Kulóskap the master, and other Algonkin poems

"Kulóskap the Master, and Other Algonkin Poems" by Leland, Deming, Smith, and Prince is a collection of translated poems and legends written in the early 20th century. Centered on Wabanaki (Algonkin) oral tradition, it gathers metrical renderings of the Kulóskap epic alongside witchcraft lore, lyrics, and scholarly apparatus. The work presents creation myths, animal tales, and shamanic episodes from Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Micmac, Abenaki, and Delaware sources. The opening of the volume offers Leland’s preface on the richness and fragility of Native North American poetry, his metrical method, and his reliance on Passamaquoddy sources, followed by Prince’s introduction situating the Wabanaki languages, sketching tribal history and wampum-record practice, explaining polysynthesis, and defining Kulóskap’s role and shamanic context. The epic then begins: Kulóskap and his malicious twin Malsum are born by different means; Malsum kills their mother and later tries to murder his brother, but Kulóskap slays him with a fern. Kulóskap creates humans from the ash tree, resizes and names the animals to place them under human dominion, turns mocking dancers into rattlesnakes, and appears to people as lord of beasts and men. He brings dawn, survival skills, and star lore, and grants petitions with mixed outcomes: a hunter gains a flute that draws game, a lustful seeker is smothered by spirit-women from a forbidden bag, and a prankster doomed to an uncontrollable comic cry ends in despair. A longer episode follows in which the Badger is initiated as a forest fairy and Little Thunder wins a chief’s daughter by passing sorcerous trials (slaying a horned serpent, conquering sled, foot, and diving contests, and defeating a giant beaver and skunk) before returning the Master’s stone canoe. Briefly, a fool loses a panacea by opening it too soon, and a new tale begins about three brothers whose wishes turn them into trees. (This is an automatically generated summary.)