Mary Catherine Judd

“ Shingebis the great loon-bird lived in a lodge alone. It was by a great lake over which thick ice had come.
He had only four logs of wood for his fire for the whole winter. But each log would burn a whole moon, and as but four moons were cold, there was wood enough.
Shingebis cared for no one. He liked the cold. When the wind blew the coldest he would go out to where the reeds grew through the ice, and pulling them up, dive down into the holes for fish. ”

“ When the poison light-arrow struck Osseo he became like an Indian who had seen a hundred winters.
Nothing old or evil can live on the Woman’s Star. Osseo could not return to his mother. He was brave. He made no mourning. He made many friends among the Ojibways.
Oweenee was the daughter of a chief. She was like the red lily that grows on the prairies. She had nine sisters. They were like a field of lilies. Her sisters had each married a great warrior.
Oweenee loved the old and wrinkled Osseo. There was none to cook the deer meat his trembling feet [182] brought to his wigwam. ”

“ The chiefs said: “Leap from this trail in the valley to the top of Leaping Rock. Then you are brave; then you are strong.”
It was a leap as high as two braves are long. It was a leap like an arrow shot into the sky; like an [92] arrow which falls and breaks on the rocks the young braves fell sometimes.
Sometimes the young brave was strong; he would stand on the slippery rock like an eagle resting on the mountain. It was well. He was then a great brave. The chief of his tribe gave him the feather of an eagle to wear, for only a strong brave may wear a feather in his scalp lock. ”

“ The wicked spirit would not let one person thank the Good Spirit for his gifts to them.
All tribes had much food, for there were many deer, elk, and buffalo, and the rivers were full of fish. Water, light, and fire were given to every one; but not one gave thanks for these things. They forgot the Good Spirit and the bad spirit was glad. He showed them how to fight and to make war.
The Good Spirit did not like to have men forget him. He lifted up the whole world and dropped it into a great lake. All the people were drowned excepting one young chief who had kindness in his heart. ”

“ No Indian may harm any one in this valley. Enemies must not know war here. Dakotas, Chippewas, Pawnees, tribes of the south and tribes of the north buried their tomahawks when they met in the Valley of Peace. This is true; the tribes gathered here to make their calumets. The calumet is the pipe of peace.
The Falls of the Winniwissi are in the Pipestone Valley. The music of the falling water is like the song of peace.
Near the Falls of Winniwissi is a high rock. When the braves come to the Valley of Peace they see a great face in this rock. They see it when far away on the long trail. ”

“ The papoose and the squaw may laugh. The brave must not let his face show what he feels. It is not wise.
The white man has stories to tell his children, and his children laugh. The Indian tells the stories of Iagoo to his children. The teepee is shut, for it is winter, and you cannot hear the papoose laugh.
The white man when he tells a story which is not true says, “Once on a time.” The Indian says, “My grandfather told me.” The papooses know when the story is true. An Indian teaches his children to tell the truth; his children are wise; they speak the truth to their tribe. ”

“ When this bird rushes from the reeds by the river into the water, the Indian who sees it often cries out, “There goes the bird Menabozho kicked.”
If the white fisherman tells a story of some great fish that he has caught, or that nearly came into his [222] net, then the Indians, among themselves, grunt and scoff at his story. They can tell of a larger fish than any white man ever saw or brought to shore. Menabozho sailed into its mouth in his canoe. And so this same being is as real to them as any we have learned of in our childhood’s days. ”

“ The Leni Lennape stick records tell only that the country of the Great Serpent was conquered little by little. The mounds are themselves the unsolved records of a great people. No Indian legends or histories have ever explained the meaning of these heaps of earth, which are shaped like animals or birds, and are now sometimes covered by huge trees.
The wampum belt tells its story by the pictures upon it, while the record sticks had only painted notches to help the memory of the tribe’s historians. ”

“ Our tribe had good hunting that winter. They killed many bears.”
“We have only one God; why do you have so many?” was next asked.
“The Great Spirit is the god of the Dakotas,” said the Indian. “He made everything but wild rice and thunder. We must do as our fathers have done or the spirits of the dead will punish us. It is not good to change. We believe what they told us when we were children. We worship the Great Spirit.” ”

“ There is no war paint on the land that is as red as the Day Sun. When Hannanna has his wigwam by the water you can see more than when it is over the land. The Day Sun is happy by the water.
When the red warrior of the sky goes out of sight in the west he rides in a canoe behind the trees and hills to his place in the east. On his way he talks to the Night Sun. You cannot see the canoe of the Day Sun.
The Night Sun does not care if men see that he rides in a canoe like an Indian. He comes from the White Land in the east. ”

“ An Indian in his native costume is a subject artists are glad to paint,—tanned buckskin trousers with the buckskin fringe down the outside seams; buckskin moccasins with colored porcupine quills neatly woven into the leather in regular patterns, and a heavy blanket or buffalo robe over his shoulders, hanging nearly to the ground. But the paint upon his face is his chief pride. ”

