XV
HIAWATHA'S LAMENTATION
WHEN Hiawatha lived, there were many evil spirits on the earth; and these evil spirits were very jealous of the friendship between Hiawatha and Chibiabos. "If we can only get this Chibiabos in our power," they plotted, "we will kill him, and when he is dead, Hiawatha cannot do so much good to all the tribes of men; for Chibiabos helps him like a brother, and together they are much too strong for us." The evil spirits joined to destroy both Chibiabos and Hiawatha, and they laid many traps and thought of many schemes to catch the two friends off their guard.
Hiawatha was so wise that he knew of all this plotting, and he often said to Chibiabos: "O my brother, stay with me always, for together the evil spirits cannot do us any harm." But Chibiabos was young and heedless and he did not fear the evil spirits. He laughed at Hiawatha, and said to him: "Harm and evil never come near me, my Hiawatha; have no fear on my account." But Hiawatha only shook his head, and feared all the more because Chibiabos feared so little.
Once in the winter time, when the Big-Sea-Water was covered with ice and snow, Chibiabos was hunting a buck with antlers, and the buck ran right across the frozen lake. Wild with excitement of hunting, Chibiabos followed him and ran far out from shore upon the treacherous ice, where the evil spirits were waiting for him. When they saw that he was far enough from land, they broke the ice and Chibiabos fell with a crash and a splash into the freezing water of the lake. Even then he might have saved himself and climbed out upon the ice but the strong, cruel water-god, the god of the Dacotahs, wrapped his cold wet arms around the body of Chibiabos and dragged him down, down through the dark black water to the bottom. There the water-god buried him beneath the mud and sand, so that his dead body might not rise to the surface; and the evil spirits danced for joy at the death of Chibiabos. "We have killed him," they shouted gleefully to one another; "we have killed the sweetest singer in the world and the dearest friend of Hiawatha!"
From the headlands on the shore, Hiawatha had seen Chibiabos plunge into the lake, and he heard the wicked shouting of the evil spirits. He gave such a cry of sorrow that the forest trembled, and the wolves on the prairie raised their heads to listen and then howled in answer, while the hoarse thunder stirred itself among the mountains and awakened all the echoes to his cry.
Then Hiawatha smeared his face with black paint, the color of sorrow and of death; he covered his head with his robe and sat for seven long weeks in his wigwam, grieving for the murdered Chibiabos. And the fir-trees sadly waved their dark green branches to and fro above his head and sighed as mournfully as Hiawatha.
Spring came, and all the birds and animals, and even the rivulets, and flowers and grasses, looked in vain for the dead Chibiabos. The bluebird sang a song of sorrow from the tree-tops; the robin echoed it from the silence of the thicket, and the whippoorwill took up the sad refrain at night and wailed it far and wide through all the woodland. "Chibiabos! Chibiabos!" murmured every living thing, and all the echoes sighed in answer until the whole world seemed to mourn for the lost singer.
Then the wise men of the tribes—the medicine-men, the men of magic—came to Hiawatha as he sat in sorrow in his hut, and they walked before him in a grave procession to drive the sadness from his heart. Each of them carried a pouch of healing, made of beaver-skin or lynx or otter, and filled with roots and herbs of wonderful power to cure all diseases and to drive the evil spirits of grief from the heart and from the mind. To and fro they walked, until Hiawatha uncovered his head, washed the black paint from his face, and followed the wise men to the Sacred Lodge that they had built beside his own wigwam.
There they gave to Hiawatha a marvelous drink made of spearmint and yarrow and all sorts of strange and different roots, and when he had drunk of this they began a wild and mystic dance, beating on the small drums that they carried, and shaking their pouches of healing in the face of Hiawatha. "Hi-au-ha!" they shouted in strange voices, "way-ha-way! We can cure you, Hiawatha; we can make you strong." And they shook their medicine pouches over Hiawatha's head, and continued beating on their hollow drums, as they circled wildly around him again and again.
All at once the sorrow left Hiawatha's heart, as the ice is swept from a river in the springtime, and like a man awakening from evil dreams he felt that he was healed, and he gazed about him where the medicine-men were still dancing. They were trying to summon Chibiabos from his grave deep down in the sandy bottom of the Big-Sea-Water, for the water-god had buried him so deep that his spirit could not go into the land of dead men, but was still in his drowned body, struggling to free itself. And the magic of the wise men was so strong that Chibiabos rose body and all, and stood on the bottom of the lake, listening to them.
Then the dead man floated to the shore, climbed out upon the bank and made his way swiftly and silently through the forest to the doorway of the wigwam where the medicine-men were singing. When he shook the curtain of the doorway and peered in upon them they would not let him enter, but gave him through an opening in the door a burning torch and told him to light a fire in the land of spirits, so that all who died might see it and find their way thither; and they made Chibiabos ruler in the Kingdom of the Dead. He left the doorway of the wigwam and vanished in the forest, and the wise men watched the twinkling of his torch until it disappeared. They saw that the branches did not move as he passed, and that the dead leaves and the grass did not even bend or rustle beneath his footsteps, and they looked at one another much afraid, because such sights are not good for living men to see.
Four days Chibiabos traveled down the pathway of the dead, and for his food he ate the dead man's strawberry. He saw many other dead men struggling under heavy burdens of food and skins and wampum that their friends had given them to use in the Land of Spirits, and they groaned beneath their burdens. He passed them all, crossed the sad, dark River of Death upon the swinging log that floats there; and at last he came to the Lake of Silver, and was carried in the Stone Canoe over the water to the Islands of the Blessed, where he rules all ghosts and shadows.
When he had disappeared in the dark forest, Hiawatha left the Sacred Lodge and wandered eastward and westward teaching men the use of roots and herbs and the cure of all disorders; and thus was first made known to the Indians the sacred knowledge of caring for the sick.