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THE FIRST VOLUME.

Page

General Considerations 9

Preliminary Observations on the Tales 31

Ojeeg Annung; or, the Summer-maker 57

The Celestial Sisters 67

Tau-Wau-Chee-Hezkaw; or, the White Feather 74

Peboan and Seegwun. An Allegory 84

The Red Lover 87

Iamo; or, the Undying Head 96

Mon-Dau-Min; or, the Origin of Indian Corn 122

Peeta Kway; or, the Tempest 129

Manabozho 134

Bokwewa; or, the Humpback 175

Iena; or, the Magic Bundle 181

Sheem; or, the Forsaken Boy 191

Paup-Puk-Keewiss 200

Iadilla; or, the Origin of the Robin 221

The Enchanted Moccasins 226

The Broken Wing 233

The Three Cranberries. A Fable 238

Paradise opened to the Indians; Pontiac's Tale 239

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

It is proposed by the author to publish the result of his observation on the mythology, distinctive opinions, and intellectual character of the aborigines. Materials exist for separate observations on their oral tales, fictitious and historical; their hieroglyphics, music, and poetry; and the grammatical structure of the languages, their principles of combination, and the actual state of their vocabulary. The former topic has been selected as the commencement of the series. At what time the remaining portions will appear, will depend upon the interest manifested by the public in the subject, and the leisure and health necessary to the examination of a mass of original papers, the accumulation of nearly twenty years.

The character and peculiarities of the tribes have been studied under favourable circumstances and new aspects; offering, it is believed, an insight into their mental constitution, as yet but imperfectly understood. Hitherto our information has related rather to their external customs and manners, their physical traits and historical peculiarities, than to what may be termed the philosophy of the Indian mind. Such an examination required time and diligence. Much of the earlier part of it was necessarily devoted to clearing the ground of inquiry, by acquiring the principles of the languages, and obtaining data for generalization. This was to be done, too, at remote points of the Continent, away from all the facilities and encouragements of literary society, and with the aid of persons profoundly ignorant of the grammatical principles of the languages they spoke, and incapable of discriminating the fabulous from the true in the histories they related. The severe axioms of commerce had, from the first, caused the Indians to be regarded merely as the medium of a peculiar branch of trade, which was pursued at great hazards, excited deep animosity in the breasts of the respective commercial factors, and gave an absorbing interest to all that took place in the Indian country for two centuries. The interpretership of the languages became, of necessity, the business of a class of men who were generally uneducated, and who, imbued strongly with the feelings and prejudices of their employers, sought no higher excellence in their profession than to express the common ideas connected with the transactions of trade. The result was, then as now, that they comprehended the scope and genius of none of the languages they spoke. Whoever will submit to the labour of a critical examination into the subject, will soon become satisfied that the mediums of communication he is compelled to use are jargons, and not languages. It is impossible not to attribute to this imperfect state of oral translation, a considerable share of the errors and misunderstandings which have characterized our intercourse, political and commercial, with the tribes. Made sensible of this defect in the mode of communication, at an early period after my entrance into the Indian territories, my collections in Indian lexicography have been withheld from my journals of travel for further opportunity to examine the principles of the languages themselves. Notwithstanding this impression, and the care adopted to ensure accuracy, much of my earlier information, derived through the ordinary channels of interpretation, proved either wholly fallacious, or required to be tested and amended by a diligent course of subsequent scrutiny.

