Myths and Legends of Our Own Land Part 27

At length the people could endure their company no longer, and taking down their lodges they left Wallen's Ridge and wandered far away until they came to a valley where no foot had left its impress, and there they besought the Great Spirit to forgive the wrong their medicine-man had done, and to free them from the terrible spirits that had been living among them. The prayer was granted, and the lodges stood for many years in a safe and happy valley.

THE SKY WALKER OF HURON

Here is the myth of Endymion and Diana, as told on the sh.o.r.es of Saginaw Bay, in Michigan, by Indians who never heard of Greeks. Cloud Catcher, a handsome youth of the Ojibways, offended his family by refusing to fast during the ceremony of his coming of age, and was put out of the paternal wigwam. It was so fine a night that the sky served him as well as a roof, and he had a boy's confidence in his ability to make a living, and something of fame and fortune, maybe. He dropped upon a tuft of moss to plan for his future, and drowsily noted the rising of the moon, in which he seemed to see a face. On awaking he found that it was not day, yet the darkness was half dispelled by light that rayed from a figure near him--the form of a lovely woman.

"Cloud Catcher, I have come for you," she said. And as she turned away he felt impelled to rise and follow. But, instead of walking, she began to move into the air with the flight of an eagle, and, endowed with a new power, he too ascended beside her. The earth was dim and vast below, stars blazed as they drew near them, yet the radiance of the woman seemed to dull their glory. Presently they pa.s.sed through a gate of clouds and stood on a beautiful plain, with crystal ponds and brooks watering n.o.ble trees and leagues of flowery meadow; birds of brightest colors darted here and there, singing like flutes; the very stones were agate, jasper, and chalcedony. An immense lodge stood on the plain, and within were embroideries and ornaments, couches of rich furs, pipes and arms cut from jasper and tipped with silver. While the young man was gazing around him with delight, the brother of his guide appeared and reproved her, advising her to send the young man back to earth at once, but, as she flatly refused to do so, he gave a pipe and bow and arrows to Cloud Catcher, as a token of his consent to their marriage, and wished them happiness, which, in fact, they had.

This brother, who was commanding, tall, and so dazzling in his gold and silver ornaments that one could hardly look upon him, was abroad all day, while his sister was absent for a part of the night. He permitted Cloud Catcher to go with him on one of his daily walks, and as they crossed the lovely Sky Land they glanced down through open valley bottoms on the green earth below. The rapid pace they struck gave to Cloud Catcher an appet.i.te and he asked if there were no game. "Patience," counselled his companion. On arriving at a spot where a large hole had been broken through the sky they reclined on mats, and the tall man loosing one of his silver ornaments flung it into a group of children playing before a lodge. One of the little ones fell and was carried within, amid lamentations. Then the villagers left their sports and labors and looked up at the sky. The tall man cried, in a voice of thunder, "Offer a sacrifice and the child shall be well again." A white dog was killed, roasted, and in a twinkling it shot up to the feet of Cloud Catcher, who, being empty, attacked it voraciously.

Many such walks and feasts came after, and the sights of earth and taste of meat filled the mortal with a longing to see his people again. He told his wife that he wanted to go back. She consented, after a time, saying, "Since you are better pleased with the cares, the ills, the labor, and the poverty of the world than with the comfort and abundance of Sky Land, you may return; but remember you are still my husband, and beware how you venture to take an earthly maiden for a wife."

She arose lightly, clasped Cloud Catcher by the wrist, and began to move with him through the air. The motion lulled him and he fell asleep, waking at the door of his father's lodge. His relatives gathered and gave him welcome, and he learned that he had been in the sky for a year. He took the privations of a hunter's and warrior's life less kindly than he thought to, and after a time he enlivened its monotony by taking to wife a bright-eyed girl of his tribe. In four days she was dead. The lesson was unheeded and he married again. Shortly after, he stepped from his lodge one evening and never came back. The woods were filled with a strange radiance on that night, and it is a.s.serted that Cloud Catcher was taken back to the lodge of the Sun and Moon, and is now content to live in heaven.

