The Vanishing Redskins

by Algernon Blackwood

I

The Red Indians of the northeastern portion of Canada and the United States are so fast disappearing before the march of modern life that before very long they will be nothing more than a name and a memory. This is a very striking fact when you think how it seems so short a time since the settlers and backwoodsmen of Canada were never safe from scalping raids and midnight attacks; how the deep woods constantly echoed the dreaded war-whoops; and the blue lakes and rivers of that wild country were often covered with great war canoes, loaded with prisoners and stained with the blood of red and white men alike.

But conditions change very rapidly in these days of discovery and education, and the old races are bound to keep up with the march, or else to die out. And the old Red Indians are dying out⁠—fast!

I have travelled a great deal in Canada, especially in the eastern parts, and the first time I saw a Red Indian I experienced a dreadful shock⁠—of disappointment. It was in Toronto. The man was undersized and walked with a shuffling gait. He was dressed⁠—I hardly like to tell you-in a faded old frock-coat and a top-hat, with baggy striped trousers and brown boots, and he was selling grass handmade articles such as mats for teapots, little workbaskets, and needle cases. I went up close and looked at him, and he turned up a weak and half-tipsy face into mine, and gazed at me out of rather bleary eyes, and asked me in his broken English if I would buy a mat or a needle case. It was a pathetic sight, and all day I was haunted by the apparition, and kept thinking of the tall, strong, eagle-eyed men who only a few years before had the scent of a fox and the speed of a deer and the endurance and courage of the wolf. It was, as I said, a great shock!

This particular Indian had come down from the great Government Reservation among the Lake-and-Island region a hundred miles north of Toronto, where the Indians have large tracts of land reserved for their special use, and where they live, fishing, hunting, making canoes, paddles and the like, and where the women make knick-knacks out of the sweet-scented grass called abaznoda and send down the “braves” in summer to sell what they can among the white folk of the towns. It is a crime punishable with very heavy fines indeed for anyone to sell whisky or intoxicating liquor to the Reservations, but once the Redskins get into the demoralising atmosphere of the towns they are not so easy to look after, and they drink the “firewater” whenever they can get it.

The main body of Indians who still dwell in this eastern part of the American continent are the Wabanaki branch of the once great Algonquin stock, and they consist of tribes known as the Passamaquoddies (meaning “Spearers of Pollock fish”), Penobscots, Abenaki (Land of the Dawn), Micmacs, and Delawares. They are disappearing so quickly now before the white men that, as Professor Prince of New York says, they are a race “which fifty years from now will have hardly a single living representative.” Some of their lesser tribes number now but a mere handful of twenty or thirty men, and when the last of these are dead there will have passed away an entire race of men whose memory will always live on to stir the thoughts and imaginations of readers and thinkers for long centuries after.

“No man can ever know now whence the Algonquin races came,” says Professor Prince. “Whether they with other peoples were emigrants from palaeolithic Europe, crossing by way of some long since vanished land bridge, or whether they wandered into their present habitat from the western part of our own continent (America), having had their origin in prehistoric Asia, it is impossible to say.” And this is a problem that no one will ever be able to solve.

Before the coming of the white men these Wabanaki Indians waged incessant warfare with the Iroquois nation of whom the Mohawks were the principal representatives. They were bitter foes of one another, and on the slightest provocation they would send out marauding bands to destroy the crops, burn the villages, and carry off as many women as they could seize. The Mohawks treated their prisoners with the most merciless severity, showing no pity even to the women and children. A favourite torture which they practised was to build a large fire of hemlock coals, into the flames of which they drove their captives, compelling them to walk up and down over the red-hot embers until relieved by death. One of the surviving Passamaquoddy chieftains told Professor Prince that there is no single case on record where a brave of the Wabanaki succumbed to the fearful pain and begged for mercy. The warriors would always pace the fiery path with undaunted resolution and without uttering a cry of any sort, until death put an end to their agony. Another cruelty they practised on their male prisoners was to cut off both feet above the ankle and make them walk out of camp on their bleeding stumps to drop down and starve to death in the woods, tormented by flies and insects, or frozen into their last sleep, according to the season of the year.

