Algonquin Legends of New England | Page 7

exist as yet
among the scattered fragments of Indian tribes here and there. The
Penobscots of Oldtown, Maine, still possess many. In fact, there is not
an old Indian, male or female, in New England or Canada who does not
retain stories and songs of the greatest interest. I sincerely trust that this
work may have the effect of stimulating collection. Let every reader
remember that everything thus taken down, and deposited in a local
historical society, or sent to the Ethnological Bureau at Washington,
will forever transmit the name of its recorder to posterity. Archaeology
is as yet in its very beginning; when the Indians shall have departed it
will grow to giant-like proportions, and every scrap of information
relative to them will be eagerly investigated. And the man does not live
who knows what may be made of it all. I need not say that I should be
grateful for such Indian lore of any kind whatever which may be

transmitted to me.
It may very naturally be asked by many how it came to pass that the
Indians of Maine and of the farther north have so much of the Edda in
their sagas; or, if it was derived through the Eskimo tribes, how these
got it from Norsemen, who were professedly Christians. I do not think
that the time has come for fully answering the first question. There is
some great mystery of mythology, as yet unsolved, regarding the origin
of the Edda and its relations with the faiths and folk-lore of the elder
Shamanic beliefs, such as Lapp, Finn, Samoyed, Eskimo, and Tartar.
This was the world's first religion; it is found in the so-called Accadian
Turanian beginning of Babylon, whence it possibly came from the
West. But what we have here to consider is whether the Norsemen did
directly influence the Eskimo and Indians. Let us first consider that
these latter were passionately fond of stories, and that they had attained
to a very high standard of culture as regards both appreciation and
invention. They were as fond of recitations as any white man is of
reading. Their memories were in this respect very remarkable indeed.
They have taken into their repertory during the past two hundred years
many French fairy tales, through the Canadians. Is it not likely that they
listened to the Northmen?
It is not generally noted among our learned men how long the
Icelanders remained in Greenland, how many stories are still told of
them by the Eskimo, or to what extent the Indians continue to mingle
with the latter. During the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries,
says the Abbe Morillot, "there were in Greenland, after Archbishop
Adalbert, more than twenty bishops, and in the colony were many
churches and monasteries. In the Oestrbugd, one of the two inhabited
portions of the vast island, were one hundred and ninety villages, with
twelve churches. In Julianshaab, one may to-day see the ruins of eight
churches and of many monasteries." In the fifteenth century all these
buildings were in ruins, and the colony was exterminated by the
pestilence or the natives. But among the latter there remained many
traditions of the Scandinavians associated with the ruins. Such is the
story of Oren'gortok, given by the Abbe Morillot, and several are to be
found in Rink's Legends. When we learn that the Norsemen, during

their three centuries of occupation of Greenland, brought away many of
the marvelous tales of the Eskimo, it is not credible that they left none
of their own. Thus we are told in the Floamanna Saga how a hero,
abandoned on the icy coast of Greenland, met with two giant witches
(Troldkoner), and cut the band from one of them. An old Icelandic
work, called the Konungs Skuggsjo (Danish, Kongespeilet), has much
to say of the marvels of Greenland and its monsters of the sea. On the
other hand, Morillot declares that the belief in ghosts was brought to
Greenland by the Icelanders and Scandinavians. The sagas have not
been as yet much studied with a view to establishing how much social
intercourse there was between the natives and the colonists, but
common experience would teach that during three centuries it must
have been something.
There has always been intercourse between Greenland and Labrador,
and in this latter country we find the first Algonquin Indians. Even at
the present day there are men among the Micmacs and
Passamaquoddies who have gone on their hunting excursions even to
the Eskimo. I myself know one of the latter who has done so, and the
Rev. S. T. Rand, in answer to a question on the subject, writes to me as
follows:--
"Nancy Jeddore, a Micmac woman, assures me that her father, now
dead, used to go as far as the wild (heathen) Eskimo,