the Catfish, the little animal rolled over on his back and pointed his horns at the Moose, crying: "Take that!"
The Moose stamped on the Catfish, and drove one of the horns way into his foot. The pain was so great that the Moose leaped clear out of the water onto the bank, and ran up into the woods. The wound from the Catfish's horns was like fire, and hurt him worse and worse. He lay down on the ground and rolled over and over, and presently he died.
It is wrong to despise any living thing, no matter how small and humble it appears to be.
(Menomeni Fable. From Anthropological Papers, American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 13.)
THE PIGEON-HAWK AND THE TORTOISE
THE Pigeon-Hawk challenged the Tortoise to a race: but the Tortoise declined it unless the Hawk would consent to run several days' journey. The Hawk very quickly consented, and they immediately set out. The Tortoise knew that if he was to obtain the victory it must be by great diligence; so he went down into the earth and, taking a straight line, stopped for nothing. The Hawk, on the contrary, knowing that he could easily beat his competitor, kept carelessly flying this way and that way in the air, stopping to visit one friend and then another, till so much time had been lost that when he came in sight of the winning point, the Tortoise had just come up out of the earth and gained the prize.
(From Indian Tales and Researches, by Henry R. Schoolcraft, 1839.)
