Folktales and Legends of the Middle West Read online

  Also by Edward McClelland

  How to Speak Midwestern

  Nothin’ But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hope of America’s Industrial Heartland

  Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President

  The Third Coast: Sailors, Strippers, Fisherman, Folksingers, Long-Haired Ojibway Painters and God-Save-the-Queen Monarchists of the Great Lakes

  Horseplayers: Life at the Track

  TO MY DAUGHTER

  Lark

  Text copyright © 2018 by Edward McClelland

  Illustrations copyright © 2018 by David Wilson

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition 2018

  ISBN: 978-0-9980188-1-2

  Belt Publishing

  2306 West 17th Street, Suite 4,

  Cleveland, OH 44113

  www.beltpublishing.com

  Cover art and book design by David Wilson

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  HOW TURTLE HELPED CREATE THE WORLD

  NANABOZHO: THE OJIBWAY SUPERHERO

  COYOTE: TRICKSTER OF THE GREAT PLAINS

  THE LEGEND OF THE SLEEPING BEAR

  NAIN ROUGE: THE DEMON WHO HAUNTS DETROIT

  THE VOYAGEUR’S BEACON

  MIKE FINK AND THE PIRATES OF OHIO

  FEBOLD FEBOLDSON: NEBRASKA’S PRAIRIE GENIUS

  PEG LEG JOE AND THE SONGS OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

  PAUL BUNYAN’S TALLEST TALE

  THE HODAG: TERROR OF THE NORTH WOODS

  JOE MAGARAC: MAN OF STEEL

  THE WABASH CANNONBALL

  RESURRECTION MARY

  ROSIE THE RIVETER

  THE GHOST SHIP OF THE GREAT LAKES

  BESSIE, THE LAKE ERIE MONSTER

  INTRODUCTION

  “Have you ever heard of the hodag?” I asked an old colleague from my newspaper days. We were having this conversation over Leinenkugel’s and fried cheese curds at one of the several dozen bars in Hurley, Wisconsin, 200-odd miles northwest of Green Bay.

  “What,” asked my friend, with the newsman’s skepticism, “is a hodag?”

  “A hodag,” I explained, “is a fanged, scaly creature that once terrorized the North Woods around Rhinelander. They survived by eating white bulldogs, and then only on Sundays.”

  “Why have I never heard of hodags?” he asked.

  “Well, they’re extinct. They emerged from the cremated carcasses of abused work oxen. The hodag was the embodiment of all the anger those oxen stored up at their ill treatment by foul-mouthed drovers. Of course, oxen no longer haul logs in the lumber camps, so there are no more hodags.”

  “That story is made up, right?” my friend said.

  “Every story you’ve ever read is made up,” I replied. “Words don’t magically appear on paper. Someone has to write them down.”

  “What I mean,” he said, “is that it’s not true; it’s not something I could print in my newspaper.”

  “You can print anything in a newspaper if you have a printing press and a barrel of ink. A newspaper in Rhinelander was the first to write about the hodag.”

  I understood my friend’s skepticism. I spent a year as a police reporter in my hometown of Lansing, Michigan, where I was taught never to write anything unless it could be verified by an eyewitness. But after years of researching and traveling around America’s Middle West, I have become convinced that the folktales, legends, and ghost stories we tell each other are just as true and relevant as anything I ever wrote in a newspaper. To me, the story of how Babe the Blue Ox’s footprints filled with water to become Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes is perfectly true—and is frankly more interesting than the “official” version about slowly melting glaciers. Likewise the Huron creation tale, which begins with a woman falling through a hole in the sky, onto the back of a giant turtle. And LaSalle’s lost ship, Le Griffon, returning as a ghost to haunt Great Lakes sailors. I have no more reason to doubt the truth of that than I do the historical accounts of LaSalle walking from Peoria to Montreal to obtain supplies for a new ship. I didn’t witness either event, but I read about them both in books.

