Books: The Algonquin Legends of New England

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THE ALGONQUIN LEGENDS OF NEW ENGLAND

OR

_Myths and Folk Lore of the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot
Tribes_

BY CHARLES G. LELAND

[Frontispiece Illustration: MIK UM WESS THE INDIAN PUCK, OR ROBIN
GOOD-FELLOW.

From a scraping on birch bark by Tomak Josephs, Indian Governor at
Peter Dona's Point, Maine. The Mik um wees always wears a red cap like
the Norse Goblin.]

PREFACE.

When I began, in the summer of 1882, to collect among the Passamaquoddy
Indians at Campobello, New Brunswick, their traditions and folk-lore, I
expected to find very little indeed. These Indians, few in number,
surrounded by white people, and thoroughly converted to Roman
Catholicism, promised but scanty remains of heathenism. What was my
amazement, however, at discovering, day by day, that there existed
among them, entirely by oral tradition, a far grander mythology than
that which has been made known to us by either the Chippewa or Iroquois
Hiawatha Legends, and that this was illustrated by an incredible number
of tales. I soon ascertained that these were very ancient. The old
people declared that they had heard from their progenitors that all of
these stories were once sung; that they themselves remembered when many
of them were poems. This was fully proved by discovering manifest
traces of poetry in many, and finally by receiving a long Micmac tale
which had been sung by an Indian. I found that all the relaters of this
lore were positive as to the antiquity of the narratives, and
distinguished accurately between what was or was not pre-Columbian. In
fact, I came in time to the opinion that the original stock of all the
Algonquin myths, and perhaps of many more, still existed, not far away
in the West, but at our very doors; that is to say, in Maine and New
Brunswick. It is at least certain, as the reader may convince himself,
that these Wabanaki, or Northeastern Algonquin, legends give, with few
exceptions, in full and coherently, many tales which have only reached
us in a broken, imperfect form, from other sources.

This work, then, contains a collection of the myths, legends, and
folk-lore of the principal Wabanaki, or Northeastern Algonquin, Indians;
that is to say, of the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots of Maine, and of
the Micmacs of New Brunswick. All of this material was gathered
directly from Indian narrators, the greater part by myself, the rest by
a few friends; in fact, I can give the name of the aboriginal authority
for every tale except one. As my chief object has been simply to
collect and preserve valuable material, I have said little of the
labors of such critical writers as Brinton, Hale, Trumbull, Powers,
Morgan, Bancroft, and the many more who have so ably studied and set
forth red Indian ethnology. If I have rarely ventured on their field,
it is because I believe that when the Indian shall have passed away
there will come far better ethnologists than I am, who will be much
more obliged to me for collecting raw material than for cooking it.

Two or three subjects have, it is true, tempted me into occasional
commenting. The manifest, I may say the undeniable, affinity between
the myths and legends of the Northeastern Indians and those of the
Eskimo could hardly be passed over, nor at the same time the identity
of the latter and of the Shaman religion with those of the Finns,
Laplanders, and Samoyedes. I believe that I have contributed material
not devoid of value to those who are interested in the study of the
relations of the aborigines of America with the Mongoloid races of the
Old World. This is a subject which has been very little studied through
the relations of these Wabanaki with the Eskimo.

A far more hazardous venture has been the indicating points of
similarity between the myths or tales of the Algonquins and those of
the Norsemen, as set forth in the Eddas, the Sagas, and popular tales
of Scandinavia. When we, however, remember that the Eskimo once ranged
as far south as Massachusetts, that they did not reach Greenland till
the fourteenth century, that they had for three centuries intimate
relations with Scandinavians, that they were very fond of legends, and
that the Wabanaki even now mingle with them, the marvel would be that
the Norsemen had not left among them traces of their tales or of their
religion. But I do not say that this was positively the case; I simply
set forth in this book a great number of curious coincidences, from
which others may draw their own conclusions. I confess that I cannot
account for these resemblances save by the so-called "historical
theory" of direct transmission; but if any one can otherwise explain
them I should welcome the solution of what still seems to be, in many
respects, a problem.

