# Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders/The Defiance at Elora

Layout 2
THE DEFIANCE AT ELORA
ELORA, with its cascades, its ravines, and its overhanging cliff, one of the many Lovers' Leaps, where an Indian girl stepped into eternity to end a hopeless love, and its buried horde of purple wampum, giving rise to tales of hidden treasure, is destined to be widely known for its romantic and beautiful setting. Of especial interest is the "Broken Fall," with a beetling pulpit of rock standing against the rush of waters at its base, for to this pertains a myth of daring equal to that of Ajax. In common with most other Indians, and with the Greeks, the Ojibways believed in guardian deities of mountains, forests, rivers, lakes, seas, and clouds. Nations and people invest their gods with their own qualities, so that a military ​nation will pray to a fighting god, a money-loving race will have messages from their god to get land and gold, the god of some tribes is a fiend, the God of Calvin was a tyrant, and the God of our own time is a God of love and mercy. The Indian appreciated the world's beauty and lived close to nature, yet in loveliness and brightness he saw as little that is gentle, that spoke of justice, order, law, and love, as if he had been civilized. He lived by shedding the blood of animals, and it was an easy passage from that to shedding the blood of men. Hence he believed in gods that loved destruction, and sacrifices were sweet to them.
Considering these facts, the courage shown by the Ojibway chief who lived in a cave here at Elora was wonderful, yet because of it he triumphed. The manitou of the river, like the spirit of Niagara, was angered by the settlement of people on its banks, and his voice in the fall roared incessant protest. Now and again, after rain or snow melting, he hurled such volumes of water over the cliff that wigwams on the shore were destroyed, canoes were swept away, and the Indians were re-strained from hunting and fishing until the flood subsided. To keep this genius of the stream from too serious mischief, sacrifices were made to him, the usual victim being an Ojibway girl. Keechimatik, who ruled here in 1750, was struck by the modesty and beauty of one such girl who had been brought to his cave, bound, that she might be ​devoted to the manitou. The people were deaf to the appeal of her old mother that she be allowed to take her daughter's place, for her life was nearly over, whereas the girl had all to live for and might become the founder of a noble family. Already the river god had seen his intended victim, and was howling and hissing his demand that she be thrown to his embrace. The elders of the tribe advanced to seize her, when the chief sprang forward and with raised arm bade them desist. "This maid shall not be given to the god," he cried. "I claim her for myself."
Turning to the fall, the chief resumed, "Too many of our people, O manitou, have we given to your keeping. I see you rising in the spray, I feel your cold breath on my face; you have called the thunder birds out of the south to strike at us, and their black wings are spreading across the heaven. I hear your voice in rage, and our medicine-men who know its speech tell us that you demand this woman for your prey. It shall not be, for she is my wife." Cutting the cords that bound her, the chief raised her to her feet; she fell on his breast in gratitude, and the people hurried away from the coming storm, fearing an instant punishment for this act. The tempest passed, and none was harmed.
What the god could not enforce he could gain by fraud. He visited the wife in dreams, charging her to slay Keechimatik, because he was faithless to her. The husband had gone to the pool to fish. ​Little did he reck of the woman's changed heart, for she, under spell of these visions, had concealed herself behind the islet in the fall. A twang, a whir, and an arrow transfixes the heart of the chief. He crawls to his cave to die, while she, attempting to regain the shore, is caught in the mad current, and the manitou receives her at last with a howl of triumph.