And one day when they had
angered her, she thought, "Truly Katahdin was right; these people are
in nowise worthy of my son, neither shall he serve them; he shall not
lead them to victory; they are not of those who make a great nation."
And being still further teased and tormented, she spake and said, "Ye
fools, who by your own folly will kill yourselves; ye mud-wasps, who
sting the fingers which would pick ye out of the water, why will ye
ever trouble me to tell you what you well know? Can you not see who was
the father of my boy? Behold his eyebrows; do ye not know Katahdin by
them? But it shall be to your exceeding great sorrow that ever ye
inquired. From this day ye may feed yourselves and find your own
venison, for this child shall do so no more for you."
And she arose and went her way into the woods and up the mountain, and
was seen on earth no more. And since that day the Indians, who should
have been great, have become a little people. Truly it would have been
wise and well for those of early times if they could have held their
tongues.
This remarkable legend was related to me by Mrs. Marie Sakis, a
Penobscot, a very clever story-teller. It gives the Fall of Man from a
purely Indian standpoint. Nothing is so contemptible in Indian eyes as
a want of dignity and idle, loquacious teasing; therefore it is made in
the myth the sin which destroyed their race.
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