncle,” said the boy as he caught sight of an old spider, “help me to escape, a nīa’´gwahē is pursuing me to eat my sister and me.”
“I am your friend,” said the old spider as he unrolled a net and spread it over the ground in all directions. Away sped the boy and soon the witch-beast came bounding into sight. Seeing her victim’s tracks, she rushed squarely into the net and became badly entangled. Very furiously she wrestled with the snare endeavoring to become disentangled and when at last she did the boy was far away.
In an evil temper at the delay the witch-beast snorted wildly as she ran to the north, in which direction the boy had gone.
“I am nīa’´gwahē, you cannot escape me,” she screeched as she ran and the fleeing boy hearing her boast ran faster than ever, until he saw a boy with a basket of pigeon feathers, he stopped.
“Save me!” he cried, “give me your basket!” and snatching it from the owner he scattered the feathers to the winds crying, “Be pigeons and stop witches!”
Instantly the feathers were transformed into myriads of pigeons who flying in clouds, sent down a kind of rain that covered the ground for miles around with a slime so deep and slippery that no creature could wade through it.
Nīa’´gwahē rushed into the slime and sinking into the depths wallowed and struggled until almost exhausted. Finally she was able to get back to its border and ran madly onward. “I am nīa’´gwahē, no one can escape me!” she called, for it was her magic to say these words.
The boy heard her voice and holding fast to the precious arrow, in which his sister was hidden, he hurried toward a false face man whom he saw dancing about a tree.
“Oh grandfather!” he cried, “save me. Nīa’´gwahē is after me!”
The false face held out his hand for tobacco and the boy gave him some. Then he pointed his hand toward a large cliff from which smoke issued.
The boy darted forward, and after him, close pursuing, was the witch. The false face halted the creature and demanded tobacco, but the witch being in the form of a nīa’´gwahē could not give it unless she became her human self. This she knew meant delay, but the false face was insistent and then she was forced to shake off the beast form and give the tribute. It is woe to those who deny the false faces, and she knew it. Then she resumed her beast shape and galloped onward.
The boy ran toward a rock and when he saw a small hole he entered and then crawled into a spacious cavern. A woman within was boiling bear’s oil.
“Save me!” cried the boy as the nīa’´gwahē snorted at the entrance and forced in its head.
The beast struggled. It was trapped. The woman lifted her pot of boiling oil and threw it upon the face of the witch-beast. A man forced out its carcass with a club and shot arrows into a black spot on its feet.
“I am your mother,” said the woman.
“I am your father,” said the man, “we were rescued from death by the false faces.”
“And I am your daughter,” said a voice as the boy uncapped his arrow, “and my brother has saved me!”
58. NIA’´GWAHE THE MAMMOTH BEAR.[52]
In the olden times in the valley of the Dociowĕh lived a newly married couple. Their lodge was far back by the big rocks and when danger threatened they hid in the caves.
After a time there came to the young wife two baby boys. When the twins were five weeks old the mother died. The father was at first dumb with grief for his heart was very heavy. Then looking up toward the heavens he sang,
“I see a hemlock tree. It has but two branches. The tree is twisted in the hurricane and is broken midway. The two remaining branches on the stub are thrashing in the gale. The tree is I. My wife is broken from me and my children are in the storm! Let me burn tobacco, the wind will cease; let me burn tobacco and my sorrow heals. It gives me thought!”
The dead mother had not lain long on her bed of spruce boughs when the hungry babes began to cry. A sudden thought came to the father. He cut down two strings of deer meat and flung them into the mortar. Grasping the pestle he pounded the meat into a powder and soaking it in hot water fed the liquid to his children. For several months they were nourished with this and they grew lusty and fat. When the corn was ripe, “in the milk,” the father scraped the kernels from the cob and pounded them in his mortar, mixed the paste with water, skimmed off the gruel and cooked with venison broth, and thus made a new food upon which the children thrived. When they were a year old they ate the same food that their father did and grew tall and strong.
The years went by and they grew vigorous and lithe and became expert runners often keeping pace with the swiftest of the tribe. At the age of fifteen one of them ran a race with a deer and falling exhausted died. And the father sorrowed again and became melancholy. After the death of his brother the other seemed to double in strength of body and mind. His name was Hahyennoweh meaning the Swift Runner. In this son the father took great pride for it was his sole remaining “branch.” Thus he instructed him in every art known to the hunter and warrior.
Hahyennoweh was a skilled bowman but as he developed greater speed in running he came to believe the bow and arrow coward’s weapons.
“A fight to death and face to face is the only fitting way,” he said.
With this idea in his mind and a sharp flint in his belt, he broke his bows and snapped his arrows. Then when he wished to slay an animal he would pursue it and when it fell exhausted he would wait until it recovered its breath and strength, slit its throat and carry it home. Bear, deer, elk, moose and buffalo all fell victims of his speed.
Like every brave and skillful man he loved to boast of his power, and no one ever made a statement of their skill lest he exclaimed, “Ho, that is nothing! I am braver than that for I am the most skillful of all the tribe!”
The father began to worry about this fault of his son’s, for it was a serious one. His entire conversation was self praise, which while excusable when indulged in occasionally, was unpardonable when continued forever. Wishing to warn him the father spoke to the boastful young warrior. “Son, I am your father, hear me!” he said. “You must not brag or boast yourself hereafter!”
