Powwow

“ Their powows, by their exorcisms, and necromantic charms, bring to pass strange things, if we may believe the Indians; who report of one Passaconaway, a great sagamore upon Merrimack river, and the most celebrated powow in the country, that he can make the water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, and metamorphize himself into a flaming man. In winter, when there are no green leaves to be got, he will burn an old one to ashes, and putting these into the water, produce a new green leaf, which you shall not only see, but substantially handle and carry away ”

“ Like all the flycatcher family the Phoebe takes its food mostly flying. Mrs. Wright says that the Pewee in his primitive state haunts dim woods and running water, and that when domesticated he is a great bather, and may be seen in the half-light dashing in and out of the water as he makes trips to and from the nest. After the young are hatched both old and young disport themselves about the water until moulting time. ”

“ The office and duty of the Powah is to be exercised principally in calling upon the Devil, and curing diseases of the sick or wounded. The common people join with him in the exercise of invocation, but do but only assent, or as we term it, say ten to that he saith, yet sometime break out into a short musical note with him. The Powah is eager and free in speech, fierce in countenance, and joineth many antics and laborious gestures with the same over the party diseased. ”

“ The white adventurer failed to meet with jest the gale of laughter which presently drove him out of camp, leaving the Crow in possession. And the Crow was clever, distributing to the Blackfoot chiefs and medicine men gifts of axes and guns, of scarlet cloth and beads, every treasure the heart of man could covet, silks for the women, toys for the children, liquor by the keg. The Crow offered subsidy to every important leader, so long as he traded in safety with the Blackfoot nation. That night he had a wagon load of robes and a tribe drunk. ”

“ Storm looked up, and the sullen resentment seemed to vanish from his face.
"Sitting Wolf, as chief," said the old man, "speaks to your father's son. I as priest speak to your mother's son. She gave you strength and staying power. The work you do should kill the strongest of our young men. She gave you also a quick mind, a straight tongue, a good heart. For these, not for your skill as a hunter or warrior, we make you a member of our tribe, and subject to our laws." ”

“ Before the end of this long ritual the sun had gone down behind the westward heights, the hearth fire burned low, and the Indians were huddled in their robes of elk or bison while Storm, with only his deer-skin hunting dress, felt chilled to the bones. With the covering of the pipe, Sitting Wolf ceased to be priest celebrant and was the chief, jealous, envious, with something in his leathery dark face sinister, boding. ”

“ They came home on a Sabbath day, and the Powaw that kneeled upon the deer-skin came home (I may say, without abuse) as black as the devil. When my master came home, he came to me and bid me make a shirt for his papoose, of a holland-laced pillowbere. About that time there came an Indian to me and bid me come to his wigwam at night, and he would give me some pork and ground nuts. ”

“ So he took the bird home, placed it in the window-sill, and waited and waited. ’Twas not very long before the bird laid its head beneath its wing and began to doze. Then the marksman raised his right hand and stroked it, quite lightly, the wrong side down. The dove instantly fell to the ground and became a maiden-soul, and so beautiful that the like of it can only be told in tales, but is neither to be imagined nor guessed at. And she spoke to the good youth who was the royal archer, and said: “Thou hast had wit enough to win me, have also wit enough to live with me. ”

“ The Wampanoags only religious practitioner was the powow. His role was that of intermediary between the humans and the supernatural. [558] When illness was thought to be of supernatural origin he was called in to determine the kind of force at work and to carry out the proper ceremonies to restore health. [559] For this work he received payment in advance. Should the patient not recover, his relatives were apt to be angry with the powow; they would demand the return of the fee and perhaps his life if they felt that deception had been involved. ”

“ Yet in one camp at least the dying fires flickered up at my coming. Old Medicine Robe called his priests and sacred women to the sweet and solemn ritual, with which I was formally adopted as a Blackfoot, as a chief and as his son. The young men roused themselves for a hunting and killed deer, so that the women might dress the skins, and make clothes for Rain and for me. The poles were cut, the cover sewn for my lodge, in which I had to sit in lonely state while Rain attended me with meals, which she brought from her hearth. ”