THE COFFIN OF SNAKES

No one knew how it was that Lizon gained the love of Julienne, at L'Anse Creuse (near Detroit), for she was a girl of sweet and pious disposition, the daughter of a G.o.d-fearing farmer, while Lizon was a dark, ill-favored wretch, who had come among the people n.o.body knew whence, and lived on the profits of a tap-room where the vilest liquor was sold, and where gaming, fighting, and carousing were of nightly occurrence. Perhaps they were right in saying that it was witchcraft. He impudently laid siege to her heart, and when she showed signs of yielding he told her and her friends that he had no intention of marrying her, because he did not believe in religion.

Yet Julienne deserted her comfortable home and went to live with this disreputable scamp in his disreputable tavern, to the scandal of the community, and especially of the priest, who found Lizon's power for evil greater than his own for good, for as the tavern gained in hangers-on the church lost wors.h.i.+ppers. One Sunday morning Julienne surprised the people by appearing in church and publicly asking pardon for her wrong-doing. It was the first time she had appeared there since her flight, and she was as one who had roused from a trance or fever-sleep. Her father gladly took her home again, and all went well until New-Year's eve, when the young men called d'Ignolee made the rounds of the settlement to sing and beg meat for the poor--a custom descended from the Druids. They came to the house of Julienne's father and received his welcome and his goods, but their song was interrupted by a cry of distress--Lizon was among the maskers, and Julienne was gone. A crowd of villagers ran to the cabaret and rescued the girl from the room into which the fellow had thrust her, but it was too late--she had lost her reason. Cursing and striking and blaspheming, Lizon was at last confronted by the priest, who told him he had gone too far; that he had been a plague to the people and an enemy to the church. He then p.r.o.nounced against him the edict of excommunication, and told him that even in his grave he should not rest; that the church, abandoned by so many victims of his wiles and tyrannies, should be swept away.

The priest left the place forthwith, and the morals of the village fell lower and lower. Everything was against it, too. Blight and storm and insect pest ravaged the fields and orchards, as if nature had engaged to make an expression of the iniquity of the place. Suddenly death came upon Lizon. A pit was dug near his tavern and he was placed in a coffin, but as the box was lowered it was felt to grow lighter, while there poured from it a swarm of fat and filthy snakes. The fog that overspread the earth that morning seemed to blow by in human forms, the grave rolled like a wave after it had been covered, and after darkness fell a blue will-o'-the-wisp danced over it. A storm set in, heaping the billows on sh.o.r.e until the church was undermined, and with a crash it fell into the seething flood. But the curse had pa.s.sed, and when a new chapel was built the old evils had deserted L'Anse Crease.

MACKINACK

Not only was Mackinack the birthplace of Hiawatha: it was the home of G.o.d himself--Gitchi Manitou, or Mitchi Manitou--who placed there an Indian Adam and Eve to watch and cultivate his gardens. He also made the beaver, that his children might eat, and they acknowledged his goodness in oblations. Bounteous sacrifices insured entrance after death to the happy hunting-grounds beyond the Rocky Mountains. Those who had failed in these offerings were compelled to wander about the Great Lakes, shelterless, and watched by unsleeping giants who were ten times the stature of mortals.

These giants still exist, but in the form of conical rocks, one of which-called Sugar-Loaf, or Manitou's Wigwam--is ninety feet high. A cave in this obelisk is pointed out as Manitou's abiding-place, and it was believed that every other spire in the group had its wraith, whence has come the name of the island--Michillimackinack (place of great dancing spirits). Arch Rock is the place that Manitou built to reach his home from Sunrise Land the better. There were many such monuments of divinities in the north. They are met with all about the lakes and in the wooded wilderness, the most striking one being the magnificent spire of basalt in the Black Hills region of Wyoming. It is known as Devil's Tower, or Mateo's Tepee, and by the red men is held to be the wigwam of a were-animal that can become man at pleasure. This singular rock towers above the Belle Fourche River to a height of eight hundred feet.

