Another striking trait of the race is found in their legends and tales. Those of the aboriginal race who excel in private conversation, become to their tribes oral chroniclers, and are relied on for historical traditions as well as tales. It is necessary, in listening to them, to distinguish between the gossip and the historian, the narrator of real events, and of nursery tales. For they gather together everything from the fabulous feats of Manebozho and Misshozha, to the hair-breadth escapes of a Pontiac, or a Black Hawk. These narrators are generally men of a good memory and a certain degree of humor, who have experienced vicissitudes, and are cast into the vale of years. In the rehearsal of their tales, transformations and transmigrations are a part of the machinery relied on; and some of them are as accurately adapted to the purposes of amusement or instruction, as if Zoroaster or Ovid himself had been consulted in their production. Many objects in the inanimate creation, according to these tales, were originally men and women. And numerous animals had other forms in their first stages of existence, which they, as well as human beings, forfeited, by the power of necromancy and transmigration. The evening star, it is fabled, was formerly a woman. An ambitious boy became one of the planets. Three brothers, travelling in a canoe, were translated into a group of stars. The fox, lynx, hare, robin, eagle and numerous other species, retain places in the Indian system of astronomy. The mouse obtained celestial elevation by creeping up the rainbow, which Indian story makes a flossy mass of bright threads, and by the power of gnawing them, he relieved a captive in the sky. It is a coincidence, which we note, that ursa major is called by them the bear.
These legends are not confined to the sky alone. The earth also is a fruitful theatre of transformations. The wolf was formerly a boy, who, being neglected by his parents, was transformed into this animal. A shell, lying on the shore, was transformed to the raccoon. The brains of an adulteress were converted into the addikumaig, or white fish.
The power of transformation was variously exercised. It most commonly existed in magicians, of whom Abo, Manabosh or Manabozha, and Mishosha, retain much celebrity. The latter possessed a magic canoe which would rush forward through the water on the utterance of a charm, with a speed that would outstrip the wind. Hundreds of miles were performed in as many minutes. The charm which he uttered, consisted of a monosyllable, containing one consonant, which does not belong to the language; and this word has no definable meaning. So that the language of magic and demonology has one feature in common in all ages and with every nation.
Man, in his common shape, is not alone the subject of their legends. The intellectual creations of the Indians admit of the agency of giants and fairies. Anak and his progeny could not have created more alarm in the minds of the ten faithless spies, than do the race of fabulous Weendigos to the Indian tribes. These giants are represented as cannibals, who ate up men, women and children. Indian fairies are of two classes, distinguished as the place of their revels is either the land or water. Land-fairies are imagined to choose their residences about promontories, water-falls and solemn groves. The water, besides its appropriate class of aquatic fairies, is supposed to be the residence of a race of beings called Nibanaba which have their analogy, except as to sex, in the mermaid. The Indian word indicates a male. Ghosts are the ordinary machinery in their tales of terror and mystery. There is, perhaps, a glimmering of the idea of retributive justice in the belief that ghosts and spirits are capable of existing in fire.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] New York Lit. & Theo. Review.
INDIAN ARROW HEADS, &c.
By far the most numerous relics of the Red Race, now found in those parts of our country from which it has disappeared, are the small stones with which they headed their arrows. Being made of the most durable substances, they have generally remained in the soil, unaffected by time and the changes of season. They most abound in those rich meadows which border some of our rivers, and in other spots of peculiar fertility, though of less extent, where the pasture, or other attractions, collected game for the Red men. The stones most commonly used were quartz and flint, which were preferred on account of the facility of shaping them, the keenness of the points and edges, which they readily present under the blows of a skilful manufacturer, as well as their superior hardness and imperishable nature. Multitudes of specimens still exist, which show the various forms and sizes to which the Red men reduced stones of these kinds: and they excite our admiration, by their perfect state of preservation, as well by the skilfulness of their manufacture.