“ The English invested savage life with all the dignity of European courts. Powhatan was styled 'King,' or 'Emperor,' his principal warriors were lords of the kingdom, his wives were queens, his daughter was a 'princess,' and his cabins were his various seats of residence. ... In his younger days Powhatan had been a great warrior. Hereditarily, he was the chief or werowance of eight tribes; through conquest his dominions had been extended. ... The name of his nation and the Indian appellation of the James River was Powhatan. ”

“ Popham, with magnificent solemnity and a pair of new calves, gave orders to Meeson and Welsby, and kept little Whelpdale panting for breath with errands; while in and out, between everybody’s legs, and over or under all obstacles, stalked the two ravens Croak James and Croak Elizabeth, a big white wedding-favour tied round the neck of each. To see these grave birds, none would have suspected how frequently they had been in the mince-pies that morning, though Popham had expressly ruled (in somewhat stilted language) that they should “take nothink by their bills.” ”

“ Over the river from where we lived was "Slab Town," dilapidated little settlement of no social or moral consideration. The old captain, the pilot of the wheezy ferry-boat Edgar, was our sworn friend, and allowed us to ride free as often as we could get away. Charles intended crossing the river to get pawpaws. A pawpaw is an easily mashed fruit, three or four inches long, with a tough skin inclosing a very liquid pulp full of seeds, and about as solid as a cream puff, when it is dead ripe. It grows on a low, stunted bush-like tree. ”

“ Smaller, but not a whit less active than the Kingbird is the Phoebe or Water Pewee—the small Flycatcher who is almost as familiar about the farm and roadside as the Robin himself. Look about the woodshed or cow-shed. Is there a beam or little nook of any sort that will hold a nest? If so, in early May you will see a pair of nervous brown birds, heaping up a mound of moss and mud. When they have made it large enough to suit them, they line it with soft grass and horsehairs; the nest is then ready for the white eggs, which once in a while are varied with a few brown spots. ”

“ When not domesticated, as these birds are rapidly becoming, the phoebes dearly love a cool, wet woodland retreat. Here they hunt and bathe; here they also build in a rocky bank or ledge of rocks or underneath a bridge, but always with clever adaptation of their nest to its surroundings, out of which it seems a natural growth. ”

“ Mr Powys is neither a windy romancer nor a reporter of actualities; in his spiritual groping he has felt deeply and hated bitterly; he has thrown a scorching light on the stingy souls of the Dorset villagers, and has produced a shocking book—shocking, that is, in the aesthetic sense. ”

“ The first of its family to come North, as well as the last to leave us for the winter, the phoebe appears toward the end of March to snap up the first insects warmed into life by the spring sunshine. Grackles in the evergreens, red-wings in the swampy meadows, bluebirds in the orchard may assure us that summer is on the way; but the homely, confiding phoebe, who comes close about our houses and barns, brings the good news home to us every hour. ”

“ I will take you over to Pa ́howa.” The man slept and the elk took him on its back and carried him while asleep, and the next morning he found himself on that point of Pa ́howa.
That night the messenger bird came to him and said, “Now, my friend, follow me, and what you see me do, that do yourself. When I dive down into Pa ́howa, you follow me.” ”

“ Look when one might, in the hottest sunshine or the heaviest rain, there sat the bird quite up out of the nest, head erect and eyes eagerly watching for intruders. The pewee, for all his tender and melancholy utterances, has a fiery spirit. He hesitates not to clinch with a brother pewee, interpolates his sweetest call into the hot chases, and even when resting between encounters, spreads his tail, flutters his wings, and erects his crest in a most warlike manner. The little dame was not a whit less vigilant than her spouse. ”

“ Great joy then felt King Powhatan,
Great joy felt all his men,
And wild and loud were the shouts that made
Their forests ring again.
No more in long suspense and fear
They lay like a strong man bound,
But light and free, the feast and song{131}
Through all the tribes went round ”

