The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and ManuscriptsSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America
The Mudjekewis bemoaned his fate, but his wife was inconsolable. She lay
in a state of partial distraction, in the lodge. As she lay here, she
thought she heard some one groaning. It was repeated through the night,
and in the morning, she carefully scanned the place, and running her
fingers through the grass, she discovered the secret belt, on the spot
where her husband had last reposed. "Aubishin!" cried the belt--that is,
untie me, or unloose me. Looking carefully, she found the small seam
which enclosed the tiny little animal. It cried out the more earnestly
"Aubishin!" and when she had carefully ripped the seams, she beheld, to
her surprise, a minute, naked little beast, smaller than the smallest
new born mouse, without any vestige of hair, except at the tip of its
tail, it could crawl a few inches, but reposed from fatigue. It then
went forward again. At each movement it would _pupowee_, that is to say,
shake itself, like a dog, and at each shake it became larger. This it
continued until it acquired the strength and size of a middle sized dog,
when it ran off.
The mysterious dog ran to the lodges, about the village, looking for the
bones of his friend, which he carried to a secret place, and as fast as
he found them arranged all in their natural order. At length he had
formed all the skeleton complete, except the heel bone of one foot. It
so happened that two sisters were out of the camp, according to custom,
at the time the body was cut up, and this heel was sent out to them. The
dog hunted every lodge, and being satisfied that it was not to be found
in the camp, he sought it outside of it, and found the lodge of the two
sisters. The younger sister was pleased to see him, and admired and
patted the pretty dog, but the elder sat mumbling the very heel-bone he
was seeking, and was surly and sour, and repelled the dog, although he
looked most wistfully up in her face, while she sucked the bone from one
side of her mouth to the other. At last she held it in such a manner
that it made her cheek stick out, when the dog, by a quick spring,
seized the cheek, and tore cheek and bone away and fled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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