He went back and continued his watch.  While there, he thought to himself, “It is singular that I am so simple, and my grandmother so wise, and that I have neither father nor mother.  I have never heard a word about them.  I must ask and find out.”  He went home and sat down silent and dejected.  At length his grandmother asked him, “Hiawatha, what is the matter with you?” He answered, “I wish you would tell me whether I have any parents living and who my relatives are.”  Knowing that he was of a wicked and revengeful disposition, she dreaded telling him the story of his parentage, but he insisted on her compliance.  “Yes,” she said, “you have a father and three brothers living.  Your mother is dead.  She was taken without the consent of her parents by your father the West.  Your brothers are the North, East, and South, and, being older than yourself, your father has given them great power with the winds, according to their names.  You are the youngest of his children.  I have nourished you from your infancy, for your mother died in giving you birth, owing to the ill-treatment of your father.  I have no relations besides you this side of the planet on which I was born, and from which I was precipitated by female jealousy.  Your mother was my only child, and you are my only hope.”

He appeared to be rejoiced to hear that his father was living, for he had already thought in his heart to try and kill him.  He told his grandmother he should set out in the morning to visit him.  She said it was a long distance to the place where The West lived.  But that had no effect to stop him for he had now attained manhood, possessed a giant’s height, and was endowed by nature with a giant’s strength and power.  He set out and soon reached the place, for every step he took covered a large surface of ground.  The meeting took place on a high mountain in the West.  His father appeared very happy to see him.  They spent some days in talking with each other.

One evening Hiawatha asked his father what he was most afraid of on earth.  He replied, “Nothing.”  “But is there not something you dread here?  Tell me.”  At last his father said, yielding, “Yes, there is a black stone found in such a place.  It is the only earthly thing I am afraid of; for if it should hit me, or any part of my body, it would injure me very much.”  He said this as a secret, and in return asked his son the same question.  Knowing each other’s power, although the son’s was limited, the father feared him on account of his great strength.  Hiawatha answered, “Nothing!” intending to avoid the question, or to refer to some harmless object as the one of which he was afraid.  He was asked again, and again, and answered, “Nothing!” But the West said, “There must be something you are afraid of.”  “Well!  I will tell you,” said Hiawatha, “what it is.”  But, before he would pronounce the word, he affected great dread. “Ie-ee—­Ie-ee—­it is—­it is,” said he, “yeo! yeo!  I cannot name it; I am seized with a dread.”  The West told him to banish his fears.  He commenced again, in a strain of mock sensitiveness repeating the same words; at last he cried out, “It is the root of the bulrush.”  He appeared to be exhausted by the effort of pronouncing the word, in all this skilfully acting a studied part.