VIIIThe Wigwam Giants
He had a wife and ten children
He had a wife and ten children
Once upon a time, in the not-so-very-long-ago, an Indian had his wigwam on the shore of a cold north sea. The Indian’s name was Pulowech, and he had a wife and ten children. But for allhis big family, Pulowech might have lived there as snugly and happily as you please, had it not been for the unkind fact that, in that north country, it is very hard to get enough to eat. Pulowech found it hard indeed, for no sooner was the tenth child fed, than the first one was hungry again; and the bigger and hungrier the children got, the less food there seemed to be.
This spring it was worse than ever. Not even a bear had shown its furry nose within sight of the wigwam. As for the crops, there was hardly a green shoot in all the field Pulowech’s wife had planted. There was nothing left to do but to fish. And fish Pulowech did. Every morning long before sunrise, his canoe was a far gray spot on the horizon. But alas for all his hard work! the more he set his nets, the fewer fish he seemed to catch; and he might trail his line in the water all day without so much as a nibble.
Finally, in despair one day, Pulowech and his wife got into their canoe, and set out for the far fishing-grounds, beyond any part of the sea where they had been before. They paddled and paddled until they could no longer see their wigwam or any land at all. Time after time they stopped and let down their lines, but that day again there seemed to be no fish in the sea. The squaw’s arm grew tired, but still they kept on, hoping to find somemagic spot where the fish would come crowding about the canoe, eager to be caught.
Suddenly, up from the sea and down from the sky and around them from every side, swept clouds of fog. In long, quick puffs it came, as if the whole world had begun very quietly to steam. The air was full of it, and as for the sea, it seemed to have vanished in an instant. Pulowech could see the shine of the little waves as he dipped his paddle, but beyond was only grayness. He began to paddle faster, first in one direction, then in another; but no matter which way he turned, the fog seemed to pursue them. There was no end to it at all.
By this time, Pulowech was quite lost. He could not make the smallest guess where his wigwam lay or how to go to get back there. There was nothing to do but to paddle fiercely on, deeper and deeper into the fog. As for Pulowech’s poor, tired wife, she began to cry, which made things very little better.
All at once she stopped paddling. “Listen!” she cried. “Thunder!”
Pulowech stopped too. Over the sea came long, continuous roars. There was no pause in them, and they grew louder and louder, as if the thunder were coming straight—straight—straight at them through the fog. There was something very strange about it too. Thenearer, the more deafening it became, the morealiveit seemed, the more it sounded as if it werethundering in words. There was another noise too, regular, but not so loud, as if a thousand paddles at once were cutting steadily through the water.
The fog grew dark ahead. Right upon them loomed the thundering monster. Pulowech and his wife shouted with all their voices. The great shape stopped. There above them in the fog towered a tremendous canoe as high as a cliff, and filled with men who seemed to touch the sky.
The giants looked at Pulowech and laughed,—a roar that shook the waves and made the little canoe bob up and down as on a stormy sea. “Ho! Ho!” cried one at last. “And where are you going, my little brother?”
Pulowech took his hands from his ears. “I wish I knew,” he answered bravely. “We are lost in the fog.”
At that the giants laughed ten times harder than ever. “Lost in the fog!” they cried, and wiped their eyes, as if it were the best joke in the world.
“Well, well, well!” said the leader at last, “if that is the case, why don’t you come home with us? You will be well treated. That I can promise you, for my father is the chief. And in spite of your great size, my friends, I warrant there will be plenty of room.”
A tremendous canoe as high as a cliff, and filled with men who seemed to touch the sky
A tremendous canoe as high as a cliff, and filled with men who seemed to touch the sky
With that, two of the giants put the ends of their paddles under the Indians’ canoe and lifted it into their own, as easily as if it had been a chip. Then very carefully they handed it around from giant to giant, as pleased over the little folk as boys would be who had found a flying-squirrel. As for Pulowech and his wife, if they shook with fear before, now they sat still and speechless at such gentleness from beings so immense.
The giants again took up their paddles as big as trees. With a single stroke, they sent the canoe a clean hundred yards through the water. As for the fog, their eyes seemed to bore straight through it, as though it had been so much air.
Then swiftly, with a tremendous grating, the canoe stopped. They had beached it upon a wide sandy shore. One of the giants jumped out, and, taking Pulowech’s canoe in his hand, ran shouting up the bank. There ahead rose three wigwams as high as mountains. And from the largest came the chief to meet them, a giant taller than all the rest.
“Well, well, my son!” he cried, “what have you there?”
“Oh, Father, only see,” called the young giant, in gasps that shook the trees. “See—a little brother!—We found him—on the water—lost in the fog!”
