Traditions of the North American Indians Volume I Part 10

If my brother knows anything of the Osages, as they are called by the people of his nation, but by themselves, and all the neighbouring tribes, the Wasbashas, he knows that they live on the banks of the large and beautiful river, the Osage, which empties itself into the Missouri, at the distance of a hunter's journey of three suns from its mouth. Once the people of my nation were all united like a family of children which have but one mother, but subdivisions of the original stock have taken place, and they are now divided into three tribes, the Great Osages and the Little Osages, who have raised their cabins on the south bank of the river, and the sister's sons who broil their meat on the banks of the stream which our white brother calls the Vermilion. Are we brave and valiant? Ask the nations around us. Behold the Dahcotah scalps drying in the smoke of our cabins! Are we strong? Here is the bow of an Osage boy--bend it. Are our women beautiful? Look at them, and be convinced.

The story which our fathers told us of our origin is this, and they believed it, for their lips never dealt in falsehood, nor were their tongues forked. The father of our nation was a SNAIL. It was when the earth was young and little: it was before the rivers had become wide and long, or the mountains lifted their peaks among the clouds, that this snail found himself pa.s.sing a quiet existence on the banks of our own beloved river. His wants and his wishes were but few and well supplied, and as quiet and rest, and the freedom to move neither often nor much, were to him the height of happiness, he was happy. He seldom hunted, and, when he did, it was in the immediate neighbourhood of his lodge, never moving unless at the call of hunger, and then according to his nature he satisfied his appet.i.te upon whatever was nearest at hand, rather than take the chance of faring better by going further. And thus lived our great forefather, the snail.

At length the region of the Missouri was visited by one of those great storms which so often scatter desolation over it, and the river, overflowed by the melted currents of snow and ice from the regions of the mountains, swept away every thing from its banks, and among other things the drowsy snail. Seated upon a log, and enjoying greatly a circ.u.mstance which gave him all the pleasure of travel without its fatigue, our lazy ancestor drifted down many a day's journey, till the torrent, subsiding, left him and his log upon the bank of the River of Fish. He mow found himself in a strange country, but there was plenty of slime, both on ground and leaf, and there was no occasion for rapid motion; then what cared he? It was in the middle of the season of hot suns, which beamed fiercely upon him, till he became baked in the slime to the earth, and found himself as incapable of moving as the clod upon which he dwelt. Gradually he grew in size and stature, and his form experienced a change, till at length what was once a snail, creeping upon all-fours on the earth, ripened into man, erect, tall, and stately, strong of limb, rugged of purpose, and formed to overcome by either strength or cunning, every thing which dwelt on the earth, or in the air, or in the water. For a long time after his change from a beast to a human being, he remained stupified, not knowing what he was, where he was, or by what means to sustain life. At length recollection returned to him: he remembered that he was once a snail, and dwelt upon another river--he remembered where that river lay. He now became animated with a wish to return to his old haunts, and accordingly directed his steps towards that part of the great island[A] from which he had been removed.

Hunger now began to prey upon him, and bade fair to close his eyes before he should again behold his beloved haunts on the banks of the Osage. The beasts of the forest were many, but their speed outstripped his; he could not catch them: the birds of the air fluttered upon sprays beyond his reach; the fish, gliding through the waves at his feet, were nimbler than he, and eluded his grasp. Each moment be grew weaker, the films gathered before his eyes, and in his ears there rang sounds like the whistling of winds through the woods in the month before the snows.

At length, wearied and exhausted, he had laid himself down upon a gra.s.sy bank to die.

[Footnote A: The Indians always speak of the earth as a "great island."]

As he lay, thinking of nothing but food and the means of obtaining it, some one at his side said, with a voice soft as the bleat of a young kid, "Wasbasha?"

Our father, who had heard birds sing and wail, and beasts cry and growl, but never till now had heard one utter intelligible sounds, answered "Eh!" Raising himself with difficulty, upon his side he beheld that which spoke to him. He saw, mounted upon a n.o.ble beast, white as the snow of winter, a being, like to nothing which is seen among the sons of the earth. He was tall of stature, his eyes glittered like the stars of morning, or the tears of a young maiden who weeps for joy, and his hair shone like the blush of sunset upon the folds of a cloud. His was indeed a glorious form; and power as well as beauty sate enthroned upon it: while the Wasbasha gazed, he trembled like a fawn caught in the toils of the hunter, or the wolf penned in the crevice of a rock. Again the glorious being spoke to our terrified but admiring father.

"Why does he who is the kernel of the snail look terrified, and why is be faint and weary?"

"That I tremble," answered our father, "is because I fear thy power, and quail before the lightnings of thine eye--that I am faint is because I lack food."

"As regards thy trembling, be composed; the Master of Breath punishes not till sin is committed--thou hast not sinned, be calm. But art thou hungry?"

