The Spirit-Bird or the Wakon Bird is the Indian bird of paradise. It is held in the utmost veneration by the Indians as the peculiar bird of the Great Spirit. The name they have given it is expressive of its superior excellence, and the veneration they have for it; the Wakon Bird being, in their language, the bird of the Great Spirit. It is nearly the size of a swallow, of a brown colour, shaded about the neck with a bright green; the wings are of a darker brown than the body; its tail is composed of four or five feathers, which are three times as long as its body, and which are beautifully shaded with green and purple. It carries this fine length of plumage in the same manner as a peacock does, but it is not known whether it ever raises it into the erect position which that bird sometimes does. The Naudowessies consider it of superior rank to any other of the feathered creation.
(2) Louder than the thunder of the Spirits Bay of Lake Huron.—p. 105.
Nearly half-way between Saganaum Bay and the north-west corner of Lake Huron, lies a Bay, which is called Thunder Bay. The Indians, who have frequented these parts from time immemorial, and every European traveller that has passed through it, have unanimously agreed to call it by this name, on account of the continual thunder they have always observed here. Whilst Carver was making over it a passage which lasted near twenty-four hours—it thundered and lightened during the greatest part of the time to an excessive degree. It is difficult to account for the phenomenon—perhaps the organic structure of the neighbouring cliffs invites the concentration of the electric fluid at this spot.
THE ISLAND OF EAGLES.
At a short distance below the Falls of St. Anthony, there is a small rocky island, covered with huge trees, oak, pine, and cypress, its water-fretted shores and steep cliffs formed of ragged rocks, against which the waves of the cataract dash and foam in vain endeavours to overwhelm it. This little island, so annoyed by the mighty and wrathful fiends who sit in that surge, is famous throughout the Indian nations for being the abode of the spirits of the warriors of the Andirondacks—a tribe which no longer exist—who, once upon a time, many ages ago, warring against the spirits of the cataract, were completely overthrown, and by the power of their enemies transformed into eagles. As a punishment, they were bidden to dwell for ever on that misty, foggy, and noisy island; doomed to a nicer perception of hearing than belongs to mortals, that their fate might be the more awful. If my brother wishes to hear the tradition, let him open wide the doors of his understanding, and be silent.
The tribe of the Andirondacks were the mightiest tribe of the land—neither in numbers nor in valour had they their equal—their rule stretched from the broad Lake Huron to the river of the Osages, from the Alleghany to the Mississippi. All the tribes which dwelt in their neighbourhood were compelled to bow down their heads and pay them tribute. The Hurons sent them beaver-skins; the Eries wove them wampum(1); even the Iroquois, that haughty and warlike nation, who lorded it over their eastern neighbours with the ferocity of wolves, bowed to those mighty warriors, the Andirondacks, whose number was greater than that of the flights of pigeons in the month before the snows, and who wielded spears, and bent bows, and shouted their war-cry with more power than any other tribe or people in the land. Some of the more distant tribes, to secure themselves against invasion, sent ambassadors with the pipe of peace wrapped in soft furs as a present; others offered their most beautiful women for wives to the "lords of the land"—all, by various means, and in various ways, testified their inability to cope with them in war, and their anxiety to become friends and neighbours. If the proud Andirondacks granted the boon of peace, it was always with some hard condition annexed to it; not always did a favour granted by them prove a favour in the end.
So long and uninterrupted a course of prosperity begot pride and arrogance in the bosom of the Andirondacks, and they forgot the Being who had bestowed so many blessings upon them, making their wives fertile as a vine in a rich soil, giving them victory over all their enemies, and health, and bounteous harvests, and successful hunts. They paid no more worship to that Great Being; no more offered him the juicy fruits of their hunt; no more ascended the high hills at the rising or setting of the sun, with their heads anointed with clay, to pour out their souls in the song of gratitude for past, or in a prayer of supplication for future, favours; they no more scarified their bodies in deprecation of his anger, but, believing themselves—vain fools!—able to do without his aid, they shook off their duty and allegiance to him, and bade him, if not in words at least in their deeds, defiance. Pride now possessed their souls, and hardness their hearts.
It need not be told my brother that the Great Spirit is slow to anger. Knowing his power to crush with a wink of his eye every living creature; to rend asunder the mightiest hills, yea, shake to its centre the very earth with a puff of his breath; he is loth to put forth his powers or to call into action the whirlwinds of his wrath. He suffers men to revile him long before he attempts to punish them; he permits them to raise the finger of defiance many times before he strikes it down, and the tongue to utter many a scornful word before he dooms it to the silence of death. It is so with the creatures of this world, as my brother must know. The strongest man—he who feels most confident of his power to repel aggression, and to command respect and obedience, is slowest to provocation, and, when excited to anger, the easiest to be soothed and calmed. The prairie-dog oftener shows his teeth than the wolf; the imbecile adder than the death-dealing rattlesnake. And my pale-faced brother has told us the wondrous tale, that, in his own land beyond the Great Waters, the mighty animal which is called the King of Beasts is, save only when he lacks food, as mild as the dove or the song-sparrow. And thus it was with the Great Spirit, as regarded the scoffing and wickedness of the Andirondacks. Long he resisted the importunities of the subordinate Manitous, that the haughty tribe might be punished for their insolence; long he waited with the hope that their eyes might be opened, and repentance seize their hearts, and amendment ensue. He waited in vain, each day they grew worse, until at length they brought down upon their heads the vengeance which could be no longer delayed.
There was among the Andirondacks a youth who, from the moment of his birth, was the favourite of the being who rules the world. While yet an unfledged bird, his words were the words of grey-headed wisdom; while yet a boy his arm was the arm of a strong man, his eye the eye of a cool man, and his heart like the heart of a brave man. He was as cool as a warrior who has lived to be aged in scenes of war. While he sat in his cradle of woven willow, his father chanced to speak in his hearing of an expedition which the Braves were about to undertake against the distant Coppermines, who had their lodges on the skirts of the sea of eternal ice. The wise child bade the father call the chiefs and counsellors of the nation around him, and to them he said, "You will not succeed in this war. The Coppermines dwell in the regions of great cold; before they can be met, icy hills and frozen lakes, and stormy winds and bleak tempests, must be encountered. If you meet them, success would be doubtful, for they are on their own hills, with nerves fitted to endure the searching cold, and possessed of that which the Andirondacks want—a thorough knowledge of every path that crosses their snow-clad vales and ice-bound waters. Stay at home, Braves, help your women to plant corn, and cut up the buffalo-meat, rather than go upon an expedition from which you will never return. Do I not see the torturing fires lighted, and Braves wearing the Andirondack mocassins bound to the stake of death? Do not mine ears hear a death-song in the Andirondack tongue? And are not these fearless sounds which come to mine ears the cries of the vulture and the wolf, fighting for the remains of a human carcase, which hath the Andirondack tuft of hair? Stay at home, Andirondacks, help your women to plant corn, and cut up the buffalo-meat, rather than go upon an expedition from which you will never return."