So Glooskap gave it up in despair, and Wasis, sitting on the floor in
the sunshine, went _goo! goo!_ and crowed.
And to this day when you see a babe well contented, going _goo!
goo!_ and crowing, and no one can tell why, know that it is because
he remembers the time when he overcame the Master who had conquered all
the world. For of all the beings that have ever been since the
beginning, Baby is alone the only invincible one. [Footnote: I am
indebted for this "marchen" to Maria Saksis, a very intelligent
Penobscot woman, a widow of a former governor, whom I met at North
Conway, in the White Mountains, N. H. In her dialect Glooskap is
invariably called _Glus-gah-be_. She told it with that admirable
dry drollery, characteristic of a good story-teller in a race where
there are no bad ones. The exquisite humor and humanity of this little
legend, placed as a pendant to the stupendous successes of the giant
hero, are such as to entitle its Indian author to rank as a genius. I
have frequently asserted that these Wabanaki or Northeastern Algonquin
tales bore to those of the West the apparent relation of originals to
poor copies. Let the reader compare this, which is given as nearly word
for word as was possible from the Indian narrative, with that of
Manobozho-Hiawatha's effort to compete with a baby. The Cherokee
account is that, seeing an infant sucking its own toe, he tried to do
the same, and failed.
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