The Edda Among the Algonquin Indians

WHEN Mr. Longfellow declared that the Manobozho legends of the Chippeways formed an Indian Edda, he spoke as a poet, not as an ethnologist. In the same spirit they might with as much justice have been termed an Indian Iliad or Nibelungenlied. But in fact the expression was so inaccurate that even the usually far from careful Schoolcraft hastened to correct it, since in the beginning of his introduction to the Hiawatha Legends he declares, “Of all these foreign analogies of myth lore, the least tangible is that which has been suggested with the Scandinavian mythology. That mythology is of so marked and peculiar a character that it has not been distinctly traced out of the great circle of tribes of the Indo-Germauic family. Odin and his terrific pantheon of war-gods and social deities could only exist in the dreary latitudes of storms and fire which produce a Hecla and a Maelstrom. From such a source the Indian could have derived none of his vague symbols and mental idiosyncrasies, which have left him as he is found to-day, without a government and without a God.”

And yet, strangely enough, there was in existence all the time in New England— and at Mr. Longfellow’s very door, poetically speaking—an Indian Edda, and there was carefully preserved among the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies of Maine “ a myth lore,” “ the analogies of which with the Scandinavian mythology ” were very much closer than those of the Edda with the Kalevala, to which it is so nearly and so incontestably related. In fact, after the most careful perusal and study of every line of the stupendous Finnish epic, I find that where it has one incident or point of resemblance with the Edda, or with other Norse poems, the Indian legends of New England and New Brunswick have a score. Rasmus B. Anderson, in the notes to his translation of the Younger Edda, declares that as regards the origin of the Asa system, that is of the Norse mythology, it is chiefly composed of Finnish elements. But all that there is to be found of the Finn in the Edda is feeble and faint compared to what there is of the Edda in the legends of the Wabanaki Indians.

The Algonquin subdivision of the six or seven stocks of American Indians includes, as J. H. Trumbull has shown, forty principal tribes, speaking as many different dialects of what was once a common or root language. Of these the “Wabanaki, or Abenaki, deriving their name from Wa-he-yu, white or light, are to us the nearest and most interesting. The word light is applied to them as living to the east. The St. Francis Indians, who call themselves specially the Abenaki, and who all speak French, translate their generic name as point du jour. They embrace in addition to the St. Francis tribe the Micmacs of New Brunswick ; the Passamaquoddies, chiefly resident at Pleasant Point, or Sebayk near Eastport, Maine; and the Penobscots of Oldtown, in the same State. The last two tribes can converse together, but it is almost or quite impossible for them to understand Micmac. Yet all of them have in common a mythology and legends which as a whole are in every respect far superior to those of the Chippeways, or, so far as I know them, to those of any of our Western tribes.

I have collected directly from the Indians themselves more than one hundred of these legends. The Rev. S. T. Rand,¹ of Hantsport, New Brunswick, the original discoverer of Glooskap,—“ the Hiawatha of the North,” but a creation inconceivably superior to Hiawatha, — has very kindly lent to me eighty-five Micmac tales, forming a folio volume of one thousand pages. In addition to these I am indebted to Mrs. W. Wallace Brown for a small but extremely valuable collection of stories from the Indians living near Calais. I have also two curious Anglo-Indian manuscripts : one a collection of tales, with a treatise on Superstitions in Indian and English ; the other a Story of Glooskap, a singular narrative of the adventures of the great hero of the North, composed in IndianEnglish of the obscurest kind. Mr. Jack, of Fredericton, N. B., has very kindly communicated to me legends and folk-lore, Malisete and Micmac, while I I am specially obliged to Miss Abby Alger, of Boston, for aid of every kind, including a small collection of tales of the St. Francis tribe. Some idea of the immense extent of this literature may be inferred from the fact that, while I have duplicates of almost every story, I never received one which did not in some important respect amend the others. All of these tribes in their oral or wampum records tell of Glooskap, a superior heroic demigod. I say demigod, since there is no proof of the existence among our Indians of a belief in a Great Spirit or in an infinite God before the coming of the whites. Glooskap was, however, more than a Hercules or a Manco Capac, for he created man and animals before teaching agriculture, hunting, and language. He was a truly grand hero ; his life was never soiled with the disgraceful, puerile, and devilish caprices of the Manobozho, whose more creditable deeds were picked out and attributed by Mr. Longfellow to the Iroquois Hiawatha. A singular admixture of grandeur, benevolence, and quiet, pleasant humor characterize Glooskap, who of all beings of all mythologies most resembles Odin and Thor in the battlefield, and Pantagruel at home.

