Note 65 — HOW A HUNTER ENCOUNTERED BMULE´, VISITED HIS COUNTRY AND OBTAINED A BOON65 FREE TRANSLATION
Reading edition
A St. Francis Abenaki tale, given by C. G. Leland and J. D. Prince (Kuloskap The Master, New York 1902, p. 236), rather closely follows this narrative, though in the St. Francis story “P’mula” gives magic eye-rings of a snake to the hunter.
Pəmu´la seems to be known locally among the western Wabanaki. To the St. Francis Abenaki he is a bird-like monster which flies from one end of the world to the other in one day. He can hear the merest mention of his name if anyone calls him. (Cf. Maurault, op. cit., p. 574.) In Penobscot mythology, Pəmu´le, “Comes flying,” is believed to heed the appeal of men. Once a year he flies across the sky, propelling himself with bull-roarers, giving three cries; one at the horizon; one at the zenith, and one at the other horizon. He may be stopped by an ascending column of smoke and will then grant supplications for aid.
The concept is interesting as an element of religious and social fabric among related western Algonkian. Among the Algonquin and Ojibwa of Ontario, the creature is known under the name Pa·´guk` (Timiskaming) (cf. F. G. Speck, Myths and Folk-Lore of the Timiskaming, Algonquin, and Timagami Ojibwa, Memoir 70, Anthropological Series No. 9, Geological Survey of Canada, 1915, p. 22) and Pa·´gαk (Timagami) (ibid., p. 81). The beliefs regarding him are similar to those of the Wabanaki; though the Timagami believe his appearance to be an omen of death. With the Menomini “Paˣkaˣ is a flying skeleton ... corresponding to the western Ojibway Pägûk” (A. B. Skinner, Social Life and Ceremonial Bundles of the Menomini Indians, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History (1913), Vol. XIII, pt. 1, p. 83).
On the northern plains, however, among the Plains Ojibwa, “Pägûk, a skeleton being with glaring eyes which is sometimes seen flitting through the air,” is the dream patron of a cannibal cult (Windigokan), the members of which perform in a mask costume and blow on whistles. The functions of the society are to heal disease and to exorcise demons. Taboo associations have become centered about the society. (A. B. Skinner, Political Organization, Cults, and Ceremonies of the Plains Ojibway and Plains Cree Indians, ibid., Vol. XI, Part VI, pp. 500-505.) The Plains Cree had the same society (Skinner, ibid., p. 528-529) and so do the Assiniboine (R. H. Lowie, The Assiniboine, ibid., Vol. IV, Part I (1909), pp. 62-66), who also designate the dance by a cognate term Wiᵂtgō´gax. This series of cases makes me feel that we have here a case of more recent elaboration from a common Algonkian idea, the result of a tendency toward socialization on the Plains, where the cannibal cult evolving out of the flying-head conception has taken on the characteristics of the crazy dance of the Arapaho, Gros Ventre and the others of this region.