The Micmacs and Passamaquoddies were also always fighting together, and what was known as their “Great War” was brought about by the quarrel of two boys, sons of chiefs. On this occasion the Passamaquoddies were on a friendly visit to the Micmacs, during which the sons of the Passamaquoddy and Micmac chiefs went shooting together. They both shot at a white sable, killing the animal, by their joint effort, but each boy claiming the shot and the game. In the end the Passamaquoddy boy became angry and killed the son of the Micmac chief. The father, on hearing of the murder, refused to listen to the Passamaquoddy’s attempt at reconciliation, and thought only of vengeance, although the father offered his own son to atone for the murder. Thus the Great War began. It lasted for very many years.

The Micmacs, although more numerous than their enemies, were not such good fighters, so that the Passamaquoddies almost always won the battles. So great was the hostile spirit that the two tribes fought whenever they met, paying no heed to the time of year, or to the general custom of the Indians to forget their warfare when the hunting season was in force.

On one occasion, the Passamaquoddies went to a place called Tiancowatik, thirty miles west of St. John, New Brunswick, with a small party consisting principally of women and children, the chief and a few fighting braves. At this place they met a number of Micmacs on their way to Passamaquoddy Bay. The Micmac chief, being a lover of fair play, ordered his men to land on an island to await the coming of a messenger. The other chief sent word that “on the following day the boys would come out to play.”

As the Passamaquoddy chief had very few men able to bear arms, he made the women attire themselves like warriors so that at a distance they might be mistaken for men, and directed them to play on the beach, shouting and laughing, as if entirely fearless. The Micmac chief, deceived by the stratagem and being afraid, summoned his braves to council, and, setting forth the disasters which had been caused by the long war, advised a treaty of peace.

This proposition was made to the Passamaquoddy chief, who, wearied by the perpetual state of unrest, gladly acceded to the request. A general council was accordingly called, by which it was decided that “as long as the sun rises and sets, as long as the Great Lakes send their waters to the sea, so long should peace reign between the two tribes.”

The usual ceremonies for making peace were then observed as follows: A marriage was contracted between a brave of the challenging people and a maiden of the challenged people. This was regarded as a type of perpetual future goodwill. Secondly, a feast, lasting two months, was celebrated nightly; and thirdly, games of ball, canoe races, foot races, and other sports were carried on with the keenest possible competition. After such ceremonies were over no breach of a treaty is on record, Professor Prince tells us, not even a single murder!

After the Great War was ended, the Passamaquoddies lived at peace, except for occasional raids of Mohawks, but the latter finally received a blow from which they never recovered, the details of which are as follows:

It was the custom of the Mohawks to make night attacks, and at one time, when the Passamaquoddies were lying at the head of Passamaquoddy Bay, the Mohawks approached the camp, which was called Quenasquamcook, with the purpose of utterly destroying it. On this occasion, however, they were seen by a Passamaquoddy brave, whose people lay in ambush for them. It was the custom of chiefs to wear medallions of white wampum-shells which were visible at a long distance, especially in the moonlight. Picking out in this way the person of the Mohawk chief, whose name was Lox (Wolverine), the watching braves, concealed by the underbrush which is very thick in these woods, shot him first, and threw the Mohawks behind him into such confusion that they turned and fled, yelling like monkeys. The Passamaquoddies followed them as soon as day broke, but their tracks were so scattered that they could not find them. It was ascertained afterwards that the Mohawks had quarrelled among themselves, one party being in favour of making peace with the enemy, while another faction was strongly opposed to such a course, and wished to fight it out to the death. The discussion of the question ended in a fierce combat among themselves. This was the final blow to the Mohawk cause, so that the nation then made peace with the Passamaquoddies.

II: Kuloskap the Master

The Wabanaki legends were handed down from one generation to another by means of speech, and furnish a complete history of the Indian ideas of the creation of men and animals, and the origin of everything they found in the woods and lakes round them⁠—their world. The keepers of the history of each tribe always made a point of instructing some of the younger members of the clan, so that they could pass it on to others after they were dead, and thus keep alive forever their songs, stories, and legends.