And at this shouting came giants running from all sides, to see what the noise might be about. They crowded about the chief’s son and peered into the small canoe until the poor Indians, finding themselves surrounded by great eyes like so many suns, sank down in terror.
“Noo, then,” cried the chief in anger, “you have scared the little people!” And taking the Indians, canoe and all, he gently carried them to his own wigwam.
Inside sat a pleasant-faced woman, no bigger than a good-sized hill. “Look, wife,” said the chief. “See what I have brought you!”
The giantess was delighted. Very deftly she picked the Indians up with her thumb and forefinger without crushing out their breath. She laid them in the hollow of her hand as in a cradle, and rocked them to and fro, softly thundering a lullaby, while with the end of her little finger she tenderly stroked their hair.
As for the chief, he hung up the Indians’ canoe where it could not be stepped on. Then he bent down to the Indians and told them in a confidential whisper that could hardly have been heard a hundred miles away, that he was their friend, and that his name was Oscoon.
“And now, wife,” he cried, “our little people must be hungry! Is there enough in the house for them to eat?”
The good woman gave a housewifely chuckle, like the dry roar of a forest fire, and looked into a great steaming pot. In the bottom were a dozen or more whales. But remembering the small size of her guests, she picked out a little one about forty feet long, and put it before them in a wooden bowl. The poor Indians did their best, but by the time they had made a little hole in the whale’s side, they were fast asleep from so much food.
Then it was that the giants were troubled, for they had no place to put the little people for the night. For there was no part of the wigwam where a giant might not step on them or roll over them in the dark. Finally the giantess had a happy idea. She took down the Indians’ own canoe and put some little skins in the bottom. Then very gently she laid Pulowech in one end and his wife in the other, tucked them snugly in, and swung the canoe up again at the top of the wigwam.
Days went by, and the giants delighted in nothing so much as in their little people. For hours at a time Oscoon would sit quite still while his small guests ran about his hand or explored the long gullies between his fingers. As for the giantess, she never left the wigwam without bringing them great handfuls of apples, which were to her, to be sure, no bigger than so many currants. Butwhen the giants went hunting, then it was that Pulowech and his wife feasted. For always they brought back two or three moose swinging in their hands like rabbits, and two or three dozen caribou hanging in their belts, as an Indian would carry a string of squirrels.
So it happened that Pulowech and his wife lived among the giants as happy and as care-free as two children. From the first morning when they awoke, high in their canoe-cradle, they seemed to have forgotten everything; not only the fog and terror of the day before, but all their past life as well. They had no memory of their home nor even of their hungry children waiting for them in the wigwam beside the sea. It seemed to them that they had always lived in this warm, happy Giantland where deer swarmed in the forests, and fish in the sea.
Every day they ate a little out of their whale, and every night they went peacefully to sleep in their high canoe. When they were neither eating nor sleeping, they romped about like children. They slid down the back of Oscoon’s hand as down a hillock; they played hide-and-seek in one of his moccasins; and they ran about in the wigwam till the good giantess would have to put them in one of her big baskets for fear they might be stepped on.
But good times do not last forever, even in Giantland. One day, Oscoon picked up his Indians with a grave face. “My little people,” said he, “to-day the great Chenoo, the dreadful ice-giant of the North, is coming to fight us. It will be a hard battle, but, most of all, I fear for you. For no one less than a giant could hear the Chenoo’s war-scream and live. We will wrap you up the best we can, and no matter what happens, you must not uncover your ears until I come for you.”
Oscoon picked up his Indians with a grave face
Oscoon picked up his Indians with a grave face
The Indians promised that they would do as he said, and entered into all the plans for the battle as gleefully as though it had been a new game. They tore little pieces of fur from a rabbit-skin and stuffed them sotightly into their ears that they could scarcely hear Oscoon when he whispered to them. Then the giantess bound up their heads with many strips of deerskin, and, laying them in their canoe, fairly smothered them with fold after fold of wrappings.
When she had finished, Oscoon took them, canoe and all, and put them in the bottom of a great stone pot. Beside them he laid a ton or so of deer meat and nine or ten bushels of apples, so that they should have enough to eat in case the battle lasted over night. Then, over the pot he spread a robe made of thousands of bearskins, which covered all the top.
After that, though Oscoon shouted with all his voice, the Indians could not hear a sound. It was dark in the pot, and, under all their coverings, rather warm. And so, since they could neither move nor hear each other if they spoke, they sensibly fell asleep.
