He said, "Be glad, but the
hour of punishment for the men who made these tears is come." So he
went to the sagamore and told him all.
The old chief called for the young men. "Slay them all as you choose,"
he said to his son-in-law; "scalp them." But the youth refused. He
called to the Fox, and got the straws which gave the power to transform
men to beasts. He changed his enemies into bad animals,--one into a
porcupine, one into a hog,--and they were driven into the woods. Thus
it was that the first hog and the first porcupine came into the world.
This story, narrated by Tomah Josephs, is partly old Indian and partly
European, but whether the latter element was derived from a French
Canadian or a Norse source I cannot tell, since it is common to both.
The mention of the horse and the hog, or of cattle, does not prove that
a story is not pre-Columbian. The Norsemen had brought cattle of
various descriptions even to New England. It is to be very much
regretted that the first settlers in New England took no pains to
ascertain what the Indians knew of the white men who had preceded them.
But modern material may have easily been added to an old legend.
THE CHENOO LEGENDS.
_I. The Chenoo, or the Story of a Cannibal with an Icy Heart._
(Micmac and Passamaquoddy.)
Of the old time. An Indian, with his wife and their little boy, went
one autumn far away to hunt in the northwest.
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