Algonquin Legends of New England

The Algonquin Legends of New
England
by Charles Godfrey
Leland

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Title: The Algonquin Legends of New England
Author: Charles Godfrey Leland
Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6803] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on January 26,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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ALGONQUIN LEGENDS ***

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THE ALGONQUIN LEGENDS OF NEW ENGLAND
OR
Myths and Folk Lore of the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot
Tribes
BY CHARLES G. LELAND

[Frontispiece Illustration: MIK UM WESS THE INDIAN PUCK, OR
ROBIN GOOD-FELLOW.
From a scraping on birch bark by Tomak Josephs, Indian Governor at

Peter Dona's Point, Maine. The Mik um wees always wears a red cap
like the Norse Goblin.]

PREFACE.
When I began, in the summer of 1882, to collect among the
Passamaquoddy Indians at Campobello, New Brunswick, their
traditions and folk-lore, I expected to find very little indeed. These
Indians, few in number, surrounded by white people, and thoroughly
converted to Roman Catholicism, promised but scanty remains of
heathenism. What was my amazement, however, at discovering, day by
day, that there existed among them, entirely by oral tradition, a far
grander mythology than that which has been made known to us by
either the Chippewa or Iroquois Hiawatha Legends, and that this was
illustrated by an incredible number of tales. I soon ascertained that
these were very ancient. The old people declared that they had heard
from their progenitors that all of these stories were once sung; that they
themselves remembered when many of them were poems. This was
fully proved by discovering manifest traces of poetry in many, and
finally by receiving a long Micmac tale which had been sung by an
Indian. I found that all the relaters of this lore were positive as to the
antiquity of the narratives, and distinguished accurately between what
was or was not pre-Columbian. In fact, I came in time to the opinion
that the original stock of all the Algonquin myths, and perhaps of many
more, still existed, not far away in the West, but at our very doors; that
is to say, in Maine and New Brunswick. It is at least certain, as the
reader may convince himself, that these Wabanaki, or Northeastern
Algonquin, legends give, with few exceptions, in full and coherently,
many tales which have only reached us in a broken, imperfect form,
from other sources.
This work, then, contains a collection of the myths, legends, and
folk-lore of the principal Wabanaki, or Northeastern Algonquin,
Indians; that is to say, of the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots of
Maine, and of the Micmacs of New Brunswick. All of this material was
gathered directly from Indian narrators, the greater part by myself, the

rest by a few friends; in fact, I can give the name of the aboriginal
authority for every tale except one. As my chief object has been simply
to collect and preserve valuable material, I have said little of the labors
of such critical writers as Brinton, Hale, Trumbull, Powers, Morgan,
Bancroft, and the many more who have so ably studied and set forth
red Indian ethnology. If I have rarely ventured on their field, it is
because I believe that when the Indian shall have passed away there
will come far better ethnologists than I am, who will be much more
obliged to me for collecting raw material than for cooking it.
Two or three subjects have, it is true, tempted me into occasional
commenting. The manifest, I may say the undeniable, affinity between
the myths and legends of the Northeastern Indians