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There was for a long time, the story goes, no moving air, so that the sea became full of slime, and all the fish died. But Glooscap is said to have repaired the wing of Wochowsen, so that we now have wind alternating with calm. The translation of the following tale of Pogump, or Black Cat and the Sable, was given me by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown.
Swamp woman. Mousham. Grandfather. Glooscap. The beneficent being whose deeds are generally superhuman, and who figures in many heroic tales of the Passamaquoddies. The term as applied to a man is one of contempt. To call a man glooscap, or a woman glooscapess, is to call them liars. Chematiquess. The big rabbit. There are many tales in relation to Chematiquess.
According to Chamberlain and Leland, "thunder beings are always trying to kill a big bird in the south." It is said by the Passamaquoddies that Wochowsen is the great bird which overspreads all with his wings and darkens the sky. This is the same bird one of whose wings Glooscap once cut when it had used too much force.
In another he can give to any one coming to him medicine to grant him whatever he wishes, and in still another Glooscap is now sharpening his arrows way off in some distant place. He will return to earth and make war. "On whom will he make war?" "He will make war on all, kill all: there will be no more world; world all gone.
The Indian legend says that at this point a stupendous dam was built by the Great Beaver; and because this was flooding the Cornwallis valley, Glooscap, whose supernatural power was unlimited, broke and bent it into its present shape, forming Cape Blomidon, afterwards strewing the promontory with gems, some of which he carried away to adorn "his mysterious female companion."
But Glooscap, who was stirring the pot of cooking food, held in his hand a great ladle. He noticed the Snake peering in at the smoke-hole, and, filling the bowl of the ladle full of the hot food, threw it into the eyes of the Snake. I think there are internal evidences of the antiquity of this song, although the English sentence, "Wait for me," shows the modern character of certain of the words.
The child is therefore parthenogenetic. According to Leland, the medicine man who turned the man into a cedar tree is Glooscap. Glooscap performed many such miracles, as in the case of the story of the animals. In another story the father of Glooscap is mentioned as a being who lives under a great fall of water down in the earth. His face is half red, and he has a single eye.
The Manitou of the Algonquins, and the Okies or Otkons of the Hurons and Iroquois were not always superior, mysterious beings endowed with supernatural powers, like the Algonquin Manabozho, the Great Hare, the king of all animals; or a deified hero, like Hiawatha, the founder of the Iroquois confederacy, and Glooscap, the favourite of Micmac legends.
Pookjinsquess went off, singing as she went the following song, which has been written out from the phonographic record by Mr. Cheney, and left Black Cat on the island. "Once on a time Glooscap was cooking something in his wigwam, and the Snake wished to see what it was. So the Snake crawled up the outside of the wigwam and looked down through the smoke-hole into the cooking vessel.
In their stories the Passamaquoddies tell the old stories as true; but they speak of other stories as what they hear. The part of the above account, of the return of Glooscap and the destruction of the world, they say is true. The last portion shows its modern origin in the statement that they hear that it is so.
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