"I have eaten nothing," replied our father, "since I ceased to be a snail."

Upon hearing this the Great Spirit drew from under his robe a bow and arrow, and bade our father observe what he would do with it. On the topmost limb of a lofty maple, at the distance of a bowshot, sat a beautiful bird, with its bright green neck and train of variegated feathers, singing and fluttering among the red leaves of its nestling-tree. Bending the bow, he placed before it an arrow, and, letting it fly, the bird dropped dead upon the earth. A deer was seen at a still greater distance, browzing upon the tree which supplies its best-loved food. Again the skilful archer drew his bow, and the animal lay food for the son of the snail.

"There are victuals for you," said the Spirit, "enough to last you till your strength enables you to beat up the haunts of the deer and the moose. And here is the bow and arrow--the heart of the fir supplies the one, the other is the thigh-bone of the buck. Son of the mighty river, you are naked and must be clothed. The winter is coming; the snows will descend, and the winds will leave their caverns in the mountains towards the setting sun, to war upon the unsheltered kernel of the snail.--You must be clothed."

Saying this, the Great Being called our father to him, and taught him how to skin the deer, and how to apply it for the protection of his person from the frost, and the wind, and the snow. Having done this, and given him the beasts, and fishes, and all feathered creatures, to be his food and his raiment, he bade our father farewell, and took his departure for his home beyond the mountains; and he who had received the gifts proceeded on his journey towards the Osage.

Strengthened, and rendered cheerful and buoyant, by invigorating food and refres.h.i.+ng sleep, our father's steps were light, and his journey was soon near its completion. He soon trod upon the banks of his beloved river; a few more suns and he would sit down upon the very spot, where, for so many seasons, he had crawled on the slimy leaf, so often dragged his lazy legs over the muddy pool. He had seated himself upon the bank of the river, and was meditating deeply on these things, when up crept from the water a stranger looking animal with four legs, a broad tail covered with scales like a fish, and two short ears nearly hidden by the long fur which covered his body. His colour was that of the berry which grows within a p.r.i.c.kly husk,[A] and is eaten by our Indian people with their roasted opossums. Approaching our father in a saucy and menacing manner, and displaying a set of teeth which were none of the handsomest, he demanded, in an angry tone, "Who are you?"

[Footnote A: The chesnut.]

"I am a snail," answered our father. "Who are you?"

"I am head-warrior of the nation of beavers," answered the other. "By what authority have you come to disturb my possession of this river? We have held it from the time that Chappewee's musk-rat brought up the earth from the bottom of the deep waters. By what right do you come to disturb our possession of this river?"

"It is not your river," answered the Wasbasha. "It has been mine ever since the melted snows ran into it. It was mine while I was a weak, and foolish, and lazy snail; and it is surely mine now I am a wise and valiant man, and a courageous and expert hunter."

While they stood quarreling hard, and at the point of coming to blows, there crept out of the water another creature--a young maiden beaver--just like the one who was disputing our father's right to his land, only far more beautiful and glossy. She enquired what they were quarrelling about.

"Why," answered the chief warrior of the beavers, "the strange creature with whom I was talking, and who, I am sure, is nothing but a polecat sewed up in a deer-skin, says he owns all the river. He says the Great Being who is over man and beast, the Master whom even beavers wors.h.i.+p, gave it to him."

"Is that all?" replied the maiden; "but you need not answer, for I listened with a curious ear to your discourse, and heard it all. It is not worth going to war about, father--make peace with the stranger, and each of you retain a sufficiency of the water of the river for his purposes; and then you can help each other when enemies a.s.sail you." And then, casting a fond look upon the Osage, she called her father aside, and whispered a long time in his ear, frequently turning her beautiful eyes, bright with love, upon our ancestor. When they had done talking, the old warrior came up to the son of the snail and asked him, in an altered tone, to go home with him to his cabin. So the Osage went home with the chief beaver and his beautiful daughter.

They soon came to a number of small cabins built on the banks of the river, and into one of these they entered, the beaver bidding the Osage first wipe his feet upon the mat which lay beside the door. The Osage found the floor of the cabin strewed with the newly-gathered branches of the box and fir. The roof and walls were white as the robe which our white brother folds around his breast, and a cool, refres.h.i.+ng air entered the building through the windows which opened on the river.

Around the room--which was four steps of a long-legged man each way--were hung skins, and skulls, and scalps of otters--trophies of the wars which the beavers had waged with that nation. In one corner of the room sat a beaver-woman, combing the heads of some little beavers, whose ears she boxed very soundly when they would not lie still. The warrior whispered the Osage that she was his second wife, and was very apt to be cross when there was work to be done, which prevented her from going to see her neighbours. Those whose heads she was combing were her children, he said, and she who had made them rub their noses against each other and be friends was his eldest daughter.