I am, in fact, of the opinion that what is given in this work confirms
what was conjectured by David Crantz, and which is thus expressed in
his History of Greenland (London, 1767): "If we read the accounts which
have been given of the most northerly American Indians and Asiatic
Tartars, we find a pretty great resemblance between their manner of
life, morals, usages, and notions and what has been said in this book
of the Greenlanders, only with this difference: that the farther the
savage nations wandered towards the North, the fewer they retained of
their ancient conceptions and customs. As for the Greenlanders, if it
be true, as is supposed, that a remnant of the old Norway Christians
incorporated themselves and became one people with them, the
Greenlanders may thence have heard and adopted some of their notions,
which they may have new-modeled in the coarse mould of their own
brain."

Among those who have greatly aided me in preparing this work I deem it
to be a duty to mention MISS ABBY ALGER, of Boston, to whom it is
cordially dedicated; the REV. SILAS T. RAND, of Hantsport, Nova Scotia,
who lent me a manuscript collection of eighty-five Micmac tales, and
communicated to me, with zealous kindness, much information by letter;
and MRS. W. WALLACE BROWN, of Calais, Maine. It was through this lady
that I derived a great proportion of the most curious folk-lore of the
Passamaquoddies, especially such parts as coincided with the Edda. With
these I would include MR. E. JACK, of Fredericton, New Brunswick. When
it is remembered that there are only forty-two of the Hiawatha Legends
of Schoolcraft, out of which five books have been made by other
authors, and that I have collected more than two hundred, it will be
seen how these friends must have worked to aid me.

AUTHORITIES.

The authorities consulted in writing this work were as follows:--

PERSONS.

Tomah Josephs, Passamaquoddy, Indian Governor at Peter Dana's Point,
Maine.

The Rev. Silas T. Rand, Baptist Missionary among the Micmac Indians at
Hantsport, Nova Scotia. This gentleman lent me his manuscript
collection of eighty-five stories, all taken down from verbal Indian
narration. He also communicated much information in letters, etc.

John Gabriel, and his son Peter J. Gabriel, Passamaquoddy Indians, of
Point Pleasant, Maine.

Noel Josephs, of Peter Dana's Point, alias _Che gach goch_, the
Raven.

Joseph Tomah, Passamaquoddy, of Point Pleasant.

Louis Mitchell, Indian member of the Legislature of Maine. To this
gentleman I am greatly indebted for manuscripts, letters, and oral
narrations of great value.

Sapiel Selmo, keeper of the Wampum Record, formerly read every four
years, at the kindling of the great fire at Canawagha.

Marie Saksis, of Oldtown, a capital and very accurate narrator of many
traditions.

Miss Abby Alger, of Boston, by whom I was greatly aided in collecting
the Passamaquoddy stories, and who obtained several for me among the
St. Francis or Abenaki Indians.

Edward Jack, of Fredericton, for several Micmac legends and many
letters containing folk-lore, all taken down by him directly from
Indians.

Mrs. W. Wallace Brown. Mr. Brown was agent in charge of the
Passamaquoddies in Maine. To this lady, who has a great influence over
the Indians, and is much interested in their folk-lore and legends, I
am indebted for a large collection of very interesting material of the
most varied description.

Noel Neptune, Penobscot, Oldtown, Maine.

BOOKS, MANUSCRIPTS, ETC.

_The Story of Glooskap._ A curious manuscript in Indian-English,
obtained for me by Tomah Josephs.

_The Dominion Monthly_ for 1871. Containing nine Micmac legends by
Rev. S.T. Rand.

_Indian Legends._ (Manuscript of 900 pp. folio.) Collected among
the Micmac Indians, and translated by Silas T. Rand, Missionary to the
Micmacs.

_A Manuscript Collection of Passamaquoddy Legends and Folk-Lore._
By Mrs. W. Wallace Brown, of Calais, Maine. These are all given with
the greatest accuracy as narrated by Indians, some in broken
Indian-English. They embrace a very great variety of folk-lore.

