"'Manabozho a ne we guawk,
Koan dan mau wah, ne we guawk,
Koan dan mau wah, ne we guawk.'"
Manabozho's dart,
I try to get his dart,
I try to get his dart.
Having found out, by conversation with her, all he wished, he put her to death. He then took off her skin, and assuming this disguise, took the cedar cord on his back, and limped away singing her songs. He completely aped the gait and voice of the old woman. He was met by one who told him to make haste; that the prince was worse. At the lodge, limping and muttering, he took notice that they had his grandson's hide to hang over the door. "Oh dogs!" said he; "the evil dogs!" He sat down near the door, and commenced sobbing like an aged woman. One observed, "Why don't you attend the sick, and not set there making such a noise?" He took up the poker and laid it on them, mimicking the voice of the old woman. "Dogs that you are! why do you laugh at me? You know very well that I am so sorry that I am nearly out of my head." With that he approached the prince, singing the songs of the old woman, without exciting any suspicion. He saw that his arrow had gone in about one half its length. He pretended to make preparations for extracting it, but only made ready to finish his victim; and giving the dart a sudden thrust, he put a period to the prince's life. He performed this act with the power of a giant, bursting the old woman's skin, and at the same moment rushing through the door. The serpents followed him, hissing and crying out, "Perfidy! murder! vengeance! it is Manabozho." He immediately transformed himself into a wolf, and ran over the plain with all his speed, aided by his father the West wind. When he got to the mountains he saw a badger. "Brother," said he, "make a hole quick, for the serpents are after me." The badger obeyed. They both went in, and the badger threw all the earth backward, so that it filled up the way behind.
The serpents came to the badger's wauzh,[46] and decided to watch. "We will starve him out," said they; so they continued watching. Manabozho told the badger to make an opening on the other side of the mountain, from which he could go out and hunt, and bring meat in. Thus they lived some time. One day the badger came in his way and displeased him. He immediately put him to death, and threw out his carcass, saying, "I don't like you to be getting in my way so often."
After living in this confinement for some time alone, he decided to go out. He immediately did so; and after making the circuit of the mountain, came to the corpse of the prince, who had been deserted by the serpents to pursue his destroyer. He went to work and skinned him. He then drew on his skin, in which there were great virtues, took up his war-club, and set out for the place where he first went in the ground. He found the serpents still watching. When they saw the form of their dead prince advancing towards them, fear and dread took hold of them. Some fled. Those who remained Manabozho killed. Those who fled went towards the South.
Having accomplished the victory over the reptiles, Manabozho returned to his former place of dwelling, and married the arrow-maker's daughter.
Concluding Note.—The story of this northern Hercules is dropped at this point of his triumph over the strongest of the reptile race. But his feats and adventures, by land and sea do not terminate here. There is scarcely a prominent lake, mountain, precipice, or stream in the northern part of America, which is not hallowed in Indian story by his fabled deeds. Further accounts will be found in several of the subsequent tales, which are narrated by the Indians in an independent form, and may be now appropriately left as they are found, as episodes, detached from the original story. To collect all these and arrange them in order would be an arduous labour; and, after all, such an arrangement would lack consistency and keeping, unless much of the thread necessary to present them in an English dress were supplied by invention, alteration, and transposition. The portions above narrated present a beginning and an end, which could hardly be said of the loose and disjointed fragmentary tales referred to. How long Manabozho lived on earth is not related. We hear nothing more of his grandmother; every mouth is filled with his queer adventures, tricks, and sufferings. He was everywhere present where danger presented itself, power was required, or mischief was going forward. Nothing was too low or trivial for him to engage in, nor too high or difficult for him to attempt. He affected to be influenced by the spirit of a god, and was really actuated by the malignity of a devil. The period of his labours and adventures having expired, he withdrew to dwell with his brother in the North, where he is understood to direct those storms which proceed from points west of the pole. He is regarded as the spirit of the northwest tempests, but receives no worship from the present race of Indians. It is believed by them that he is again to appear, and to exercise an important power in the final disposition of the human race.
In this singular tissue of incongruities will be perceived several ideas probably derived from Asiatic sources. It will be found, in the tale of the visiters to the Sun and Moon, that Manabozho was met on the way, and he is represented as expressing a deep repentance for the sins he had committed while on earth. He is, however, found exercising the vocation of a necromancer; has a pointed lodge, from which he utters oracles; and finally transforms on the spot two of the party, who had consulted him, and asked the gift of immortality, the one into a cedar-tree, and the other into a block of granite.
Manabozho is regarded by the Indians as a god and a benefactor, and is admired and extolled as the personification of strength and wisdom. Yet he constantly presents the paradox of being a mere mortal; is driven to low and common expedients; and never utters a sentiment wiser or better than the people among whom he appears. The conception of a divinity, pure, changeless, and just, as well as benevolent, in the distribution of its providences, has not been reached by any traits exhibited in the character of this personage. And if such notions had ever been conceived by the ancestors of the present race of Indians in the East, they have been obscured, if not obliterated, in the course of their long, dark, and hopeless pilgrimage in the forests of America. That the tribes themselves are of Oriental origin, is probable, from the grammatical structure of their languages, and their mode of expressing thought. But it is apparent that their separation took place at a very ancient period. Whether this event is of a date prior to the organization of the Hebrew theocracy, or whether the American tribes have originated, as some writers suppose, in a separation from the latter sub-stock, there is not, at this time, sufficient data, stamped with the character of sound investigation, to determine; but is rendered manifest, by the present investigation into Indian opinions, that, although they probably had, at the epoch of their expatriation, a knowledge of the Creator and a tradition of the creation, and also of the subsequent destruction of men by the deluge, this knowledge was already corrupted and mixed with notions of materialism and carnality, somewhat after the comparatively recent and grosser manner exhibited in the existing legend of Manabozho.