champions of both groups was quickly transformed
into a month-long party-a “jump-up” on the
beach, during which festivities, according to legend,
rum was invented.
So long as the Native Peoples would live in har-
mony with Nature, the “Shining Ones From Over
The Big Sea Water” (as they were called) were
content to live in harmony with them.
Robin and the Pixies of Britain gave lessons in
archery to the Catawba braves, who passed their
skill in bowmanship along to the neighboring Cher-
okee and Teton Sioux. Leshy and Vily, from the
forests of Muscovy, instructed the Mohicans in
woodcraft, teaching them to move silently and in-
visibly through the trees-a skill which (learned au-
thorities say) the Mohicans possessed to the Last.
The fabulous carpet weaving techniques of the
Ojinn and Peri were admired and then mastered by
the people who were their neighbors in the vast and
pleasant desert regions of the New World’s South-
west. (It was the sort of place to which the Spirits of
Araby were naturally attracted).
Among the native customs quickly adopted by
some of the Fairy newcomers was the smoking of
To-Bacco–a vice to which the Leprechauns, es-
pecially, were susceptible.
How long the Fairy Folk of the Old World dwelt
peacefully among the natives of the New, no one
knows. There are certainly enough “Indian Myths”
to establish the historical veracity of the immigration
and cohabitation: stories and poems about “Bright
Visitors From a Far Place” abound.
Yet when mortal men of Europe, Africa, and the
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