|
"Mount Katahdin is
the tallest mountain in Maine. It is located in Baxter State Park, about 100
miles or so north of Bangor Maine. Katahdin was named by the Penobscot
Indians and means "the Greatest Mountain." An ancient Native American legend
describes a curse by an Indian woman against those who gossiped about her son:
"An Indian girl
gathering berries on the side of Mount Katahdin looked up at its peak,
rosy in the afternoon light, and sighed, “I wish that I had a husband. If
Katahdin were a man he might marry me.” Her companions laughed at this
quaint conceit, and, filled with confusion at being overheard, she climbed
higher up the slope and was lost to sight.
For three years her
tribe lost sight of her; then she came back with a child in her arms a
beautiful boy with brows of stone. The boy had wonderful power: he had only
to point at a moose or a duck or a bear, and it fell dead, so that the tribe
never wanted food. For he was the son of the Indian girl and the spirit of
the mountain, who had commanded her not to reveal the boy's paternity.
Through years she
held silence on this point, holding in contempt, like other Indians, the
prying inquiries of gossips and the teasing of young people, and knowing
that Katahdin had designed the child for the founder of a mighty race, with
the sinews [source of strength] of the very mountains in its frame, that
should fill and rule the earth.
Yet, one day, in
anger at some slight, the mother spoke: “Fools! Wasps who sting the fingers
that pick you from the water! Why do you torment me about what you might all
see? Look at the boy's face--his brows: in them do you not see Katahdin? Now
you have brought the curse upon yourselves, for you shall hunt your own
venison from this time forth.” Leading the child by the hand she turned
toward the mountain and went out from their sight.
And since then the
Indians who could not hold their tongues, and who might otherwise have been
great, have dwindled to a little people.
|
