This legend is little more than an enumeration of the recipes popularly employed to obtain certain powers. It may be observed that it is limited to all that a real Indian requires. It is very different from what a white man or an Asiatic savage would have wanted; and there is just enough truth and common sense in the methods recommended to make the whole plausible. The reader will observe that the magic hair-string and locks of hair play the same important part in m'teoulin that they did in Old World magic. This is hardly one of the coincidences which can be attributed to spontaneous development from similar causes. It may be such, but there may be also an Eskimo sidegate through which it entered from the other side.
Another magic means was the influencing high and mysterious powers. Of this the following is an admirable illustration:—
Tumilkoontaoo, or the Broken Wing.
(Micmac.)
An Indian family lived on the sea-shore. They had two sons; the eldest of these was married, and had many small children. They lived by fishing; they chiefly caught eels.
It came to pass that the weather was so stormy that they could not fish. The wind blew terribly night and day; the waves were like dancing hills. Hunger made them fierce. One day the father told his boys to walk along the shore and see if no fish had been cast on the beach.
A young man went; he went far along; and as he went the wind was ever worse; it blew so fiercely that he could hardly stand. It seemed to come from a point of land. He resolved to pass it, and when there he saw the cause of the tempest. Upon a kwesopskeak'—a high and rocky ledge, a bold cliff, but surrounded by the water—sat the Wind-Bird, or storm-sagamore himself, flapping his wings, and thereby raising all the wind.
Then the young man, who was brave and wise, resolved to outwit the wind-god. And approaching him and addressing him as Nikskamich, "My grandfather," he inquired, "are you cold!" And he answered, "Nay;" but the young man insisted that he must be suffering, and offered to carry him on his back to the main-land. [Footnote: It would appear that while the bird flapped his wings he did not fly. I believe this was the same with the Norse Hrosvelgar.] And the offer being accepted, he carried the mighty bird from one weedy, slippery rock to another, up and down, jumping anon, and wading through the pools. But at the last rock he, with full intention, stumbled and fell as if by accident, yet managed it so well as to break one of the wings of the eagle, as he indeed meant to do. Yet he made great show of being very sorry, and, having set the wing, bade the bird keep quiet, and not move his wings for many days; not till the wound was healed should he stir them. "Sit still, Nikskamich," he said, "and I will bring you food; I will be attentive; you shall want nothing." And the god sat still: there was a calm on the water; no leaves moved in the forest; there was no wind in all the world.
The young man went home; there was not a breeze, the canoe went smoothly over the sea, the eels could be seen in the depths, the Indians caught fish by thousands; never before had they caught so many. And the sagamore of the birds sat still; the Wind-Bird waited to get well; the young man fed him every day.
There can be too much of what is good; good turns to evil, sweet to sour. After many days of quiet calm the sea was covered with Ogokpegeak, a scum which is caused by sickness among the fish, and which is thrown off by them, for they suffer in still water. Then the fisherman can no longer look down into the sea; then he cannot use the spear.