rew them at
Mudjekeewis; but Mudjekeewis blew them back with his breath, and
remembering what Hiawatha had said about the bulrushes he tore them up
from the mud, roots and all, and used them as a whip to lash his son.

Thus began the fearful fight between Hiawatha and his father,
Mudjekeewis. The eagle left his nest and circled in the air above them
as they fought; the bulrush bent and waved like a tall tree in a storm,
and great pieces of the black rock crashed upon the earth. Three days
the fight continued, and Mudjekeewis was driven back--back to the end
of the world, where the sun drops down into the empty places every
evening.

"Stop!" cried Mudjekeewis, "stop, Hiawatha! You cannot kill me. I have
put you to this trial to learn how brave you are. Now I will give you a
great prize. Go back to your home and people, and kill all the monsters,
and all the giants and the serpents, as I killed the great bear when I
was young. And at last when Death draws near you, and his awful eyes
glare on you from the darkness, I will give you a part of my kingdom and
you shall be ruler of the North-west wind."

Then the battle ended long ago among the mountains; and if you do not
believe this story, go there and see for yourself that the bulrush grows
by the ponds and rivers, and that the pieces of the black rock are
scattered all through the valleys, where they fell after Hiawatha had
thrown them at his father.

Hiawatha started homeward, with all the anger taken from his heart. Only
once upon his way he stopped and bought the heads of arrows from an old
Arrow-maker who lived in the land of the Indians called Dacotahs. The
old Arrow-maker had a daughter, whose laugh was as musical as the voice
of the waterfall by which she lived, and Hiawatha named her by the name
of the rushing waterfall--"Minnehaha"--Laughing Water. When he reached
his native village, all he told to Nokomis was of the battle with his
father. Of the arrows and the lovely maiden, Minnehaha, he did not say a
word.

V

HIAWATHA'S FASTING

THE time came when Hiawatha felt that he must show the tribes of Indians
that he would do them some great service, and he went alone into the
forest to fast and pray, and see if he could not learn how to help his
fellow-men and make them happy. In the forest he built a wigwam, where
nobody might disturb him, and he went without food for seven nights and
seven days. The first day, he walked in the forest; and when he