Deep beneath Mackinack was a stately and beautiful cavern hall where spirits had their revels. An Indian who got leave to quit his body saw it in company with one of the spirits, and spread glowing reports of its beauties when he had clothed himself in flesh again. When Adam and Eve died they, too, became spirits and continued to watch the home of Manitou.

Now, there is another version of this tradition which gives the, original name of the island as Moschenemacenung, meaning "great turtle." The French missionaries and traders, finding the word something too large a mouthful, softened it to Michillimackinack, and, when the English came, three syllables served them as well as a hundred, so Mackinack it is to this day. Manitou, having made a turtle from a drop of his own sweat, sent it to the bottom of Lake Huron, whence it brought a mouthful of mud, and from this Mackinack was created. As a reward for his service the turtle was allowed to sleep there in the sun forever.

Yet another version has it that the Great Spirit plucked a sand-grain from the primeval ocean, set it floating on those waters, and tended it until it grew so large that a young wolf, running constantly, died of old age before reaching its limits. The sand became the earth. Prophecy has warned the Winnebagoes that Manibozho (Michabo or Hiawatha) shall smite by pestilence at the end of their thirteenth generation. Ten are gone.

All shall perish but one pure pair, who will people the recreated world.

Manibozho, or Minnebojou, is called a "culture myth," but the Indians have faith in him. They say that he lies asleep on the north sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior, beneath the "hill of four k.n.o.bs," known as the Sleeping Giant. There offerings are made to him, and it was a hope of his speedy rising that started the Messiah craze in the West in 1890.

LAKE SUPERIOR WATER G.o.dS

There were many water G.o.ds about Lake Superior to whom the Indians paid homage, casting implements, ornaments, and tobacco into the water whenever they pa.s.sed a spot where one of these manitous sat enthroned. At Thunder Cape, on the north sh.o.r.e, lies Manibozho, and in the pillared recess of La Chapelle, among the Pictured Rocks, dwelt powerful rulers of the storm to whose mercy the red men commended themselves with quaint rites whenever they were to set forth on a voyage over the great unsalted sea. At Le Grand Portal were hidden a horde of mischievous imps, among whose pranks was the repet.i.tion of every word spoken by the traveller as he rested on his oars beneath this mighty arch. The Chippewas worked the copper mines at Keweenaw Point before the white race had learned of a Western land, but they did so timidly, for they believed that a demon would visit with injury or death the rash mortal who should presume to pillage his treasure, unless he had first bestowed gifts upon him. Even then they went ash.o.r.e with fear, lighted fires around a surface of native copper, hacked off a few pounds of the softened metal, and ran to their canoes without looking behind them.

There was another bad manitou at the mouth of Superior Bay, where conflicting currents make a pother of waters. This spirit sat on the bottom of the lake, gazing upward, and if any boatman ventured to cross his domain without dropping a pipe or beads or hatchet into it, woe betide him, for his boat would be caught in a current and smashed against a rocky sh.o.r.e. Perhaps the most vexatious G.o.d was he who ruled the Floating Islands. These islands were beautiful with trees and flowers, metal shone and crystals sparkled on their ledges, sweet fruits grew in plenty, and song-birds flitted over them. In wonder and delight the hunter would speed toward them in his canoe, but as he neared their turfy banks the jealous manitou, who kept these fairy lands for his own pleasure, would throw down a fog and shut them out of sight. Never could the hunter set foot on them, no matter how long he kept up his search.