Glooskap was born of the Turtle gens, “ since it is on the Turtle that all rests.” He had a twin brother, Malsum the Wolf. Before birth the pair conferred as to how they would enter the world. Glooskap preferred to be born as others, but the Wolf in his wicked pride tore through his mother’s armpit and killed her. In the Iroquois version of this tale, the two are called the Good Being and the Evil One. The Wolf is therefore the type of evil, or the destroyer.

Malsum asked Glooskap (who subsequently appears distinctly as the sun god) what would kill him. He replied that of all created things the bulrush alone could take his life. So Malsum tried to kill him with it; but the bulrush would take his life only for an instant. So, recovering, he slew the Wolf. The resemblance between the bulrush, cattail, or, as one version says, “ a ball of soft down,” and the mistletoe, the softest of all plants, which kills Balder in the Edda, is here apparent enough. The same tale is told, but in a broken and abbreviated form, among the Hiawatha Legends.

Glooskap proceeded to create the dwarfs or fairies, and then man. He made him from an ash-tree. Man was in the ash-tree as a principle or as a being, but lifeless. First the dwarfs were created from the bark, and then mankind from the wood. Glooskap shot his magical life-giving arrows into the tree, and men came forth. In the Edda man existed as the ash; the elm was added as woman ; but as in the Indian tale man was without consciousness till the three gods

(Völuspa, 17, 18.)

In the Edda, the first created on earth are two giants, born from their mother’s armpit. Their father, who is an evil Jötun, has feet male and female. The next beings created are the dwarfs, and then man from the ash-tree. Every one of these details corresponds step by step with the Wabanaki mythology, except that in the latter it is Lox, the evil principle of fire, who has feet male and female. This Lox, the Indian devil, is no specific man or animal, but he is like Loki in every respect.

That the ash alone was the primitive tree of life or of man appears from the account of Yggdrasil in the next verse (Völuspa, 19). To hunt and draw his sled Glooskap took the Loons. But they were too often absent. So he had, like Odin, two attendant wolves, one black and one white. There can be no doubt of the accuracy of this statement, for the Indian is still living who actually met Glooskap a few years ago, “ very far north,’ and ferried him over a bay. His black and white wolf dogs were at the landing before them, when all mysteriously vanished. In the Edda two wolves also follow, one the sun, another (Manogarm) the moon.

In one legend Glooskap is described as directing and guiding the course of the seasons. He has always by him a being named Kool-pe-jo-tei, meaning in Micmac “rolled over by handspikes.” He lies on the ground ; he has not a bone in his body. He rests under the heaven all the year. He is rolled over with wooden handspikes in the spring and autumn. This was very clearly explained by the Indian narrator as referring to the course of the seasons. Glooskap’s sledge is drawn by wolves. In the Elder Edda Odin is described as riding a wolf. Odin has, however, two pet wolves, Gere and Freke, whom, like Glooskap, he feeds from his own hands (Younger Edda, c. xiii.). To recapitulate, Odin and Glooskap have each two attendant wolves. They use wolves as steeds ; those of Glooskap are black and white, corresponding to the day and night, or sun and moon wolves of the Edda, termed Skol and Hate.

Gylfe, the great sorcerer (Younger Edda, c. ii.), when he went to Asgard to see if the gods were really so mighty as he had heard, disguised himself as an old man. Glooskap, going with a similar intention to see the wicked giant magicians, who dwelt by North Conway, N. H., or in the Intervale, also went as an old man, but made himself so like the father of these monsters that the sons could not tell one from the other. If it should ever be definitely proved that there was a common source for the Wabanaki tales and the Norse, we shall find much that has been lost from the latter in the former. It has often seemed to me that these Indian traditions contained incidents wanting in their Norse counterparts.

Glooskap has a canoe which is, when he wishes it to be large, capable of carrying an army, but which also contracts to the smallest size. At times it is made into an ordinary birch akevédun, but when not in use it is a rocky island, covered with trees. Odin, or Frey (Younger Edda, c. xiii.), has a ship, Skidbladnir, so large that all the Asas can find room in it, “but which, when not wanted for a voyage, may he folded by Frey like a napkin and carried in the pocket.”

Glooskap has a belt which gives supernatural strength. This belt is often mentioned. Thor possesses the meginjarder, or belt of strength (Y. Edda, c. viii.), which doubles his might when he puts it on. The little old woman who typifies old age in the Indian tales puts on a similar magic girdle when she wrestles with the Micmac Hercules. This belt has passed into all fairy lore, but in the Wabanaki legends it is still distinctly mythical or heroic.

The gods in Valhalla feed on the boar Sahrimnir, which is inexhaustible. “ It is boiled every day, and is whole again in the evening.” (Y. Edda, c. xii.) Glooskap sets before his guests a small dish, in which there is very little food. But however hungry they may be, the dish is always full.

