Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

"M' TOULIN."

Passamaquoddy Indians are believers in a power by which a song, sung in one place, can be heard in another many miles away. This power is thought to be due to m' toulin, or magic, which plays an important part in their belief. Several instances were told me, and others have published similar observations. Leland, in his "Algonquin Legends of New England," pp. 517, 518, gives a weird account of an Indian who was so affected by m' toulin that he left his home and travelled north to find a cold place. Although lightly clad and bare-footed, he complained that it was too hot for him, and hastened away to find a climate more congenial to his tastes. In this account one is led to believe that the man was insane, and that to the Indian insanity is simply the result of m' toulin.

THE ORIGIN OF THE THUNDER-BIRD.

In a very interesting paper of A.F. Chamberlain, on "The Thunder-Bird among the Algonquins," in the "American Anthropologist," January, 1890, reference is made to the belief in this being among the Passamaquoddy Indians. On my recent visit to Calais I obtained from Peter Selmore a story of the origin of the Thunder-Bird, which is different from any mentioned by Leland. This story, I regret to say, I was unable to get on the phonograph.

A story of the old times.[7] Two men desired to find the origin of thunder. They set out and travelled north, and came to high mountains. These mountains drew back and forth, and then closed together very quickly. One of the men said to the other, "I will leap through the cleft when it opens, and if I am caught you can follow and try to find the origin of thunder." The first one passed through the cleft before it closed, and the second one was caught. The one that went through saw, in a large plain below, a group of wigwams, and a number of Indians playing ball. After a little while these players said to each other, "It is time to go." They went to their wigwams and put on wings, and took their bows and arrows and flew away over the mountains to the south. The old men said to the Indian, "What do you want? Who are you?" He told his mission, and they deliberated what to do. Finally they took him and put him in a mortar and pounded him up so that all his bones were broken. Then they took him out and gave him wings and a bow and arrows, and sent him away. They told him he must not go near the trees, for if he did he would go so fast that he could not stop, but would get caught in the crotch of a tree.

He could not get to his home because the bird Wochowsen blew so hard that he could make no progress against it. As the Thunder-Bird is an Indian, the lightning from him never strikes one of his kind.[8]

This is the same bird one of whose wings Glooscap once cut when it had used too much force. There was for a long time, the story goes, no moving air, so that the sea became full of slime, and all the fish died. But Glooscap is said to have repaired the wing of Wochowsen, so that we now have wind alternating with calm.

BLACK CAT AND THE SABLE.

The translation of the following tale of Pogump, or Black Cat and the Sable, was given me by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown.[9] The original was told into the phonograph in Passamaquoddy by Peter Selmore, in the presence of Noel Josephs. A bark picture of Pookjinsquess leaving the island, representing the gulls, and Black Cat on the back of the Snail, was made by Josephs. A copy of this [picture] is given at the end of this paper.

Mrs. Brown tells me there is a story which accounts for the hump on the back of Pookjinsquess, as follows: While leaning against a tree, some one cut off the tree above and below her shoulders, and she consequently carries the hump on her back.