THE WITCH OF PICTURED ROCKS

On the Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior dwelt an Ojibway woman, a widow, who was cared for by a relative. This relative was a hunter, the husband of an agreeable wife, the father of two bright children. Being of a mean and jealous nature, the widow begrudged every kindness that the hunter showed to his wife--the skins he brought for her clothing, the moose's lip or other dainty that he saved for her; and one day, in a pretence of fine good-nature, the old woman offered to give the younger a swing in a vine pendent from a tree that overhung the lake.

The wife accepted, and, seating herself on the vine, was swayed to and fro, catching her breath, yet laughing as she swept out over the water.

When the momentum was greatest the old woman cut the stem. A splash was heard--then all was silent. Returning to the lodge, the hag disguised herself in a dress of the missing woman, and sitting in a shadow, pretended to nurse the infant of the household. The hunter, returning, was a little surprised that his wife should keep her face from him, and more surprised that the old woman did not appear for her share of the food that he had brought; but after their meal he took his little ones to the lake, to enjoy the evening breeze, when the elder burst into tears, declaring that the woman in the lodge was not his mother, and that he feared his own mother was dead or lost.

The hunter hurled his spear into the earth and prayed that, if his wife were dead, her body might be found, so he could mourn over it and give it burial. Instantly a bolt of lightning came from a pa.s.sing cloud and shot into the lake, while the thunder-peal that followed shook the stones he stood on. It also disturbed the water and presently something was seen rising through it. The man stepped into a thicket and watched. In a few moments a gull arose from the lake and flew to the spot where the children were seated. Around its body was a leather belt, embroidered with beads and quills, which the hunter recognized, and, advancing softly, he caught the bird--that changed at once into the missing woman.

The family set forth toward home, and as they entered the lodge the witch--for such she was--looked up, with a start, then uttered a cry of despair. Bending low, she moved her arms in both imprecation and appeal.

A moment later a black, ungainly bird flew from the wigwam and pa.s.sed from sight among the trees. The witch never came back to plague them.

THE ORIGIN OF WHITE-FISH

An Indian who lived far in the north was so devoted to the chase that he was never at home for the whole of a day, to the sorrow of his two boys, who liked nothing so much as to sport with him and to be allowed to practise with his weapons. Their mother told them that on no account were they to speak to him of the young man who visited the lodge while their father was away, and it was not until they were well grown and knew what the duty of wives should be that they resolved to disobey her. The hunter struck the woman dead when he learned of her perfidy. So greatly did her spirit trouble them, however, that they could no longer abide in their old home in peace and comfort, and they left the country and journeyed southward until they came to the Sault Sainte Marie.

As they stood beside the falls a head came rolling toward them on the earth--the head of the dead woman. At that moment, too, a crane was seen riding on the surface of the water, whirling about in its strongest eddies, and when one of the boys called to it, "O Grandfather, we are persecuted by a spirit; take us across the falls," the crane flew to them. "Cling to my back and do not touch my head," it said to them, and landed them safely on the farther sh.o.r.e.

But now the head screamed, "Come, grandfather, and carry me over, for I have lost my children and am sorely distressed," and the bird flew to her likewise. "Be careful not to touch my head," it said. The head promised obedience, but succ.u.mbed to curiosity when half-way over and touched the bird's head to see what was the matter with him. With a lurch the crane flung off his burden and it fell into the rapids. As it swept down, b.u.mping against the rocks, the brains were pounded out and strewn over the water. "You were useless in life," cried the crane. "You shall not be so in death. Become fis.h.!.+" And the bits of brain changed to roe that presently hatched to a delicate white fish, the flesh whereof is esteemed by Indians of the lakes, and white men, likewise. The family pitched a lodge near the spot and took the crane as their totem or name-mark. Many of their descendants bear it to this day.

