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A still more remarkable instance is to be found among the Welsh of Carnarvonshire, who, it need hardly be said, are now on a very different level of civilization from that of the Passamaquoddies.
The faith in and fondness for magic were so great among the Algonquins that there is not one even of their most serious histories into which it has not been introduced. The Passamaquoddies will narrate an incident of their wars with the Mohawks.
Although the Micmacs seemed to have had an elaborate system of hieroglyphics to designate sounds, neither they nor their immediate neighbors, according to Vetromile, had characters to designate tones. The songs were probably committed to memory, and possibly on that account were often somewhat modified. The sign of the Passamaquoddies is a canoe with two Indians in it and a porpoise.
In the Zuñi dances, and in the Moqui snake-dance, a turtle rattle is tied to the inside of the left leg. The rattle, carried in the hand by the Moqui snake dancer, is a gourd, but the Passamaquoddies seem to find the horn better adapted for their purpose. The almost universal use of the rattle among the Indians in their sacred dances is very significant.
It is interesting also to note that the hair bands in this variant of the story were of eelskin, a fact which is not brought in Leland's account. k'Cheebellock is a superhuman deity of the Passamaquoddies, and is represented as a being without body, but with heart, head, wings, and long legs.
Manuscript: The Superstitions of the Passamaquoddies. In Indian and English. A History of the Passamaquoddy Indians. Manuscript of 80 pages, Indian and English. All of these were written for me by L. Mitchell, M.L. Wampum Records. Read for me by Sapiel Selmo, the only living Indian who has the key to them. David Cusick's Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations. Lockport, N.Y., 1848.
After a fortnight's deliberation the treaty was signed, on the 23rd February, by Ballomy Glode, chief of the St. John Indians, and Michel Neptune, chief of the Passamaquoddies.
"When she saw him seize his bow to beat her she ran down to the river, and jumped in to escape death at his hands, though it should be by drowning. But as she fell into the water she became a sheldrake duck." The Passamaquoddies, who relate this story, have hardly yet passed out of the stage of thought in which no steadfast boundary is set between men and the lower animals.
She immediately told me correctly in all cases which was the Indian, although she had never before heard the Passamaquoddy songs. The folk stories of the Passamaquoddies are but little known to the young boys and girls of the tribe. It is mostly from the old and middle-aged persons that these stories can be obtained.
And since then the Indians who could not hold their tongues, and who might otherwise have been great, have dwindled to a little people. Eastern traditions concerning Hiawatha differ in many respects from those of the West. In the East he is known as Glooskap, god of the Passamaquoddies, and his marks are left in many places in the maritime provinces and Maine.
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