“For the last time as musk rat,
For the first time as woman.
Go in beast, come out human!”
The spirit’s directions were obeyed to the letter. The Nanticoke took his glossy little maiden musk rat by the paw, led her to the border of the lake, and whilst she dipped her feet in the water, he used the appointed formulary; thereupon a change took place in the little animal. Her body was observed to assume the posture of a human being, gradually erecting itself, as a sapling, which, having been bent to earth, resumes its upright position. When the little creature became erect, the skin began to fall from the head and neck, and gradually unveiling the body, exhibited the maiden, beautiful as a flowery meadow, or the blue summer sky, or the north lit up with the flush of the dancing lights, or the rainbow which follows the fertilising shower. Her hand was scarce larger than a hazel-leaf, and her foot not longer than that of the ringdove. Her arm was so slight that it seemed as though the breeze must break it. The Nanticoke gazed with delight on his beauteous bride, and his gratification was enhanced when he saw her stature increase to the proportions of a human being.
Other American Indian tribes assert that the Great Spirit, moved with compassion for man, who wasted in solitude on earth, sent a heavenly spirit to be his companion, and the mother of his children. And I believe they are about right. But the Kickapoos tell a very different tale.
There was a time throughout the great world, say they, when neither on land nor in the water was there a woman to be found. Of vain things there were plenty—there were the turkey, and the blue jay, the wood duck, and the wakon bird; and noisy, chattering creatures there were plenty—there were the jackdaw, the magpie, and the rook; and gadabouts there were plenty—there were the squirrel, the starling, and the mouse; but of women, vain, noisy, chattering, gadabout women, there were none. It was quite a still world to what it is now, and it was a peaceable world, too. Men were in plenty, made of clay, and sun-dried, and they were then so happy, oh, so happy! Wars were none then, quarrels were none. The Kickapoos ate their deer’s flesh with the Potowatomies, hunted the otter with the Osages, and the beaver with the Hurons. Then the great fathers of Kickapoos scratched the backs of the savage Iroquois, and the truculent Iroquois returned the compliment. Tribes which now seek one another’s scalps then sat smiling benevolently in each other’s faces, smoking the never-laid-aside calumet of peace.
These first men were not quite like the men now, for they had tails. Very handsome tails they were, covered with long silky hair; very convenient were these appendages in a country where flies were numerous and troublesome, tails being more sudden in their movements than hands, and more conveniently situated for whisking off the flies which alight on the back. It was a pleasant sight to see the ancestral men leisurely smoking, and waving their flexible tails at the doors of their wigwams in the golden autumn evenings, and within were no squalling children, no wrangling wives. The men doted on their tails, and they painted and adorned them; they platted the hair into beautiful tresses, and wove bright beads and shells and wampum with the hair. They attached bows and streamers of coloured ribbons to the extremities of their tails, and when men ran and pursued the elk or the moose, there was a flutter of colour behind them, and a tinkle of precious ornaments.
But the red men got proud; they were so happy, all went so well with them, that they forgot the Great Spirit. They no more offered the fattest and choicest of their game upon the memahoppa, or altar-stone, nor danced in his praise who dispersed the rains to cleanse the earth, and his lightnings to cool and purify the air. Wherefore he sent his chief Manitou to humble men by robbing them of what they most valued, and bestowing upon them a scourge and affliction adequate to their offence. The spirit obeyed his Master, and, coming on earth, reached the ground in the land of the Kickapoos. He looked about him, and soon ascertained that the red men valued their tails above every other possession. Summoning together all the Indians, he acquainted them with the will of the Wahconda, and demanded the instant sacrifice of the cherished member. It is impossible to describe the sorrow and compunction which filled their bosoms when they found that the forfeit for their oblivion of the Great Spirit was to be that beautiful and beloved appendage. Tail after tail was laid upon the block and amputated.
The mission of the spirit was, in part, performed. He now took the severed tails and converted them into vain, chattering, and frisky women. Upon these objects the Kickapoos at once lavished their admiration; they loaded them as before with beads, and wampum, and paint, and decorated them with tinkling ornaments and coloured ribbons. Yet the women had lost one essential quality which as tails they had possessed. The caudal appendage had brushed off man the worrying insects which sought to sting or suck his blood, whereas the new article was itself provided with a sharp sting, called by us a tongue; and far from brushing annoyances off man, it became an instrument for accumulating them upon his back and shoulders. Pleasant and soothing to the primeval Kickapoo was the wagging to and fro of the member stroking and fanning his back, but the new one became a scourge to lacerate.
However, woman retains indications of her origin. She is still beloved as of yore; she is still beautiful, with flowing hair; still adapted to trinketry. Still she is frisky, vivacious, and slappy; and still, as of old, does she ever follow man, dangling after him, hanging at his heels, and never, of her own accord, separating from him.
The Kickapoos, divested of their tails, the legend goes on to relate, were tormented by the mosquitoes, till the Great Spirit, in compassion for their woes, mercifully withdrew the greater part of their insect tormentors. Overjoyed at their deliverance, the red men supplicated the Wahconda also to remove the other nuisances, the women; but he replied that the women were a necessary evil and must remain.[1]
This is worse treatment than that which the ladies received from Hesiod. We have all heard of a young and romantic lady who was so enraptured with the ideal of American Indian life as delineated by Fenimore Cooper, that she fled her home, and went to the savages in Canada. We hope she did not fall to the lot of a Kickapoo.