In Indian Tents. Abby Langdon Alger

      PREFACE

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      In the summer of 1882 and 1883, I was associated with Charles G. Leland in the collection of the material for his book “The Algonquin Legends of New England,” published by Houghton and Mifflin in 1884.

      I found the work so delightful, that I have gone on with it since, whenever I found myself in the neighborhood of Indians. The supply of legends and tales seems to be endless, one supplementing and completing another, so that there may be a dozen versions of one tale, each containing something new. I have tried, in this little book, in every case, to bring these various versions into a single whole; though I scarcely hope to give my readers the pleasure which I found in hearing them from the Indian story-tellers. Only the very old men and women remember these stories now; and though they know that their legends will soon be buried with them, and forgotten, it is no easy task to induce them to repeat them. One may make half-a-dozen visits, tell his own best stories, and exert all his arts of persuasion in vain, then stroll hopelessly by some day, to be called in to hear some marvellous bit of folk-lore. These old people have firm faith in the witches, fairies, and giants of whom they tell; and any trace of amusement or incredulity would meet with quick indignation and reserve.

      Two of these stories have been printed in Appleton’s “Popular Science Monthly,” and are in the English Magazine “Folk-Lore.”

      I am under the deepest obligation to my friend, Mrs. Wallace Brown, of Calais, Maine, who has generously contributed a number of stories from her own collection.

      The woman whose likeness appears on the cover of this book was a famous story-teller, one of the few nearly pure-blooded Indians in the Passamaquoddy tribe. She was over eighty-seven when this picture was taken.

      IN INDIAN TENTS

      THE CREATION

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      In the beginning God made Adam out of the earth, but he did not make Glūs-kābé (the Indian God). Glūs-kābé made himself out of the dirt that was kicked up in the creation of Adam. He rose and walked about, but he could not speak until the Lord opened his lips.

      God made the earth and the sea, and then he took counsel with Glūs-kābé concerning them. He asked him if it would be better to have the rivers run up on one side of the earth and down on the other, but Glūs-kābé said, “No, they must all run down one way.”

      Then the Lord asked him about the ocean, whether it would do to have it always lie still. Glūs-kābé told him, “No!” It must rise and fall, or else it would grow thick and stagnant.

      “How about fire?” asked the Lord; “can it burn all the time and nobody put it out?”

      Glūs-kābé said: “That would not do, for if anybody got burned and fire could not be put out, they would die; but if it could be put out, then the burn would get well.”

      So he answered all the Lord’s questions.

      After this, Glūs-kābé was out on the ocean one day, and the wind blew so hard he could not manage his canoe. He had to go back to land, and he asked his old grandmother (among Indians this title is often only a mark of respect, and does not always indicate any blood relationship), “Māli Moninkwess” (the Woodchuck), what he could do. She told him to follow a certain road up a mountain. There he found an old man sitting on a rock flapping his wings (arms) violently. This was “Wūchowsen,” the great Wind-blower. He begged Glūs-kābé to take him up higher, where he would have space to flap his wings still harder. So Glūs-kābé lifted him up and carried him a long way. When they were over a great lake, he let Wūchowsen drop into the water. In falling he broke his wings, and lay there helpless.

      Glūs-kābé went back to sea and found the ocean as smooth as glass. He enjoyed himself greatly for many days, paddling about; but finally the water grew stagnant and thick, and a great smell arose. The fish died, and Glūs-kābé could bear it no longer.

      Again he consulted his grandmother, and she told him that he must set Wūchowsen free. So he once more bore Wūchowsen back to his mountain, first making him promise not to flap his wings so constantly, but only now and then, so that the Indians might go out in their canoes. Upon his consent to do this, Glūs-kābé mended his broken wings; but they were never quite so strong as at first, and thus we do not now have such terrible winds as in the olden days.

      This story was told to me by an old man whom I had always thought dull and almost in his dotage; but one