The Junior Classics, vol 1 | Page 8

a stripling, Manabozho was uncommonly wide-awake. Every sight
he beheld in the heavens was a subject of remark, every new animal or
bird an object of deep interest, and every sound was like a new lesson
which he was expected to learn. He often trembled at what he heard
and saw.
The first sound he heard was that of the owl, at which he was greatly
terrified, and, quickly descending the tree he had climbed, he ran with
alarm to the lodge. "Noko! noko! grandmother!" he cried. "I have heard
a monedo."
She laughed at his fears, and asked him what kind of a noise it made.
He answered. "It makes a noise like this: ko-ko-ko-ho!"
His grandmother told him he was young and foolish; that what he heard
was only a bird which derived its name from the peculiar noise it made.
He returned to the prairie and continued his watch. As he stood there
looking at the clouds he thought to himself, "It is singular that I am so
simple and my grandmother so wise; and that I have neither father nor
mother. I have never heard a word about them. I must ask and find
out."
He went home and sat down, silent and dejected. Finding that this did
not attract the notice of his grandmother, he began a loud lamentation,
which he kept increasing, louder and louder, till it shook the lodge and
nearly deafened the old grandmother.

"Manabozho, what is the matter with you?" she said, "you are making a
great deal of noise."
Manabozho started off again with his doleful hubbub, but succeeded in
jerking out between his big sobs, "I haven't got any father nor mother, I
haven't."
Knowing that he was of a wicked and revengeful nature, his
grandmother dreaded to tell him the story of his parentage, as she knew
he would make trouble of it.
Manabozho renewed his cries and managed to throw out for a third or
fourth time, his sorrowful lament that he was a poor unfortunate who
had no parents or relatives.
At last she said to him, to quiet him, "Yes, you have a father and three
brothers living. Your mother is dead. She was taken for a wife by your
father, the West, without the consent of her parents. Your brothers are
the North, East, and South; and being older than you your father has
given them great power with the winds, according to their names. You
are the youngest of his children. I have nursed you from your infancy,
for your mother died when you were born."
"I am glad my father is living," said Manabozho, "I shall set out in the
morning to visit him."
His grandmother would have discouraged him, saying it was a long
distance to the place where his father, Ningabinn, or the West, lived.
This information seemed rather to please than to discourage
Manabozho, for by this time he had grown to such a size and strength
that he had been compelled to leave the narrow shelter of his
grandmother's lodge and live out of doors. He was so tall that, if he had
been so disposed, he could have snapped off the heads of the birds
roosting on the topmost branches of the highest trees, as he stood up,
without being at the trouble to climb. And if he had at any time taken a
fancy to one of the same trees for a walking stick, he would have had
no more to do than to pluck it up with his thumb and finger and strip

down the leaves and twigs with the palm of his hand.
Bidding good-by to his old grandmother, who pulled a very long face
over his departure, Manabozho set out at a great pace, for he was able
to stride from one side of a prairie to the other at a single step.
He found his father on a high mountain far in the west. His father
espied his approach at a great distance, and bounded down the
mountainside several miles to give him welcome. Apparently delighted
with each other, they reached in two or three of their giant paces the
lodge of the West which stood high up near the clouds.
They spent some days in talking with each other-for these two great
persons did nothing on a small scale, and a whole day to deliver a
single sentence, such was the immensity of their discourse, was quite
an ordinary affair.
One evening Manabozho asked his father what he was most afraid of
on earth.
He replied-"Nothing."
"But is there nothing you dread here-nothing that would hurt you if you
took too much of it? Come, tell me."
Manabozho was very urgent, so at last his father said: "Yes, there is a
black stone