Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children Part 8

Then she looked into the face of his brother, and said, "You shall be named the Dark One."

The island became a beautiful land.

The twin brother Light One grew up happy, loving, peaceful, and kind. He wanted to make the new land the most beautiful place in which to live.

The twin brother Dark One grew up sullen, quarrelsome, hateful, and unkind. He tried to make the land the worst place in which to live.

From his mother's beautiful face the Light One made the sun. He set it in the eastern sky, that it might s.h.i.+ne forever. Then the Dark One put darkness in the west to drive the sun from the sky.

The Light One gave his mother's body to the earth, the Great Mother from which springs all life. He made great mountains, and covered them with forests from which beautiful rivers ran. The Dark One threw down the mountains, gnarled the forests, and bent the rivers which his brother had made.

Every beautiful thing which the good brother Light One made, the bad brother Dark One tried to destroy and ruin.

And because the first-born of earth were the twin spirits, the Good Mind and the Evil Mind, there has been a good and bad spirit born into every boy and girl who has come into the world since.

So the Indians say!

HOW A BOY WAS CURED OF BOASTING

There was once an Indian boy, who thought he knew more and could do more than anyone else. He was so proud of himself that he walked around like a great chief, who wears a war s.h.i.+rt with many scalp locks on it.

The other Indian boys and girls called him Spread Feather, because he strutted about like a big turkey or a peac.o.c.k.

One day, Spread Feather was playing ball with the other boys. Not once had he failed to drive or catch the ball with his crosse stick. Twice he had thrown the ball with such force that some one had been hurt.

Spread Feather grew more and more pleased with himself, as he played. He began to use tricks and to talk very large.

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"No one can play ball as I," he said. "I can catch the swiftest ball that can be thrown. I can throw the ball to the sky. I can run faster than the deer."

Spread Feather boasted so loudly that a rabbit heard him. The rabbit came out of the bushes and sat up on his hind legs. He watched Spread Feather play, and listened to his boasting.

Soon a strange boy was standing where the rabbit had sat.

The stranger said to Spread Feather, "I would like to play ball with you."

"Come on, then!" taunted the boastful boy. "Spread Feather will show the strange ball player how to catch a ball."

They began to play.

The stranger could run like a deer. His b.a.l.l.s were so swift and so curved that Spread Feather could not see them. He could not catch one.

They seemed to come from the sky.

At last one ball hit Spread Feather on the mouth. He fell to the ground.

His face was red with anger, and his lips were red with blood.

He sprang to his feet and shouted to the stranger, "Though I do not like the taste of your ball, yet I can throw you."

"Very well, then," said the stranger. "We will have a game of 'Catch as catch can.'" This is the Indian name for a game of wrestling.

Spread Feather set his feet very hard on the ground.

"My legs are as strong as the legs of a bear," he boasted.

They began to wrestle. Soon Spread Feather's arms fell at his sides. He panted for air. He had no breath and no strength.

The stranger picked Spread Feather up and tossed him over his head like a ball. The boy fell without a word.

When Spread Feather opened his eyes, a rabbit sprang into the bushes.

All night, Spread Feather lay and thought, and thought. He was too weak and too sore to go back to his wigwam. Nor was he eager to meet the other boys.

At sunrise a rabbit hopped near. The rabbit slyly suggested that he might like to play another game of ball.

The boy sat up and said to the rabbit, "Spread Feather is no more. He no longer struts like a turkey. He has nothing to say. He will win a new name. It will not be Spread Feather."

WHY THE CUCKOO IS SO LAZY

The land was lean and hungry. The Old Man of the North Lodge had breathed upon the valley. His breath had frozen the corn, and there was no bread for the people.

The Indian hunters took to the chase. They followed every track of deer or rabbit. If their arrows brought them meat, they threw it over their shoulders and ran to the village, that the hungry women and children might eat.

But one Indian remained in his wigwam. He sat by the fire with his wife and child, and waited for the hunters to bring game.

This man refused to go on the hunt. He was lazy. All day he sat by the fire and smoked his pipe. Once in a while, he would stir the water in the kettle which he kept boiling for the meat that he hoped the hunters might bring. Whenever the child, his little son, begged him for food, he would say, "It isn't done yet."

At last the little Indian boy grew so sick and faint for want of food that he cried aloud.

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The lazy Indian father was angry. He seized the pudding stick, and struck the child to the ground. Instantly a bird flew up and perched on the pole over the fire, from which the kettle hung.

"Now it's done!" said the bird solemnly, for it did not seem to have a light heart like other birds.

Now, strange as it may seem this father was no longer cruel and lazy.

His lazy spirit seemed to have gone. He wanted to go at once on the chase, and hunt food for his wife and little boy.

"To-night you shall have deer meat to eat," he said, as he spread a soft skin by the fire, for the boy to lie on. Then he turned to place the child on the skin,--but no boy was there. He had no son. Only that strange bird perched, joyless and alone, over the fire, on the pole from which the kettle hung.