After a very long time, Pulowech opened his eyes. Everywhere was blackness. For a moment, he thought that he must have gone blind. Then faintly, far above somewhere, he made out a tiny crack of light, and he remembered: they were in the stone pot, and the light was creeping in at the edge of the bearskin. He touched his wife. She stirred and rubbed her eyes. And there in the dark they shouted at each other,—and the stillnesswas unbroken. Pulowech started up, and sank suddenly back again, pulled down by the weight of his coverings. Then angrily he tried to pull them off, and could not so much as lift one of them. For they were made of hundreds of skins. There was nothing for it but to lie still.
A slow, familiar pain seized Pulowech’s insides. Greedily he remembered the apples and the deer meat, and put out his hand. There they were, close beside him. He clutched great handfuls of them, and ate eagerly. He touched his wife and made her understand too. For some time, they forgot the dark and even the silence. But gradually, as Pulowech began to care less and less about eating, his head seemed to feel extraordinarily hot and uncomfortable. His hands fumbled the wrappings and twitched at the knots. If only he could get one of them off, it might be more bearable.
Then he remembered his promise to Oscoon. But surely, he thought, the battle must be over by now. And even if it were not, what difference would one deerskin, more or less, make to hearing the ice-giant’s scream? Oscoon was too careful.
Nevertheless the promise held him. He took down his hands and lay for some time quite still. A dreadful terror came over him: suppose the battlewasover, andOscoon had forgotten them. Worse still, suppose Oscoon should never come at all; suppose he had been killed! Then they might die there, for even if they could get free of their coverings, they could never climb up the steep walls of the stone pot.
Pulowech’s wife moved. She began to pull fiercely at the bandages about her ears. It was too much for Pulowech. He put up his hands again and tore wildly at the deerskin strips. If Oscoonwasdead, he decided, then they must talk together; they must plan some way of escape. They must not be found there helpless by the dreadful Chenoo.
Suddenly, something swifter, keener, shriller than the sharpest spear seemed to pierce through Pulowech. His hands dropped limp. His breath went. His whole body seemed divided, and his ears shattered by the wild, high, cruel sound of it. It was the Chenoo’s war-scream. Again it came, lower and less intense, shooting through Pulowech’s numb body like pain let loose; and then a third time, faint and far away, no longer cutting, but chill as the wind from icebergs.
When Pulowech came to himself, he was startled by the light all about him. Then dimly he made out the great face of the giantess bending over him. He was no longer in the pot. He was lying beside his wife inthe hollow of the giantess’s hand, and she was rubbing them vigorously with her little finger.
“There, there, my little people,” she said. “You’re all safe, so you are. And the wicked Chenoo shall never scream again to hurt you. For he is dead, so he is. Killed, by my Oscoon and our sons. There, there, my little people, open your eyes.”
Pulowech blinked, and looked around the wigwam. All about sat the giants, binding up their cuts, and picking out the pine-trees that were stuck in their legs like splinters. For the fight had been in a forest, and the poor giants were bothered with the trees, as men would be with thistles.
All at once the door-flap moved, and Oscoon’s youngest son fell down in the doorway, quite dead. Now, in some families this would have caused a commotion. But the giants went on talking of the battle as if nothing unusual had happened. Finally Oscoon, who was smoking his pipe in a corner, looked over at his boy upon the ground.
“Well, my son,” he said, “why are you lying there?”
“It is because I am dead, Father,” answered the young giant. “The Chenoo has killed me.”
“If that is all,” said Oscoon, quietly, “get up at once. It is supper-time.”
The young giant opened his eyes and sat up. He did not seem to be any the worse for having been dead. And at supper, certainly, he ate none the less for it.
So the days passed as before. The giants never tired of petting their small guests. Every day the young giants would bring them new treasures, and every day Oscoon would contrive some new game for them. The youngest giant, who was quick with his hands, caught some small live deer, which the giantess kept for them in a basket, as a boy might keep pet mice.
But in spite of these new playthings, Pulowech’s wife became less and less lively. She did not play as she used to, and she would sit quietly for hours at a time as if she were trying to think out something that troubled her. Finally a thoughtfulness settled over Pulowech as well. They gave up hide-and-seek entirely. Instead, they talked and talked together, sometimes far into the night. Little by little they seemed to be remembering something, and the more they remembered, the more worried they grew.
The giantess became anxious. The little people got on more and more slowly with their whale, and as for the deer meat, they no longer seemed to care for it at all. The giantess racked her brains for some way to tempt them. So, with long patience she made for Oscoon atiny net which would catch the sharks that wriggled through his whale-net like minnows. And when he caught some, she broiled three fine ones for dinner. But the Indians, who had been so pleased with new dishes before, seemed hardly to notice the change.