  I believe almost all stories have some truth in them. Newspapers and history books are good for a certain… statistical accounting of the past, but they tend to be written by people who don’t understand the difference between the facts and the truth. What I mean by that is simple: a fundamentalist would say the Bible is both factual and true; an atheist would say it’s neither. But a discerning reader understands that while Biblical stories may not be consistent with science, they contain moral lessons that can help him lead a better life. Certainly this is true of the Coyote stories told by the Plains Indians. Coyote, a classic trickster character, is always coming up with schemes to get food from the other animals because he’s too lazy to hunt. Usually, he ends up outsmarting himself and getting into more trouble than he was in before. It’s a lesson in the dangers of thinking you’re too smart to work hard. Likewise the tale of Nain Rouge, who has haunted Detroit for over 300 years, ever since the city’s founder, Cadillac, struck him with a cane, ignoring a fortune-teller’s warning to treat the little red demon with solicitude. Detroit has suffered mightily as a result of Cadillac’s arrogance. Everyone should listen to fortunetellers, no matter how mean or disreputable they may appear. Even French noblemen.

  Beyond the moral lessons, these stories contain history lessons as well. Reading about Paul Bunyan, the mythical North Woods logger, or Mike Fink, the Ohio River keelboatman, or Febold Feboldson, the Nebraska pioneer, or Joe Magarac, the Pittsburgh steelworker, will teach you just as much about the people who settled and developed the Middle West as reading France and England in North America or watching The Plow that Broke the Plains. Maybe more, because these are stories told by lumberjacks, sailors, keelboatmen, steelworkers, and other folks who make the world go round. They’re “alternative history,” to adapt a contemporary term to my own purposes. They constitute a rich history of the Middle West, as told through its myths and legends, which may be a truer history than any bound by the facts.

  I read my friend the story about the hodag, which appears on page 100 of this book. I still don’t think he believes it’s true. Read it yourself, and see what you think.

  Chicago, Illinois

  December 2017

  HOW TURTLE HELPED CREATE THE WORLD

  f you’ve ever heard North America referred to as “Turtle Island,” you already know a little bit about the creation story told by the Iroquois, a confederation of six nations who dominated the eastern Great Lakes before the arrival of the French and the English. According to the Iroquois, the Earth rests on a great turtle whose back was a landing pad for the first woman, who fell into our world from the sky. There are almost as many versions of this tale as there are Iroquois nations; this one was heard among the Mohawk in the early nineteenth century.

  There is a world above ours, above the sky, where deer bound through evergreen forests, the rivers and streams flow with trout, and the corn grows without planting, plowing, or even rain. The sun is never dimmed by clouds, and the people know no illness, old age, or death.

  Free as they are of material cares, the people in this celestial paradise are not free of jealousy or wrath. The story of our own world begins with a man who was consumed by both. He was wealthy, even for that land of abundance, and he was married to a young woman named Ataentsic, whom he suspected of carrying ano
ther man’s child. One hot afternoon, he sent his pregnant wife to fetch a dipper of water from the spring. On the way back to the house, Ataentsic offered a drink to a sweaty young lacrosse player. In the jealous husband’s mind, this was proof of her infidelity. Enraged, he ordered his servants to uproot a white pine and force his wife into the hole left behind.

  The servants pushed Ataentsic in so deep that she broke through the barrier between the upper and lower worlds, and began falling, falling, falling through our sky. As she fell, she grabbed the roots of a strawberry plant and a tobacco plant, so she would have something to eat and comfort her when she landed.

  Our world was all water then, so only the aquatic creatures lived in it. A muskrat, who always swam with his head about the surface, was the first to spy the tumbling figure.

  “Something is coming from the sky!” he shouted.

  A loon flew upward to see what it was, and returned to report that a woman was headed their way. The muskrat and the loon held a council with the beaver, the mink, and the turtle to decide who could support this woman on his back. Everyone volunteered, but only the turtle’s shell was broad or sturdy for this creature to stand on.