In adopting an original nominative for the series, the object has been to convey definite general impressions. The term ALGIC is introduced, in a generic sense, for all that family of tribes who, about A.D. 1600, were found spread out, with local exceptions, along the Atlantic, between Pamlico Sound and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, extending northwest to the Missinipi of Hudson's Bay, and west to the Mississippi. The exceptions embrace the Yamassees and Catawbas on the coast, and the Tuscaroras, Iroquois, Wyandots, and Winnebagoes, and a part of the Sioux, in the interior, all of whom appear to have been intruders within the circle, and three of which, namely, the Tuscaroras, Iroquois, and Wyandots, speak dialects of a generic language, which we shall denominate the OSTIC. The Winnebagoes are clearly of the Abanic stock, and the Yamassees and Catawbas--extinct tribes, of whom but little has been preserved, of the restless and warlike Muscogee race. The latter, who, together with the Cherokees and Choctaws, fill up the southern portion of the Union, quite to the banks of the Mississippi, exist in juxtaposition to, and not as intruders within, the Algic circle. The Chickasaws are a scion of the Choctaws, as the Seminoles are of the Muscogees. The Choctaw and Muscogee are, radically, the same language. The Cherokees do not appear to have put forth any distant branches, and have come down to our times, as a distinct people. It thus appears that four mother stocks occupied the entire area of North America, east of the Mississippi, and lying between the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson's Bay, with the exception of a single tribe and a portion of another. The Winnebagoes, who are of the Abanic race, had, however, merely crossed from the west to the east banks of the Mississippi, but never proceeded beyond the shores of Green Bay. The Dacotahs had crossed this stream higher north, and proceeded to the west shores of Superior, whence they were beat back by the van of the Algics under the name of Odjibwas.

The object of inquiry is thus defined with general precision, although it is not intended to limit the inquiry itself to geographical boundaries. It will be perceived that the territory formerly occupied by the Algic nations comprehended by far the largest portion of the United States east of the Mississippi, together with a large area of the British possessions. They occupied the Atlantic coast as far south as the river Savannah in Georgia, if Shawnee tradition is entitled to respect, and as high north as the coast of Labrador, where the tribes of this stock are succeeded by the Esquimaux. It was into the limits of these people that the Northmen, according to appearances, pushed their daring voyages previous to the discovery of Columbus; and it was also among these far-spreading and independent hordes that the earliest European colonies were planted. Cabot, and Hudson, and Verrizani made their principal landings among the tribes of this type. The Pilgrims first set foot ashore in their midst, and they landed near the spot where, several centuries before, Thorwald Ericson had fallen a sacrifice to the spirit of Norwegian and Icelandic discovery. If the country had ever been occupied by Esquimaux, as indicated by Scandinavian history, there was not an Esquimaux there at that period. The entire coast of New-England was possessed by the Algics. They extended north of it to Cape Breton. Cartier found them in the Bay of Chaleur, the Pilgrims at Plimouth, Hudson at the island of Manhattan, Barlow and Amidas on the coasts of Virginia. They lined the seaboard; they appear to have migrated along its borders from southwest to northeast, and were probably attached to the open coast by the double facility which it afforded of a spontaneous subsistence, having the resources of the sea on one side and of the forest on the other. It is probable that these advantages led them to underrate the interior, which, being left unguarded, their enemies pushed in from the west, and seated themselves in Western New-York and Pennsylvania on the sources of the principal streams. It is evident that the Algics did not penetrate the interior to a great extent, their camps and towns forming, as it were, but a hem or cordon along the Atlantic. At the only points where this edging was penetrated, the discoverers found tribes of the Ostic stock, a fierce and indomitable race, of a sanguinary character, and speaking a harsh and guttural language. Such were the Iroquois, who were encountered on the Upper Hudson and the Mohawk, and the Wyandots found by Cartier at the islands of Orleans and Hochelaga. Regard these two leading races of the north in whatever light we may, it is impossible to overlook the strong points of character in which they differed. Both were dexterous and cunning woodsmen, excelling in all the forest arts necessary to their condition, and having much in their manners and appearance in common. But they spoke a radically different language, and they differed scarcely less in their distinctive character and policy. The one was mild and conciliating, the other fierce and domineering. They were alike in hospitality, in their misconception of virtue, and their high estimate of bravery. Independence was strikingly characteristic of both; but the one was satisfied with personal or tribal freedom, while the other sought to secure it by general combination. And if the two races be closely compared, there appears to be grounds for the opinion, that one is descended from a race of shepherds or pastoral nomades, and the other from a line of adventurers and warlike plunderers. It may, perhaps, be deemed among the auspicious circumstances which awaited the Europeans in this hemisphere, that they planted their earliest colonies among the former race.