As all these coincidences cannot be given within the limits of an article like this, I would say that the tale of Idun and her apples does not contain a single incident which does not occur in unmistakably ancient form in the Wabanaki legends. The only part which I have believed came in from Canadian French or modern European influence is the apples themselves. There is an Indian tale of such magic apples (Micmac) ; but then the fruit did not grow of old in this country, and the story cannot therefore be pre-Columbian.

There is a very ancient Wabanaki legend, originally a poem, and which, like most of these narratives, has been transmitted for generations, word by word. The Rev. S. T. Rand has recorded his astonishment at finding that the Indians would always readily resume the narrative Which had been discontinued, at the very word where they had left off. I made the same discovery when I observed that my friend Tomaqu’hah would often pause to recover the word which led the sentence. I mention this because in this tale there are not only incidents but verbal passages almost identical with some in the Elder Edda. In it Glooskap went with his host Kitpooseagunow (Micmac), a mighty giant, to fish for whales. The guest carried the canoe to the water, and asked, “ Who shall sit in the stern and paddle, and who will take the spear?” (that is, who will fish?). Kitpooseagunow said, “That will I.” So Glooskap paddled, and his host soon caught a great whale. In the Edda (Hymiskria, 25) Thor asks,

In both the Edda and the Indian tale stress is laid on the fact that the guest rowed. The Norse Hymir grudgingly admits that Thor does this well, but declares that he wishes to see further proof of his abilities. Then, going home, Hymir and Thor have a great mutual trial of strength and endurance; that is to see if Thor can break a cup against Hymir, the ice giant’s icy head. The two Indian Titans try to see which can freeze the other to death. If we go to the direct meaning of the Norse myth, this after-contest amounts to the same thing in each case. In both the Norse and Indian myths, the heart or the head of an ice giant is represented as being made of “ ice harder than the hardest stone,” to express the intense coldness of his nature. In each it is a contest with cold.

The Wabanaki as well as the Chippeways and others, call the Milky Way the spirits’ road or the ghosts’ highway. In the Edda, Bifrost the rainbow (Y. Edda, c. v.) is the bridge over which the gods pass ; but Mr. Keary (Northern Mythology) has shown that in many old Norse and German tales the Milky Way is the spirits’ path, while in the Vedas both rainbow and Via Lactea are described as roads or bridges for supernatural beings.

In Norse mythology, Jötunheim, inhabited by giants of ice and stone, lies far in the North Atlantic. Its stone giants dwell in Stony-town. They are all sorcerers. Hrungnir with the flint heart is their chief. In the Wabanaki tales the same North Atlantic has the same land of precisely the same inhabitants. Hence came “the stonish giants” of the Iroquois, which Mr. Schoolcraft avowed his inability to explain (Indian Tribes, vol. i.), but which are explained in minute and remarkable detail by the Wabanaki. Hrungnir with the flint heart is the counterpart of the cannibal giant Chenoo of the Micmacs, and Keeawahqu’ of the more southern Wabanaki, who has a heart of “ ice, harder than the hardest stone.” It is the principal business of Glooskap to fight these beings, which are identical with Jötuns and Trolls.

Once Glooskap sent a great sorcerer (megumawessu) to this land of the Booöin. (Micmac, powwow, a sorcerer.) They made him run a race with one of them. But it was not a man, but the Northern Lights disguised as a man. Yet the giants were deceived, for he who visited them was the Lightning, and he conquered. In the Edda, Thiasse is made to race, on a precisely similar visit to the same people, with Thought (Huge) disguised as a man. In the Edda, Thor wrestles with a little old woman (Elle), the foster mother of the giant Ganglere. In the Micmac and the Passamaquoddy story of the Culloo, a man of miraculous strength, an Indian Hercules, wrestles with a little, feeble-looking old woman, who has previously defeated all the strong men of the world. He, it is true, overcomes her. But the point lies in this: that old age (Elle) is incarnate among the Indians as a little old woman. In the very wild Passamaquoddy tale of the Dance of Old Age, a young sorceress in an Indian waltz grows a year older at every turn, and at the hundredth falls dead as a small, shriveled, wrinkled old squaw.

