Chapter 27
section twenty seven notes part two from echoes of the forest by william edgar brown recorded for liprivox dot org by sandra enchanted waters saunders the story goes that once long ago some one was killed upon the lake and the troubled spirit returned to haunt the scene of its mortal passing but the murderer smitten with remorse and repenting of his crime was finally forgiven by the great spirit and the lake became known as the waters of the forgiven The shadow of that crime was never lifted, and it broods forever over the lake's dark face, and upon the mountains that hold it in that cup of stone. There the echo is multiplied.
If one calls aloud, a chorus of fantastic mocking voices takes up the sound, and it goes crying through the solitude like lost souls in purgatory. The waters of the forgiven exhale their eternal sigh, their pensive gloom. Everywhere the sun rides high in the blue, but to feel the fullness of its spectral melancholy, one must seek it out in the scenery of the night.
There, as the mellow moon rises over the mountaintops, laying the pale fingers of its rays suggestively on rock and tree, touching them with magical illusion and transforming them with goblin shapes, one palpitates with strange fear, is impressed with impending disaster. As the moonlight flows in smooth streams, scaling ravine and lake, deep in shadow the more intense for the contrast of white, discriminating light that shines quicksilver like upon the ripples of the water and the quivering needles of the pine, the silence is broken by dismal howls.
It is the lean grey timber wolves, their mournful cry is flung back again by the ghostly pack that no eye sees and no foot can track. Mountain lions yell shrilly, and are answered by distant ones of their kind, and inevitably that other lesser cry comes back again and again, as though the phantom chorus could never forget nor bear off the burden of the lament. Out of the pregnant darkness into the spectral moonlight shadowy creatures come to the shore to drink. The deer, the bear, sometimes the mountain lion and elk stalk forth and quench their thirst. These things are strange enough, savage enough to inspire fear. But it is not they, not the grisly mountains, that create the terror which is a phantasm,
the dread which is not of flesh nor earth. No Indian, however brave, pitches his teepee by this lake, nor crosses its water, for among the tangle of weeds in its black mysterious bosom, water sirens are believed to dwell ever watchful of human prey. They gaze upward from their mossy couches, and if a boatman ventures out in his frail canoe, they rise, entangling their strangling white arms about him, pressing him with kisses, poisonous as the serpent's sting, breathing upon him their blighting, deadly sweet breath
that dulls his senses into the oblivion of eternal sleep. End quote. Notes to the Legend Confederation of the Iroquois The legend of the Confederation covers 19 pages and is given first place in Mr. Confield's Legends of the Iroquois. It is one of the most finely written and in every way one of the most valuable of Indian legends.
The first part of the legend gives an account of the adventures of the young Seneca warriors and their carrying off the young Mohawk men and maidens. Twice Mohawk chiefs came to the village of the Senecas to settle the matter at a council of war before real warfare was begun. But the Senecas, contrary to all the rules of warfare, bound the Mohawk chiefs, and this brought on the invasion of the Senecas by the Mohawks and Anandagas. The first part of the legend is occupied with eloquent speeches by chiefs of both sides,
and the poem begins with the actual invasion of the Seneca village and the scene of the total eclipse of the sun. which occurred June 28, 1451. The Confederation of the Iroquois is one of the masterpieces of Iroquois literature. It may be regarded as more of a tradition or history than a legend. It has something of the legendary in it,
but doubtless it is the most correct and authentic historical account that has been given of the Confederation of the Five Nations, the Senecas, Mohawks, Onondagas, Onidas, and Cayugas. In the year 1712, the Tuscaroras, a tribe previously located in North Carolina, were defeated by their white neighbors, and about 1860 of them fled to New York State, then the dwelling place of the Iroquois. They were adopted into the Confederacy. These people did not possess the energy of members of the other tribes, and because of this had to wear the tobacco pouches of the women, thus acknowledging that they were inferior to the other five tribes.
They probably overcame this humiliation in time and gained full rank as one of the six nations, as the Iroquois were known to the white people in subsequent periods. The date of the formation of the Confederacy is uncertain. According to the best authority, we deletit that of Cornplanter and Governor Black Snake, who attained the great age of 123 years, living from 1736 to 1859, the date was given as June 28, 1451, and it was a confederacy of the three tribes, only the other two tribes soon afterward joining, and the last tribe, the Tuscaroras, in 1712, thus forming the Six Nations. Upon the authority of these two chiefs, it is not difficult to believe
that this date is historically correct, and that the incident related in the legend was the occasion upon which the wonderful Union of Republics was formed. Considered as a government formed by a savage people, the Confederation of the Iroquois certainly was a wonderful union. If it had not been broken and destroyed by the whites
after a series of wars extending over a period of more than two centuries and culminating in the village burning expedition of Sullivan in 1779, the Confederacy would have made rapid progress in civilization. We find among the five nations the characteristic novelist and poet. We find among the Iroquois mighty men who, without question,
excelled in literary gifts. We also find gifted men among the Algonquin and other nations. The Iroquois are noted for their intelligence, their oratory, their warm friendship for one another and for the sterling qualities of their character. Had they been treated with greater fairness by the whites, and had they not been driven to retaliation, great achievements might have been recorded of them, of which any nation might have been proud. The legend of the moccasin
flower. We find in Mr. Wright's book the legend called The Moccasin Flower, which suggested the poem in this book entitled Apostrophe to a Moccasin Flower. The legend runs that when the first union between a white man and an Indian woman took place, the parents of the bride were greatly angered. They ordered the white man out of the village, and told their daughter that if she did not leave the pale face they would disown her forever. The husband, thus forced to leave,
started away in his canoe in great sorrow, but his wife, true to her vows, followed along the shore all one day, trying to call him back. As dusk came on, she lost her way and fell in a faint, and all night long the owls echoed her calls to her banished husband. The next day flowers, resembling moccasins were found all along her track. There the white lady slippers. By her side was her babe held tightly in her death grasp. The Indians call them co-co-co-co, moccasin,
which means owl shoes. End of section 27. This recording is in the public domain.
