Though slow to anger, and waiting long before he remembers the provocations he has received, the Great Spirit, in the end, and when no atonement is made, always inflicts an adequate punishment for every offence. Seeing how wicked the Indians had become, he said to his Manitous: "It is time that the Kickapoos and other red men were punished. They laugh at my thunders, they make mock of my lightnings and hurricanes, they use my bounties without thanking me for them. When their corn grows ripe and tall, instead of imputing its luxuriance to my warm suns and reviving showers, they say, 'We have managed it well;' when their hunt is successful, they place it to account of their own skill and perseverance. Reckoning not, as in times past, of my superintendence over all things, they have banished me altogether from their haughty hearts, and taught themselves to forget that there is aught greater and more powerful than the Indian."
So saying, he bade his chief Manitou repair to the dwelling-places of the red men, and, to punish them for their wickedness, deprive them of that which they most valued, and bestow upon them a scourge and affliction adequate to their offences. The Spirit obeyed his master, and descended to the earth, lighting down upon the lands occupied by the Kickapoos. It was not long before he discovered what it was which that people and the other Indians most valued. He saw, from the pains they took in decorating their tails with gay paints, and beads, and shells, and wampum, that they prized them above every other possession. Calling together all the red men, he acquainted them with the will of his master, and demanded the instant sacrifice of the article upon which they set so much value. It is impossible to describe the sorrow and compunction which filled their bosoms, when they found that the forfeit for their wickedness was to be that beautiful and beloved appendage. But their prayers and entreaties, to be spared the humiliation and sacrifice, were in vain. The Spirit was inexorable, and they were compelled to place their tails on the block and to behold them amputated.
The punishment being in part performed, the Spirit next bethought himself of a gift which should prove to them "a scourge and affliction adequate to their offences." It was to convert the tails thus lopped off into vain, noisy, chattering, laughing creatures, whose faces should he like the sky in the Moon of Plants, and whose hearts should be treacherous, fickle, and inconstant; yet, strange to relate, who should be loved above all other things on the earth or in the skies. For them should life often be hazarded—reputation, fame, and virtue, often forfeited—pain and ignominy incurred. They were to be as a burden placed on the shoulders of an already overloaded man; and yet, a burden he would rather strive to carry than abandon. He further appointed that they should retain the frisky nature of the material from which they were made, and they have retained it to this day.
The Great Spirit, deeming that the trouble wherewith he had provided the red man would not sufficiently vex and punish him, determined to add another infliction, whose sting, though not so potent and irksome, should be without any alleviation whatever. He sent great swarms of musquitoes. Deprived of tails, by which flies could be brushed away at the pleasure of the wearers, the Indians dragged out for a long time a miserable existence. The musquitoes stung them, and their tails teased them. The little insects worried them continually, and their frisky companions, the women, were any thing but a cup of composing drink. At length the Great Spirit, seeing how the poor Indians were afflicted, mercifully withdrew the greater part of the musquitoes, leaving a few as a memorial of the pest which had formerly annoyed them. The Kickapoos petitioned that the women should also be taken away from them, and their old appendages returned—but the Great Spirit answered, that women were a necessary evil, and must remain.
THE HILL OF FECUNDITY.
A TRADITION OF THE MINNATAREES.
At the distance of a sun's journey from the creek, called in the tongue of the white people the Knife Creek—which divides the larger and smaller towns of the Minnatarees from each other by a valley not much above four bowshots across—there are two little hills, situate at a small distance from each other. These hills are famous, throughout all the nations of the west, for the faculty they once possessed of imparting relief to such women as resorted to them for the purpose of crying and lamenting for the circumstance of their having no children. It was there, that, if they were careful to say proper prayers, and to use the proper lamentations, the reproach of barrenness was removed; and those, whose arms had never enfolded a babe of their own, whose ears had never listened to the innocent prattle of children born of their own bodies, might enjoy that greatest of human happinesses; might feel the exquisite pleasure which arises, when the little creatures press to their knees, or draw the food of life from their bosoms.
Once upon a time, many years ago, there was among the Minnatarees a woman, whose name was Namata-washta, or the Pretty Tree. It had been her misfortune to be married, when little more than a child, to a very proud and bad man; who soon came to use her with great cruelty and injustice. She was a very strict and devout worshipper of the Great Spirit, and never failed, whether in the field or in the cabin, by night or by day, to offer up prayers and a portion of every acquisition to the Being who bestowed it upon her. The Great Spirit saw her goodness, and loved her. He made her corn to grow much larger than that of any other woman in the village; and the produce of her garden was always much earlier and better. But she was a barren woman, and thence resulted her misery. For seven weary seasons had she lived in the lodge of her husband; and while his seven other wives had each children at her knee, crying, "My mother!" there was none to address her by that tender name, and to lisp in childish tones its delight, when she returned from the labours of the field of maize—and to bestow its innocent caresses upon her after the separations which unavoidably take place in forest life. Thence arose the extreme harshness of her husband, and the continued sneers and gibes of the wives who had been blest with offspring. The good Namata-washta bore their ill usage for a long time without repining; but, at length, the oft-repeated cruelties of her husband and the incessant insults of her companions became so painful, that she was wont to fly from them to the solitude of the forest.
One evening, she wandered out from the cabin of her husband until she came to the nearest of the two small hills, of which I have been telling my brother. Upon this hill she seated herself, and was occupied in bewailing her fatal misfortune of barrenness, and in praying the Great Spirit to avert it, when some one whispered at her shoulder, "Namata-washta!"