ABORIGINAL AMERICAN POETRY. 29 



of this folk-lore ; and a hundred years hence some few will, perhaps, regret that it was 

 not done." ( " Algonquin Legends," p. 308.) Need it be said that the suggestion and the 

 reproach are as applicable to Canada as to the United States ? They are much more so 

 indeed. 



The " Myths of the Iroquois " have been collected by the late Mrs. Erminuie A. 

 Smith, and are printed in the second volume of the Eeport of the Bureau of Ethnology, 

 Washington. Some of them contain songs; some of them are virtually poems. In "The 

 Charmed Suit," w^e have a song which runs thus : — 



" Ha-hum-weh, 



Ha-hum-weh, 



Wa-he-dum-nœ 



Sru-gua he. 

 Ha hum weh 

 Ha hum weh." 



This ditty, sung by a woman's sweet voice, is the very intimation that the thoughtful 

 father wished his boy to hear : — 



" I belong to the wolf clan. 



(6is.) 

 I am going to many him." 



(.bis.) 



Another song occurs in the tale of the wild cat and white rabbit, which begins : 

 " He gah yah neh," and means, " When you are frightened, sweet rabbit, you run in a 

 circle." The story is an allegorical representation of the inevitable power of destiny. 



The story of " The Hunter and his Dead Wife" is one of the most touching of these 

 Iroqiiois myths. It is a story of a man who dearly loved his wife, and who, after her 

 death, made a wooden image, which he dressed in her clothes, and set up near his fire- 

 place. After a year, he began to notice, when he returned from hunting, that the wigwam 

 had been swept, and wood brought in, and meat cooked in the kettle. He sought his kind 

 benefactress in vain for some time, but, finally, after carefully watching, he saw a woman 

 entering the house with wood on her shoulders. He followed her, and to his surprise saw 

 his wife where the wooden image had been. She warned him not to come near her or 

 touch her, lest he should lose her for ever. But " the desire of the man to once more clasp 

 his wife in his arms was too great, and he went up to her and put out his hands." In 

 vain she motioned him off. He still approached ; he embraced her, and, lo ! it was not 

 his wife, but a wooden doll that he held in his arms. 



A work of the utmost importance in the study of the origin, traditions, poetry, 

 ceremonies, and history of the Iroquois, is " The Iroquois Book of Eites," by Mr. Horatio 



" Rabbits liave, especially when wounded, an inexplicable habit of running in a circuit of a few hundred feet 

 diameter. I once followed one seventeen times round the periphery of two acres of brusliy land before I finally 

 secured him, and often in hunting with the long bow and arrow, I found it a good plan, when a rabbit has been 

 wounded and has made one turn, to stand and await his reappearance at any point of the circle, while another 

 follows on his track." Harper's New Monthly, July, 1877, p. 253, " Hunting with the Long Bow." 