  “We need some earth to provide her a place to land,” the muskrat announced. He dove beneath the surface, but returned with empty paws.

  “If I go any deeper I will drown,” he said.

  The beaver dove down a little further, but could not reach the bottom. Finally, the mink tried, and surfaced with a clod of dirt stuck to his claw. He set it on the turtle’s shell. From this seed of soil grew the land we know today.

  The loon flew upward again, and conducted Ataentsic downward on his back. By the time she landed, that speck of dirt had grown to the size of a human foot, so she could stand with one foot atop the other. Soon, she was able to sit down; a few days later, she was living on an island where streams ran beside red willows. Ataentsic planted her tobacco and strawberry, and these were the world’s first crops.

  By the time Ataentsic was ready to give birth, the speck of dirt had grown into the continents we know today. She lay down beneath the red willow and delivered a daughter. When she grew to womanhood, this girl was courted by all the animals, who transformed themselves into young men to press their suits. First came the loon. He was tall and handsome, with beautiful feathers, but Ataentsic thought a creature of the air would be flighty and unreliable, and forbade her daughter to marry him. Then came the beaver, but he was a creature of the dirt, living in a lodge made of sticks and always digging in the mud, so he, too, was an unacceptable suitor. Finally, the turtle courted the girl. He was short and hump-backed, but Ataentsic remembered the creature who had given her a place to stand in this world. “Marry this one,” she whispered to her daughter.

  On their wedding night, after the girl had gone to sleep, the turtle placed crossed arrows on her belly—one tipped with bark, the other with flint. That night, the girl had become pregnant with twin boys. One was born in the natural way, but the other, impatient and envious of seeing his brother emerge first, fought his way out through his mother’s armpit, killing her as he came into the world. The twins were raised by their grandmother Ataentsic. The elder was called Thaluhyawuku, or Sky-holder. The younger was called Tawiskalu, or Flint, and his body was made of that hard mineral. Flint hunted with the flint-tipped arrow his father had left him, while Sky-holder’s arrow was flimsy bark.

  These two brothers filled the world with rivers, plants, and animals. They also filled it with good and evil, happiness and sorrow, plenty and hunger. Sky-holder created the game animals: deer, bison, elk, moose. Flint hunted the animals and confined them in a cave. When Sky-holder discovered the cave and set the animals free, Flint created the wolf and the cougar to eat them. Flint placed bones in fish and thorns on berries. He added winter to the seasons, but Sky-holder ensured that the animals would wake from their hibernations and the trees would bud again, so spring would follow.

  Finally, Sky-holder made a man and a woman out of red clay.

  “The Earth and all that is in it is yours,” he told the first people. “Go, and raise a family.”

  Flint tried to make his own people out of clay, but his first effort had a tail and became the monkey. His second effort had no tail and became the ape. At last, he made a man and a woman out of white sea foam, a fair race that was sent to live on the other side of the ocean.

  There was another source of dissension between the twins: Sky-holder’s bark arrow could only kill birds, and Flint only shared the animals killed by his arrow with Ataentsic. Because he brought his grandmother game, she came to favor her younger grandson.

  One day, Sky-holder was hunting birds by the lakeshore. His bark-tipped arrow, which had always flown true, missed its target and fell into the water. To retrieve it, he swam to the bottom of the lake where, to his surprise, he found himself in the home of his father, the turtle.

  “My son,” the turtle said, “I have seen how you struggle with your brother, and his designs to hold back you and the people you have created. I am your father, and I will show you how to overcome him.”

  The turtle handed Sky-holder an ear of maize, the food that would become the staple of the human race.

  “Take this and plant it,” he said. “It will allow the people to feed themselves when the hunt fails. Your brother treats you badly now, but his wickedness will grow worse. You must kill him, so he can place no more obstacles in the people’s way. Gather all the flint and buck’s horns you can find: only these are hard enough to pierce his skin.”

