Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/166

154 seems to have received a linguistic garb, and also various additions inconsistent with original Indian conceptions. If the Pottawattamie text is in existence, it would be desirable to have it laid before a scholar for com- parison.

The romance purports to be an autobiography. Pokagon himself, on his return from school in Twinsburg, while hunting, sees across the river a white deer, that plays about a maiden, who sings in the voices of the birds of the woods. He constructs a bark canoe, crosses the stream, and finds the girl, with whom he has an interview, and whose trail he finally follows to a wonderful wigwam, made of many-colored rushes, and hung with mats adorned with quills and feathers. Here he finds the maiden and her mother; to the latter he reveals himself as the son of Leopold Pokagon, and is informed that his interlocutor has herself been brought up by his grandmother as a foster sister of his mother. The woman and her daughter Lonidaw accompany Pokagon to visit his mother, the white stag acting as their guardian. The birth of Lonidaw is related; having seen the light in the forest during the flight of her mother from United States troops, she is endowed with the property of understanding the birds, and other magical gifts. Pokagon returns from school, but is unable to free his heart from the passion he has conceived, and retires to the forest for reflection; he concludes that his affection is from Heaven, and goes in search of Lonidaw. A marriage is agreed on, and consummated after two days, during which Pokagon remains with friends of the bride; the pair then establish a wigwam in the woods. The white stag dies of jealousy. Two children are born to them; but the boy, Olondaw, at the white man's school, acquires a passion for liquor, which costs him his life, while the girl is drowned by a canoe steered by a drunken trapper. Lonidaw dies of grief, first extracting from Pokagon a promise that he will spend his life in combating the curse; this vow is enforced by a vision, in which he sees the spirit of alcohol as a gigantic demon clad in the stars and stripes, eagle on breast, and serpents under his arms, who seize on the victims he encounters.

Sufficiently remarkable is the thread of the story, inasmuch as it forms a counterpart to numerous European tales in which a white deer leads the hero to the dwelling of a fairy. The conception seems connected with the custom of keeping pet animals; as with other races, the rare albino color indicates sanctity. The stag, in this case, was raised from a fawn. We read also of a pet wolf.

An episode gives the Pottawattamie legend of the arbutus, which, however is so overlaid with literary decoration that the original form cannot be determined. The flower is here described as springing up in the track of a beautiful maiden (spring), clad in leaves and flowers, who visits an old man (winter), who lives in the forest, vainly seeking fuel to keep up the fire in his lodge. The old man sleeps, dissolves in water, and the arbutus, said to be the tribal flower, grows up in the spot.

W. W. Newell.