In giving this enlarged signification to the terms Algic and Ostic, reference has been had to the requisitions of a general philological classification. But it is proper to remark of the Algic tribes, to whom our attention is to be particularly directed, that they were marked by peculiarities and shades of language and customs deemed to be quite striking among themselves. They were separated by large areas of territory, differing considerably in their climate and productions. They had forgotten the general points in their history, and each tribe and sub-tribe was prone to regard itself as independent of all others, if not the leading or parent tribe. Their languages exhibited diversities of sound, where there was none whatever in its syntax. Changes of accent and interchanges of consonants had almost entirely altered the aspect of words, and obscured their etymology. Some of the derivates were local, and not understood beyond a few hundred miles, and all the roots of the language were buried, as we find them at this day, beneath a load of superadded verbiage. The identity of the stock is, however, to be readily traced amid these discrepancies. They are assimilated by peculiar traits of a common physical resemblance; by general coincidence of manners, customs, and opinions; by the rude rites of a worship of spirits, everywhere the same; by a few points of general tradition; and by the peculiar and strongly-marked features of a transpositive language, identified by its grammar, alike in its primitive words, and absolutely fixed in the number and mode of modification of its radical sounds.

The Algics entered the present limits of the United States from the southwest. They appear to have crossed the Mississippi at the point where the heavy formations of boulder and gravel, southwest of the Alleghanies, are heaved up close along its banks. They were followed, at distinct eras, by the Ostic, the Muskogee, and the Tsallanic hordes, by the first of whom they were driven, scattered, and harassed, and several of the tribes not only conquered, but exterminated. The Iroquois, who, in their sixfold dialects, constitute the type of the Ostics, appear to have migrated up the Valley of the Ohio, which they occupied and named; and, taking a most commanding and central position in Western New-York, interposed themselves between the New-England and the Algonquin sub-types, and thus cut off their communication with each other. This separation was complete. They pushed their conquests successfully down the Hudson, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, and the St. Lawrence, and westward up the great lakes. The Wyandots, an Ostic tribe, who, at the discovery of the St. Lawrence by the French, were posted as low down as the island of Orleans, formed an alliance with the French and with the Algonquins north of that stream. This exposed them to dissension with their warlike and jealous relatives the Iroquois, and led to their expulsion into the region of the upper lakes, even to the farther shores of Lake Superior. They were, however, supported by all the influence of the French, and by the whole of the confederate Algic tribes, and finally fixed themselves upon the Straits of Detroit, where they were privileged with a high political power, as keepers of the great council fire, and enjoyed much respect among the Western tribes through the whole of the eighteenth century. It was this tribe whom it required most address to bring over, in the combined struggle which the lake tribes made for independence under the noted Algic leader Pontiac, between 1759 and 1764.

But we will not anticipate the results of research, where the object is merely to direct attention to the interest of the inquiry itself. To discover and fix the comprehensive points of their national resemblance, and the concurring circumstances of their history and traditions; to point out the affinities of their languages, and to unveil the principles of their mythology, are conceived to be essential prerequisites to the formation of right notions of their probable origin and mental peculiarities. And it is obvious that the true period for this inquiry must be limited to the actual existence of the tribes themselves. Every year is diminishing their numbers and adding to the obscurity of their traditions. Many of the tribes and languages are already extinct, and we can allude to at least one of the still existing smaller tribes who have lost the use of their vernacular tongue and adopted the English. Distinct from every benevolent consideration, weighty as these are, it is exceedingly desirable that the record of facts, from which they are to be judged, should be completed as early as possible. It is conceived that, in rescuing their oral tales and fictitious legends, an important link in the chain has been supplied. But it is believed that still higher testimony remains. History, philosophy, and poetry regard with deep interest these recorded and accumulating materials on the character and origin of races of men, who are associated with the geographical nomenclature of the country, and to whom at least, it may be assumed, posterity will render poetic justice. But revelation has a deeper stake in the question, and it is one calculated to infuse new energy in the cause of benevolence, and awaken fresh ardour in the heart of piety.