  Back on land, Sky-holder set out to hunt in the forest. When he was returning to his hut, he heard a voice call his mother’s name. It was a fawn. Sky-holder followed the fawn until autumn, and gathered its shed horns. For seven years he tracked the fawn, until it was a strong buck with a ten-point rack. He also collected flint stones wherever he traveled, hiding them in a hole in his hut, which he covered with a reed mat. When he was fully prepared to battle with his evil twin, Sky-holder cooked Flint a heavy meal of venison, maize, squash, and beans. The meal was so filling that when Flint finished it, he repaired to his hut for a nap. Once Flint was asleep, Sky-holder built a fire outside his door. The heat caused the stones on Flint’s body to expand and burst off in scales. Flint raced to the swamp, to cool himself and collect bulrushes, which he knew were the only substance that could hurt Sky-holder. They battled all night, and all the next day, but Sky-holder was so well provisioned with flint and buck horns that he prevailed.

  Since Flint was descended from the gods and could not be killed, Sky-holder threw him over the edge of the world. He now rules the night and the underworld, and whenever he is angry, volcanoes erupt.

  NANABOZHO: THE OJIBWAY SUPERHERO

  his tale might be familiar to you if you’ve read The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow set to poetry The Algic Researches, a book of Ojibway legends collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an Indian agent who operated in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the 1820s and was married to an Ojibway woman. Longfellow’s title character was based on the Ojibway demigod Nanabozho, who lived around Lake Superior. The name Hiawatha came from the legendary founder of the Iroquois Confederacy, who lived around Lake Erie. Longfellow thought “Nanabozho” and “Hiawatha” were two names for the same person, and apparently he judged the latter to sound more musical. This is a story of the Ojibway superhero, told under his real name.

  Nanabozho grew up in the lodge of his grandmother, Nokomis, who lived between the water of Kitchi-gami, greatest of the Great Lakes, and the prairie where the wild rice grows. Nanabozho was different from other children: He could speak to the loon and the moose, and he could take on the shape of the beaver or the oak tree. But Nanabozho was also different because he had no mother or father. When he reached manhood, he asked his grandmother about his parents.

  “Nanabozho,” she told him, “you are a young man, and you were born to live among people, but your ancestors are not of the Earth.
I am a daughter of the moon. Soon after I was married, a rival who was envious of my husband lured me to a grapevine swing on the shore of a lake and pushed me out over the water. I fell through and landed here on the Earth, where I gave birth to your mother, Wenonah. I warned her always to be on guard against the West Wind, Mudjikeewis, and never let it take her unawares. But one day she stooped to pick an orchid, and the wind blew off her robe. In a single instant, Mudjikeewis began your life and ended your mother’s. I found you in the woods, on the spot where your mother had last stood. You were less than a baby even, and from that I raised you.”

  After hearing this story, Nanabozho determined to confront his father, Mudjikeewis. Strong enough to stalk deer for days without rest or to paddle a canoe the breadth of the lake, the young man was ready to undertake his first quest. Mudjikeewis had obtained his power when he and his nine brothers overcame the Mammoth Bear and stole from him the sacred belt of wampum. As a spoil of that conquest, Mudjikeewis became Father of Winds. For himself, he took control of the West, the strongest wind. To the sons of his wife, he gave the North, the South, and the East. But to Nanabozho, his illegitimate offspring, Mudjikeewis had given nothing.

  Mudjikeewis lived atop a mountain far to the west, but Nanabozho could cover an acre with every stride. A few mornings after beginning his journey, he came face to face with his father on the peak. Mudjikeewis seemed pleased to meet his son and had no reason to suspect Nanabozho’s hostility. They talked for many days, during which Nanabozho got his father to admit he had caused Wenonah’s death. After hearing this, Nanabozho decided to punish the old man.

  When Nanabozho felt he had fully gained his father’s trust, Nanabozho asked his father, “What do you fear most?”

  “Nothing!” Mudjikeewis bellowed, standing and puffing out his chest.