A very great while ago the ancestors of the Shawanos nation lived onthe other side of the Great Lake, half-way between the rising sun andthe evening star. It was a land of deep snows and much frost, of windswhich whistled in the clear, cold nights, and storms which travelledfrom seas no eyes could reach. Sometimes the sun ceased to shine formoons together, and then he was continually before their eyes for asmany more. In the season of cold the waters were all locked up, andthe snows overtopped the ridge of the cabins. Then he shone out sofiercely that men fell stricken by his fierce rays, and were numberedwith the snow that had melted and run to the embrace of the rivers. Itwas not like the beautiful lands--the lands blessed with soft suns andever-green vales--in which the Shawanos now dwell, yet it was wellstocked with deer, and the waters with fat seals and great fish, whichwere caught just when the people pleased to go after them. Still, thenation were discontented, and wished to leave their barren andinhospitable shores. The priests had told them of a beautiful worldbeyond the Great Salt Lake, from which the glorious sun neverdisappeared for a longer time than the duration of a child's sleep,where snow-shoes were never wanted--a land clothed with perpetualverdure, and bright with never-failing gladness. The Shawanos listenedto these tales till they came to loathe their own simple comforts; allthey talked of, all they appeared to think of, was the land of thehappy hunting-grounds.
Once upon a time the people were much terrified at seeing a strangecreature, much resembling a man, riding along the waves of the lake onthe borders of which they dwelt. He had on his head long green hair;his face was shaped like that of a porpoise, and he had a beard of thecolour of ooze.
If the people were frightened at seeing a man who could live in thewater like a fish or a duck, how much more were they frightened whenthey saw that from his breast down he was actually fish, or rather twofishes, for each of his legs was a whole and distinct fish. When theyheard him speak distinctly in their own language, and when he sangsongs sweeter than the music of birds in spring, or the whispers oflove from the lips of a beautiful maiden, they thought it a being fromthe Land of Shades--a spirit from the happy fishing-grounds beyond thelake of storms.
He would sit for a long time, his fish-legs coiled up under him,singing to the wondering ears of the Indians upon the shore thepleasures he experienced, and the beautiful and strange things he sawin the depths of the ocean, always closing his strange stories withthese words, shouted at the top of his voice--
"Follow me, and see what I will show you."
Every day, when the waves were still and the winds had gone to theirresting-place in the depths of the earth, the monster was sure to beseen near the shore where the Shawanos dwelt. For a great many sunsthey dared not venture upon the water in quest of food, doing nothingbut wander along the beach, watching the strange creature as he playedhis antics upon the surface of the waves, listening to his songs andto his invitation--
"Follow me, and see what I will show you."
The longer he stayed the less they feared him. They became used tohim, and in time looked upon him as a spirit who was not made forharm, nor wished to injure the poor Indian. Then they grew hungry, andtheir wives and little ones cried for food, and, as hunger banishesall fear, in a few days three canoes with many men and warriorsventured off to the rocks in quest of fish.
When they reached the fishing-place, they heard as before the voiceshouting--
"Follow me, and see what I will show you."
Presently the man-fish appeared, sitting on the water, with his legsfolded under him, and his arms crossed on his breast, as they hadusually seen him. There he sat, eying them attentively. When theyfailed to draw in the fish they had hooked, he would make the watershake and the deep echo with shouts of laughter, and would clap hishands with great noise, and cry--
"Ha, ha! there he fooled you."
When a fish was caught he was very angry. When the fishers had triedlong and patiently, and taken little, and the sun was just hidingitself behind the dark clouds which skirted the region of warm winds,the strange creature cried out still stronger than before--
"Follow me, and see what I will show you."
Kiskapocoke, who was the head man of the tribe, asked him what hewanted, but he would make no other answer than--
"Follow me."
"Do you think," said Kiskapocoke, "I would be such a fool as to go Idon't know with whom, and I don't know where?"
"See what I will show you," cried the man-fish.
"Can you show us anything better than we have yonder?" asked thewarrior.
"I will show you," replied the monster, "a land where there is a herdof deer for every one that skips over your hills, where there are vastdroves of creatures larger than your sea-elephants, where there is nocold to freeze you, where the sun is always soft and smiling, wherethe trees are always in bloom."
The people began to be terrified, and wished themselves on land, butthe moment they tried to paddle towards the shore, some invisible handwould seize their canoes and draw them back, so that an hour's labourdid not enable them to gain the length of their boat in the directionof their homes. At last Kiskapocoke said to his companions--
"What shall we do?"
"Follow me," said the fish.
Then Kiskapocoke said to his companions--
"Let us follow him, and see what will come of it."
So they followed him,--he swimming and they paddling, until nightcame. Then a great wind and deep darkness prevailed, and the GreatSerpent commenced hissing in the depths of the ocean. The people wereterribly frightened, and did not think to live till another sun, butthe man-fish kept close to the boats, and bade them not be afraid, fornothing should hurt them.
When morning came, nothing could be seen of the shore they had left.The winds still raged, the seas were very high, and the waters raninto their canoes like melted snows over the brows of the mountains,but the man-fish handed them large shells, with which they baled thewater out. As they had brought neither food nor water with them, theyhad become both hungry and thirsty. Kiskapocoke told the strangecreature they wanted to eat and drink, and that he must supply themwith what they required.
"Very well," said the man-fish, and, disappearing in the depths of thewater, he soon reappeared, bringing with him a bag of parched corn anda shell full of sweet water.
For two moons and a half the fishermen followed the man-fish, till atlast one morning their guide exclaimed--
"Look there!"
Upon that they looked in the direction he pointed out to them and sawland, high land, covered with great trees, and glittering as the sandof the Spirit's Island. Behind the shore rose tall mountains, from thetops of which issued great flames, which shot up into the sky, as theforks of the lightning cleave the clouds in the hot moon. The watersof the Great Salt Lake broke in small waves upon its shores, whichwere covered with sporting seals and wild ducks pluming themselves inthe beams of the warm and gentle sun. Upon the shore stood a greatmany strange people, but when they saw the strangers step upon theland and the man-fish, they fled to the woods like startled deer, andwere no more seen.
When the warriors were safely landed, the man-fish told them to letthe canoe go; "for," said he, "you will never need it more." They hadtravelled but a little way into the woods when he bade them stay wherethey were, while he told the spirit of the land that the strangers hehad promised were come, and with that he descended into a deep cavenear at hand. He soon returned, accompanied by a creature as strangein appearance as himself. His legs and feet were those of a man. Hehad leggings and moccasins like an Indian's, tightly laced andbeautifully decorated with wampum, but his head was like a goat's. Hetalked like a man, and his language was one well understood by thestrangers.
"I will lead you," he said, "to a beautiful land, to a most beautifulland, men from the clime of snows. There you will find all the joys anIndian covets."
For many moons the Shawanos travelled under the guidance of theman-goat, into whose hands the man-fish had put them, when he retracedhis steps to the Great Lake. They came at length to the land which theShawanos now occupy. They found it as the strange spirits haddescribed it. They married the daughters of the land, and theirnumbers increased till they were so many that no one could count them.They grew strong, swift, and valiant in war, keen and patient in thechase. They overcame all the tribes eastward of the River of Rivers,and south to the shore of the Great Lake.
THE END.
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