Once upon a time there lived a woman who was called Shenanska, or the White Buffalo Robe. She was an inhabitant of the prairie, a dweller in the cabins which stand upon the verge of the hills. She was the pride of her people, not only for her beauty, which was very great, but for her goodness. The breath of the summer wind was not milder than the temper of Shenanska, the face of the sun was not fairer than her countenance.
At length the tribe was surprised in its encampment on the banks of the Kickapoo by a numerous band of the fierce Mengwe. Many of them fell fighting bravely, the greater part of the women and children were made prisoners, and the others fled to the wilds for safety. It was the fortune of Shenanska to escape from death or captivity. When the alarm of the war-whoop reached her ear as she was sleeping in her lodge with her husband, she had rushed forth with him and gone with the braves to meet their assailants. When she saw half of the men of her nation lying dead around, then she fled. She had been wounded in the battle, but she still succeeded in effecting her escape to the hills. Weakened by loss of blood, she had not strength enough left to hunt for a supply of food, and she was near perishing with hunger.
While she lay beneath the shade of a tree there came to her a being not of this world.
“Shenanska,” said he, in a gentle voice, “thou art wounded and hungry, shall I heal thee and feed thee? Wilt thou return to the lands of thy tribe and live to be old, a widow and alone, or go now to the land of departed spirits and join the shade of thy husband? The choice is thine. If thou wilt live, crippled, and bowed down by wounds and disease, thou mayest. If it would please thee better to rejoin thy friends in the country beyond the Great River, say so.”
Shenanska replied that she wished to die. The spirit took her, and placed her in one of the recesses of the cavern, overshadowed by hanging rocks. He then spoke some words in a low voice, and, breathing on her, she became stone. Determined that a woman so good and beautiful should not be forgotten by the world, he made her into a statue, to which he gave the power of killing suddenly any one who irreverently approached it. For a long time the statue relentlessly exercised this power. Many an unconscious Indian, venturing too near to it, fell dead without any perceptible wound. At length, tired of the havoc the statue made, the guardian spirit took away the power he had given to it. At this day the statue may be approached with safety, but the Indians hold it in fear, not intruding rashly upon it, and when in its presence treating it with great respect.
THE MAIDEN WHO LOVED A FISH.
There was once among the Marshpees, a small tribe who have their hunting-grounds on the shores of the Great Lake, near the Cape of Storms, a woman whose name was Awashanks. She was rather silly, and very idle. For days together she would sit doing nothing. Then she was so ugly and ill-shaped that not one of the youths of the village would have aught to say to her by way of courtship or marriage. She squinted very much; her face was long and thin, her nose excessively large and humped, her teeth crooked and projecting, her chin almost as sharp as the bill of a loon, and her ears as large as those of a deer. Altogether she was a very odd and strangely formed woman, and wherever she went she never failed to excite much laughter and derision among those who thought that ugliness and deformity were fit subjects for ridicule.
Though so very ugly, there was one faculty she possessed in a more remarkable degree than any woman of the tribe. It was that of singing. Nothing, unless such could be found in the land of spirits, could equal the sweetness of her voice or the beauty of her songs. Her favourite place of resort was a small hill, a little removed from the river of her people, and there, seated beneath the shady trees, she would while away the hours of summer with her charming songs. So beautiful and melodious were the things she uttered, that, by the time she had sung a single sentence, the branches above her head would be filled with the birds that came thither to listen, the thickets around her would be crowded with beasts, and the waters rolling beside her would be alive with fishes, all attracted by the sweet sounds. From the minnow to the porpoise, from the wren to the eagle, from the snail to the lobster, from the mouse to the mole,—all hastened to the spot to listen to the charming songs of the hideous Marshpee maiden.