The Passamaquoddy histories were kept by means of wampum-shells arranged on strings in such a manner that certain combinations suggested certain sentences to the narrator or “reader,” who, of course, already knew his record by heart, and was merely aided by the association in his mind of the arrangement of shells and beads with certain incidents in the history he was telling. Other tribes achieved the same result by burning marks or rude figures on a stick and making them suggest certain events. These sticks were about six inches long, very slender, and tied up in bundles, so that the Indian libraries were not very expensive or difficult to carry about from one place to another!

Most of these Wabanaki stories centre round the curious figure of Kuloskap, the Indian God-Man, who was something like Hiawatha in Longfellow’s poem, and whose adventures and story are told in a series of songs which the Indians were never tired of singing. This Kuloskap was an extraordinary being, and I want to tell you some of the things he did, and how patient he was in teaching his red children, and how exceedingly well he understood their difficult character and their many peculiarities.

To begin with, he was twin brother to Malsum the Wolf, with whom all through his life he waged bitter and incessant warfare; for while Kuloskap was a good spirit, Malsum the Wolf was a wicked spirit, who only sought to bring trouble to the Indians and to destroy them. Fairies and elves already existed before Kuloskap came on the scene at all, so he at once made men by taking his largest arrows and shooting them into an ash-tree, and the new forms that came out of the hole made by the arrow were the first of human kind⁠—i.e. the first Indians.

Then he went to work to make animals, and the description of how he made them is very peculiar and interesting. First he made them all gigantic in size, and then summoned them each in turn and asked them what they would do if they saw men. The moose, the first animal thus interrogated, declared that he would tear the trees down on them; so Kuloskap immediately made the moose smaller and weaker, so that the Indians could kill him. The squirrel, then about the size of a wolf, also said it would scratch the trees down on them, so it was taken up by the master’s hands and smoothed down to its present size. The great white bear said quite honestly that he would eat men, and he was consequently banished to the far North, where he would never see any Indians; and in this way Kuloskap questioned all the other animals and changed their size and strength according to their answers. For his own particular use in hunting he reserved the loon (a diving -bird found on all North American lakes ) for water, and two wolves for land, to be messengers to report to him all that went on in the world of men and animals he had just created.

The origin of the rattlesnakes was curious. At first the rattlesnakes were Indians. They were very impudent men, and when Kuloskap warned them that he was sending a great flood on the world, they merely gave three cheers for it and laughed in his face. He warned them again that they would be drowned unless they moved in time to a place of safety, but they jeered and got out their rattles (made of turtle-shell containing little pebbles), and rattled them with all their might in a “daring dance to the flood.” Then the flood came and the audacious Indians danced till they were nearly drowned, and but for the kindness of the Master they would all have been swept away. At the last moment, however, he changed them to the form of serpents, so that the rattlesnakes who crawl all over the North American continent were once Indians⁠—and they still sound their angry rattles when a man approaches too near.

The great bullfrog, Aklibimo by name, caused Kuloskap a lot of trouble, and the legend of how he conquered him in the end is worth telling. Far away in the lonely mountains there was a little Indian village where the squaws and braves lived very peaceably and happily, except for one thing⁠—they had very little water. Now, these Indians liked good fresh water, and plenty of it too, and the only supply they had was furnished by a small mountain stream which had a habit of running very low in summertime, just when they most needed water. There were no springs and no lakes near them, and not a drop in all the country round except this one uncertain stream. When, therefore, this stream too began to grow less and less they grew very uneasy, and when at length one year it dried up altogether, they were afraid and did not know what to do.

Now, far away in the hills where none of them had ever penetrated, there was another village, they heard, situated on this very same stream, only much nearer the source; so they despatched a man to look into the matter and see what kind of a village it was, and what sort of Indians dwelt there, and perhaps, also, to discover what was the cause of the sad drought.

Their messenger travelled for three days, and at the end of that time came to the other village and found that a big dam had been built across the stream so that the water was kept back to form a pond. He asked the inhabitants why this was done, since it was not the slightest use to them, and only deprived his own village farther down the stream of water; but the people told him he must go and ask their chief. So he went to the chief.

