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Overview

Peter Toney’s Story of a Kookwés begins with children hunting and a giant hunting people. He slaps his chest to imitate the drumming of a cock-partridge, luring the boys close enough to seize them. Hair-covered and immensely strong, he tries to kill them against a stone but mistakes an anthill for one. All but one survive stunned. He carries them home in a large birch-bark vessel strapped to his back.

When the boys revive, one uses a knife to cut an escape hole. They time the cutting to the noise of branches rattling against the bark so their captor does not notice. The survivors slip out one after another. His strength is so great that their diminishing weight does not alert him. At home he boasts to a companion, discovers only the dead child remains and begins roasting that victim.

The escaped children raise the alarm. Armed men reach the giants before the meal is ready and shoot them silently. The captor interprets the arrows as a pain in his side and sinks down as if falling asleep; his companion mocks his drowsiness, then is killed in the same manner. The child already killed is not restored. Rand explicitly says Toney supplied the story to illustrate the giants’ stupidity alongside their strength; his subsequent comparison with European giant tales is editorial interpretation.

Partridge-drumming imitationHair-covered immense bodyBirch-bark carrying vesselStrength masks prisoners’ escape
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Origins & earliest records

Silas Tertius Rand, Legends of the Micmacs, edited by Helen L. Webster (New York and London: Longmans, Green,1894). Tale XXIII explicitly names Peter Toney as the teller. Webster’s preface describes Rand’s English retellings from Mi’kmaw narration, checked by reading back to the teller; original-language narratives were not preserved with these translations.

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Records & interpretation

Complete tale XXIII, Story of a Kookwés, pp. 183–184, including Toney’s attribution and Rand’s comparative closing note. The generic giant category is illustrated by this named teller’s complete episode, without assuming every Kookwés story has the same ending.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

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    Legends of the Micmacs

    Silas Tertius Rand; edited by Helen L. Webster; story told by Peter Toney · 1894

    Complete XXIII, Story of a Kookwés, pp.183–184; translation/editorial prefacev–ix.

Family & connections

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Located primary passages

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Legends of the Micmacs

New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1894, Wellesley Philological Publications; Silas Tertius Rand’s English translations edited by Helen L. Webster. Preface dated November 1893 read completely; selected episodes independently read from retained original-volume OCR.

  1. Peter Toney’s cannibal giant is physically strong but fails to understand the children’s escape or the attack on him.

    XXIII, Story of a Kookwés, pp.183–184, complete story and contributor note

Preface says original Mi’kmaq narrations were not preserved: Rand wrote English from memory aided by notes and read it back for corrections. Webster edited for clarity. No universal living-tradition claim, original-language collation or endorsement of colonial comparisons.

References

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  1. Primary textRand1894 original collectionResearch access: 2026-10-05

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