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Myths and Folk Lore of the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and PenobscotTribes
[Frontispiece Illustration: MIK UM WESS THE INDIAN PUCK, OR ROBIN
GOOD-FELLOW.
From a scraping on birch bark by Tomak Josephs, Indian Governor atPeter Dona's Point, Maine. The Mik um wees always wears a red cap likethe Norse Goblin.]
When I began, in the summer of 1882, to collect among the PassamaquoddyIndians at Campobello, New Brunswick, their traditions and folk-lore, Iexpected to find very little indeed. These Indians, few in number,surrounded by white people, and thoroughly converted to RomanCatholicism, promised but scanty remains of heathenism. What was myamazement, however, at discovering, day by day, that there existedamong them, entirely by oral tradition, a far grander mythology thanthat which has been made known to us by either the Chippewa or IroquoisHiawatha Legends, and that this was illustrated by an incredible numberof tales. I soon ascertained that these were very ancient. The oldpeople declared that they had heard from their progenitors that all ofthese stories were once sung; that they themselves remembered when manyof them were poems. This was fully proved by discovering manifesttraces of poetry in many, and finally by receiving a long Micmac talewhich had been sung by an Indian. I found that all the relaters of thislore were positive as to the antiquity of the narratives, anddistinguished accurately between what was or was not pre-Columbian. Infact, I came in time to the opinion that the original stock of all theAlgonquin myths, and perhaps of many more, still existed, not far awayin the West, but at our very doors; that is to say, in Maine and NewBrunswick. It is at least certain, as the reader may convince himself,that these Wabanaki, or Northeastern Algonquin, legends give, with fewexceptions, in full and coherently, many tales which have only reachedus in a broken, imperfect form, from other sources.
This work, then, contains a collection of the myths, legends, andfolk-lore of the principal Wabanaki, or Northeastern Algonquin, Indians;that is to say, of the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots of Maine, and ofthe Micmacs of New Brunswick. All of this material was gathereddirectly from Indian narrators, the greater part by myself, the rest bya few friends; in fact, I can give the name of the aboriginal authorityfor every tale except one. As my chief object has been simply tocollect and preserve valuable material, I have said little of thelabors of such critical writers as Brinton, Hale, Trumbull, Powers,Morgan, Bancroft, and the many more who have so ably studied and setforth red Indian ethnology. If I have rarely ventured on their field,it is because I believe that when the Indian shall have passed awaythere will come far better ethnologists than I am, who will be muchmore obliged to me for collecting raw material than for cooking it.
Two or three subjects have, it is true, tempted me into occasionalcommenting. The manifest, I may say the undeniable, affinity betweenthe myths and legends of the Northeastern Indians and those of theEskimo could hardly be passed over, nor at the same time the identityof the latter and of the Shaman religion with those of the Finns,Laplande