Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore | Page 6

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.
[Footnote 7: The Zu?i folk-tales always begin with a similar introduction, which may be translated, "In the time of the ancients." The Passamaquoddies often end a story by the words which, being translated, mean "this is the end." The same occurs in other Indian stories.]
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]
[Footnote 8: The wind (Wochowsen) is represented as resisting the Thunder-Bird. According to Chamberlain and Leland, "thunder beings are always trying to kill a big bird in the south." It is said by the Passamaquoddies that Wochowsen is the great bird which overspreads all with his wings and darkens the sky. Often when he passes by, the glare of the bright sun is ample to blind them.]
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.
[Footnote 9: The version gives only the incidents as remembered, and can hardly be called a translation.]
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.
Cooloo, the great bird that overspreads all with his wings, was a chief. His wife was named Pookjinsquess. The Sable and the Black Cat went in a stone canoe to a place where they make maple sugar. In this journey they were lost, and separated from each other. Sable in his wanderings came to a peculiarly shaped wigwam. He went in and found within a large Snake. The Snake said he was glad the Sable had come, as he was very hungry. The Snake told him to go into the woods and get a straight stick, so that when he pierced him he would not tear open his entrails. Sable then went out and sang in a loud voice a song which he hoped his brother the Black Cat would hear and come to his aid.[10] The Black Cat heard him and came to him. Then the Sable told the Black Cat the trouble he was in, and how the Snake was going to kill him. The Black Cat told Sable not to be afraid, but that he would kill the big Snake. He told him that he would lie down behind the trunk of a hemlock tree which had fallen, and that Sable should search out a stick that was very crooked, obeying the commands of the big Snake. When he had found a stick, he should carry it to the Snake, who would complain that the stick was not straight enough. The Black Cat instructed Sable to reply that he would straighten it