Mateguas

The river was locked with ice, the snow lay deep on the plain, and Mahtigwess the Rabbit was hungry. He lived with his grandmother in a small lodge, waiting for better times. That is how the old stories bring him on: not as a god and not as a monster, but as a poor relation with an empty pot. Then one hard morning he came through the woods to a wigwam on the riverbank where the Otter lived, and he watched his host walk to the top of a smooth chute of ice, coast down it into the black water, and come up with a great bunch of eels. Rabbit went home with an idea. The idea nearly drowned him.

He moved the whole lodge to the lake, built himself an ice slide, invited the Otter to dinner, and then discovered that he could not slide. He went down sideways, hitching and jumping, and hit the water backwards. Of all the swimmers and divers in the world the Rabbit is the very worst, and this one was no better than his brothers. He lost his breath, thrashed, and was hauled out half frozen while his guest looked on. The Otter fished the meal himself, threw the catch down as a gift, and went home without tasting it.

It kept happening. He dined with the Woodpecker girls, who wore red head-dresses and ran up the trunks of trees as easily as walking, tapping here and there and gathering the small white insects the people called rice. So he invited them back, lashed the head of an eel-spear to his nose for a bill, and climbed. He got no rice. He got a red poll, which is to say a scalp torn open by his own fishing-point, and a wigwam full of birds trying not to laugh. He watched Mooin the Bear cut a thin slice from the sole of his own foot and drop it in the pot, where it swelled into a dinner for the whole house, and two days later he was whetting a knife on a stone and slicing at his own small thin soles while his guest growled, what on earth is the fellow doing. Each time his grandmother gave the same weary diagnosis. He has seen somebody do something, and he is trying to do likewise.

He was a terrible copier. What saved him was that he was a good original, and that he never gave up anything he had once begun. So he stopped trying to be an otter and a woodpecker and a bear, and instead he studied m’teoulin, magic, and he studied it so severely that in time he grew into an awful conjurer, able to raise ghosts, crops, storms or devils whenever he had need of them.

The proof of it is the chase. The Wild Cat, the Lusifee, went hunting with a gang of wolves and came home with nothing, and to save his standing he promised them the Rabbit. They found the lodge empty, reviled him, and ran off howling through the trees, and the Wild Cat swore by his tail that he would run the Rabbit down if it took forever. Rabbit heard him coming and made himself as magical as he could. He picked up a handful of wood chips, threw one as far as he could and jumped to it, for he had a charm for a long jump, and then threw another, and so on for a great distance, so that he left no scent and no track, and then he ran like the wind.

Night caught him. He had time only to trample down a little patch of snow, stick a spruce twig upright, and sit on it. The Wild Cat, arriving at a gasp, put his head into a fine warm wigwam, where a grave old man with grey hair and a majestic pair of very long ears told him kindly that rabbits were everywhere in these woods, dozens of them, and that a respectable guest was a blessing to a lonely household. The Wild Cat ate a good supper, slept hard by the fire, and woke on open heath in the snow with the wind going straight through his body, and nothing beside him but a trampled patch and a spruce twig. Out of that little, the Rabbit had built a house.

The next night it was a whole village, with a church in it, and a sermon on the wickedness of being vindictive and rapacious, preached by a grey ancient whose ears stood up over his cap like the two handles of a pitcher. The night after that it was a feast, a great fire, two pots of meat, and a chief with two beautiful daughters who asked the exhausted guest for a song. The Wild Cat, who was vain about his voice, sang about scalping every rabbit alive. Then the chief said that he too would sing, but that everyone must sit and shut their eyes, and Chief Rabbit cleared the heads of his guests at one bound and brought a tomahawk down into the Wild Cat’s skull. He woke again in slush, bleeding, starving, and swore by his tail, his teeth, his claws and his eyes.

There was a doctor after that, a kindly grey doctor with a strangely split nose and oddly yellow soles, who explained the nose with a story about hammering wampum and the soles with a story about pressing tobacco, and who dressed the wound with a cool salve and left a platter of delicate little biscuits and a beautiful pitcher of wine by the bed. In the morning the salve was hemlock needles and pine splinters packed into the open cut, the wine was a last summer’s pitcher-plant, and the biscuits were what you would expect to find on the floor of a warren. And at the end of it all, at the edge of a lake, the Rabbit seamed a chip with sorcery and threw it into the water, where it stood up as a tall ship under sail with flags flying and a fine grey captain on the deck in a cocked hat whose two points rose like horns. The Wild Cat plunged in after it, a flight of night-hawks came down out of the dusk with a sound like a volley of musketry, and he turned and swam for the dark old forest, where, if he is not dead, he is running still.