But when the messenger came to see the Sagamore, behold there lay before him, lazily in the mud, a creature who was more a monster than a man, of enormous size, swollen and bloated, with great round yellow eyes like the knobs on a pine-tree, and a huge mouth that stretched from ear to ear.

The Indian did not much like his appearance, but he made his complaint to the creature none the less. At first he got only an uncivil grunt by way of reply, but, as he persisted, the Sagamore shouted in a loud bellowing voice at last and told him if he wanted water he must go somewhere else and find it, for he didn’t care whether the village had water or not. Still, the Indian went on with his complaint, and told how his people were all dying for want of water, and after a long time the creature rose up and made a single tremendous spring to the dam and let out just a few drops of the precious liquid, and then told him to “Up and begone!”

The Indian returned in sorrow to his people, and for a few days there was a little water in the stream, but then it dried up once more and there was none.

Then the village determined to do some thing desperate. They called a council, and chose their boldest brave and told him to go to the village and insist on the dam being cut down, or else to threaten war to the knife. It so happened that, just at this stage, Kuloskap, who always kept a pitying eye on his red children and knew what was going on, decided to take a hand in the business himself, for he admired their decision to do something bold and desperate and deemed them worth helping. He appeared in the village, looking very fierce, towering in height and wearing a hundred plumes of red and black feathers, and his face painted like blood. After listening to their tale, he told them not to despair, for he would himself put matters to rights. The Indians, not knowing who he was, were delighted to have such a champion and waited results with intense interest.

Kuloskap went straight up the bed of the brook till he came to the other village, and then sat down and told a boy to bring him some water to drink, and when the boy declared there was not a drop anywhere to be had, he ordered him to go to his chief and get some good fresh water and bring it to him where he sat, or there would have to be an explanation the chief might not like. After waiting an hour the boy returned with a small cup half-filled with foul water.

Then Kuloskap rose up, very angry, and went straight to the Sagamore where he lay lazily in the mud, and cried, “Give me to drink, and that of the best too, and at once, thou villainous Thing of Mud!” And the Sagamore, also in a fury, shouted back with a roar “Begone and find thy water where thou canst!”

This was more than Kuloskap the Master could tolerate. He threw his great spear and made a huge hole in the Sagamore’s side, and at once there gushed forth a mighty stream, for it was all the water which should have run in the brook that the creature had taken into himself. Next, the Master stood up, as high as a giant pine-tree, and caught the monster by his back, crumpling him like paper in his mighty grip⁠—and lo! it was the bullfrog! Then he hurled him into the current.

Ever since the bullfrog has borne those crumpled wrinkles on his back, made by the Master’s awful squeeze!

The end of this story, however, is the strangest part of all, as showing the imagination of the Indian and his invention of how the various creatures that live in water were created. For it so happened that, while waiting in their village for the result of the Master’s journey, they had one and all amused themselves, as children might, by asking each other what they would do if the cool sparkling water really came down the dried bed of the brook. One said he would live in the “soft smooth mud and always be wet and cool”; another said he would “plunge from the rocks and dive in the deep cool stream, always drinking as he dived”; a third said he would “be washed up and down with the rippling waves, living at will on the land or in the water”; and a fourth declared that none of them knew how to wish properly at all, and he would “live in the water all the time, and forever swim in it.”

By a strange coincidence, all these wishes were uttered in that hour when the wishes of men are granted and come true. And so it was with these Indians; for the first, became a leech, the second a spotted frog, the third a crab, which is washed up and down with the tide, and the fourth a fish, which swims forever in the water. And the river came rushing and roaring down its rocky bed and carried them into the sea, and thence all over the world to populate the oceans and the lakes.

There are a great many other adventures of Kuloskap I could tell you if you are interested and if the Editor has the space to spare⁠—how the Master went whale fishing, how he showed himself a great smoker, how he fought with witches and sorcerers, how he sailed through the awful Caverns of Darkness, and how, finally, he left the world altogether till the last great day when all the Red Indians shall call to him and he shall return and restore to them the land of sunshine and plenty which the white men have taken away from them.

III

Kuloskap, according to these Wabanaki stories, was always trying to do things to make his redskinned people happy in the world. He had great trouble, especially, to get rid of all the wizards and sorcerers that infested the forests, and many of the legends describe his terrible fights with these monsters.

