CHAPTER XV 

 SOME PRETTY INDIAN STORIES 



NOT many of the stories about birds now or for- 

 merly current among the American aborigines 

 are of a pleasing character. They are fantastic 

 myths for the most part, as appears from many of the 

 incidents given elsewhere in this book; and often they 

 are so wildly improbable, incoherent, and unbirdlike as 

 to disgust rather than interest us. That is partly owing, 

 no doubt, to our difficulty in taking the native point of 

 view, and our ignorance of the significance the half- 

 animal, half-human characters in the tales have to the 

 redmen, with whom, in most cases, the startling narra- 

 tives pass for veritable tribal history. Their stories are 

 as foreign to our minds as is their "tum-tum" music 

 to our ears. Now and then, however, we come across 

 an understanding and pleasing legend, of purely native 

 origin, and touched with poetic feeling. 



A favorite story among the central Eskimos, for in- 

 stance, is that of their race-mother Sedna, who was the 

 daughter of a chief, and was wooed by a fulmar (a 

 kind of northern petrel) who promised her, if she would 

 marry him, a delightful life in his distant home. So 

 she went away with him. But she had been ruefully 

 deceived, and was cruelly mistreated. A year later her 

 father went to pay her a visit; and discovering her 

 misery he killed her husband and took his repentant 

 daughter home. The other fulmars in the village fol- 



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