“ The bird is in no way adapted to transport its young through the air.
There are upwards of a dozen species of British plover; birds interesting to the naturalist, dear to the heart of the shore-shooter and to the sportsman of the marshes. Some of these are summer visitants to our shores, others come in winter, while a few stay with us throughout the year. The common green plover or peewit, with its crest, its peculiarly rounded wings, its plaintive cry, is the best known; and this species breeds with us, as the abundance of its eggs shows. ”

“ And Rising Wolf is wise. They come. They say their God shall drive you from our villages!"
The Crow knew better. "See, my son," he said. "Their God lives a long way off. I carry mine in this wagon. Which is the strongest—an enemy nation beyond the World Spine yonder, or the enemy warrior in your camp, knife in his teeth, creeping under the lodge skin, feeling the heave of your bed robe, finding the way for the heart? Such is my god; but theirs——" He chuckled softly, and Heap-of-dogs passaged his horse to and fro, played by the liquor.
"Where are they?" asked the trader. ”

“ Povy's to discourse about getting of his money, wherein I am concerned in hopes of the L50 my Lord hath promised me, but I dare not reckon myself sure of it till I have it in my main,— [hand.] —for these Lords are hard to be trusted. Though I well deserve it. I staid at Povy's for his coming in, and there looked over his stables and every thing, but notwithstanding all the times I have been there I do yet find many fine things to look on. Thence to White Hall a little, to hear how the King do, he not having been well these three days. I find that he is pretty well again. ”

“ That letter found Phoebe on a mid-March morning, when the thrushes were beginning to sing, when the larches were reddening, and only in the topmost hollows of the pikes did any snow remain, to catch the strengthening sunlight.
As she opened it, she looked at its length with astonishment. Then the tone of it brought the rushing colour to her cheek, and when it was finished she kissed it and hid it in her dress. After weeks of barrenness, of stray post-cards and perfunctory notes, these ample pages, with their rhetorical and sentimental effusion, brought new life to the fretting, lonely woman. ”

“ From that dark day to the present, Whoso had taken the Pobble's toes,
In a manner so far from pleasant. Whether the shrimps or crawfish gray,
Or crafty Mermaids stole them away,
Nobody knew; and nobody knows
How the Pobble was robbed of his twice five toes!
VI.
The Pobble who has no toes
Was placed in a friendly Bark, And they rowed him back, and carried him up
To his Aunt Jobiska's Park. And she made him a feast, at his earnest wish,
Of eggs and buttercups fried with fish;
And she said, "It's a fact the whole world knows,
That Pobbles are happier without their toes." ”

“ He rules over the wild beasts, and takes his pleasure with them.”—“So that’s the sort of bridegroom you present us with! Well, go back to him and say that he must send us forty forties of gray wolves, and then we’ll accept him as the bridegroom.” Then the little fox ran to the meadows which lay beneath this very wood [88] and began rolling about in these meadows. A wolf came running up and said: “I see, gossip, that you’ve had a good feed somewhere or you would not roll about like that.”—“I wish I wasn’t so full; I’ve been at a banquet with the Tsar and the Tsaritsa. ”

“ XIX POWELL, PRINCE OF DYFED
One of the oldest of the Welsh fairy tales tells us about Pwyle, King of Fairyland and father of the numerous clan of the Powells. He was a mighty hunter. He could ride a horse, draw a bow, and speak the truth. He was always honored by men, and he kept his faith and his promises to women. The children loved him, for he loved them. In the castle hall, he could tell the best stories. No man, bard, or warrior, foot holder or commoner, could excel him in gaining and keeping the attention of his hearers, even when they were sleepy and wanted to go to bed. ”

“ A Phœbe is always associated, in my mind, with old bridges and bubbling brooks. Nearly every bridge which is at all adapted for the purpose has its Phœbe home beneath it, to which the same pair of birds will return year after year, sometimes building a new nest, sometimes repairing the old. They seem to be of a nervous temperament, for, as they sit upon their usual lookout perch, their tails are continually twitching as though in anticipation of the insects that are sure to pass sooner or later. ”