Then calling aloud, "Wife," said he, "what have you to eat? The stranger is undoubtedly hungry; see, he is pale, his eye has no fire, and his step is like that of a moose."

Without replying to him, for it was a sulky day with her, she called aloud, and a dirty-looking beaver entered. "Go," said she, "and fetch the stranger something to eat."

With that the beaver-girl pa.s.sed through a small door into another room, from which she soon returned, bringing some large pieces of willow-bark, which she laid at the feet of the warrior and his guest. While the warrior-beaver was chewing the willow, and the Osage was pretending to do so, they fell to talking over many matters, particularly the wars of the Beavers with the Otters, and their frequent victories over them. He told our father by what means the beavers felled large trees, and moved them to the places where they wished to make dams; how they raised to an erect position the poles for their lodges, and how they plastered them so as to keep out rain. Then he spoke of their employments when they had buried the hatchet; of the peace, and happiness, and tranquillity, they enjoyed when, gathered into companies, they rested from their labours, and pa.s.sed their time in talking, and feasting, and bathing, and playing the game of bones, and making love. All the while the young beaver-maiden sat with her eyes fixed upon the son of the snail, at every pause moving a little nearer, till at length she was at his side with her fore-paw upon his arm; a minute more and she had placed it around his neck, and was rubbing her soft furry cheek against his. Our ancestor, on his part, betrayed no disinclination to receive her caresses, but returned them with equal ardour. The old beaver, seeing what was going on, turned his back upon them, and suffered them to be as kind to each other as they pleased.

At last, turning quickly round, while the maiden, suspecting what was coming and pretending to be abashed, ran behind her mother, said he, "To end the foolery, what say you, son of the snail, to marrying my daughter? She is well brought up, and is the moat industrious girl in the village. She will flap more wall with her tail in a day than any maiden in the nation; she will gnaw down a larger tree betwixt the rising of the sun and the coming of the shadows than many a smart beaver of the other s.e.x. As for her wit, try her at the game of the dish, and see who gets up master; and for cleanliness, look at her petticoat."

Our father answered that he did not doubt that she was industrious and cleanly, able to gnaw down a very large tree, and to use her tail to very good purpose; that he loved her much, and wished to make her the mother of his children. And thereupon the bargain was concluded.

That day the beaver-maiden became the wife of the Osage, and all the nation of beavers a.s.sembled to eat the marriage-feast. The Osage went out and killed a l.u.s.ty racc.o.o.n, upon which he fed; but his wife and all her kindred fed upon the tender bark of the young poplar and alder. A peace was made between the two nations, which was to last for ever, but it was broken a long tune ago; and they now take each other's scalps whenever they can. The next day, the Osage and his wife departed for the former haunts of the snail, where in a few moons they arrived, and where their descendants have dwelt to this day.

Brothers, if this is a lie, blame not me, but our fathers and mothers who told it to us. I have done.

The Author may perhaps be suspected of intending this as a satire upon Buffon's highly _imaginative_ description of the habits of the Beaver.

Let the reader compare it with that description, and he will be able to judge for himself. If the tale is a lie, he has only to say in the language of the Indian--"Blame not me." Several more recent travellers bear witness, however, to the genuineness of the Tradition.

THE CHOICE OF A G.o.d.

After a pause of the usual length, Miacomet, an aged Narragansett, rose and said:

"Brother, I am a Narragansett, and my father and mother were Narragansetts. I live a journey of more than two moons towards the rising sun. But you will say the name of the Narragansetts is unknown to you, and will ask what deeds have they done. Are they warlike? can they fast long, travel far, and bear the tortures of the flame, without betraying tears and groans? The tribes of the north, and the south, and the west, of the Great River, and the Broad Lake, and the Spirit's Backbone, will say this, for they know us not. Our hunting-fields lie far apart, and our war-paths are over different forests. But it is only to those who live a far way off, who have never heard the roaring of the Great Lake in the time of storms, or killed the fish, whose body is a mountain, that the Narragansetts are unknown. Our neighbours know us well, brother; they have both seen and felt us. Come to our cabins, brothers, and come in what guise you like. If you come in peace, you shall be welcome, and we will make a feast for you. We will hunt the nimble deer with you, and show you where the mighty eagle roosts, and where the fish with s.h.i.+ning scales abides. If you come painted, your war-pipe filled, your bow bent, your arrow sharp and barbed, your heart strong, and your cry loud, we too will paint ourselves; we will smoke our pipe of war, we will bend our bow, make sharp our arrows, and stout our hearts, and will cry our war-cry, till the startled heron shall wing his way from the swamps to his hiding-place among the hills, and the deer shall escape from the open s.p.a.ce to the tangled covert. Our shouts shall be as loud as the roar of the Lake of Whales in the time of the Herring-Moon.

