Myths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 06 : Central States and Great Lakes — A Reader’s Guide

Historical Settings as Story Frames

Skinner anchors many legends in specific times and places. "An Averted Peril" opens with a precise date—1786—and a named location: North Bend, Ohio, near the junction of the Miami and Ohio Rivers. The blockhouse serves as both a real defensive structure and a stage for intercultural tension. Similarly, the mill in Detroit ("Two Revenges") is identified by street—"the foot of Twenty-fourth Street"—and torn down in 1795, grounding the ghost story in a verifiable timeline.

These details lend credibility to otherwise fantastical events. The reader encounters not a vague "long ago" but a world where treaties, blockhouses, and millers’ adoptions are documented facts. Skinner’s method is to embed the supernatural within the mundane, making the strange seem plausible.

Recurring Motifs: The Supernatural and the Senses

Several excerpts share sensory motifs that signal danger or otherness. In the Grosse Isle tale, the "rolling muff" is feared because meeting it foretells trouble; it can be driven off by holding a cross or asking about Christmas. The encounter leaves an odor—"not of sanctity"—on the witness’s garments, which neighbors attribute to a skunk. This blend of folk belief and earthy humor recurs in "The Nain Rouge," where a devil’s baptism is suspected.

Visual signs also recur: a candle in a window ("Two Revenges"), a girl’s ghost carrying a candle, and the white stone canoe of Hiawatha. These repeated images create a cohesive symbolic language across disparate tales.

The Figure of the Shape-Shifting Hero

The excerpt on Hiawatha presents him as a Messianic figure who "could change his form to any shape of bird, fish, or plant." This ability to transcend physical limits mirrors the transformative power of storytelling itself. Skinner notes that Hiawatha is known by different names—Manabozho around the lakes, Glooskap in the East—indicating a fluid oral tradition.

The hero’s adventures include being swallowed by a giant fish and killing it from within, a motif familiar from other mythologies. Yet Skinner emphasizes Hiawatha’s human experiences: he marries Minnehaha, hunts, and "suffered the common pains and adversities of his kind." This duality—divine power and mortal vulnerability—makes the legend adaptable to different cultural contexts.

Violence as Narrative Catalyst

Many tales in this volume hinge on sudden, brutal acts. In "Two Revenges," Wasson kills the girl and Colonel Campbell with a hatchet; later, Kenen nearly stabs a couple before flinging his knife into the river. The violence is often impulsive, driven by jealousy or wounded pride, and its consequences are immediate: the mill is torn down, the white man is captured by Iroquois.

Skinner does not moralize extensively; instead, he lets the action speak. The deaths are reported matter-of-factly, and the supernatural aftermath—a ghost with a candle—serves as a lingering reminder. This economy of narration keeps the focus on the event itself, inviting readers to infer meaning.

Reading these excerpts sequentially reveals Skinner’s editorial hand: he selects tales that balance historical grounding with folkloric wonder, often ending with a haunting image or a moral twist. The volume does not attempt a comprehensive survey but rather a curated collection that highlights the region’s cultural crossroads. Readers may find it useful to note how each story’s setting—a blockhouse, a mill, a lake—shapes its supernatural elements, and how the same motifs reappear in different guises.