At last, one day when Oscoon had taken them to the beach, he spoke to them. “My little people,” he said, “it worries me to see you so quiet and sad. Tell me what troubles you. For we will cheerfully do anything that will make you happy again.”
“Oh, dear Oscoon!” cried Pulowech, “we could not be happier than in your wigwam. It is something we partly remember that makes us sad. Ever since we heard the ice-giant’s scream, it has seemed to us that we have not always been in this Giantland. Once we seem to have lived in a different country, where we were cold, and often hungry. But there our wigwam was, and our children. It is they that worry us. For we do not know what they can do without us. They must be hungry—” Pulowech caught his breath, and his poor wife began to sob.
Now, Oscoon was a good giant if there ever was one, and it grieved his big heart through and through to see his small friends so unhappy.
“Oh, my little people!” he cried, heaving a little himself,“I would rather give you anything than to have you leave us. But you must go back to your children—right away.”
And with that he sneezed so violently that the rocks were jounced around in their places, and the Indians had to cling tight to his thumb for fear of falling off. Then they all laughed,—which made them feel so much better that everybody’s sobs got swallowed.
And so, grasping his little people, Oscoon ran leaping back to the wigwam, calling the giantess at the top of his big lungs. “Oh, wife! wife!” he bellowed, “our little people have a voyage to take. We must give them the little dog, and some food to take along with them.”
When the giantess heard about the children at home, she kissed her little Indians very hard indeed, and then she set all the young giants at work piling up furs and dried meat for them to take home to their wigwam. And so, as they all worked with a will, in about two minutes and a half there were enough furs and meat stacked up to sink three or four hundred canoes the size of Pulowech’s.
When Oscoon saw that, he took the Indians’ canoe down from the top of the wigwam, and filled it as full as it could hold. Then he set Pulowech in the stern, and his wife in the bow, and holding the canoehigh over his head, roared out to the whole camp that they were ready to start.
So they set out, Oscoon ahead, carrying his little people in their canoe in one hand, and in the other a tiny, sharp-nosed gray dog. All the giants followed in a great procession, leaping up and down and singing, as though it were a very gala occasion indeed. When they came to the shore, Oscoon gently slipped the canoe into the water, and gave Pulowech the little gray dog.
“Paddle,” he said, “just as the little dog points. He will take you home.”
The little dog ran to the middle of the canoe, and stood with his paws resting on the edge. He barked, and pointed with his nose straight out to sea. Pulowech dipped his paddle, but he could scarcely see to steer for the tears in his eyes.
“Good-by!” shouted the giants.
“Good-by!” called the Indians.
And Oscoon cried out, last of all: “Do not forget us, little people! Come back to visit us, and send your children. Sometime we will send the little dog for you.”
The Indians paddled, and the little dog pointed. They seemed to glide over the smooth sea at a wonderful rate. In a few minutes, they were out of sight of the giants, who stood on the beach, still waving and shouting good-by.In no time at all, it seemed, they came straight to their own home. There stood their wigwam just as it was the day they left it; and as the canoe grazed the shore, their own children came running to meet them, rosy and well.
The little dog jumped out of the canoe, barking and wagging his tail. He ran about on the sand, and licked the children’s hands. Then he turned and trotted home again over the top of the sea, as if it had been made of hard ice. Pulowech caught up his two youngest children, and set them on his shoulders. And so, carrying the giants’ gifts, they came into their own wigwam.
After that, whenever Pulowech set his nets, they came up bursting with fish. When he went hunting, his arrows brought down all the deer he could possibly need. As for the children, they grew so tall and hearty that the old wigwam would not begin to hold them, and they had to build a new one—the biggest in all the country.
So Pulowech knew that the giants had not forgotten him. And his heart was glad when, a year and a day after they had come home, the little dog came again trotting over the water. The children ran to meet him, and he bounded up to them and licked their hands, just as he had done before.
Pulowech smiled to himself, for he knew quite well why the little dog was there. Then he launched one of his canoes (for now he had many), and calling his two oldest children, told them to get in. The little dog jumped in too, and pointed with his nose the way they were to go. The children paddled safely over the smooth sea, and so they, too, went to Giantland.
In three months the little dog brought them back again, with their canoe full of furs and meat enough to keep them all warm and happy for years to come.
So every year the little dog came, barking and wagging his tail, and every year two of Pulowech’s family went to visit the giants. And none of them were ever cold or hungry again,—of that you may be sure.
—From a Micmac legend.
Based on C. G. Leland’s Algonquin Legends of New England.