_Manuscript Fairy Tales in Indian and English._ By Louis Mitchell.

_Manuscript: The Superstitions of the Passamaquoddies._ In Indian
and English.

_A History of the Passamaquoddy Indians._ Manuscript of 80 pages,
Indian and English. All of these were written for me by L. Mitchell,
M.L.

_Wampum Records._ Read for me by Sapiel Selmo, the only living
Indian who has the key to them.

David Cusick's _Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations._
Lockport, N.Y., 1848. Printed, but written in Indian-English.

_Manuscript: Six Stories of the St. Francis or Abenaki Indians._
Taken down by Miss Abby Alger.

Osgood's _Maritime Provinces._ In this work there are seven short
extracts relative to Glooskap given without reference to any book or
author.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

GLOOSKAP, THE DIVINITY.

Of Glooskap's Birth, and of his Brother Malsum, the Wolf

How Glooskap made the Elves and Fairies, and then Man of an Ash-Tree,
and last of all the Beasts, and of his Coming at the Last Day

Of the Great Deeds which Glooskap did for Men; how he named the
Animals, and who they were that formed his Family

How Win-pe, the Sorcerer, having stolen Glooskap's Family, was by him
pursued. How Glooskap for a Merry Jest cheated the Whale. Of the Song
of the Clams, and how the Whale smoked a Pipe

Of the Dreadful Deeds of the Evil Pitcher, who was both Man and Woman;
how she fell in Love with Glooskap, and, being scorned, became his
Enemy. Of the Toads and Porcupines, and the Awful Battle of the Giants

How the Story of Glooskap and Pook-jin-skwess, the Evil Pitcher, is
told by the Passamaquoddy Indians

How Glooskap became friendly to the Loons, and made them his Messengers

How Glooskap made his Uncle Mikchich, the Turtle, into a Great Man, and
got him a Wife. Of the Turtles' Eggs, and how Glooskap vanquished a
Sorcerer by smoking Tobacco

How Glooskap sailed through the Great Cavern of Darkness

Of the Great Works which Glooskap made in the Land

The Story of Glooskap as told in a few Words by a Woman of the
Penobscots

How Glooskap, leaving the World, all the Animals mourned for him, and
how, ere he departed, he gave Gifts to Men

How Glooskap had a Great Frolic with Kitpooseagunow, a Mighty Giant who
caught a Whale

How Glooskap made a Magician of a Young Man, who aided another to win a
Wife and do Wonderful Deeds

How a certain Wicked Witch sought to cajole the Great and Good
Glooskap, and of her Punishment

Of other Men who went to Glooskap for Gifts

Of Glooskap and the three other Seekers

Of Glooskap and the Sinful Serpent

The Tale of Glooskap as told by another Indian, showing how the Toad
and Porcupine lost their Noses

How Glooskap changed Certain Saucy Indians into Rattlesnakes

How Glooskap bound Wuchowsen, the Great Wind-Bird, and made all the
Waters in the World stagnant

How Glooskap conquered the Great Bull-Frog, and in what Manner all the
Pollywogs, Crabs, Leeches, and other Water Creatures were created

How the Lord of Men and Beasts strove with the Mighty Wasis, and was
shamefully defeated

How the Great Glooskap fought the Giant Sorcerers at Saco, and turned
them into Fish

How Glooskap went to England and France, and was the first to make
America known to the Europeans

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

How Glooskap found the Summer

THE MERRY TAXES OF LOX, THE MISCHIEF-MAKER.

The Surprising and Singular Adventures of two Water Fairies who were
also Weasels, and how they each became the Bride of a Star. Including
the Mysterious and Wonderful Works of Lox, the Great Indian Devil, who
rose from the Dead

Of the Wolverine and the Wolves, or how Master Lox froze to Death

How Master Lox played a Trick on Mrs. Bear, who lost her Eyesight and
had her Eyes opened

How Lox came to Grief by trying to catch a Salmon

How Master Lox, as a Raccoon, killed the Bear and the Black Cats, and
performed other Notable Feats of Skill, all to his Great Discredit

How Lox deceived the Ducks, cheated the Chief, and beguiled the Bear

The Mischief-Maker. A Tradition of the Origin of the Mythology of the
Senecas. A Lox Legend

How Lox told a Lie

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF MASTER RABBIT.

