The Rabbit is rewarded with skill as an enchanter merely
for continuing to try. His very failures have this in them, that he
keeps on resolutely, though in a wrong road. No one can fail to be
struck, in these legends of the Northeast Algonquins, how often a boy,
or adult, when asked if he can do a difficult thing, replies, "I can
try." All of this apotheosis of pluck, perseverance, and patience is
_far_ more developed among these legends than in those of the
Chippewas or other western and southern tribes, at least so far as I am
familiar with them. It exists wherever there are red Indians, but the
Eastern Algonquin seems to have thought it out more and made more of it
than others have done. Therefore his cycle of myths, or his Edda,
occupies a higher place. It is less chaotic; it is more consistent; it
is a chorus in which every voice is trained to respond to or correspond
with the leader. In this respect it has a remarkable resemblance to the
Scandinavian myths and poems. In its theory that magic power may be
obtained by "penitence,"--I do not mean here "repentance,"--that is by
self-inflicted pain, it agrees with the Hindoo, and in fact more or
less with all religions. But it is only, I believe, in the red Indian
and Hindoo creeds that it is distinctly admitted that man can attain
the power to do both good and evil, or whatever he pleases, if he will
only pay for it by suffering.
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