The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

PAUGUK,

AND

THE MYTHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF HIAWATHA.

In a class of languages, where the personification of ideas, or sentiments, frequently compensates for the paucity of expression, it could hardly be expected that death should be omitted. The soul, or spirit, deemed to be an invisible essence, is denominated Ochichaug; this is the term translators employ for the Holy Ghost. There is believed to be the spirit of a vital and personal animus, distinct from this, to which they apply the term Jeebi or Ghost. Death, or the mythos of the condition of the human frame, deprived of even the semblance of blood, and muscle, and life, is represented by the word Pauguk. Pauguk is a horrible phantom of human bones, without muscular tissue or voice, the appearance of which presages speedy dissolution. Of all the myths of the Indians, this is the most gloomy and fearful.

In strict accordance, however, with aboriginal tastes and notions, Pauguk is represented as a hunter. He is armed with a bow and arrows, or a pug-gamagan, or war-club. Instead of objects of the chase, men, women, and children are substituted as the objects of pursuit. To see him is indicative of death. Some accounts represent him as covered with a thin transparent skin, with the sockets of his eyes filled with balls of fire.

Pauguk never speaks. Unlike the Jeebi or ghost, his limbs never assume the rotundity of life. Neither is he confounded in form with the numerous class of Monedoes, or of demons. He does not possess the power of metamorphosis, or of transforming himself into the shapes of animals. Unvaried in repulsiveness, he is ever an object of fear; but unlike every other kind or class of creation of the Indian mind, Pauguk never disguises himself, or affects the cunning of concealment—never effects to be what he is not.

Manabozho alone had power to invoke him unharmed. When he had expended all his arts to overcome Paup-Puk-Keewiss, who could at will transform himself, directly or indirectly, into any class or species of the animal creation, going often, as he did, as a jeebi, from one carcass into another, at last, at the final conflict at the rock, he dispatched him with the real power of death, after summoning the elements of thunder and lightning to his aid. And when thus deprived of all sublunary power, the enraged Great Hare, Manito (such seems the meaning of Manabozho), changed the dead carcass of his enemy into the great caniew, or war eagle. Nothing had given Manabozho half the trouble and vexation of the flighty, defying, changeable and mischievous Paup-Puk-Keewiss, who eluded him by jumping from one end of the continent to the other. He had killed the great power of evil in the prince of serpents, who had destroyed Chebizbos his grandson—he had survived the flood produced by the great Serpent, and overcome, in combat, the mysterious power held by the Pearl, or sea shell Feather, and the Mishemokwa, or great Bear with the wampum necklace, but Paup-Puk-Keewiss put him to the exercise of his reserved powers of death and annihilation. And it is by this act that we perceive that Hiawatha, or Manabozho, was a divinity. Manabozho had been a hunter, a fisherman, a warrior, a suppliant, a poor man, a starveling, a laughing stock and a mere beggar; he now shows himself a god, and as such we must regard him as the prime Indian myth.

This myth, the more it is examined, the more extensive does it appear to be incorporated in some shape in the Indian mythology. If interpreted agreeably to the metaphysical symbols of the old world, it would appear to be distilled from the same oriental symbolical crucible, which produced an Osiris and a Typhon—for the American Typhon is represented by the Mishikinabik, or serpent, and the American Osiris by a Hiawatha, Manabozho, Micabo, or great Hare-God, or Ghost.

This myth, as it is recognized under the name of Hiawatha by the Iroquois, is without the misadventures over which, in the person of Manabozho, the Algonquins laugh so heartily, and the particular recitals of which, as given in prior pages, afford so much amusement to their lodge circles. According to the Iroquois version, Tarenyawagon was deputed by the Master of Life, who is also called the Holder of Heaven, to the earth, the better to prepare it for the residence of man, and to teach the tribes the knowledge necessary to their condition, as well as to rid the land of giants and monsters. Having accomplished this benevolent labor, he laid aside his heavenly character and name, assuming that of Hiawatha; took a wife, and settled in a beautiful part of the country. Hiawatha having set himself down to live as one of them, it was his care to hold up, at all times, the best examples of prudential wisdom. All things, hard or wondrous, were possible for him to do, as in the case of the hero of the Algonquin legend, and he had, like him, a magic canoe to sail up and down the waters wherever he wished.

Hiawatha, after he had performed the higher functions appertaining to his character, settled down in the Iroquois country, and was universally regarded as a sage. He instructed the tribes how to repel savage invaders, who were in the habit of scourging the country, and was ever ready to give them wise counsels. The chief things of these good counsels to the tribes were to attend to their proper vocation, as hunters and fishermen, to cultivate corn, and to cease dissensions and bickerings among themselves. He finally instructed them to form a general league and confederacy against their common enemies. These maxims were enforced at a general council of the Iroquois tribe, held at Onondaga, which place became the seat of their council fire, and first government. This normal council of Iroquois sages resulted in placing the tribes in their assembled, not tribal capacity, under the care of a moderator, or chief magistrate of the assembled cantons, called Atatarho.[72] ]