THE SPIRIT OF CLOUDY

Among the lumbermen of Alger, Michigan, was William Cloud, an Indian, usually called Cloudy, who was much employed on a chute a mile and a half out of the village. The rains were heavy one spring, and a large raft of logs had been floated down to the chute, where they were held back by a gate until it was time to send them through in a ma.s.s. When the creek had reached its maximum height the foreman gave word to the log-drivers to lower the gate and let the timber down. This order came on a chilly April night, and, as it was pitchy dark and rain was falling in sheets, the lumbermen agreed to draw cuts to decide which of them should venture out and start the logs. Cloudy drew the fatal slip. He was a quiet fellow, and without a word he opened the door, bent against the storm, and pa.s.sed into the darkness. An hour went by, and the men in the cabin laughed as they described the probable appearance of their comrade when he should return, soaked through and through, and they wondered if he was waiting in some shelter beside the path for the middle of the night to pa.s.s, for the Indians believed that an evil spirit left the stream every night and was abroad until that hour.

As time lengthened the jest and talk subsided and a moody silence supervened. At length one of the number resolved to sally out and see if any mishap had fallen to the Indian. He was joined by three others, and the party repaired to the creek. Above the chute it was seen that the gate--which was released by the withdrawal of iron pins and sank of its own weight-had not quite settled into place, and by the light of a lantern held near the surface of the rus.h.i.+ng current an obstruction could be dimly seen. The gate was slightly raised and the object drawn up with pike-poles. It was the mangled body of Cloudy. He was buried beside the creek; but the camp was soon abandoned and the chute is in decay, for between the hours of ten and twelve each night the wraith of the Indian, accompanied by the bad spirit of the stream, ranges through the wood, his form s.h.i.+ning blue in the gloom, his groans sounding above the swish and lap of the waters.

THE SUN FIRE AT SAULT SAINTE MARIE

Father Marquette reached Sault Sainte Marie, in company with Greysolon Du Lhut, in August, 1670, and was received in a manner friendly enough, but the Chippewas warned him to turn back from that point, for the Ojibways beyond were notoriously hostile to Europeans, their chief--White Otter--having taken it on himself to revenge, by war, his father's desertion of his mother. His father was a Frenchman. Inspired by his mission, and full of the enthusiasm of youth and of the faith that had led him safely through a host of dangers and troubles, Marquette refused to change his plans, and even ventured the a.s.sertion that he could tame the haughty Otter and bring him to the cross. At dawn he and his doughty henchman set off in a war-canoe, but, on arriving in White Otter's camp and speaking their errand, they were seized and bound, to await death on the morrow. The wife of the chief spoke, out of the kindness of her heart, and asked mercy for the white men. To no avail. The brute struck her to the ground. That night his daughter, Wanena, who had seen Du Lhut at the trading post and had felt the stir of a generous sentiment toward him, appeared before the prisoners when sleep was heaviest in the camp, cut their bonds, led them by an obscure path to the river, where she enjoined them to enter a canoe, and guided the boat to the Holy Isle.

This was where the Ojibways came to lay offerings before the image of Manitou, whose home was there believed to be. There the friendly red men would be sure to find and rescue them, she thought, and after a few hours of sleep she led them into a secluded glen where stood the figure rudely carved from a pine trunk, six feet high, and tricked with gewgaws. As they stood there, stealthy steps were heard, and before they could conceal themselves White Otter and eight of his men were upon them. Du Lhut grasped a club from among the weapons that--with other offerings--strewed the earth at the statue's feet and prepared to sell his life dearly. The priest drew forth his crucifix and prayed. The girl dropped to the ground, drew her blanket over her head, and began to sing her death-song.

"So the black-coat and the woman-stealer have come to die before the Indian's G.o.d?" sneered the chief.

"If it be G.o.d's will, we will die defying your G.o.d and you," replied Marquette. "Yet we fear not death, and if G.o.d willed he could deliver us as easily as he could destroy that worthless image." He spoke in an undertone to Du Lhut, and continued, confidently, "challenge your G.o.d to withstand mine. I shall pray my G.o.d to send his fire from the sky and burn this thing. If he does so will you set us free and become a Christian?"