The Indian Fairy Book / From the Original Legends

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

"No, my friend," said he, "here are mine," at the same time taking them down and drawing them on. "It is your moccasins that are burning."

Mishosha dropped his head upon his breast. All his tricks were played out—there was not so much as half a one left to help him ont of the sorry plight he was in.

"I believe, my grandfather," added Owasso, "that this is the moon in which fire attracts, and I fear you must have set your foot and leg garments too near the fire, and they have been drawn in. It is bad that you have none, but let us go forth to the hunt."

The old magician was compelled to follow him, and they pushed out into a great storm of snow and hail and wind, which had come on over night; and neither the wind, the hail, nor the snow had the slightest respect for the bare limbs of the old magician, for there was not the least virtue of magic in those parts of old Mishosha's body. After a while they quite stiffened under him, his body became hard, and his hair bristled in the cold wind; so that he looked more like a tough old sycamore tree than a highly gifted magician. But Owasso, remembering, had no compassion and turned away, leaving the wicked old fellow alone to ponder upon his past life.

Owasso himself reached home in safety, proof against all kinds of weather, and the magic canoe became the exclusive property of the young man and his wife.

Now to go back to the sister who had been left alone with Sheem during all these years. She knew enough of the arts of the forest to provide their daily food and labored with good-will to supply the lodge. She watched her little brother and tended his wants, with all of a good sister's care. But at last she began to be weary of solitude and of her charge. No one came to be a witness of her constancy, or to let fall a single word in her mother-tongue. She could not converse with the birds and beasts about her, and felt, to the bottom of her heart, that she was alone. In these thoughts she forgot her younger brother, and almost wished him dead; for it was he alone that kept her from seeking the companionship of others.

So one day she collected all the provisions she had been able to reserve from their daily use and brought a supply of wood to the door. Then she said to her little brother:

"My brother, you must not stray from the lodge. I am going to seek our elder brother. I shall be back soon."

She then set the lodge in perfect order and, taking her bundle, set off in search of habitations. These she soon found, and in the enjoyment of the pleasures and pastimes of her new acquaintances, she began to think less and less of her little brother, Sheem. At last she accepted a proposal of marriage, and from that time she utterly forgot the abandoned boy.

As for poor little Sheem, he was soon brought to the pinching turn of his fate. As soon as he had eaten all of the food left in the lodge, he was obliged to pick berries and live off such roots as could be dug with his slender hands. As he wandered about in search of the wherewithal to stay his hunger, he often looked up to heaven and saw the gray clouds going up and down. And then he looked about upon the wide earth, but he never saw his sister or brother returning from their long delay.