“ White people do not always believe it.
There lived a great Siwash hunter in the land in the west near the great river full of salmon, where it comes into the sea. His arrows gave him much meat; his great canoe and his spear gave him much fish. He had very many strings of shell money; the Siwash people call it hiaqua.
No one ever loved hiaqua as much as this great hunter loved it. He had many strings of it around his neck. He was rich; but when he waited in the trees in the forest for the elk or the deer to come that he might shoot them, he was always counting the shells on these strings. ”

“ The birch-bark canoe is light and very swift, and white hunters are proud of their skill in its use, but the skin boat has only strength as its merit.
The Siwash Indian of Puget Sound hollows out from a single log a fine canoe with decorated prow. He makes it secretly in the dark forest, and white men have tried for years to solve the problem of its swiftness.
The bows of strong wood bent by sinew cords and the stone-headed arrows with feather tips were excellent weapons in the Indians’ former methods of warfare and hunting, and a good arrowhead maker was famous throughout a nation. ”

“ The Dakotas believe that Toonkan, the oldest of all the gods, lives in stone. Stone was made first. Toonkan lived first. He lives in every rock. He loves best the great rocks. They are his home. The Indians worship the face in the rock. It is Toonkan watching them. He will bring them back alive from battle. He will help them in the fight with the bear. ”

“ Perhaps some daughter of the Dakotas was the cause of all this patient study of the art of dressing; but I cannot dream of Hiawatha ever belittling himself to take so long a time with feathers and paint.”
It seemed strange to the traveler for the Indian to take so much pains with the colors of paint and the place where he put them upon his face, but it is now known that each color has its meaning with them. The Indians paint their faces very differently when they are going on the warpath. The warriors of each nation have their own fashion of painting their faces and bodies. ”

“ A Navajo will not look into the face of the mother of his wife; when they talk together he looks on the ground or in another direction. It is said a Navajo once forgot himself and, looking up, became blind. They believe that the souls of the women of their tribe enter fish when they leave this world; and they rarely eat fish for that reason. Indian customs and manners are taught to their children with just as much earnestness as white people teach their little ones.
All the Pueblos make curious images or dolls of clay. ”

“ The chief of one side drops his ball into the pocket of his bat and tosses it toward the center ground between the stakes. Both sides rush toward the place where the ball may fall, each brave hoping he may be the lucky one to catch it; whoever gets the ball tosses it with his bat into the air toward his side of the grounds. Then the screaming, howling mob of players tears across the field to the place where the ball may fall again. The ball is thrown and contended for until one side succeeds in throwing it beyond the bounds of the opposite party. ”

“ The Pueblos are a peaceful people. They have had time to invent things that astonish the white men who have seen only the Indians of the wandering tribes.
The pueblo of Zuñi is in New Mexico, about two hundred miles southeast of Santa Fé. This Indian town was sought for by Coronado and his Spanish soldiers. They had heard marvelous stories of the silver, gold, and jewels owned by the red people living north of Mexico; but the Pueblos were brave as well as wise, and the history of that Spanish expedition is sad reading. ”

“ The Indians watch the sun, moon, and stars a great deal and know much more about them than many white people who have no time for such study. When they saw the power of the sun in bringing life out of the earth in the shape of growing plants from hidden seeds, then the sun seemed like a living spirit to them.
The name Menabozho has been found to mean in the Indian language the Great White Hare. ”

“ The huts are like a one-room house and are covered also with pine or birch bark. Each spring these Indians make large quantities of maple sugar, which they pack in mokuks, or birch-bark baskets, and sell or exchange at the stores in towns. During the summer they pick and sell the berries which grow near the woods and lakes. They have gardens of maize, squash, pumpkins, beans, and onions, and some raise potatoes. Their meat supply is getting scarce, as the deer, moose, and bear are being hunted so freely by white men. ”

“ Se-quoyah, a Georgia Indian half-breed, was a modern Cadmus to his people. He invented a perfect alphabet of over eighty letters for his native Cherokee language, and by his own zeal inspired his nation with a love for written words. His paper was birch bark; his ink the juices of berries and weeds. [4]
He hated the white people, for his white father had basely deserted his mother when Se-quoyah was a helpless babe. His mother’s father was a proud chief, and the grandson seems to have inherited his spirit. ”

“ Whatever was the first cause of their belief in such a being, there is no way of knowing. All people, no matter how wild, believe in God; but the wilder the people the more gods they believe in. It is so with the Indian. ”

“ The Indian pony is thought to be descended from the horses brought to America by the Spanish explorers.
The dogs belonging to an Indian camp or village are numerous and often nearly starved. Whenever a stranger makes his appearance, his coming is announced by furious barks and howls of these hungry sentinels. The white hunter has reason to dread the attacks of these dogs, for they are much like the coyotes and wolves of the forests. ”

“ You are not wise. You are like the mouth of a great fish. You have great hunger, but it is all for hiaqua. Your shoulders are covered with heavy strings of hiaqua. You have taken the shells from the nose and lips of your own squaw. You sell her elk meat, and she is starving like the other women. You will not feed her with the elk meat you will get to-day. ”