It is not the purpose of these remarks to excite the expectation that a long residence in the Indian country, and official intercourse with the tribes, have given the author such access to the Indian mind, or enabled him to push his inquiries so far into their former history and mental characteristics, as to clear up fully the obscurities referred to; but the hope is indulged that data have been obtained of a new and authentic character, which will prove important in any future researches on these topics.

FOOTNOTES:

Derived from the words Alleghany and Atlantic, in reference to the race of Indians anciently located in this geographical area, but who, as expressed in the text, had extended themselves, at the end of the 15th century, far towards the north and west.

From the Algic Oshtegwon, a head, &c.

Denoting occidental. From Kabeyun the west--and embracing the tribes who, at the commencement of 1800, were located west of the Mississippi. The Sioux, Otoes, Omahaws, Osages, and Quapaws, constitute the leading members of this group.

For some remarks on this question, see Am. Biblical Repository, second series, No. 2, April, 1839.

Keewaydin.

The Brothertons.

INDIAN TALES AND LEGENDS,

MYTHOLOGIC AND ALLEGORIC.

RENDERED FROM THE ORAL TRADITIONS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS BY COMPETENT INTERPRETERS,

AND WRITTEN OUT

FROM THE ORIGINAL NOTES.

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON THE TALES.

The following tales are published as specimens of an oral imaginative lore existing among the North American aborigines. In the long period of time in which these tribes have been subjects of observation, we are not aware that powers of this kind have been attributed to them. And it may be asked, Why the discovery of this peculiar trait in their intellectual character has not been made until the first quarter of the nineteenth century? The force of the query is acknowledged; and, in asserting the claim for them, the writer of these pages proposes first to offer to the public some proofs of the correctness of his own conclusions on this point.

These remarks are offered to indicate, that the several periods of our colonial and confederate history, and wars, were unfavourable to the acquisition of that species of information respecting their mental capacities and social institutions, of which it is our purpose to speak. The whole tendency of our intercourse with them has been, to demonstrate rather the physical than moral capabilities of the Indian, his expertness in war, his skill, stratagem, powers of endurance, and contempt of suffering. Indian fortitude has been applauded at the stake, and Indian kindness and generosity acknowledged in the wigwam, and in the mazes of the wilderness. Admiration had been excited by his noble sentiments of independence and exaltation above personal fear. Above all, perhaps, had he been accredited for intellect in his acuteness in negotiation and the simple force of his oratory. But the existence of an intellectual invention had never been traced, so far as it is known, to the amusements of his domestic fireside; nor could it well have been conjectured to occupy so wide a field for its display in legendary tales and fables.

