In the early history of the association of white men with the Seneca of New York and Pennsylvania, there was in the tribe a celebrated shaman named Handsome Lake, as his Indian name is translated into English. Handsome Lake had a nephew who was taken by the Spaniards to Europe and educated as a priest. The nephew, on his return to America, told many Bible stories to his uncle, for he speedily relapsed into paganism. The uncle compounded some of these Bible stories with Seneca folk-tales, and through his eloquence and great influence as a shaman succeeded in establishing among the Seneca a new cult of doctrine and worship. The Seneca are now divided into two very distinct bodies who live together on the same reservation,--the one are “Christians,” the other are “Pagans” who believe and teach the cult of Handsome Lake.
Mr. Cushing has introduced a hybrid tale into his collection, entitled “The Cock and the Mouse.” Such tales are found again and again among the Amerinds. In a large majority of cases Bible stories are compounded with native stories, so that unwary people have been led to believe that the Amerinds are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.
OR THE MAIDEN OF MÁTSAKI AND THE RED FEATHER
In the days of the ancients, when Mátsaki was the home of the children of men, there lived, in that town, which is called “Salt City,” because the Goddess of Salt made a white lake there in the days of the New, a beautiful maiden. She was passing beautiful, and the daughter of the priest-chief, who owned more buckskins and blankets than he could hang on his poles, and whose port-holes were covered with turquoises and precious shells from the ocean--so many were the sacrifices he made to the gods. His house was the largest in Mátsaki, and his ladder-poles were tall and decorated with slabs of carved wood--which you know was a great thing, for our grandfathers cut with the _tímush_ or flint knife, and even tilled their corn-fields with wooden hoes sharpened with stone and weighted with granite. That’s the reason why all the young men in the towns round about were in love with the beautiful maiden of Salt City.
Now, there was one very fine young man who lived across the western plains, in the Pueblo of the Winds. He was so filled with thoughts of the maiden of Mátsaki that he labored long to gather presents for her, and looked not with favor on any girl of his own pueblo.