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The Wabanaki have in common the traditions of a grand mythology, the central figure of which is a demigod or hero, who, while he is always great, consistent, and benevolent, and never devoid of dignity, presents traits which are very much more like those of Odin and Thor, with not a little of Pantagruel, than anything in the characters of the Chippewa Manobozho, or the Iroquois Hiawatha.
When the last Indian shall be in his grave, those who come after us will ask in wonder why we had no curiosity as to the romance of our country, and so much as to that of every other land on earth. Much is allowed to poets and painters, and no fault was found with Mr. Longfellow for attributing to the Iroquois Hiawatha the choice exploits of the Chippewa demi-devil Manobozho.
The idea of an Indian Tyl Eulenspiegel going about the country making mischief recalls a great part of the adventures of Hiawatha or Manobozho; in fact, it could not fail to suggest itself to a believer in Shamanism, or pow-wow, according to which evil spirits and men like them are continually teasing mankind, out of sheer malice.
The Eskimo is told by a sorcerer to let the sea-birds into the tent, and not to begin to kill them till the tent is full. He disobeys, and a part of them escape. In Schoolcraft's Hiawatha Legends, Manobozho gets the mysterious oil which ends the foregoing story from a fish. He fattens all the animals in the world with it, and the amount which they consume is the present measure of their fatness.
Then he, too, ran down to the river and out on a tree, and, seeing a fine salmon, caught at it with his claws. But he had not learned the art, and so fell into the river, and was swept away by the rushing current. This is one of AEsop's fables Indianized and oddly eked out with a fragment from a myth attributed to both Manobozho and the Wabanaki Rabbit.
If a child can be put to sleep by singing to it, why cannot insensibility to pain or a cure be caused by the same process? He is told that the wafer becomes the body of Christ; this may confirm his belief that the Indian god Manobozho turned bits of his own flesh or his wife's into raccoons, for food.
In one, the Chippewa, given by Schoolcraft, the wretched efforts to rival the woodpeckers and bear are attributed to a no less personage than Hiawatha, or Manobozho, himself, when under a cloud. But Hiawatha as a poem deals only with the better part of the hero's character.
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