Once there was a father who had three sons and a daughter, all of whom were wizards of the worst kind, for they ate men, women, and children, and the whole land was tired of their abominations. Kuloskap heard of them in due course, and determined to go and find out for himself if all the tales he heard of their wickedness were true, and, if so, to destroy them.

The evil family dwelt upon the sandy bed of a dried-up river, with a towering rock behind them, and the old father had only one eye, and was “half grey like a stony mountain.” So the Master made himself exactly like the hoary old fellow in appearance, so that there was not the difference of a hair between them, and then entered his wigwam and sat down on the ground beside him.

Then the murdering brothers, who never spared a soul, hearing that someone was talking in the tent, peeped slyly in, and, seeing a stranger so like their father that they knew not which was which, said, “This is a great magician, but he shall be tried ere he goes, and that right bitterly!”

Next the giantess sister took the tail of a whale and cooked it, and gave it to the stranger that he might eat it; when, just as it lay before him on the platter, and on his knees, the elder brother entered, and saying, “This is too good for a beggar like you,” took it away to his own wigwam.

Then Kuloskap said, “That which was given to me is mine⁠—so I take it again.” And, sitting still, he willed for it to return, and lo! the dish came flying again into his lap.

This evidence of his power rather disturbed the brothers and their evil sister, and they saw that he was no ordinary magician; but still they did not realise that he was the Master himself, and so they tried another trick on him. They brought a mighty bone, the jaw of a whale, and the elder brother, using both arms and all his strength, bent it a little, and proudly held it out to the Master. But Kuloskap took it with his thumb and finger of one hand, snapped it like a dry twig, and then ground it to powder, to the great wonder and dismay of the whole wizard family.

Their last effort was quite different. They brought an enormous pipe full of the strongest tobacco. No man, not even a sorcerer, could have smoked such fearful stuff for long, and, as it was passed round, all of them smoked a little. The brothers blew the smoke through their nostrils, as if it were light as air. But the Master filled it full, and, lighting it, burned all the tobacco into ashes at one puff, with a single pull. Then they kept on smoking, and shut the door of the wigwam, hoping to smother him; but he “puffed away as if he had been on the top of a mountain in a breeze,” till, at last, one of the brothers declared the trick was no good, and they were merely wasting time. He proposed to go out and play at ball in the open.

“The place where they were to play was the sandy, stony plain which lies on the bed of the river. But when the game began, Kuloskap discovered that the ball with which they played was a hideous human skull, a living thing which snapped at his heels. Had the Master been as other men, the monster would have bitten a foot away. But he only laughed aloud at them, and said: ‘So this is your style of football! Well and good! But, let us all play with our own balls.’”

He stepped up to a tree by the river, and broke off a bole or knot and it turned into a living skull; but one that was ten times greater and ten times more terrible than that which the sorcerers used. And the three brothers ran before it as it chase them as a rabbit is chased by a lynx. They were entirely beaten. Then Kuloskap stamped with his feet in the sand, and the waters rose and came rushing fearfully from the mountains down the dried-up riverbed. And, as they foamed down, the Master sang the magic song which changes all creatures to other forms, and changed the whole family into large flat fish, which went down head long to the ocean, where they live and are caught to this day. These magicians each wore a collar of wampum of white and purple beads, wherefore the fish, into which they were changed, also has round its neck the same clear marks of white and purple spots.

The story of how the Master showed himself a great smoker also had to do with a wizard who came to try and take his life. Kuloskap guessed his intention at once, because he had the power of reading all men’s thoughts. The evil wizard first tried to frighten the Master by the size of his pipe. Its bowl was bigger than the head of a man, and it had a ten-foot stem. But Kuloskap’s pipe began to grow, too, and soon reached the size of a pumpkin, and then of a ten-foot boulder, while the smoke of his puffing was like a forest fire. Then the wizard filled his bowl with a tobacco whose smoke “could kill a porcupine or a toad,” so strong it was; and with a single puff he burned it all up, and left no single spark behind, showing how great was his power. [He was still trying to frighten the Master by his prowess. He sent all this smoke out in one great round ball, and then sat and watched the Master to see if he would be terrified.]

