🧚 Myths and Folk-lore of the Timagami Ojibwa., part 3 · page 2

The next morning the man started on and left Wemicus there with no shoes.111 Wemicus started to work.112 He got a big boulder, made a fire, and placed the boulder in it until it became red hot.113 He then wrapped his feet with spruce boughs and pushed the boulder ahead of him in order to melt the snow.114 In this way he managed to walk on the boughs.115 Then he began to sing, “Spruce is warm, spruce is warm.”116 When the man reached home he told his wife what had happened.117 “I hope Wemicus will die,” she said.118 A little while after this, they heard Wemicus coming along singing, “Spruce is warm, spruce is warm.”119 He came into the wigwam and, as he was the head man, they were obliged to get his meal ready.120

The ice was getting bad by this time, so they stayed in camp a while.121 Soon Wemicus told his son-in-law, “We’d better go sliding.”122 He then went to a hill where there were some very poisonous snakes.123 The man’s wife warned her husband of these snakes and gave him a split stick holding a certain kind of magic tobacco, which she told him to hold in front of him so that the snakes would not hurt him.124 Then the two men went sliding.125 At the top of the hill Wemicus said, “Follow me,” for he intended to pass close by the snakes’ lair.126 So when they slid, Wemicus passed safely and the man held his stick with the tobacco in it in front of him, thus preventing the snakes from biting him.127 The man then told Wemicus that he enjoyed the sliding.128

The following day Wemicus said to his son-in-law, “We had better go to another place.”129 When she heard this, the wife told her husband that, as it was getting summer, Wemicus had in his head many poisonous lizards instead of lice.130 She said, “He will tell you to pick lice from his head and crack them in your teeth.131 But take low-bush cranberries and crack them instead.”132 So the man took cranberries along with him.133 Wemicus took his son-in-law to a valley with a great ravine in it.134 He said, “I wonder if anybody can jump across this?”135 “Surely,” said the young man, “I can.”136 Then the young man said, “Closer,” and the ravine narrowed and he jumped across easily.137 When Wemicus tried, the young man said “Widen,” and Wemicus fell into the ravine.138 But it did not kill him, and when he made his way to the top again, he said, “You have beaten me.”139 Then they went on.140

They came to a place of hot sand and Wemicus said, “You must look for lice in my head.”141 “All right father,” replied the son-in-law.142 So Wemicus lay down and the man started to pick the lice.143 He took the cranberries from inside his shirt and each time he pretended to catch a louse, he cracked a cranberry and threw it on the ground, and so Wemicus got fooled a second time that day.144 Then they went home and Wemicus said to his son-in-law, “There are a whole lot of eggs on that rocky island where the gulls are.145 We will go get the eggs, come back, and have an egg supper.”146 As Wemicus was the head man, his son-in-law had to obey him.147

So they started out in their canoe and soon came to the rocky island.148 Wemicus stayed in the canoe and told the man to go ashore and to bring the eggs back with him and fill the canoe.149 When the man reached the shore, Wemicus told him to go farther back on the island, saying, “That’s where the former husbands got their eggs, there are their bones.”150 He then started the canoe off in the water by singing, without using his paddle.151 Then Wemicus told the gulls to eat the man, saying to them, “I give you him to eat.”152 The gulls started to fly about the man, but the man had his paddle with him and he killed one of the gulls with it.153 He then took the gulls’ wings and fastened them on himself, filled his shirt with eggs, and started flying over the lake by the aid of the wings.154

When he reached the middle of the lake, he saw Wemicus going along and singing to himself.155 Wemicus, looking up, saw his son-in-law but mistook him for a gull.156 Then the man flew over him and defecated in his face, and Wemicus said, “Gull’s excrement always smells like that when they have eaten a man.”157 The man flew back to camp and told his wife to cook the eggs, and he told his children to play with the wings.158 When Wemicus reached the camp, he saw the children playing with the wings and said, “Where did you get those wings?”159 “From father,” was the reply.160 “Your father?161 Why, the gulls ate him!”162 Then he went to the wigwam and there he saw the man smoking.163 Then Wemicus thought it very strange how the man could have gotten home, but no one told him how it had been done.164 Thought he, “I must try another scheme to do away with him.”165

One day Wemicus said to his son-in-law, “We’d better make two canoes of birch-bark, one for you and one for me.166 We’d better get bark.”167 So they started off for birch-bark.168 They cut a tree almost through and Wemicus said to his son-in-law, “You sit on that side and I’ll sit on this.”169 He wanted the tree to fall on him and kill him.170 Wemicus said, “You say, ‘Fall on my father-in-law,’ and I’ll say, ‘Fall on my son-in-law’, and whoever says it too slowly or makes a mistake will be the one on whom it will fall.”171 But Wemicus made the first mistake, and the tree fell on him and crushed him.172 However, Wemicus was a manitu [32] and was not hurt.173 They went home with the bark and made the two canoes.174 After they were made, Wemicus said to his son-in-law, “Well, we’ll have a race in our two canoes, a sailing race.”175 Wemicus made a big bark sail, but the man did not make any, as he was afraid of upsetting.176 They started the race.177 Wemicus went very fast and the man called after him, “Oh, you are beating me.”178 He kept on fooling and encouraging Wemicus, until the wind upset Wemicus’ canoe and that was the end of Wemicus.179 When the man sailed over the spot where Wemicus had upset, he saw a big pike (ki·nų′je) there, into which Wemicus had been transformed when the canoe upset.180 This is the origin of the pike.181