erful chief and prophet, is
involved in doubt, but there can be no misprision of his wisdom. By some
historians he has been made one with St. Aspenquid, the earliest of
native missionaries among the Indians, who, after his conversion by
French Jesuits, travelled from Maine to the Pacific, preaching to
sixty-six tribes, healing the sick and working miracles, returning to die
at the age of ninety-four. He was buried on the top of Agamenticus,
Maine, where his manes were pacified with offerings of three thousand
slain animals, and where his tombstone stood for a century after, bearing
the legend, "Present, useful; absent, wanted; living, desired; dying,
lamented."

By others Passaconaway is regarded as a different person. The Child of
the Bear--to English his name--was the chief of the Merrimacs and a
convert of the apostle Eliot. Natives and colonists alike admired him for
his eloquence, his bravery, and his virtue. Before his conversion he was
a reputed wizard who sought by magic arts to repel the invasion of his
woods and mountains by the white men, invoking the spirits of nature
against them from the topmost peak of the Agiochooks, and his native
followers declared that in pursuance of this intent he made water burn,
rocks move, trees dance, and transformed himself into a mass of flame.

Such was his power over the forces of the earth that he could burn a tree
in winter and from its ashes bring green leaves; he made dead wood
blossom and a farmer's flail to bud, while a snake's skin he could cause
to run. At the age of one hundred and twenty he retired from his tribe
and lived in a lonely wigwam among the Pennacooks. One winter night the
howling of wolves was heard, and a pack came dashing through the village
harnessed by threes to a sledge of hickory saplings that bore a tall
throne spread with furs. The wolves paused at Passaconaway's door. The
old chief came forth, climbed upon the sledge, and was borne away with a
triumphal apostrophe that sounded above the yelping and snarling of his
train. Across Winnepesaukee's frozen surface they sped like the wind, and
the belated hunter shrank aside as he saw the giant towering against the
northern lights and heard his death-song echo from the cliffs. Through
pathless woods, across ravines, the wolves sped on, with never slackened
speed, into the mazes of the Agiochooks to that highest peak we now call
Washington. Up its steep wilderness of snow the ride went furiously; the