The extinct Chitimacha Indians of northern Louisiana had a tale that a man set the marshes on fire, and a little bird uprose through the smoke and remonstrated. The man was angry and threw a shell at the bird, which wounded its wings and made them bleed, and thus the red-winged blackbird got its scarlet shoulders.
A familiar and active little shrike of the northern border of South America is the kiskadee, with a conspicuous white mark on its head. The Arawaks say that this radiant little songster, which has the same sort of fierce hostility to hawks and other large birds as distinguishes our doughty kingbird, got tired of a war that was going on among the animals, put a white bandage around its head and pretended to be sick. The war halted long enough to expose the fraud of the little malingerer, and kiskadees were sentenced to wear the white bandage perpetually.
Arawak story-tellers also relate that the trumpeter (Psophia) and a kingfisher quarrelled over the spoils of war, and knocked each other into the ashes, which accounts for the gray of their plumage. The nakedness of the trumpeter’s legs is owing to his stepping into an ant’s nest, and getting them picked clean. The owl discovered a package among the spoil of the war that contained only darkness, since which that bird cannot endure daylight. It is interesting to compare with this the adventure of the trumpeter current among the Maquiritares, which is related elsewhere.
So the stories go on. The Pimas, for example, believe that the mountain bluebird was originally an unlovely gray, but acquired its present exquisite azure coat by bathing in a certain lake of blue water that had neither inlet nor outlet. It bathed in this regularly for four mornings. On the fourth morning it shed all its plumage and came out with the skin bare; but on the fifth morning it emerged from its bath with a coat of blue.
This tradition is somewhat sentimental, as befits the sweetly warbling and beloved bluebird, which is not only a favorite, but has a certain sacredness in the southwest; but often, in the majority of cases perhaps, a rough humor tinges the history. Thus Manabush, a mythical ancestor of the Menominees, once assembled all the birds by a subterfuge, and then killed several. The little grebe, or “hell-diver,” was one of those chosen for death, and as it was a poor runner it was easily caught. Manabush said contemptuously, “I won’t kill you, but you shall always have red eyes and be the laughing-stock of all the birds.” With that he gave the poor bird a kick, sending it far out into Lake Michigan and knocking off its tail, so that the hell-diver is red-eyed and almost tailless to this day.
I have restricted this chapter mainly to examples from the folklore of the American Indians, but, were there not danger of becoming tedious, many more might be quoted from the fireside tales of other countries, especially Africa. African traditions, however, can hardly be held to account for the following explanations by some Southern darkies as given by Martha Young[[2]]:
The bluejay was yoked into a plow by the sparrow, and the necklace-like mark on his breast is the mark left by the yoke worn in this degrading service.
The buzzard originally had a “fine plume sweepin’ from de top of his head,” but lost it in a quarrel with a dog. “Sense dat day Buzzard don’t never miss fust pickin’ out de eye of ev’thing that he gwine eat,” so that it cannot see to resist if it is not quite dead.
Darkies say that the hummingbird lost her voice—“she choke her voice clean out of her wid honey”—through being so greedy when she first discovered the honey in flowers, by reason of contracting a “swimmin’ in de head” by incessant whirling, as her poising on wings seems to the negroes. “She hav a notion now that she los’ her voice ... deep in some flower. She’s al’a’rs lookin’ fer dat los’ voice. Flash in dis flower! Dash in dat flower! But she’ll nuvver, nuvver fin’ it.”
Charles G. Leland quotes in his Etruscan Roman Remains[[97]] a note given him by Miss Mary Owen, of St. Joseph, Missouri, that the negroes and half-breeds in southern Missouri consider the redheaded woodpecker a great sorcerer, who can appear as either a bird or as a redman with a mantle or cloak on his arm. He is supposed to be very grateful or very vengeful as his mood requires. He sometimes bores holes in the heads of his enemies, while they sleep, and puts in maggots which keep the victims forever restless and crazy. He made the bat by putting a rat and a bird together.