The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American India | Page 7

ears to listen to the tales of men; and the Indian is far too shrewd a
man, and too firm a believer in the system of invisible spirits by which
he is surrounded, to commit himself by saying a word which they, with
their acute senses on the opening of the spring, can be offended at.
He leaps over extensive regions of country like an ignis fatuus. He
appears suddenly like an avatar, or saunters over weary wastes a poor
and starving hunter. His voice is at one moment deep and sonorous as a
thunder-clap, and at another clothed with the softness of feminine
supplication. Scarcely any two persons agree in all the minor
circumstances of the story, and scarcely any omit the leading traits. The
several tribes who speak dialects of the mother language from which
the narration is taken, differ, in like manner, from each other in the
particulars of his exploits. His birth and parentage are mysterious. Story
says his grandmother was the daughter of the moon. Having been
married but a short time, her rival attracted her to a grape-vine swing
on the banks of a lake, and by one bold exertion pitched her into its
centre, from which she fell through to the earth. Having a daughter, the
fruit of her lunar marriage, she was very careful in instructing her, from
early infancy, to beware of the west wind, and never, in stooping, to
expose herself to its influence. In some unguarded moment this
precaution was neglected. In an instant, the gale accomplished its

Tarquinic purpose.
Very little is told of his early boyhood. We take him up in the
following legend at a period of advanced youth, when we find him
living with his grandmother. And at this time he possessed, although he
had not yet exercised, all the anomalous and contradictory powers of
body and mind, of manship and divinity, which he afterward evinced.
The timidity and rawness of the boy quickly gave way in the
courageous developments of the man. He soon evinced the sagacity,
cunning, perseverance, and heroic courage which constitute the
admiration of the Indians. And he relied largely upon these in the
gratification of an ambitious, vainglorious, and mischief-loving
disposition. In wisdom and energy he was superior to any one who had
ever lived before. Yet he was simple when circumstances required it,
and was ever the object of tricks and ridicule in others. He could
transform himself into any animal he pleased, being man or manito, as
circumstances rendered necessary. He often conversed with animals,
fowls, reptiles, and fishes. He deemed himself related to them, and
invariably addressed them by the term "my brother;" and one of his
greatest resources, when hard pressed, was to change himself into their
shapes.
Manitoes constitute the great power and absorbing topic of Indian lore.
Their agency is at once the groundwork of their mythology and
demonology. They supply the machinery of their poetic inventions, and
the belief in their multitudinous existence exerts a powerful influence
upon the lives and character of individuals. As their manitoes are of all
imaginary kinds, grades, and powers, benign and malicious, it seems a
grand conception among the Indians to create a personage strong
enough in his necromantic and spiritual powers to baffle the most
malicious, beat the stoutest, and overreach the most cunning. In
carrying out this conception in the following myth, they have, however,
rather exhibited an incarnation of the power of Evil than of the genius
of Benevolence.
Manabozho was living with his grandmother near the edge of a wide
prairie. On this prairie he first saw animals and birds of every kind. He

there also saw exhibitions of divine power in the sweeping tempests, in
the thunder and lightning, and the various shades of light and darkness,
which form a never-ending scene of observation. Every new sight he
beheld in the heavens was a subject of remark; every new animal or
bird an object of deep interest; and every sound uttered by the animal
creation a new lesson, which he was expected to learn. He often
trembled at what he heard and saw. To this scene his grandmother sent
him at an early age to watch. 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!"[6] 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." She told him that he was young and foolish; that what
he had heard was only a bird, deriving its name from the noise it made.
He went back and continued his watch. While