How Master Rabbit sought to rival Kecoony, the Otter

How Mahtigwess, the Rabbit, dined with the Woodpecker Girls, and was
again humbled by trying to rival them

Of the Adventure with Mooin, the Bear; it being the Third and Last Time
that Master Rabbit made a Fool of himself

Relating how the Rabbit became Wise by being Original, and of the
Terrible Tricks which he by Magic played Loup-Cervier, the Wicked
Wild-Cat

How Master Rabbit went to a Wedding and won the Bride

How Master Rabbit gave himself Airs

The Young Man who was saved by a Rabbit and a Fox

THE CHENOO LEGENDS.

The Chenoo, or the Story of a Cannibal with an Icy Heart

The Story of the Great Chenoo, as told by the Passamaquoddies

The Girl-Chenoo

THUNDER STORIES.

Of the Girl who married Mount Katahdin, and how all the Indians brought
about their own Ruin

How a Hunter visited the Thunder Spirits who dwell on Mount Katahdin

The Thunder and Lightning Men

Of the Woman who married the Thunder, and of their Boy

AT-O-SIS, THE SERPENT.

How Two Girls were changed to Water-Snakes, and of Two others that
became Mermaids

Ne Hwas, the Mermaid

Of the Woman who loved a Serpent that lived in a Lake

The Mother of Serpents

Origin of the Black Snakes

THE PARTRIDGE.

The Adventures of the Great Hero Pulowech, or the Partridge

The Story of a Partridge and his Wonderful Wigwam

How the Partridge built Good Canoes for all the Birds, and a Bad One
for Himself

The Mournful Mystery of the Partridge-Witch; setting forth how a Young
Man died from Love

How one of the Partridge's Wives became a Sheldrake Duck, and why her
Feet and Feathers are red

THE INVISIBLE ONE

STORY OF THE THREE STRONG MEN

THE WEEWILLMEKQ'

How a Woman lost a Gun for Fear of the Weewillmekq'

Muggahmaht'adem, the Dance of Old Age, or the Magic of the Weewillmekq'

Another Version of the Dance of Old Age

TALES OF MAGIC.

M'teoulin, or Indian Magic

Story of the Beaver Trapper

How a Youth became a Magician

Of Old Joe, the M'teoulin

Of Governor Francis

How a Chiefs Son taught his Friend Sorcery

Tumilkoontaoo, or the Broken Wing

Fish-Hawk and Scapegrace

The Giant Magicians

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

MIK UM WESS, THE INDIAN PUCK, OR ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW

GLOOSKAP KILLING HIS BROTHER, THE WOLF

GLOOSKAP LOOKING AT THE WHALE SMOKING HIS PIPE

GLOOSKAP SETTING HIS DOGS ON THE WITCHES

THE MUD-TURTLE JUMPING OVER THE WIGWAM OF HIS FATHER-IN-LAW

GLOOSKAP AND KEANKE SPEARING THE WHALE

GLOOSKAP TURNING A MAN INTO A CEDAR-TREE

LOX CARRIED OFF BY CULLOO

THE INDIAN BOY AND THE MUSK-RAT. SEEPS, THE DUCK

THE RABBIT MAGICIAN

THE CHENOO AND THE LIZARD

THE WOMAN AND THE SERPENT

INTRODUCTION

Among the six chief divisions of the red Indians of North America the
most widely extended is the Algonquin. This people ranged from Labrador
to the far South, from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains, speaking
forty dialects, as the Hon. J. H. Trumbull has shown in his valuable
work on the subject. Belonging to this division are the Micmacs of New
Brunswick and the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes of Maine, who with
the St. Francis Indians of Canada and some smaller clans call
themselves the Wabanaki, a word derived from a root signifying white or
light, intimating that they live nearest to the rising sun or the east.
In fact, the French-speaking St. Francis family, who are known _par
eminence_ as "the Abenaki," translate the term by _point du
jour_.

