The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-03
SOME DID OHIO
 SMOKE STORIES Tales of Serpents of EnOr-
 nous Size TOLD BY THE INDIANS One Giant Reptile Rolled Down the Hill Clearing Away All the L~ Timber As He s.4 Went
TOLD BY THE INDIANS

The first serpent of it's race which start
 ed out by destroying the prospects of the
 whole human family in the Garden of
 Eden, the Midgard serpent of Morse mythology and the almost equally ancient sea serpent of periodical bathing place lnotoriety have perhaps stimulated more |imagnations than any other individuals of their species, but none of them has anything to do with one fine collection Of
 snake stories which is familiar to every student of North American ethnology. These stories begin 1500 or perhaps 200o years back, when the parent stock of all
 the Algonkian tribes still lived up in Can ada, northsof the Strait of MaclSinac and most of the Iroquoian family lived nortn
 of the St. Lawrence.
 The country south of the lakes. the Ohio valley, was the abiding place of tribe of serpents of tremendous size, who, when not doing business elsewhere were likely to appear suddenly and unexpected Fly in the Algonkian or the Iroquoian c0un- try, to the consternation of the peaceful human inhabitants. Sometimes q single serpent would come rolling across the country, his head sticking up like a fac tory chimney above the top of the tallest
 forest, and sometimes a party of them
 made day and night hideous for the wretched villagers. whom they regarded as suitable fare.
 | The first of these invaders, according to one Algonkian story, desired to destroy all human beings out of pure, unadu,ter- ated cussedness, trait showing his close Relationship the serpent of the Garden | of Eden. Not satisfied, apparently, with his own swallowing capacity for that pur- T monster, three other individuals of un- classified kind, and flood.
 | The flood and the monsters together ma 1 lterially reduced the Algonllian population, but the remainder climbed up on the Fur | tie Island, or MaclSinac, until A1ichabolI, | the Hercules of Algonkian mythology, came to their assistance and put a quletu5
 on the flood and its author together
 | Another Algonkian story preserved by the Chippewas is that a number of ser pents, perhaps to retaliate for the first ones defeat, attempted to blot Michabou himself out of the universe. They were taught the difference between a man war rior and a wideawake, full sized demigol
 when Michabou skinned the white chief snake of the party alive, and covering himself with the skin as sF convenient kind of armorplate chased the remaining rep tiles back into their own country before they realized that they had been headed in that direction.
 The 1roquoians, competitors of the AL gonkians in everything else, seem to have resolved early not to be outdone by the latter in the telling of snake stories. | The Sepecas relate that a serpent be- seged their forefathers in a fort on the | hill Cerundewah, in northern New York, by the effective process of coiing himself entirely around the fort. Some of .he n-
 mates, attempting to escape, walked down his throat, whereupon one of the tribe who from the inside of the defenses had prudently watched the disappearance of his relatives conceived the idea of ex- perimenting upon the monsters vitals with a poisoned arrow.
 | The expedient was so successful that the. serpent went rolling down the hill, clearing off the timber as he went, and disgorging the heads of the people whom he had swallowed into Lake Canandaigua.
 where they still remain, in the shape of Large black bolders. Some patriotic Sen eca, realizing the deficiencies of thls mar
 rative, seems to have improved upon it. | for his tribesmen have another version, asserting that two serpents besieged the | fort and that both were disposed of by a reckless young warrior who made love to the female snake of the pair.
 | The Tuscaroras apparently understood
 that the snake idea per SC had been de- , ,veloped to the limit in the Seneca legend
 and therefore to acquit themselves cred itably added horns to the enormous rep tile, which, they affirm, once appeared south of Lake Ontario provided with a | breath so poisonous that multitude of the | Iroquoians died from inhaling the infected atmosphere The last snake of the series l so far outclassed the Seneca serpent in lformidableness that presumably poisoned arrows were inadequate to the occasion, for storm of thunderbolts was required | to expel him from the Iroquois country. | The indestructibleness of this horned serpent so impressed the imaginatioas of
 the Cherokees that they believe hiln to be still in existence and in some of Their
 sacred formulas invoke his favor and help as great medicine god
 Some archaeologists don ot regard these tales as mere examples of the human minds inherited ambition to excel in snake fiction. They recognize them as myths, that is historical accounts with most of the facts left out and the re- mainder popuarly exaggerated.
 They find other statements in the an- cient histories of the Algonbian and Iro- quoian tribes which show clearly that the
 monstrous snakes were really human tribes, who,-li like the ancient Mexicans and Central Americans, worshpped a snake god along with the sun deity. These snake people built more than one carthen rep resentative of their ophidian deity in what is now southwestern Ohio. The celebrated Serpent Mound in Adams coun- ty, Ohio, which is a quarter of a mile long, seems to be the model form which the Algonlkian and Troquoan historians got their ideas of proportion in describing the size of their forefathers' adversarics