Hidden Ontario Read Online Free PDF Page B

die.”
    John Manatuwaba, a 70-year-old Ojibwa in 1929, recalled a family who fed their souls to the serpent: “A Parry Island couple had three children, two boys who died very young and a child that died at birth. Two years ago the serpent swallowed the man’s soul. The woman then confessed that in her girlhood she had accepted a blessing from the evil serpent.”
    â€œI recall the tales about the water-serpent,” stated a First Nations resident of Parry Island today. “It was told to us to keep the kids from going out in deep water. This kept the children safe.
    â€œI have heard that the water-serpent lives in Three Mile Lake and travels underground to Hay Bay. It was told to us that when a south wind blows and the water becomes murky the serpent is moving in the water.”
    According to another First Nations resident, a group of young children encountered the water spirit in the 1950s on Parry Island. The creature was snake-like and had legs. It could travel through the forest as well as the water.
    One Native elder on the island, when asked about the water spirit, reinforced the belief that the creature is actually a spirit.
    There are other spirits that inhabit the district, such as the little people called the Memegwesi. They are friendly manidos, or rather a band or family of manidos. They may play pranks on the people, but never harm them. In the early part of the last century, a Parry Island native on his way to Depot Harbour saw a Memegwesi going down a creek. It had the outline of a man, but only its face was visible, the body being concealed beneath a huge growth of whiskers.
    John Manatuwaba, recalled this encounter with the Memegwesi: “At the north end of Parry Sound, in what white men call Split Rock Channel, there is a crag known to the Indians as Memegwesi’s Crag. Some natives once set night lines there, but their trout were always stolen.”
    At last one of the men sat up all night to watch for the thief. At dawn he saw a stone boat manned by two Memegwesi approaching, one a woman, the other bearded like a monkey. The watcher awakened his companions and they pursued the stone boat, which turned around and called to the Indians, “Now you know who stole your trout. Whenever you want calmer weather give us some tobacco, for this is our home.” The boat and its occupants then entered the crag and disappeared.
    Jenness also discovered that there are two kinds of invisible Indians, both closely akin to manidos. “One kind has no name, the other is called bagudzinishinabe or ‘Little Wild Indian.’ To see an individual of either kind confers the blessing of attaining old age.”
    The bagudzinishinabe are dwarfs that do no harm, Jenness found, but play innumerable pranks on human beings. Though small, no larger in fact than a little child, they are immensely strong. Sometimes they shake the poles of a wigwam, or throw pebbles on its roof; or they steal a knife from a man’s side and hide it in his lodge. Often a person will eat and eat and still feel unsatisfied. He wonders how he can eat so much and still be hungry, but the dwarfs, unseen, are stealing the food from his dish.
    Occasionally, you hear the reports of their guns, but cannot see either the dwarfs or their tracks. Yet, Francis Pegahmagabow stated that he once saw their tracks, “like those of a tiny baby,” on a muddy road on Parry Island. A few years ago a Native person camping on the island awoke in the morning to discover tiny, child-like tracks alongside her tent.
    In 1976, a Rosseau area resident who was studying with Native elders encountered the little people.
    â€œThis one day I was in a beechnut forest south of Algonquin Park and I had stopped to eat some nuts,” he said. “Afterwards I sat down in a glade near a babbling brook. I dozed off.
    â€œSuddenly I woke up and caught a glimpse of a creature about 10 feet away. At that moment it ducked behind a tree.