is not like the Mexican pantheon; it has not the same sounds, colors,
or feelings; and though many of its incidents or tales are the same as
those of the Chippewas, or other tribes, we still feel that there is an
incredible difference in the spirit. Its ways are not as their ways.
This Wabanaki mythology, which was that which gave a fairy, an elf, a
naiad, or a hero to every rock and river and ancient hill in New
England, is just the one of all others which is least known to the New
Englanders. When the last Indian shall be in his grave, those who come
after us will ask in wonder why we had no curiosity as to the romance
of our country, and so much as to that of every other land on earth.

Much is allowed to poets and painters, and no fault was found with Mr.
Longfellow for attributing to the Iroquois Hiawatha the choice exploits
of the Chippewa demi-devil Manobozho. It was "all Indian" to the
multitude, and one name answered as well in poetry as another, at a
time when there was very little attention paid to ethnology. So that a
good poem resulted, it was of little consequence that the plot was a
_melange_ of very different characters, and characteristics. And
when, in connection with this, Mr. Longfellow spoke of the Chippewa
tales as forming an Indian Edda, the term was doubtless in a poetic and
very general sense permissible. But its want of literal truth seems to
have deeply impressed the not generally over particular or accurate
Schoolcraft, since his first remarks in the Introduction to the
Hiawatha Legends are as follows:--

"Where analogies are so general, there is a constant liability to
mistakes. Of these foreign analogies of myth-lore, the least tangible,
it is believed, is that which has been suggested with the Scandinavian
mythology. That mythology is of so marked and peculiar a character that
it has not been distinctly traced out of the great circle of tribes of