None of this is the shape the Rabbit was born in. Chee Mahtigwess, the Great Rabbit, was once heavy of body with a long and handsome tail, and he lost the tail helping a stranger. An old man had fallen into a pit and could not be lifted out, so Rabbit told him to catch hold of his tail and jumped, and the tail broke off short within an inch of the root. He simply said, catch hold of me round the waist instead, and jumped again, and brought the man up, and the weight came so near to breaking his back that his waist has been slender ever since. Later, at that same old man’s wedding, dancing with earrings on his heels because rabbits dance on their toes, he saw that the bride’s wet skirt was shrinking as she danced, and he ran and fetched a deerskin and twisted a cord to tie it, holding one end of the cord in his teeth and pulling with such earnest goodwill that he cut his upper lip clean through to the nose. That is why every rabbit since has worn a harelip. Each of his three deformities is a souvenir of trying to help somebody and getting it slightly wrong.

His powers all grow from the same root, which is that he cannot win a fair contest and knows it. He cannot fish, cannot climb, cannot swim, and has nothing in his body that will frighten anything. What he has is illusion, an unlimited appetite for humiliation, and a long jump. His limits grow from the same root. The magic is finite and it runs down: by the end of the chase he had almost come to the end of his m’teoulin and had just enough left for one more great effort. He wins nothing outright. He escapes, and he makes the pursuer look ridiculous, and he goes home to his grandmother, who is unimpressed.

Somewhere in the last century and a half the Rabbit picked up a second career that does not belong to him. Look the name up now and you will be told that Mateguas was the elder brother of Gluskabe, that he died and became ruler of the land of the dead, and that he was the first medeoulin and the founder of the Midewiwin, sending spiritual secrets back to his living brother from beyond the grave. It is a good story. It is a Great Lakes story. It belongs to Jiibayaabooz, also called Chibiabos, the Spirit Rabbit of the Ojibwe and the Potawatomi, the brother who died and became chief of the underworld and taught the rites of the vision quest, and the Midewiwin is an Anishinaabe institution of the Great Lakes, a very long way from the Penobscot and the Passamaquoddy. The Wabanaki word for magic, the word that runs through every real story about this rabbit, is m’teoulin. The two traditions each have a rabbit and each have a word that sounds like the other’s. It is not hard to see how one slid into the other.

The slide can almost be dated. The claim rests on a single uncited line in an encyclopedia entry, a line that links straight through to the article on the Ojibwe figure, whose own citations are Ojibwe from end to end. From there it was picked up by a series of horror novels set on an island off the coast of Maine, beginning in 2014, whose author footnoted that encyclopedia openly and said in as many words that she had taken liberties with the legends. Everything since has been repetition. What the Wabanaki themselves said about the Rabbit is stranger and better than a borrowed throne in the land of the dead: the Passamaquoddy made great account of him as their ancestor, and as the father of the Wabanaki. The most persistent failure in the woods turned out to be everybody’s grandfather.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Mateguas in Abenaki mythology?

Mateguas is the Rabbit, whose name is simply the Abenaki word for rabbit. He is known as Mahtigwess in Passamaquoddy and Ableegumooch in Mi’kmaq, and he appears across Wabanaki storytelling as a trickster and a powerful magician. The Passamaquoddy regarded him as their ancestor and as the father of the Wabanaki people.

What powers does Mateguas have?

Mateguas is a master of m’teoulin, the Wabanaki term for magic, and the stories say he could raise ghosts, crops, storms or devils at will. His signature power is illusion: he turns a spruce twig stuck in trampled snow into a warm wigwam, a scatter of branches into an entire village with a church in it, and a wood chip thrown in a lake into a tall ship under sail. He also has a charm for a long jump, which he uses to travel without leaving tracks.

Why does the rabbit have a split lip and a short tail?

Both are scars from failed attempts to help someone. Mateguas was once heavy-bodied with a long tail, and it broke off within an inch of the root when a man he was rescuing from a pit held onto it; the man’s weight on his second attempt nearly broke his back, which is why his waist is slender. At the same man’s wedding he cut his upper lip through to the nose while twisting a deerskin cord in his teeth to fix the bride’s shrinking skirt, and rabbits have had harelips ever since.

Is Mateguas the Abenaki god of the dead?

No reliable Wabanaki source supports that. The widely repeated claim that Mateguas was Gluskabe’s dead brother, ruler of the land of the dead and founder of the Midewiwin, traces to an uncited encyclopedia line that links to the Ojibwe figure Jiibayaabooz, also called Chibiabos, and it was popularised by a series of horror novels published from 2014. The Midewiwin is an Anishinaabe institution of the Great Lakes, not a Wabanaki one; the Wabanaki word for magic is m’teoulin, and Mateguas genuinely is a great m’teoulin, which is probably how the confusion began.

What is the most famous Mateguas story?

The chase with Lusifee the Wild Cat. After the Wild Cat swears to hunt him to death, Mateguas throws wood chips ahead of himself and jumps to them so as to leave no trail, then spends three nights conjuring illusions that lure his exhausted pursuer into false shelter, feed him imaginary suppers, and leave him waking in the open snow. It ends with the Rabbit splitting the Wild Cat’s skull with a tomahawk at a feast and then raising a phantom ship on a lake, after which the Wild Cat flees into the forest for good.

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