Stories of American Life and AdventureEggleston, Edward
History
Stories of American Life and Adventure
Eggleston, Edward
Readers -- History; United States -- History -- Juvenile literature
The next morning was calm. The Indians took a short course by sailing
straight to an island out in the lake. But after they had got far out,
the wind began to blow very hard. They expected every moment that
their canoe would be swallowed up by the waves. They began to pray to
the rattlesnake to help them. One of the chiefs resolved to make a
sacrifice to the snake. He took a dog, and tied its legs together, and
threw it into the water. He asked the snake spirit to be satisfied
with this. But the wind continued to grow higher, and so another dog
was thrown into the water, and some tobacco was thrown with it. The
chief told Grandfather Snake that the man who wanted to kill him was
really a white man, and no kin to the snake or to the Indians.
Some of the Indians began to think of throwing Mr. Henry in after the
dog and the tobacco to satisfy the snake spirit; but the wind went
down, and they soon got to the island. Some days afterward the party
came to the fort. The English general was very glad to see Mr. Henry,
and his long captivity was over, in spite of the anger of the
rattlesnake god of the Indians.
WITCHCRAFT IN LOUISIANA.
The Indian medicine men or priests have many ways of deceiving their
people. A French officer found that the people of a certain tribe
believed very much in an idol which a medicine man had set up. This
idol was called by a long name, Vistee-poolee-keek-apook. The Indians,
when they stood near, would sometimes hear it speak, and this seemed
to them a very wonderful thing.
A French officer named Bossu tried to find out what made the idol
talk. He found a long reed, such as we call a cane pole, running from
the back of the idol's head to a cave or hollow in the rocks behind
the idol. This reed had been made into a hollow tube. In the cave
there was a medicine man who talked into the tube. The words coming
out of the other end in the idol's head were heard from the mouth of
the idol, as if the idol were speaking. Bossu showed the Indians the
trick, and then got one of his soldiers to destroy the idol.
The soldier that destroyed the idol was so brave, that the Frenchmen
had given him a nickname which means "fearless." The medicine man
declared that some dreadful thing would fall on Fearless because he
had destroyed the idol. In order to make his people believe in the
power of this god that had been thrown down, he told them that there
was a witch or evil spirit which came to the village in the shape of a
little black panther. He said, that, whenever he pronounced the name
of his god, this little black panther would instantly disappear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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