Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Legend of Calumet Island. There is abundance of evidence which goes to prove that had the scene of events in Longfellow's immortal Hiawatha been located at the Thousand Islands, the Manatoana, or" Garden of the Great Spirit, " of the Iroquois and Algonquins, the poem would have been true to the legendary origin of Hiawatha. Read with that idea in mind, one will be surprised at the many striking passages which apply to the St. Lawrence with more force than to the Lake Superior region in which the poet has depicted the principal events of the legend. In 1843, Ossahinta and Dehatkatons, two Onondaga chiefs related the legend of the god of fishing and rivers to Mr. Clark who carefully wrote out the story and filed it in the archives of the New York Historical Society. He thus translates the narration of the two chiefs : Hundreds of years ago, Ta-oun-ya-wat-ha, the Deity who presides over fisheries and streams, came down from his dwelling place in the clouds to visit the inhabitants of the earth. He had been deputed by the Great and Good Spirit, Ha-wa- ne-u, to visit the streams and clear the channels from all obstructions, to seek out the good things of the country through which he intended to pass, that they might be more generally disseminated among all the good people of the earth—especially to point out to them the most excellent fishing grounds, and to bestow upon them other acceptable gifts. About this time, two young men of the Onondaga Nation were listlessly gazing over the calm blue waters of the Lake of a Thousand Isles. During their reverie they espied, as they thought, far in the distance, a single white speck, beautifully dancing over the bright blue waters, and while they watched the object with the most intense anxiety, it seemed to increase in magnitude, a...