Kitchi-Gami: Life Among the Lake Superior Ojibway

CHAPTER Xlll

190 SEED BY THE W.A.YSIDE. CHAPTER Xlll. CATHOLIC MISSIONS-SEED BY THE WAYSIDE-KA.GAGENGS-INDIJ.N STORIES -CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISH-TilE CREATION OF HANKIND-KITCHI· HJ.NITOU-HJ.NI CREATED-INDIAN PA.B.ADISE-TliE TEMPTATION-THE FALL-THE BmLE AND TliE BmCH·BAB.K BOOK-A SOIREE-TilE DREAH OF LIFE-TliE LITTLE RAVEN'S STORY-VISIT TO TliE SUN-PRESENTSTRUE PREDICTIONS-RETURN TO EARTH. CATHOLIC missionaries made their appearance in the country round Lake Superior some two .hundred years ago. The Bible stories and Christian legends rather pleased the savages, and excited their fancy. Had the missionaries remained permanently among them, the work so well begun might have prospered. But as the labours of the Christian missions have often been given up and then recommenced, the whole· resembles a garden that has bee1;1. laid out and then left to itself. The.winds and currents of intercourse have wafted some of the seed a long distance, and it has at times taken root at spots remote from the mission in the heart of the desert. But it has there grown up a peculiar forest plant, which only in a few features reveals that it originally grew in the Christian garden. Such a production, half Christian and half Indian, THE LITTLE RAVEN. 191 is, I fancy, the story of the first human pair, which was told me on my Anse Bay by an old Indian of the name of Kagagengs. He is the oldest man in our mission, and, as is usual in such cases of extreme age among the Indians, he is said to be a hundred years old. He believes this himself. " Si je peux attraper encore deux ans," he said to me, "j'aurai cent ans." His name means the Little Raven, and the French Canadians call him the same. Kagagengs's birthplace and home is on the Lac du Flambeau (not the one we traversed). This lake is far to the southward of Lake Superior, in the interior of the country, and seems to have been from old times an Indian chief town. Even at the present day an influential chief, whose acquaintance I formed at La Pointe, resides there. Kagagengs spent the greater part of his life on that lake as a pagan, but when the Catholic mission was founded here on the Anse, and several of his relatives were baptised and removed hither, the old man came with them, and became-at least nominally-a Christian. People had prophesied in his youth that he would live to a great age. The following curious circumstance happened to him, as he himself told me, shortly after his birth : It was the custom among the people on Torch Lake to carry a new-born child, if a boy, round from lodge to lodge and show him. The squaws inspected him, the men smoked the pipe of peace over him, and spoke some words of welcome and health to the little being. No sooner was Little Raven born than his father laid him on a deer-skin, and carried him, according to custom, round the village. All the women stared at the child, all the men smoked over him, during all 192 AN INFANT PHENOMENON. which the babe remained remarkably quiet, and stared about him with his bright eyes. The little stupid sucklings generally forget what happened on such occasions, or pay no attention to it, but Kagagengs, from his birth, was a chosen vessel. All that took place at this presentation remained faithfully imprinted on his memory, and he did not even forget one of the words spoken, although he did not understand them at once. So long as he was unable to speak, he could not tell this to any one, but he had hardly learned to speak in his second year than he frequently repeated to himselfthe words he had heard. Mother and father could not at first comprehend the child's extraordinary sayings, but at length he told them they were the words spoken by the neighbo'\lrs at his " presentation," and he reminded them of all the events that took place, so that every one was amazed at the lad. " That will be a clever man," they said, and also prophesied " he would live to be a hundred years old." Many persons in the village, I grant, assert that Kagagengs is a humbug, and invented the whole...