6M1TII 1 HI-NU" DESTROYING THE GIANT ANIMALS. 55 



Despair was in her heart. She knew that there was uo escape for 

 her, so in desijeration she leaped into her canoe and pushed it from 

 shore on the roaring waters of Niagara. She heeded not that she was 

 going to her death, preferring the angry waters to the arms of her de- 

 tested lover. 



Now, the God of Cloud and Eain, the great deity Hi-nu°, who watches 

 over the harvest, dwelt in a cave behind the rushing waters. From his 

 home he saw the desperate launching of the maiden's canoe ; saw her 

 going to almost certain destruction. He spread out his wings and flew 

 to her rescue, and caught her just as her frail bark was dashing on the 

 rocks below. 



The grateful Indian girl lived for many weeks in Hi-nu'^'s cave. He 

 taught her many new things. She learned from him why her people died 

 so often — why sickness was always busy among them. He told her how 

 a snake lay coiled up under the ground beneath the village, and how he 

 crept out and i)oisoned the springs, because he lived upon human be- 

 ings and craved their flesh more and more, so that he could never get 

 enough if they died from natural causes. 



Hi-uu" kept the maiden in till he learned that the ugly old suitor was 

 dead. Then he bade her return and tell her tribe what she had learned 

 of the great Hi nu°. 



She taught them all he had told her and begged them to break up 

 their settlement and travel nearer to the lake; and her words pre- 

 vailed. For a while sickness ceased, but it broke out again, for the ser- 

 pent was far too cunning to be so easily outwitted. He dragged him- 

 self slowly but surely after the people, and but for Hi-nu°'s influence 

 wou'd have undermined the new settlement as he had the former one. 

 Hi-nu" watched him until he neared the creek, then he launched a 

 thunderbolt at him. A terrible noise awoke all the dwellers by the 

 lake, but the snake was only injured, not killed. Hi-nu" was forced to 

 launcli another thunderbolt, and another and another, before, finally, the 

 poisoner was slain. 



The great dead snake was so enormous that when the Indians laid 

 his body out in death it stretched over more than twenty arrow flights, 

 and as he floated down the waters of Niagara it was as if a mountain 

 appeared above them. His corpse was too large to pass the rocks, so it 

 became wedged in between them and the waters rose over it mountains 

 high. As the weight of the monster pressed on the rocks they gave 

 way and thus the horseshoe form, that remains to this day, was fash- 

 ioned. But the Indians had no more fever in their settlement. 



THE THUNDERERS. 



The following story, as related to me by Horatio Hale, who received 

 it from an Indian chief, shows that sustained imaginative power which 

 seems to distinguish the myths of the Iroquoian family. 



