The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American India | Page 4

genuflections, have been discovered, in many instances, under the
earth-heaps and artificial mounds and places of sepulture of the ancient
inhabitants. Intelligent Indians yet living, among the North American
tribes, point out the symbol of the sun, in their ancient muzzinabikons,
or rock-inscriptions, and also amid the idiographic tracery and
bark-scrolls of the hieratic and magical medicine songs.
With a cosmogony which ascribes the creation of the Geezha Monedo,
who is symbolized by the sun, the myth of Hiawatha is almost a
necessary consequence in carrying out his mundane intentions to the
tribes, who believed themselves to be peculiar objects of his love and
benevolence. This myth is noticed by the earliest explorers of this
continent, who have bestowed attention on the subject, under the
various names of Inigorio, Yoskika, Taren-Yawagon, Atahentsic,
Manabozho, and Micabo. A mythology appears indispensable to a rude
and ignorant race like the Indians. Their vocabulary is nearly limited to
objects which can be seen and handled. Abstractions are only reached
by the introduction of some term which restores the idea. The Deity is a
mystery, of whose power they must chiefly judge by the phenomena
before them. Everything is mysterious which is not understood; and,

unluckily, they understand little or nothing. If any phenomenon, or
existence not before them, is to be described, the language must be
symbolic. The result is, that the Indian languages are peculiarly the
languages of symbols, metaphors, and figures. Without this feature,
everything not in the departments of eating, drinking, and living, and
the ordinary transactions of the chase and forest, would not be capable
of description.
When the Great Sacred White Hare of Heaven, the Manabozho of the
Algrics, and Hiawatha of the Iroquois, kills the Great Misshikinabik, or
prince of serpents, it is understood that he destroys the great power of
evil. It is a deity whom he destroys, a sort of Typhon or Ahriman in the
system. It is immediately found, on going to his lodge, that it is a man,
a hero, a chief, who is sick, and he must be cured by simples and magic
songs like the rest of the Indians. He is surrounded with Indian doctors,
who sing magic songs. He has all the powers of a deity, and, when he
dies, the land is subjected to a flood; from which Hiawatha alone
escapes. This play between the zoonic and mortal shapes of heroes
must constantly be observed, in high as well as in ordinary characters.
To have the name of an animal, or bird, or reptile, is to have his powers.
When Pena runs, on a wager of life, with the Great Sorcerer, he
changes himself sometimes into a partridge, and sometimes into a wolf,
to outrun him.
The Indian's necessities of language at all times require personifications
and linguistic creations. He cannot talk on abstract topics without them.
Myths and spiritual agencies are constantly required. The ordinary
domestic life of the Indian is described in plain words and phrases, but
whatever is mysterious or abstract must be brought under mythological
figures and influences. Birds and quadrupeds must be made to talk.
Weeng is the spirit of somnolency in the lodge stories. He is provided
with a class of little invisible emissaries, who ascend the forehead,
armed with tiny war-clubs, with which they strike the temples,
producing sleep. Pauguk is the personification of death. He is armed
with a bow and arrows, to execute his mortal functions. Hosts of a
small fairy-like creation, called Ininees, little men, or Pukwudj Ininees,
vanishing little men, inhabit cliffs, and picturesque and romantic scenes.

Another class of marine or water spirits, called Nebunabaigs, occupy
the rivers and lakes. There is an articulate voice in all the varied sounds
of the forest--the groaning of its branches, and the whispering of its
leaves. Local Manitos, or fetishes, inhabit every grove; and hence he is
never alone.
To facilitate allusion to the braggadocio, or the extravagant in
observation, the mythos of Iagoo is added to his vocabulary. The North
and the South, the East and the West, are prefigured as the brothers of
Hiawatha, or the laughter-provoking Manubozho. It is impossible to
peruse the Indian myths and legends without perceiving the governing
motives of his reasons, hopes, wishes, and fears, the principles of his
actions, and his general belief in life, death, and immortality. He is no
longer an enigma. They completely unmask the man. They lay open his
most secret theories of the phenomena of spirit life; of necromancy,
witchcraft, and demonology; and, in a special manner, of the deep and
wide-spread prevalence throughout the world of Indian opinion, of the
theory and power of local Manitos. It is here that the Indian prophet,
powwow, or jossakeed, throws off his mask, and the Indian religionist
discloses to us the secrets