A Guide to Mythology

by Helen A. Clarke

He walked briskly all day, and at night he had the satisfaction of reaching a lodge in all respects like that which he had left in the morning. There were two fine old men, and his treatment was in every particular the same, even down to the parting blessing and the laughter that followed him as he went his way.

After walking the third day, and coming to a lodge the same as before, he was satisfied from the bearings of the course he had taken that he had been journeying in a circle, and by a notch which he had cut in the door-post that these were the same two old men all along; and that, despite their innocent faces and their very white heads, they had been playing him a sorry trick.

“Who are you,” said Paup-puk-keewiss, “to treat me so? Come forth, I say!”

They were compelled to obey his summons lest, in his anger, he should take their lives, and they appeared on the outside of the lodge.

“We must have a little trial of speed now,” said Paup-puk-keewiss.

“A race?” they asked. “We are very old; we cannot run.”

“We will see,” said Paup-puk-keewiss; whereupon he set them out upon the road, and then he gave them a gentle push, which put them in motion. Then he pushed them again—harder—harder—until they got under fine headway, when he gave each of them an astounding shock with his foot, and off they flew at a great rate, round and round the course; and such was the magic virtue of the foot of Paup-puk-keewiss that no object once set going by it could by any possibility stop; so that, for aught we know to the contrary, the two innocent, white-headed, merry old men are trotting with all their might and main around the circle in which they beguiled Paup-puk-keewiss to this day.

Continuing his journey, Paup-puk-keewiss, although his head was warm and buzzing with all sorts of schemes, did not know exactly what to do until he came to a big lake. He mounted a high hill to try and see to the other side, but he could not. He then made a canoe, and sailed forth. The water was very clear—a transparent blue—and he saw that it abounded with fish of a rare and delicate complexion. This circumstance inspired him with a wish to return to his village, and to bring his people to live near this beautiful lake.

Toward evening, coming to a woody island, he encamped and ate the fish he had speared, and they proved to be as comforting to the stomach as they were pleasing to the eye. The next day Paup-puk-keewiss returned to the mainland, and as he wandered along the shore he espied at a distance the celebrated giant, Manabozho, who is a bitter enemy of Paup-puk-keewiss, and loses no opportunity to stop him on his journeyings and to thwart his plans.

At first it occurred to Paup-puk-keewiss to have a trial of wits with the giant, but on second thoughts he said to himself: “I am in a hurry now; I will see him another time.”