630 LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
assisted my appreciation of what I saw of it, and enabled me to
imagine such of it as we lost by the intrusion of night.
As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is blanketed with
Indian tales and traditions. Bat I reminded him that people usually
merely mention this fact—doing it in a way to make a body's mouth
water—and judiciously stopped there. Why? Because the impres-
sion left, was that these tales were full of incident and imagination—.
a pleasant impression which would be promptly dissipated if the taleg
were told. I showed him a lot of this sort of literature which I had
been collecting, and he confessed that it was poor stuff, exceedingly
sorry rubbish; and I ventured to add that the legends which he had
himself told us were of this character, with the single exception of the
admirable story of Winona. He granted these facts, but said that if
I would hunt up Mr. Schoolcraffs book, published near fifty years
ago, and now doubtless out of print, I would find some Indian inven-
tions in it that were very far from being barren of incident and
imagination ; that the tales in Hiawatha were of this sort, and they
came from Schoolcraft's book; and that there were others in the same
book which Mr. Longfellow could have turned into verse -with good
effect. For instance, there was the legend of * The Undying Head,1
He could not tell it, for many of the details had grown dim in his
memory; but he would recommend me to.find it and enlarge my
respect for the Indian imagination. He said that this tale, and mosfc
of the others in the book, were current among the Indians along this
part of the Mississippi when he first came here; and that the contri-
butors to SchoolcrafVs book had got them directly from Indian lips,
and had written them down with strict exactness, and without embel-
lishments of their own,
I have found the book. The lecturer was right. There are
several legends in it which confirm what he said. I will offer two of
them—* The Undying Head/ and ' Peboan and Seegwnn, an Allegory
of the Seasons/ The latter is used in Hiawatha; but it is worth
reading in the original form, if only that one may see how effective a
genuine poem can be without the helps and graces of poetic measure
and rhythm—