The Wabanaki have in common the traditions of a grand mythology, the
central figure of which is a demigod or hero, who, while he is always
great, consistent, and benevolent, and never devoid of dignity,
presents traits which are very much more like those of Odin and Thor,
with not a little of Pantagruel, than anything in the characters of the
Chippewa Manobozho, or the Iroquois Hiawatha. The name of this divinity
is Glooskap, meaning, strangely enough, the Liar, because it is said
that when he left earth, like King Arthur, for Fairyland, he promised
to return, and has never done so. It is characteristic of the Norse
gods that while they are grand they are manly, and combine with this a
peculiarly domestic humanity. Glooskap is the Norse god intensified. He
is, however, more of a giant; he grows to a more appalling greatness
than Thor or Odin in his battles; when a _Kiawaqu'_, or Jotun,
rises to the clouds to oppose him, Glooskap's head touches the stars,
and scorning to slay so mean a foe like an equal, he kills him
contemptuously with a light tap of his bow. But in the family circle he
is the most benevolent of gentle heroes, and has his oft-repeated
little standard jokes. Yet he never, like the Manobozho-Hiawatha of the
Chippewas, becomes silly, cruel, or fantastic. He has his roaring revel
with a brother giant, even as Thor went fishing in fierce fun with the
frost god, but he is never low or feeble.

Around Glooskap, who is by far the grandest and most Aryan-like
character ever evolved from a savage mind, and who is more congenial to
a reader of Shakespeare and Rabelais than any deity ever imagined out
of Europe, there are found strange giants: some literal Jotuns of stone
and ice, sorcerers who become giants like Glooskap, at will; the
terrible Chenoo, a human being with an icy-stone heart, who has sunk to
a cannibal and ghoul; all the weird monsters and horrors of the Eskimo
mythology, witches and demons, inherited from the terribly black
sorcery which preceded Shamanism, and compared to which the latter was
like an advanced religion, and all the minor mythology of dwarfs and
fairies. The Indian _m'teoulin_, or magician, distinctly taught
that every created thing, animate or inanimate, had its indwelling
spirit. Whatever had an _idea_ had a soul. Therefore the Wabanaki
mythology is strangely like that of the Rosicrucians. But it created
spirits for the terrible Arctic winters of the north, for the icebergs
and frozen wastes, for the Northern Lights and polar bears. It made, in
short, a mythology such as would be perfectly congenial to any one who
has read and understood the Edda, Beowulf, and the Kalevala, with the
wildest and oldest Norse sagas. But it is, as regards spirit and
meaning, utterly and entirely unlike anything else that is American. It
is not like the Mexican pantheon; it has not the same sounds, colors,
or feelings; and though many of its incidents or tales are the same as
those of the Chippewas, or other tribes, we still feel that there is an
incredible difference in the spirit. Its ways are not as their ways.
This Wabanaki mythology, which was that which gave a fairy, an elf, a
naiad, or a hero to every rock and river and ancient hill in New
England, is just the one of all others which is least known to the New
Englanders. When the last Indian shall be in his grave, those who come
after us will ask in wonder why we had no curiosity as to the romance
of our country, and so much as to that of every other land on earth.

