ILLUSTRATIONS

The rabbit tells Nanahboozhoo of his troubles

With the children cuddled around, Souwanas began

The wild and picturesque Ka-ka-be-ka Falls

They howled with rage and terror

The startling placard

While her mate stood beside her

Surrounding them were fierce Indian dogs

The beautiful reflections in the water

They tumbled the tall ghost over

Their dog trains were in constant demand

Where the fire was stolen

The coyote was too quick for them

Across a single log at a dizzy height

Which white men now call Cathedral Mountain

Their babies with them

Gave him such a terrible beating

The big rock was surely gaining on him [note:  not in actual text]

Sun dance lodge of the Blood Indians

They both threw their magic sticks

He took a leap into the open mouth

He ran away west, to the great mountains

Wigwams and Indians

The Indian story-teller

Nanahboozhoo then mounted on the back of the great buzzard

With Mary and Kennedy in the birch canoe

Nanahboozhoo gave him a great push

They were excited at his coming

Algonquin Indian Tales

CHAPTER I.

The Children Carried Off by the Indians—­The Feast in the Wigwam—­Souwanas, the Story-teller—­Nanahboozhoo, the Indian Myth—­How the Wolves Stole His Dinner, and Why the Birch Tree Bark is Scarred—­Why the Raccoon has Rings on His Tail.

Without even knocking at the door there noiselessly entered our northern home two large, unhandsome Indians.  They paid not the slightest attention to the grown-up palefaces present, but in their ghostly way marched across the room to the corner where the two little children were playing on the floor.  Quickly but gently picking them up they swung them to their shoulders, and then, without a word of salutation or even a glance at the parents, they noiselessly passed out of that narrow door and disappeared in the virgin forest.  They were pagan Saulteaux, by name Souwanas and Jakoos.

The Indian names by which these two children were called by the natives were “Sagastaookemou,” which means the “Sunrise Gentleman,” and “Minnehaha,” “Laughing Waters.”

To the wigwam of Souwanas, “South Wind,” these children were being carried.  They had no fear of these big Indians, though the boy was only six years old, and his little sister but four.  They had learned to look with laughing eyes even into the fiercest and ugliest of these red faces and had made them their friends.