Algonquin Legends of New England

by Charles Godfrey Leland

And yet again the Master did a mighty deed. It came to pass in those days that the Beavers had built a dam across from Utkoguncheek, or Cape Blomidon, to the opposite shore, and thereby made a pond that filled all the valley of Annapolis. Now in those times the Beavers were monstrous beasts, and the Master, though kind of heart, seems to have had but little love for them ever since the day when Qwah-beetsis, the son of the Great Beaver, tempted Malsum to slay his brother. Now the bones of these Beavers may be found to this day, and many there are on Oonamahgik, and their teeth are six inches across, and there are no such qwah-beet to-day. [Footnote: Both Mr. Rand and myself have been solemnly assured by Indians who had seen these antediluvian remains that they are the petrified relics of Glooskap's victims.] And these are the remains of the Beavers who built the dam at Cape Blomidon and forded the Annapolis Valley. Now Glooskap would have a hunt and do a deed which should equal the great whale-fishing of Kit-pooseeog-unow. So he cut the great dam near the shore, and bade Marten watch; for he said, "I mistrust that there is a little Beaver hiding hereabouts." And when the dam was cut from where it joined the shore there was a mighty rush of many waters, so that it swung round to the westward, yet it did not break away from the other shore. Therefore the end of it lodged with a great split therein when the flood had found a free course, and the whole may be seen there still, even to this day, and may be seen by all of those who pass up the bay; and this point, or Cape Split, is called by the Micmacs Pleegun, which, being interpreted, means the opening of a beaver dam.

Then, to frighten the Beaver, Glooskap threw at it a few handfuls of earth, and these, falling somewhat to the eastward of Partridge Island, became the Five Islands. And the pond which was left was the Basin of Minas.

And yet another tradition tells that, after cutting the dam, Glooskap sat and watched, but no beaver came out; [Footnote: This is the Anglo-Indian manuscript, already referred to.] for Qwah-beet had gone out of a back door. So he took a rock and threw it afar, [Footnote: "He took Rock tructed 150 miles ip River to sker beaber bock down, but beaber has gone ober granfalls.">[—one hundred and fifty miles,—to scare the Beaver back again; but the Beaver had gone over the Grand Falls, and the stone remaineth there even to this day.

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

"Glus-gahbe gave names to everything. He made men and gave them life, and made the winds to make the waters move. The Turtle was his uncle; the Mink, Uk-see-meezel, his adopted son; and Monin-kwessos, the Woodchuck, his grandmother. The Beaver built a great dam, and Glus-gahbe turned it away and killed the Beaver. At Moose-tchick he killed a moose; the bones may be seen at Bar Harbor turned to stone. He threw the entrails of the Moose across the bay to his dogs, and they, too, may be seen there to this day, as I myself have seen them; and there, too, in the rock are the prints of his bow and arrow." [Footnote: Many a place is pointed out as the locality of the same legend. In addition to those in New Brunswick and Bar Harbor, Thoreau found another in Maine, which he thus describes:—

"While we were crossing this bay" (that is, the mouth of Moose River), "where Mount Kineo rose dark before us, within two or three miles, the Indian repeated the tradition respecting this mountain's having been anciently a cow-moose,—how a mighty Indian hunter, whose name I forget, succeeded in killing this queen of the moose tribe with great difficulty, while her calf was killed somewhere among the islands in Penobscot Bay; and to his eyes this mountain had still the form of the moose in a reclining posture, its precipitous side presenting the outline of her head. He told this at some length, though it did not amount to much, and with apparent good faith, and asked us how we supposed the hunter could have killed such a mighty moose as that; how we could do it. Whereupon a man-of-war to fire broadsides into her was suggested, etc. An Indian tells such a story as if he thought it deserved to have a good deal said about it, only he has not got it to say; and so he makes up for the deficiency by a drawling tone, long-windedness, and a dumb wonder which he hopes will be contagious."

This concluding criticism is indeed singularly characteristic of Mr. Thoreau's own nasal stories about Nature, but it is as utterly untrue as ridiculous when applied to any Indian storytelling to which I have ever listened, and I have known the near relatives of the Indians of whom he speaks, and heard many of them tell their tales. This writer passed months in Maine, choosing Penobscot guides expressly to study them, to read Indian feelings and get at Indian secrets, and this account of Glooskap, whose name he forgets, is a fair specimen of what he learned. Yet he could in the same book write as follows: "The Anglo-American can indeed cut down and grub up all this waving forest, And make a stump and vote for Buchanan on its ruins; but he cannot Converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retires as he advances."

If Mr. Thoreau had known the Indian legend of the spirit of the fallen tree—and his guide knew it well—he might have been credited with speaking wisely of the poetry and mythology which he ridicules the poor rural Yankees for not possessing.

Such a writer can, indeed, peep and botanize on the grave of Mother
Nature, but never evoke her spirit.

The moving the island is evidently of Eskimo origin, since Crantz (History of Greenland) heard nearly the same story of some magician-giant. It was probably suggested by the very common floating away of ice-islands.]