The Lenape Stone; or, The Indian and the MammothMercer, Henry C.
History
The Lenape Stone; or, The Indian and the Mammoth
Mercer, Henry C.
Delaware Indians; Mammoths; Picture-writing, Indian
The element of divine wrath, common to monster myths among barbarous
peoples, again occurs in a Wyandot version of the same tradition,
taken down from a band of Iroquois and Wyandots by Colonel G. Croghan,
at the Salt Licks in Kentucky in 1748, and given in Winterbotham's
"History of the United States," vol. iii., page 139. The head chief,
says the writer, having been flattered with presents of tobacco, paint,
ammunition, etc., on being asked about the large bones, related the
ancient tradition of his people as follows: "That the red man, placed
on this island by the Great Spirit, had been exceedingly happy for
ages, but foolish young people forgetting his rules became ill-tempered
and wicked, in consequence of which the Great Spirit created the Great
Buffalo, the bones of which we now see before us. These made war upon
the human species alone, and destroyed all but a few, who repented and
promised the Great Spirit to live according to his laws if he would
restrain the devouring enemy; whereupon he sent lightning and thunder,
and destroyed the whole race in this spot, two excepted, a male and
female, whom he shut up in yonder mountain, ready to let loose again
should occasion require."
David Cusic, the Tuscarora Indian, in his history of the Iroquois,
among other instances, speaks of the Big Quisquis,[E] a terrible
monster who invaded at an early time the Indian settlements by Lake
Ontario, and was at length driven back by the warriors from several
villages after a severe engagement; and of the Big Elk, another great
beast, who invaded the towns with fury and was at length killed in a
great fight; and Elias Johnson, the Tuscarora chief, in his "History of
the Six Nations," speaks of another monster that appeared at an early
period in the history of his people, "which they called Oyahguaharh,
supposed to be some great mammoth who was furious against men, and
destroyed the lives of many Indian hunters, but who was at length
killed after a long and severe contest."
Another instance of a terrible monster desolating the country of a
certain tribe "with thunder and fire" appears in a collection of
Wyandot traditions published by one William Walker, an Indian agent,
in 1823; and again the great beast appears in the song tradition of
the "Father of Oxen," from Canada, and in a monster tradition from
Louisiana, both spoken of by Fabri, a French officer, in a letter to
Buffon from America in 1748.
"The Reliquæ Aquitanicæ," published by Lartet and Christy, page 60,
quotes a letter from British America of Robert Brown to Professor
Rupert Jones, which speaks of a tradition common to several widely
separated tribes in the Northwest, of lacustrine habitations built by
their ancestors to protect themselves against an animal who ravaged the
country a long time ago.
Hardly less remarkable in its description of the animal than any of the
others is, perhaps, the Great Elk tradition as mentioned by Charlevoix
in his "History of New France."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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