A few remarks may be added respecting the character of the tales now submitted to inspection. And the first is, that they appear to be of a homogeneous and vernacular origin. There are distinctive tribal traits, but the general features coincide. The ideas and incidents do not appear to be borrowed or unnatural. The situations and circumstances are such as are common to the people. The language and phraseology are of the most simple kind. Few adjectives are used, and few comparisons resorted to. The style of narration, the cast of invention, the theory of thinking, are eminently peculiar to a people who wander about in woods and plains, who encounter wild beasts, believe in demons, and are subject to the vicissitudes of the seasons. The tales refer themselves to a people who are polytheists; not believers in one God or Great Spirit, but of thousands of spirits; a people who live in fear, who wander in want, and who die in misery. The machinery of spirits and necromancy, one of the most ancient and prevalent errors of the human race, supplies the framework of these fictitious creations. Language to carry out the conceptions might seem to be wanting, but here the narrator finds a ready resource in the use of metaphor, the doctrine of metamorphosis, and the personification of inanimate objects; for the latter of which, the grammar of the language has a peculiar adaptation. Deficiencies of the vocabulary are thus supplied, life and action are imparted to the whole material creation, and every purpose of description is answered. The belief of the narrators and listeners in every wild and improbable thing told, helps wonderfully, in the original, in joining the sequence of parts together. Nothing is too capacious for Indian belief. Almost every declaration is a prophecy, and every tale a creed. He believes that the whole visible and invisible creation is animated with various orders of malignant or benign spirits, who preside over the daily affairs and over the final destinies of men. He believes that these spirits must be conciliated by sacrifices, and a series of fasts and feasts either follow or precede these rites, that by the one they may be rendered acceptable, and by the other, his gratitude may be shown. This constitutes the groundwork of the Algic religion: but superstition has ingrafted upon the original stock, till the growth is a upas of giant size, bearing the bitter fruits of demonology, witchcraft, and necromancy. To make the matter worse, these tribes believe that animals of the lowest, as well as highest class in the chain of creation, are alike endowed with reasoning powers and faculties. And as a natural conclusion, they endow birds, and bears, and all other animals with souls, which, they believe, will be encountered in other shapes in another state of existence. So far the advantages of actual belief come in aid of their fictitious creations, and this is the true cause why so much importance is attached to the flight and appearance of particular birds, who, being privileged to ascend in the air, are supposed by them to be conversant with the wishes, or to act in obedience to the mandates of the spirits: and the circumstance of this belief deserves to be borne in mind in the perusal of their tales, as it will be found that the words put into the mouths of the actors express the actual opinions of the natives on life, death, and immortality, topics which have heretofore been impenetrably veiled.

The value of these traditionary stories appeared to depend, very much, upon their being left, as nearly as possible, in their original forms of thought and expression. In the original there is no attempt at ornament. Great attention is paid, in the narration, to repeating the conversations and speeches, and imitating the very tone and gesture of the actors. This is sometimes indulged at the risk of tautology. Moral point has been given to no tale which does not, in the original, justify it; and it is one of the unlooked-for features connected with the subject, that so considerable a proportion of them possess this trait. It is due to myself, and to those who have aided me in the collection and translation of the materials, to say, that the advantages enjoyed in this respect have been of the most favourable character. The whole examination, extending, with intervals, through a period of seventeen years, has been conducted not only with the aid that a public station, as an executive officer for the tribes, has supplied, but with the superadded intelligence and skill in the languages existing within the range of my domestic and affiliated circle.

Of the antiquity of the tales, the surest external evidence may probably be drawn from the lexicography. In a language in which the actor and the object are riveted, so to speak, by transitive inflections, it must needs happen that the history of its names for objects, whether preserved orally or by letters, is, in fact, the history of the introduction of the objects named, and this fixes eras in the enlargement of the vocabulary. Although it is true, that without letters these eras cannot be accurately fixed, yet valuable inferences may be drawn from an examination of this branch of the inquiry. Words are like coins, and may, like them, be examined to illustrate history. It has been found that those of the highest antiquity are simple and brief. Most of the primitive nouns are monosyllabic, and denote but a single object or idea. A less number are dissyllabic; few exceed this; and it may be questioned, from the present state of the examination, whether there is a single primitive trisyllable. The primitives become polysyllabic by adding an inflection indicating the presence or absence of vitality , and a farther inflection to denote number. They also admit of adjective terminations. Pronouns are denoted by particles prefixed or suffixed. The genius of the language is accumulative, and tends rather to add syllables or letters, making farther distinctions in objects already before the mind, than to introduce new words. A simple word is thus oftentimes converted into a descriptive phrase, at once formidable to the eye and the ear. And it is only by dissecting such compounds that the radix can be attained.

These particulars may suffice to indicate the importance of etymological analysis in examining the antiquity of the tales. Narrations of a later era are denoted by the introduction of the modern compounds, such as their names for the domestic animals of Europe, a gun, a rifle, a ship, a spyglass, compass, watch, hat, &c. The bow and arrow, club and lance, are the only species of arms actually described as in use, except in a single instance, and this tale is manifestly an interpolated version of an ancient story. The father of the winds makes battle with a huge flagroot, and the king of reptiles is shot with a dart.

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