When Glooskap’s envoy visited the giant sorcerers, he was required by his host to kill a dragon as a task. The American Wabanaki had the dragon long ere the whites told them of it. It was a being like a monstrous wingless serpent, with horns and scales like shining copper, or a kind of brown-golden gleaming fish. The Micmacs call it chepitch-calm, the Passamaquoddies weewil-l-mecqu’. The Indian killed it by putting a log across its hole, and when it was half out chopped it in two. In the Edda, Sigurd, visiting Regin, was instigated by his host — also as a task — to kill the dragon Fafnir. He dug a pit, and when the monster crawled over it thrust his sword up and slew him. (Fafnismal, I.) The Norse dragon left a treasure which brought ruin to all who received it. The invaluable horns of the dragon (described as such in other legends) were brought to the host by the victor, but they proved to be his bane or death, for the dragon was his téomul (Micmac; in Passamaquoddy, pou-hegan ; in Norse, ham) ; that is, his tutelary beast or guardian angel. When this dies, the protégé also perishes. This narrative is as Norse in its general tone as in the details. Like most of the older tales, it has evidently been a poem. The death of Fafnir also caused the deatli of Regin. In every important part the two stories are the same. I have only one entire long legend which is as yet all a real song. But nearly all have passages from which the gilding of metre (if I may so call it) or euphony has not entirely disappeared, or in which verses still remain.

The Edda tells us that the wind is caused by a giant clad in eagle’s plumes, and when he flaps his wings the wind blows : —

This is in every detail identical with the account of the Wabanaki, who say that the wind is raised by a giant, who is also an eagle, who sits at the extreme north on a high rock. In Passamaquoddy he is called Wut-chow-sen, or the Wind-Blower. With the Western tribes there is a thunder bird; but as in all the cases which I have met of coincidences between Indian and Norse myths, that of the Wabanaki is most like the latter. Once the wind blew so terribly that Glooskap tied the Wind-Blower’s wings. Then there was no air for months ; the sea grew stagnant, He untied one wing: then there was a wind, but since then there have been no tornadoes like those of the olden time. I have a vague recollection of a Northern myth in which Thor, or some strong god, conquers Hræsvelgar, but cannot speak with certainty of it. I have long and detailed accounts of this legend from both Micmac and Passamaquoddy Indians.

Glooskap left the world, promising to return, but did not. From an old squaw, who could not speak a word of English, Mrs. W. Wallace Brown recently obtained the following, to which I add a few details gathered from other sources:—

“ Glooskap is alive. He lives in an immense lodge. He is making arrows. One side of the lodge is now piled full of them. They are as close together as that: ” here she put her fingers closely together. “ When the lodge shall be full, then he will come out and make war, and all will be killed. Then he will come in his canoe; then he will meet the great wolf, and all the stone and ice and other giants, the sorcerers, the goblins and elves, and all will be burned up; the water will all boil away from the fire,”

This is not from any Christian source. It is simply the account of Ragnarok, when Odin is to come and fight the Fenris wolf, or the destroying type of evil, and all be consumed. But the Indian woman, when closely questioned, drew a sharp distinction between the Wabanaki Day of Judgment and the account of it in the Bible. And after much experience of these legends and traditions, I cannot help believing or feeling that one acquires an almost unerring flair or faculty of perceiving in them what is Eskimo, what Norse, what Indian, and what is French Canadian fairy tale. Add to these a few of Æsop’s fables, very strangely Indianized, and we have almost all there is in them. The Eskimo element, which is very important, is simply indubitable. The French Canadian stories are apparent enough, with their coaches and horses, kings and swords, gunpowder, God, and the devil.

The next character to be considered is Lox, the “ Indian devil.” The word Lox is not, I believe, Indian. This character includes the wolverine, badger, and raccoon, though strangely enough not the fox. Collectively he forms a character. — a man who is so much like Loki of the Edda that I have often been amazed at the likeness. There is not a Wabanaki Indian who would not recognize the latter as an old friend. Yet, although the incidents of the lives of Lox and Loki are so much alike, the real resemblance lies in their characters, style of tricks, and language; in their mutual infinite blackguardism and impudence, and their greed for devilish mischief, for mere fun’s sake,

Loki is fire, and Lox, as it appears from many instances, is a fire spirit; both are distinctly described as the fathers of the wolves. Lox dies by cold and water, but when dead is revived by heat. In the Edda, Loki is carried about and grievously punished by a giant in the form of an eagle. Lox is treated in the same way, for having played the following trick. Entering a house, he was rather coolly treated by a woman ; the slight to his vanity was of the most trifling kind, but he revenged it by cutting her head off and putting it into the pot with the rest of the dinner to boil, to give the family a surprise on returning. All of this is related in one of Dasent’s Norse tales. The head of the family was a Culloo, a kind of giant eagle or roc, and he punished Lox by carrying him up to the top of the sky and letting him drop.

In the Edda there is a scene between Thor and Harbard, the ferryman, in which Thor is sadly chaffed and abused. How it is that any critic could have mistaken Harbard for Odin, or for any one but Loki, is really incomprehensible. That the name could have been assumed does not occur to any one. In an Indian tale Lox satirizes and insults the crane — the ferryman — so effectually that the latter drowns him when pretending to pass him over. This legend has manifestly been a poem.

