ILLUSTRATIONS
| PAGE | |
| Early Indian drawing showing a wrestling bout | [Frontispiece] |
| Early Indian pottery | [20] |
| Wild rice tied in bunches or sheaves | [42] |
| Wild rice kernels after threshing and winnowing | [42] |
| Birch-bark yoke, and sap buckets, used in maple sugar making | [52] |
| Picture writing. An Ojibwa Meda song | [84] |
| Permanent ash-bark wigwam of the wild rice gathering Ojibwa | [104] |
| Shell gorget showing eagle carving | [128] |
| Indian jar from the mounds of Arkansas | [128] |
| Spider gorgets | [158] |
| Shell pins made and used by Indians of the Mississippi Valley | [176] |
| Ojibwa dancer’s beaded medicine bag | [198] |
MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE
MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
AND THE
GREAT LAKES
THE EARTH-MAKER
Winnebago
WHEN Earth-maker came to consciousness, he thought of the substance upon which he was sitting. He saw nothing. There was nothing anywhere. Therefore his tears flowed. He wept. But not long did he think of it. He took some of the substance upon which he was sitting; so he made a little piece of earth for our fathers. He cast this down from the high place on which he sat. Then he looked at what he had made. It had become something like our earth. Nothing grew upon it. Bare it was, but not quiet. It kept turning.
“How shall I make it become quiet?” thought Earth-maker. Then he took some grass from the substance he was sitting upon and cast it down upon the earth. Yet it was not quiet.