One day a handsome young man chanced to come to the spot at the moment she was receiving her morning’s attentions from her mother.  He was struck with her beauty and immediately went home and told his feelings to his uncle, who was a great chief and a powerful magician.  The uncle told him to go to the mother’s lodge, sit down in a modest manner, and, without saying a word, think what he wanted, and he would be understood and answered.  He did so; but the mother’s answer was:  “Give you my daughter?  No, indeed, my daughter shall never marry you.”  This pride and haughtiness angered the uncle and the spirits of the lake, who raised a great storm on the water.  The tossing waves broke the string, and the box with the girl floated off through the straits to Lake Huron.  It was there cast on shore and found by an old spirit who took the beautiful girl to his lodge and married her.

The mother, when she found her daughter gone, raised loud cries, and continued her lamentations for a long time.  At last, after two or three years, the spirits had pity on her and raised another storm, greater even than the first.  When the water rose and encroached on the lodge where the daughter lived, she leaped into the box, and the waves carried her back to her mother’s lodge.  The mother was overjoyed, but when she opened the box she found that her daughter’s beauty had almost all departed.  However, she still loved her because she was her daughter, and she now thought of the young man who had made her the offer of marriage.  She sent a formal message to him, but he had changed his mind, for he knew that she had been the wife of another. “I marry your daughter?” said he; “your daughter!  No, indeed!  I shall never marry her.”

THE HUMPBACK MAGICIAN

Bokwewa and his brother lived in a secluded part of the country.  They were considered as Manitoes who had assumed mortal shapes.  Bokwewa was a humpback, but had the gifts of a magician, while the brother was more like the present race of beings.  One day the brother said to the humpback that he was going away to visit the habitations of men, and procure a wife.  He travelled alone a long time.  At length he came to a deserted camp, where he saw a corpse on a scaffold.  He took it down and found it was the body of a beautiful young woman.  “She shall be my wife,” he exclaimed.

He took her and carried her home on his back.  “Brother,” he exclaimed, “cannot you restore her life?  Oh! do me that favor.”

The humpback said he would try, and, after performing various ceremonies, succeeded in restoring her to life.  They lived very happily for some time.  But one day when the humpback was home alone with the woman, her husband having gone out to hunt, a powerful Manito came and carried her off, though Bokwewa used all his strength to save her.