Lox is a fire spirit. Mr. Keary, in his work on the Norse Mythology, has asserted that in many old German and Norse legends fire is typified by thorns, prickles, nettles, stings, and the like. In one Indian tale, Lox, “ the Indian devil,” is thrown on a bed of thorns, falls into a mass of briers, steps into a wasp’s or hornet’s nest, and is rolled on sharp flints ; while in another, in consequence of eating itch berries, be scratches himself almost to death.

On one occasion, the Indian devil, after cruelly burning two old women in jest, dies of delight, and being then in the form of a raccoon is put into a pot to boil. The touch of scalding water gives him life again, and he springs out of the pot. But at the very instant of revival his sense of mischief awakens, and as he leaps from the kettle he gives it a kick; the hot water falls into the ashes; the ashes fly up and blind an old woman. Compare with this a passage in the Finnish Kalevala, the elder sister of the Edda. When, by evil magic, a stag or elk was created for mischief, the first thing the creature did on coming to life was to run at full speed. But it had hardly started ere it went by a Lapland hut, and as it ran it kicked over a kettle, so that the meat in it fell in the ashes, and the soup was dashed over the hearth. Surely this never came to the Indians through a French fairy tale. Once, when the Indian devil is drowned and is then revived by his brother, he says, “ It seems to me that I have been asleep.” In the Kalevala, likewise, the completely drowned Lemmekäinen, brought to life by his mother, makes the same remark. In a Samoyede tale a dead man’s bones are picked up by a half man, with one leg and one arm. Of these unipeds I shall speak anon, He burns the bones; his wife sleeps on them; the dead man comes to life, and makes the same remark. As we go on it begins to seem as if there were some world-old Shamanic root for half the Norse tales, and all the Finnish, Samoyede, Eskimo, and Indian. No one has raised the veil of the mystery as yet, but it will be lifted.

In a Micmac story the Indian devil runs a race with a stone giant; that is, an immense rock. Loki is chased by the stone giant Thiasse, but as an eagle, both having wings. In another Indian legend an evil sorcerer, who is evidently a form of the Indian devil, flies in a race with another man, who is. for the nonce, a hawk.

It came to Lox’s mind to change himself to a woman, to make mischief. Loki did the same thing in Fensal. The Indian devil’s trick got him into trouble, and he took refuge in a waterfall, where, through being over cunning, he perished. Loki’s tricks of killing Balder, which are incidentally like the Indian as to the mistletoe, led to his being chased to Franangurs fors, “the bright and glistening cataract,” where he was caught and came to his ruin. Finally, Loki in this waterfall turns himself into a salmon, and also catches a salmon and an otter before his capture. In another Indian story Lox the devil perishes just as he catches a salmon. And in another Passamaquoddy tale, an evil sorcerer, who is the veritable devil of a village and perfectly identified with Loki and Lox by certain sinful tricks, dies in consequence of catching an otter; tins otter being, exactly like the otter of the Norse tale, not a mere animal, but a goblin, a human otter, or, as the story expressly declares, a pou-he-gan (Norse ham). In this same story two girls go to sleep in a cabin. A man’s neck bone lies by the door. The younger, being told not to touch it, gives it a kick. All night long the bone abuses her. In a Norse tale an old woman brings home a human bone, and till morning it disturbs her by talking and howling. The Indian story is unquestionably a very old one.

A passage in the Edda which has been a stumbling-block to all commentators, of which Grimm could make nothing, and Benjamin Thorpe said, “ I believe the difficulty is beyond help,” is this: —

In Norse this is, “ Loki of hiarta lyndi brendu fann hann halfs vithinn hugstein Kona.” In the Indian tales, a man may become a misanthrope, and then a Chenoo, a being at once ghoul, cannibal, and sorcerer. Then he acquires incredible swiftness, and may grow up to be a giant at will. His heart now turns to ice, harder than any stone. But he still does not become utterly devilish until he overcomes in battle a female Chenoo, and swallows her heart. The Indians, when they kill a Chenoo, take great pains to burn the heart. Should they leave it half burned, another Chenoo would find and swallow this ” thoughtstone,” and become twice as terrible as before. This story explains of itself that the heart, not the head, is supposed to be the seat of the thought or intellect. All of these details I found originally in the tale of the Chenoo: first, from the Micmac, by Rev. S. T. Rand; and again, in a much more detailed form, from the Passamaquoddy, told me by an Indian. In the latter, the heart is said to be a miniature human figure of the owner.

Loki is the father of the wolves, and Lox is represented as the same. On one occasion they give him a charm by which he can make three fires. — one for each night of a three days’ journey. But in his impatience to be warm he burns them all out the first morning, and then freezes to death. What can this typify if not fire, — its raging impatience and the manner in which it dies by its own indulgence?

