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This is the only story in my collection of which I cannot give the name and residence of the original Indian narrator. In the first part we have in the Mischief Maker the same character or principle who appears as Lox, the Wolverine, the Raccoon, and Badger among the Wabanaki.
Now this was the truth, and it was great wonder, that Katahdin had wedded this girl, thinking with himself and his wife to bring up a child who should build up his nation, and make of the Wabanaki a mighty race.
Thirdly, man was made from the ash-tree. According to the Wabanaki, this was the order: First, two giants were born, one from his mother's armpit. Thirdly, man was made from the trunk of the ash. The account of the creation of the dwarfs is wanting in the present manuscript. Of the Great Deeds which Glooskap did for Men; how he named the Animals, and who they were that formed his Family.
This work, then, contains a collection of the myths, legends, and folk-lore of the principal Wabanaki, or Northeastern Algonquin, Indians; that is to say, of the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots of Maine, and of the Micmacs of New Brunswick.
Then taking him from the point, the fisher tossed him into the bark as if he had been a trout. And the giants laughed; the sound of their laughter was heard all over the land of the Wabanaki. And being at home, the host took a stone knife and split the whale, and threw one half to the guest Glooskap, and they roasted each his piece over the fire and ate it.
He said nothing, but Rolf felt that it was a point gained, and, trying to follow it up, said: "Here's your drum, Quonab; won't you sing 'The Song of the Wabanaki?" But it was not well timed, and the Indian shook his head. "I've done some trying." "Well, now, we'll go out to-morrow evening and try once more. What do you think of the weather, Quonab?"
But no one can deny that, while that which Cusick narrates has much in common with the mythology of the Wabanaki, it is much less like that of the Edda; that Indian grotesqueness has in it greatly perverted an original: and finally, that it certainly occupies a position midway between the mythology of the Northeastern Algonquins and that of the Chippewas, Ottawas, and other Western tribes.
Thus, in the Edda we are told that the first birth on earth was that of a giant girl and boy, begotten by the feet of a giant and born from his armpit. In the Wabanaki legends, the first birth was of Glooskap, the Good principle, and Malsum the Wolf, or Evil principle. The Wolf was born from his mother's armpit. He is sometimes male and sometimes female. His feet are male and female, and converse.
But the truth is, we really know very little as to how soon wandering Vikings went to America, or how many were here. I would say in conclusion that, while these legends of the Wabanaki are fragmentary and incomplete, they still read like the fragments of a book whose subject was once broadly and coherently treated by a man of genius.
Thus we find in the mythology of the Wabanaki, as in the Edda, the chief evil being indulging in mere wanton, comic mischief, to an extent not to be found in the devil of any other race whatever. Here, in a mythical tale, the same mischief maker steals a snake-girl's hair, and is compelled to replace it.
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