Much is allowed to poets and painters, and no fault was found with Mr.
Longfellow for attributing to the Iroquois Hiawatha the choice exploits
of the Chippewa demi-devil Manobozho. It was "all Indian" to the
multitude, and one name answered as well in poetry as another, at a
time when there was very little attention paid to ethnology. So that a
good poem resulted, it was of little consequence that the plot was a
_melange_ of very different characters, and characteristics. And
when, in connection with this, Mr. Longfellow spoke of the Chippewa
tales as forming an Indian Edda, the term was doubtless in a poetic and
very general sense permissible. But its want of literal truth seems to
have deeply impressed the not generally over particular or accurate
Schoolcraft, since his first remarks in the Introduction to the
Hiawatha Legends are as follows:--

"Where analogies are so general, there is a constant liability to
mistakes. Of these foreign analogies of myth-lore, the least tangible,
it is believed, is that which has been suggested with the Scandinavian
mythology. That mythology is of so marked and peculiar a character that
it has not been distinctly traced out of the great circle of tribes of
the Indo-Germanic family. Odin and his terrific pantheon of war gods
and social deities could only exist in the dreary latitudes of storms
and fire which produce a Hecla and a Maelstrom. These latitudes have
invariably produced nations whose influence has been felt in an
elevating power over the world. From such a source the Indian could
have derived none of him vague symbolisms and mental idiosyncrasies
which have left him as he is found to-day, without a government and
without a god."

This is all perfectly true of the myths of Hiawat'ha-Manobozho. Nothing
on earth could be more unlike the Norse legends than the "Indian Edda"
of the Chippewas and Ottawas. But it was not known to this writer that
there already existed in Northeastern America a stupendous mythology,
derived from a land of storms and fire more terrible and wonderful than
Iceland; nay, so terrible that Icelanders themselves were appalled by
it. "This country," says the Abbe Morillot, "is the one most suggestive
of superstition. Everything there, sea, earth, or heaven, is strange."
The wild cries which rise from the depths of the caverned ice-hills,
and are reechoed by the rocks, icebergs, or waves, were dreadful to
Egbert Olafson in the seventeenth century. The interior is a desert
without parallel for desolation. A frozen Sahara seen by Northern
lightning and midnight suns is but a suggestion of this land. The sober
Moravian missionary Crantz once only in his life rose to poetry, when
more than a century ago he spoke of its scenery. Here then was the
latitude of storm and fire required by Schoolcraft to produce something
wilder and grander than he had ever found among Indians. And here
indeed there existed all the time a cycle of mythological legends or
poems such as he declared Indians incapable of producing. But strangest
of all, this American mythology of the North, which has been the very
last to become known to American readers, is literally so nearly like
the Edda itself that as this work fully proves, there is hardly a song
in the Norse collection which does not contain an incident found in the
Indian poem-legends, while in several there are many such coincidences.
Thus, in the Edda we are told that the first birth on earth was that of
a giant girl and boy, begotten by the feet of a giant and born from his
armpit. In the Wabanaki legends, the first birth was of Glooskap, the
Good principle, and Malsum the Wolf, or Evil principle. The Wolf was
born from his mother's armpit. He is sometimes male and sometimes
female. His feet are male and female, and converse. We pass on only
twelve lines in the Edda (Vafthrudnismal, 36) to be told that the wind
is caused by a giant in eagle's plumage, who sits on a rock far in the
north "at the end of heaven." This is simply and literally the
_Wochowsen_ or Windblower of the Wabanaki word for word,--not the
"Thunder-Bird" of the Western Indians. The second birth on earth,
according to the Edda, was that of man. Odin found Ash and Elm "nearly
powerless," and gave them sense. This was the first man and woman.
According to the Indians of Maine, Glooskap made the first men from the
_ash_-tree. They lived or were in it, "devoid of sense" till he
gave it to them. It is to be observed that primevally among the Norse
the _ash_ alone stood for man. So it goes on through the whole
Edda, of which all the main incidents are to be found among the sagas
of the Wabanaki. The most striking of these are the coincidences
between _Lox_ (lynx, wolf, wolverine, badger, or raccoon, and
sometimes man) and Loki. It is very remarkable indeed that the only two
religions in the world which possess a devil in whom _mischief_
predominates should also give to each the same adventures, if both did
not come from the same source. In the Hymiskvida of the Edda, two
giants go to fish for whales, and then have a contest which is actually
one of heat against cold. This is so like a Micmac legend in every
detail that about twenty lines are word for word the same in the Norse
and Indian. The Micmac giants end their whale fishing by trying to
freeze one another to death.

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