But the son merely laughed and replied, “Father, I do not. I speak truth!”
“But, my son,” the father entreated, “the animals will hear you,—will hear your boasting and out of revenge will slay you.”
“No, I think not, father,” he replied, “for no animal can outrun me, not a beast in all this forest.”
“Son!” the father spoke gravely, “think wisely and hold your tongue. The winds will steal your words for mischief and the magically endowed animals will know it. Then, my son,—then I shall lose you!”
“Father,” replied the son, “I shall ever boast if speaking truth is boasting!”
The father continued his warnings but Hahyennoweh only laughed and bounded back into the forest.
One evening Hahyennoweh came home after an exciting race and began again to boast his prowess. Sadly the father looked at him, and said sorrowfully, “Son, again I bid you to cease your boasting. Evil will befall you for I feel it.” But the son was asleep.
A knock sounded at the door and the father pushed aside the bear skin curtain saying, “Dahdjoh!” “Gahdjih!” said a voice and the father went out. A stranger stepped from a shadow.
“I have come,” said he, “to tell you that the animals have heard your son’s voice. They have heard his audacious voice and his unseemly boasting. They have felt his knife and died. They have chosen me and I have come to him. I have come to tell him he must race me. I am the chosen one to race him from the sunrise to the sunset. We race the way the sun goes. If I win, then I shall kill him. If I lose then he shall slay me. Tell him he must meet me at the windfall.”
Awaking, the son heard the voices outside and when the father pushed aside the curtain to re-enter he began to question him. The father’s brow was wrinkled, his cheek had a gray color. He had sorrow in his voice.
He spoke “My son, you are all I have and you have loudly boasted about running swiftly. Did you not hear my advising words of caution? Did you not hear my entreaties? Nia’´gwahē has been here and spoken to me. You have heard our talk together. You will be hurt by him. Hahyennoweh! My only son I believe that you will perish!”
Hahyennoweh smiled, and then laughed at his father saying, “Nia’´gwahē is an old and foolish creature. So it is only he who makes this challenge! Chisnah! He should know that I am the champion of runners. Father, tell me more particularly about him, I would like to know how to feel afraid, but what you have said does not make me afraid.”
Turning, the father answered, “Nia’´gwahē is a mighty conjurer. He can change his form to suit him any time he wishes. He has never once been beaten in a race. Now you had better go to sleep and let me think about it and when I am done I shall awaken you.” So the son drew his blanket over his head and went back to his dreaming.
Seizing the pestle, the father pounded parched corn and maple sugar together and moistening the meal molded it into a cake and put it into a rawhide bag. After awhile he awakened his son for he had been thinking as he had worked.
“Son, awake!” he said. “I have been thinking and now I will advise you. The small humming bird is the swiftest of all the feathers and Nia’´gwahē has never had a race with him. In your cap I am going to put two feathers from the humming bird’s breast; they are a race charm.”
The father did not want to sleep that night but sat and threw pinches of oyankkwaoweh, the sacred tobacco, on a small fire to calm his fears and give him power with medicine spirits.
Before the sunrise the son awoke and going down the trail to the creek took his morning plunge and returned to eat his venison. Finishing his meal, he shook his father’s hand and said, “Oneh, now I am going.” His limbs felt strong and elastic for he had rubbed them well with plenty of oil. As he ran he thought he would like to test his jumping power,—just for luck,—and nearing the windfall, judged its breadth seven times his length. Increasing his speed he gave a great leap and cleared it. “Ho!” said he, “I am ready for any race in the world and ready for Nia’´gwahē, the beast-conjurer. My legs move of their own accord and my feathers give me power. Now where is this old thing that gives me a challenge?”
Just as he spoke there was a loud snort, and looking up he saw the monster.
The sun was about to go under the rim of the sky, over Onondasdaht, the big hill. Hahyennoweh spoke, “Shall we race now? I am ready, it is sunrise!” But Nia’´gwahē did not answer. He simply blew wind through his nose and started running.
The monster’s path was toward a swamp and Hahyennoweh followed after. The great beast ran very fast through clumps of bushes, just as easily as the son ran over grass. Saplings, stumps and trees fell before the big animal. For about five miles the son labored through the muck and tangles, and then seeing that these obstacles were too much for his style of running, concluded that it would not be wise to follow much longer through the swamp-land. He, therefore, decided to return to the starting point and take his route over the high ridge that curved for miles around the big swamp. Toward noon, when he had circled it, and had run miles beyond, he saw Nia’´gwahē far in the distance. Increasing his speed he soon reached the animal with the exclamation, “Ho-hoh, I am up to you!” But the mammoth bear only replied, “Ungh wooh!” The son saw that the Nia’´gwahē was very tired and as he ran beside him he said. “Kway Nia’´gwahē! Adekoni, it is time for eating!” But the beast with heavy breathing kept on running. Hahyennoweh, the Swift Runner, paused in the race, and sitting down on a stone, took a swallow of water and slowly chewed a handful of parched corn and sugar. He rested for a while after his meal and then after a swim in the brook, near by, he started on his race again.
When the sun was midway from the high heavens to its setting, the son caught up to the beast again. “Ho-hoh, I am up to you, old opossum!” he said, but the huge animal was too tired even to grunt. A stream of water poured from his body leaving in his tracks a muddy streak and his big sides bulged within and without.