But Kuloskap had a better trick than that up his sleeve. His own pipe was many times greater than the other’s. He took one huge puff, and sent all his smoke out in a mighty round ball⁠—but a ball as hard as any flint. Then he blew it along the ground, which was of granite rock, and split it asunder, so that a deep valley suddenly yawned between them. Then they sat in silence for a long time staring at one another, after which the Master laughed and cried, “Do that, too⁠—and then take my life!” But the wizard could do nothing to equal that great trick, and went away in shame and anger to the evil ones who had sent him.

Finally, having made everything pleasant and happy in the world, the great Indian retired to his huge wigwam in the skies, where he lives alone, making arrows for the last great fight when the world will be destroyed, when “the world will pass away,” as the words of the legend have it, “in roaring fire and flame; while all the sea will rise hot boiling into mist. It may perhaps be so; I’ve only heard it told, just heard it and no more!”

Another terrible tale of Indian sorcery, which I may mention in conclusion, does not bring in Kuloskap at all, but is none the less interesting on that account. It is a Delaware Indian story.

Deep in the heart of the forest there lived a very old man with his nephew, and one day he called the boy to him and whispered that he was soon going to die, and wished to give him his last words of affection. The nephew was very grieved, and declared that, at least, his uncle should die in comfort, and not merely lying on the bare earth, and he made him, accordingly, working all night at it, a great basket, lined with soft downy feathers. In the morning, however, the old man beckoned his nephew over to his side, and told him of a vision of great dread that had come to him in the night as he lay in the soft basket. “Someone is coming at midnight from whom thou shalt shrink with great trembling,” he whispered; “but take courage, my nephew, although he shall come to our wigwam at midnight, when all things are sleeping.”

The boy was frightened, of course. That night, long after their supper, he sat down by the fire and waited to see what would come. His uncle lay in the feathered basket on the other side of the wigwam. “Then, all of a sudden, a creature, too awful to tell of, was with him, a wizard of hideous presence, who dropped through the smoke hole a-shrieking: ‘Give up to me, youth, thine old uncle! I wish to devour his lean flesh!’”

The boy, plucky like all Indian lads, recognised at once the cannibal wizard, the demon who eats human flesh, and sprang up at him and shouted in his face that his uncle should never be devoured by any wizard, but that he would always be here to protect him. Mutt’ntoe, the wizard, warned him that when he returns another night, unless the uncle is ready for him to carry off and devour, the boy shall dearly rue it.

Next morning the nephew told his uncle he must make a little journey towards the sunset to get help and medicine for his illness, and promised to return as soon as he possibly could. He said nothing about his meeting with old Mutt’ntoe; but in reality he was going to find someone who could tell him how to protect his uncle and save him from being devoured when the wizard came again.

The second day of his journey he passed a small wigwam and saw a lad standing in the doorway. The lad called out: “Hail, stranger, how fareth thine uncle?” He was amazed at the boy’s knowledge, and entered the little wigwam and there found a kind old wizard, who told him what to do when Mutt’ntoe came again. “For,” he said, “this in truth is Mutt’ntoe, the Spirit of Evil, who yearns for the flesh of thy kinsman; but fear not, for I will tell thee the way to o’ercome him.” The remainder of the story may best be told in Professor Prince’s translation:

“When the nephew had heard all the wisdom, and learned how to conquer Mutt’ntoe, he went back at once to his uncle. Then, after they’d eaten that evening, he swept up the dirt from the wigwam, and placed in his own bed the uncle. Then he lay himself in the basket, where he felt himself filled full of magic and power to conquer Mutt’ntoe. At the dead hour of midnight, once more in the midst of the wigwam the monster dropped down through the smoke-hole.

“‘Awake, lad,’ quoth he, ‘I’m Mutt’ntoe. Bring forth thine old uncle; I want him!’

“Then out from the basket the nephew
Stepped boldly, all covered with feathers,
A terrible sight to Mutt’ntoe,
Who leapt with a shriek through the smoke-hole
And never returned to that wigwam,
Where the youth and his uncle, still living,
Dwell happily in the dark forest.”