Page 16 - 1958

GRADES 9 - 1 1 ESSA Y - SECOND
MARGARET C'"rlRISTENSEN XA
INDIAN LEGENDS
Very few countries are without a host of legends in their history! In some countries few people believe in ther.l.; in others, they were once firmly believed, the legends explaining things which the people ,did not understand.
The North American India ns had '8 legend foI' almost everything in nature .
T~e Algonquin creation myth was this: One day, the demi-god, Michabo, hunting with his wolves, saw them disappear into a lake. When he followed to rescue them, the l~ke overflowed, flooding the entire earth. Michabo dispatched a raven to find a piece of earth whi ch might act, a s a nucleus for a new world, but it was unsuccessful.
An otter was then sent, but it; too, failed . At last, a muskrat returned with sUfficient earth for Wtichabo to recreate solid land. Because the trees were denuded, he shot arrows at them, which became branches. He then narried the muskrat, and from it the human race was born.
The peace pipe originated from the belief that, many years [.go , the Great Spirit called all the people together and, standing on the Red Pipe-stone Rock, broke a piece of stone from the wall. After kneading it into a huge pipe, he smoked it over the people, telling them that it was their flesh. They could get all their pipes from
that place, but the scalping-knife and,war-club were not to be used near there. When
he had disappeared, the whole rock melted and b eeame 'glazed. From th is sacred place, and no ether, the Indians have obtained all ,their peace pipES.
, The Iroquois believed they came from Ioskeha, grands'on of the moon and twin
b~other of Taviscare. Ioskeha and his brother had once fought, Ioskeha using the
horns of a stag for his weapon, and Taviscare using a wild rose. This proved to be
a ,puny weapon, and Taviscare fled, his blood drops falling behind him, turning to stones. Ioskeha settled in the east, becoming the deity of the Iroquois.
The Blackfoot explanation of the sun and moon was this: A poor Indian who was f9rced, with his wife and two sons, to live entirely on plants, had a dream in which hI? was told to stretch a spider's web across an animal trail. He did this, catching
many animals in the web. One day, ' suspecting hi s wife wa s in love with someone else, h~ told her to gather firewood and asked his sons to watch where she went. They showed him a patch of dead timber in which be discovered the snake with whom his wife wes in love. Furious, he burned the snake and turned to kill his WifE, but she escap'ed int~o tbe web, , 'her, hoo,d being the only thing which stuck out. The Indian cut this off and:tbe head instantly b€gan to chase his sons while thE: body chased him. ,The boys t~rew some wet moss behind them, from which sprang 8 river which drowned the head.
The body is still chasing the Indian, it being the mooD, ,and he the sun. ' If the moon overtakes the sun, night will reign continually, but ,as long as the sun keeps:ahead,
we will have daylight part of the time. ' " , Lcngfellow'c Hiawatha is the combination of two characters, one being the
entirely mythical demi-god, Michabo, who performed the marvellous feats described in the'poem. The other person is the historical Hiawatha, chief of Iroquois, whose most important feat was the uniting of the Five Iroquois Nations into the ' Grand League . '
We can €El sily see how these legends originGted j to the Indians, the natura 1 e:J!:planation of ,unexplainable things. The I ndian legends, although they do not contain
a particle of truth, are, Levortnol~8s: intere~ting~· providing a way of understanding the Indian b~tter.