At another time Lox found many women making bags of fine fur. “ You have a very slow way of doing that,” he observed. “ In our country the women manage it much more rapidly.” “ And how, then ? ” inquired the goodwives. “ Thus,” replied Lox ; and taking a fine piece of fur he buried it beneath the ashes, and then heaped on coals, after which, with great style, he drew from under it all a very fine bag. Having done this he ran out of town. Whereupon the women put all their furs under ashes and coals, but when they took them out, what remained was ruiued. This is a fire trick, again.

It is true that the fire test is not infallible as an indication of the devil; for once Odin himself was obliged by his host Geirrod to sit eight days and nights between fires, roasting. The atrociously wicked sorcerer Porcupine obliged Glooskap in like manner to sit in a cave full of fire. But as he had far greater power of resistance, it was the host who perished, as he does, indeed, in the Norse tale, though not by fire. But the whole of this Indian legend sings like an Icelandic tale. In it the hero is obliged to pass on a roaring rapid through a sunless cave, in midnight blackness, till he emerges on a broad, quiet river in a lovely land. As this is repeated in different narratives of different heroes, it appears to be a regular ordeal or ceremony of initiation.

The Cold is a distinct personage in Northern Indian tales. But he is with the Wabanaki much more like the Pakkaren, or Cold incarnate of the Finns and of the Kalevala than that of the Western tribes. In the same epic there is a supernatural being who cuts down a tree at a single blow with an axe. Among the Passamaquoddies, Atwakenikess, the Spirit of the Woods, always does the same thing. When a tree is heard to fall afar in the wilderness the Indian says, “There is Atwakenikess ! ”

But it is not from the Indians alone that we learn their myths. Among the Wabanaki, as well as among the Eskimo, there are strange tales of half men, lengthwise. These were also known to the Eskimo of the European side ; that is, to the Samoyedes and Lapps. The Norsemen seem to have regarded them as American. “ In 1009 Karlsefne went around Cape Cod, and sailed along the coast, until off Boston he ‘raised’ the Blue Hills, when he returned to the settlement in Rhode Island, appearing unwilling to venture up the coast of New Hampshire and Maine on account of the unipeds, or one-footed men fabled to live there.”² Karlsefne, as it would seem from the story, picked up his information as to unipeds in Boston. It would be interesting to be able to prove that Boston bad begun at so early a date to influence the religious opinions and philosophy of its visitors. One of Karlsefne’s men was killed by a uniped, and they made up a song on it. Charlevoix assures us that the celebrated chief Donnaconna told him that he had seen these one-legged people, and that an Eskimo girl brought to Labrador, or Canada, in 1717 declared they were well known in Greenland. While writing this paper, I have received from Mr. S. T. Rand a long story entitled Esluman the Half Man. The Abbé Morellet, in his work on the Eskimo, cites from the Sagas an account of a Norse sea-rover, a great hero, who, having been wrecked on the icy coast of Greenland, was attacked by two ravenous giantesses, but conquered them, and returned to tell the tale at home. It is said that two giantesses were the last of the race left in Scandinavia. (Vide Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. ii.) These monstrous women cannibals are the female Kiawaqu’ or Chenoo of the Micmacs. They form the subject of many tales. They belong to the post-Jötuns.

Though the story of the Swan or Sea-Gull maiden, who, having laid her wings aside, was caught by a youth, is known all over Europe, it is for all that probably of Norse origin. The Northern races are more familiar with such birds than the men of the South. In the story the girl lives with her husband until finding one day her wings, she flies away with her children. This legend occurs not once, but many times, among the Wabanaki, and it did not come to them through the Canadian French. It is imbedded as an essential part in their oldest myths. It begins the tale of Pulowech, which is evidently one of the earliest, most serious, and most thoroughly Indian of all the legends of New England and Canada.

I have gathered in conversation from several Indians, and I have it recorded in several written-out tales, that it is a very ancient belief that beings which correspond exactly to the Trolls of the Edda often attack brave men by night. If the latter can only prolong the fight till the sun shines on the fiend, it turns to stone or a dead tree immediately, and all its strength and wisdom pass into the conqueror. In the Edda (Alvissmal, 36), where a dwarf or Troll contends in argument with Thor, the wily hero prolongs the contest until daybreak, when the dwarf is petrified by the light.

The same is said in the Helgakvida, where Atli tells the giantess Hrimgera, “ It is now day ; you have been detained to your destruction. It will be a laughable mark in the harbor, where you will stand as a stone image.” At the corner of Friar’s Bay, Campobello, is the ridiculously so called “ Friar,” a rock thirty feet high, which the Indians in one tradition say is a petrified woman. It is certainly both a petrified Troll and a harbor mark.

Dead men made to live again by sorcery are very common in Wabanaki, Eskimo, Finnish, and Samoyede tales. They occur in the Norse, but are by no means frequent. A study of Shamanism in all its phases from the Accadian or Turanian Babylonian, through the Tartar or Lapland, the Eskimo, and so on to the American Indian, must result in the conviction that there has been a regular “ historical ” transmission of culture from a very ancient common source through all of these.

It is to be remarked that when the Wabanaki kill a bear they always beg his pardon, and in fact many other Indians address long speeches of apology or of excuse to the dead Bruin. When the Laplanders do the same they sing to him ; —

But in the Kalevala an entire runot is devoted to the songs of apology and ceremonies incident to killing a bear. The French translator Le Duc loses himself in bewildered conjectures as to the meaning of it all. It is fully explained in three of my Passamaquoddy stories. The she-bear was the grandmother or foster-mother of both Glooskap and Manobozho. This was as sacred a relation as that of mother. The shebear was as the mother of their god, and when her son leaves her she exacts that a bear shall never be slain without certain ceremonies or under certain conditions. There is a Norse story which is identical in minute detail with an Indian one of a girl marrying a white bear and of a boy reared by bears.

There is one Indian legend which is throughout so Norse, so full both of the Icelandic folk tale and the Edda, that if no other link of union existed between the Wabanaki and Europe this would almost establish it. It is the one already alluded to as a Micmac song, communicated by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown, of Calais. It is a tale of Three Strong Men. In it a starved-looking little elf eats the food of three men, and fights all day long with a man of incredible strength, the son of a white bear. In an entirely Norse tale, a very small elf fights a white bear all night long ere he is conquered. The wife of the hero invokes the Wind-Blower or Giant Eagle to send a wind. When her husband leaves her, she, fearing a rival sorceress, warns him that if, when he approaches his place of destination, a small whelp should lick his hand he will forget her. In the Edda, to dream of whelps is the most evil of all Atli’s many bad dreams. (Gudrun, II. 41.) In the Atlamal in Groenlenzku (Edda), Högui is warned against going (Gudrun, 24), and he takes a potion which causes oblivion. Broken and bewildering as this is, there is at every step in both the Indian tale and this particular part of the Gudrun song something which recalls in one the other. We are told in the Norse that to dream of a white bear means a great storm; that is, a startling event. It rarely occurs in a Wabanaki tale that the white bear’s skin is brought in unless there is at hand some startling magic transformation. I had observed this long before any connection between Indian and Norse stories suggested itself.

In the Edda, Odin takes Mimir’s head, and prepares it by magic, so that it answers all his questions and gives him advice. In three Indian stories the head of a magician does the same thing, and, as in the Edda, it is constantly kept as an oracle. But in the Wabanaki it is eventually reunited to its body, and the man thus formed runs amok, killing every one he meets. It may be conjectured that in the old Norse tale, now lost, Mimir will, at the last day, regain his head, and fight madly. Without this the Edda is at present manifestly defective, since in it Mimir, the source of all Odin’s wisdom, that is of all wisdom, has no share in the final revival.

There are not in the Chippeway or any other Indian tales known to me such indications of culture as are found among the legends of the Wabanaki. Regarded as literature, the latter are marvelously accommodated to the European style and standard. There is a large-hearted, genial spirit of strength, health, and humor in them which is, one may say, Norse, and nothing else, — the spirit of Rabelais and of Shakespeare. Glooskap. the Lord of Men and Beasts, the sublime American Thor and Odin, who towers above Hiawatha aud Manobozho like a colossus above pigmies, the master of the mighty mountains, has still a wonderfully tender heart. He has one ever-repeated joke,— his canoe, which he lends, always saying, “I have often lent it, and everybody has promised to bring it back, but I have always been obliged to go after it myself.” It is his umbrella. He often sends certain friends to the land of the giant sorcerers. There they have terrible adventures ; they slay giants and serpents. One invariable and dreadful trial awaits them at the last station, returning. A giant skunk, big as St. Paul’s, standing on the shore, opens on them his battery. Of course the monster is triumphantly slain by the hero. But this skunk forms no part of the devices of the enemy. It is a little private trick of Glooskap’s own, — a genial potent delusion, a joke.

It may naturally be inquired how it came to pass that there is so much in common to the Wabanaki and Norse. The latter were in Greenland for three centuries. They left there the ruins of fourscore churches and monasteries. In their time the Eskimo are believed to have ranged as far south as New York. The Wabanaki or Algonquin live to-day in Labrador. When I wrote recently to the Rev. S. T. Rand to know if the Micmacs ever visited the Eskimo, he did but go to his next Indian neighbor, a woman, who told him that her husband had passed seven winters with Eskimo, — four among the “ tame,” and three among the heathen. The Indians do not appear anywhere or at any time to have told stories to the Iglesmani, — that is, English or Americans, — or to have listened to any of theirs. The ordinary American, as for instance Thoreau, listens to their tales only to ridicule them. He immediately proceeds to demonstrate to the Indian the “folly” of his belief; that is, his own moral supremacy. This was not the case with the French Canadians, who emptied out on the Indians in full faith all their contes des fées. With the Eskimo and halfpagan Norsemen there was an even greater sympathy. The Indian had his téomul, his pou-he-gan, his animal fate or spirit; the Norseman had his ham, or fylgia, which was precisely the same thing.

It has been objected to me that these Greenland Norsemen were all Christians. So are the Indians, every one good Catholics. Once there was one Sunday morning (I am assured that this is really true) a small church full of Christian Wabanaki Indians. They were all at prayers. The church was surrounded by their enemies, the Megwech or Mohawks. They were marched out to die. But there was among the Christians a K’chee medéoulin, a great sorcerer. He asked the Mohawk chief if he might, ere he was slain, walk thrice round the church. This is an old Norse magical formula. (Vide Thorpe.) The request was granted. He walked and sang. He invoked the tempest. It came, and the lightning killed all the wicked heathen Mohawks, who were at once scalped by the good Christian Micmacs. Doubtless the Norsemen were equally pious. It was only a few years before Karlsefne visited Boston that Thangbrand, the pirate bishop, converted so many to Christianity in Iceland by splitting with a cross the heads of the heathen who would not believe, — pour encourager les autres.

There has been as yet very little study of the Shamanic mythology, folklore, and poetry of the early world. The commentators on the Edda should study more closely the races with the magic drum. There is some mighty mystery behind it all, as yet unsolved. I cannot admit of our Indian legends that popular tales are the same the world over. Were this apparent Norse element not in those of the Wabanaki, what remains would be French or Eskimo fairy stories, every one easy to recognize. I would add to this a conviction that the Chippewas drew their legends from the East. Thus, for instance, the Toad Woman of Schoolcraft and many others are imperfect and distorted, compared to the versions of the same stories as told in the East. The Iroquois Book of Rites, edited by H. Hale, and the early accounts of that race indicate that it was gifted with a high sense of justice, that it had men of great genius, that while savage it developed elements of culture such as we cannot at all understand as coexistent with barbarity. This appears to have been to a striking degree the case with the Algonquin or Wabanaki, whose culture, however, while not inferior to that of the Iroquois, was very different from it. It was a little more Eskimo, and very much more Norse. I have here given only the minority of the proofs of resemblance. The majority consists of the genial, hearty, and vigorous Norse feelings which inspire these wonderful and beautiful legends, and the ever - continued evidence that, in some utterly strange way both drew their life from the same source.

The Lay of Grotti, or the Mill-Song of the Edda, which tells how the sea became salt, is also known to the Indians. As they give it with the same additions which appear in the common fairy tale, I do not cite this as proving that it came from old Norse narration. But it is remarkable that in all cases the Indian tales and incidents incline to the Eddaic, and that they have much more of it than of modern stories.

The best of these legends have utterly perished. What I have recovered has been from old squaws, from old men, or here and there a clever Indian. The great chroniclers are all dead. But I learn every day that the work of collection should have begun, especially in New England, at least a century ago.

I have recovered, thus far, twentyseven legends or sagas relative to Glooskap, forming a connected series, and many more of Lox, the rabbit, etc. All of the old Indians can remember when these were sung, and declare that till within fifty years they were preserved with sacred care. I believe that the most ancient and important myths still exist among the Algonquin of the far north, and that our historical societies or the government would do well to employ a scholar to collect them. Such as I have been able to get together are now in press, and will soon appear in a volume entitled The Algonquin Legends of New England. Unfortunately, there is perhaps no subject of so little general interest to the American as the Indian,—unless it be, indeed, the art of extirpating him. There was a time when every rock and river, hill and headland, had its legends, — legends stranger, wilder, and sweeter than those of the Rhine or Italy, — and we have suffered them to perish. Indians have made a fairy-land for me of certain places in New England; and there is not a square mile in the country which was not such to them. When the last Indian shall be in his grave, scholars will wonder at the indifference of the “ learned ” men of these times to such treasures as they have allowed to perish. What the world wants is not people to write about what others have gathered as to the Indians, but men to collect directly from them. We want, not theories, but material. Après nous la théorie. There are four hundred books on the gypsies, but in all not more than ten which tell us anything new or true about them. There will be speculators in abundance, and better than any now living, through all the ages, but then there will be no Indians.

Charles G. Leland.