"Brother, we have with us a chief, whose face is of the colour of the plucked pigeon; he listens. He has crossed the great waters in the season of storms, he has forded the shallow streams and swum the deeper, and threaded the dreary woods, and faced unaccustomed dangers, that he may learn our traditions, our customs, our laws, and our opinions of the Great Spirit. He has come, if he does not lie, from a far country, a land very beautiful to the eye, a land of many villages and much people, but who are not so wise and warlike as we are. He has left his father and mother, and wife and children, and the bones and burial-place of his ancestors, to listen to the wisdom of the Indians, and to be instructed by them in the history of their tribes.

Shall we enlighten him? Shall we teach him the things which we know, that be may go back to his countrymen prepared to repeat to them the words of wisdom which fell from our lips; that, when he returns to his own fire-place, he may make the young doves coo, and the eyes of then mother glisten, with the tales he has heard in the camp of the Red Man.

"Brother, the Narragansetts have a tradition which I will repeat before you. It has come down to us from old days, and we believe it, for it was told us by our fathers, who were men of truth. I know not how long since the thing was done; I cannot number the rings upon the oak since the day of its date, nor the moons that have been born and have died. But I know it was done, and done in the lands which my tribe now occupy. Listen.

"The Narragansetts are the oldest people in the world; older than the Pequods; older than the Iroquois. _When_ they were created, no one knows, save the Great Spirit--_how,_ ask not me, for I do not know.

We were when we first knew we were; we lived when we first found we had breath, further than that I cannot tell you. How should I know more? If a man, while he was wrapped in a deep sleep, should be carried to a far land which he had never seen before, would he know where he was when he waked? or could he tell how he came thither? no, nor can I tell you the manner of the creation of man, or name, with certainty, his creator.

"But this we do know--when we are born, we are helpless children. The Narragansetts once were such. Even when they had grown to the stature of men, their warriors were nothing but big boys; their chiefs and councillors no wiser than old women. There was a time when they had no bow and arrow, no hatchet, no canoe, no cabin, no corn. They were ignorant and foolish as white men. They would have mistaken the track of the moose for that of a wild cat; they would have thought the tread of a land-tortoise the trail of the grey snake; they would have killed an owl and feasted upon it, for a heath-hen. They had nothing but feet to walk with, hands to catch fish with, and tongues which loved best to utter wicked lies and speak foolish words. They were only fit to serve bad spirits, the men of the Spirit of Evil, whom they called Hobbamock(1).

And they did serve him, night and day, but he would give them very little for their wors.h.i.+p, treating them worse than he treated any tribe upon the borders of the Great Lake. The Pequods killed more whales; the people of Nope raised more _poke_. When a Narragansett caught a deer, it was always a sick one, and had no fat upon it, and when he speared a fish, it had only a backbone. He was, in truth, a very ungrateful master."

There was among the Narragansetts a very wise conjuror(2) or priest, whose name was Sasasquit. He was the priest of the Good Spirit; he was a good man; much better than the rest of the tribe, for he never served the Evil Spirit. He said to the Narragansetts, "If you were better men, if you served my master, the Good Spirit, as you do the Evil Spirit, he would give you abundance of good things. You would not, as you do now, catch fish with heads as big as mine, and bodies no bigger than my arm, but would take fat fish, and would take them with little trouble. You would snare birds more easily, and, perhaps, have other gifts which now you do not dream of."

The Sachem said to the people, "Sasasquit talks well, but talking well is the business of a priest. Let us say to him, that we will take for our G.o.d the Spirit which gives us the best gifts, and bid him tell his master so."

The Narragansetts liked well what the Sachem had said, and went in a body to Sasasquit. "We have come," said they, "to offer our services and wors.h.i.+p to the Great Spirit, if he will pay us better for our wors.h.i.+p than Hobbamock has done."

Sasasquit replied, "It is not for the worth of your wors.h.i.+p, that the Great Spirit will grant your wish, but because he loves to vex the Evil Spirit. Come to-morrow to the Great Hill, when the sun first comes out of the water, and you shall see whose G.o.d is the most generous--yours, or mine."

Early the next day the tribe all gathered to the place where Sasasquit had agreed to meet them. With them came Poca.s.set, the priest of the Evil Spirit, wearing his robes of magic, a bear's-skin, curiously painted with figures of beasts, and birds, and fishes, and the skin of a dog's head drawn over his own, with the teeth standing out. When all the tribe had a.s.sembled, Sasasquit asked the Sachem, Miantinomo, to repeat what he had before said, that the Narragansetts would serve the Spirit that should make them the greatest and best gifts. Then Miantinomo repeated what he had before said, and all the Indians promised as he had promised. Poca.s.set also made them a very long speech. I have forgotten what he said, only I know he said, that "his master would have the best of the bargain yet."

Then Sasasquit climbed up a great tree, till he came to the topmost bough, when he commenced calling upon the Great Spirit. And this was the song he sung: