Folktales and Legends of the Middle West Read online

  “There must be something, Father,” Nanabozho said. “No one is fearless, or immune from harm.”

  Mudjikeewis felt he owed the truth to his son, so he finally admitted, “There is a black stone that would hurt me badly if it touches my body.”

  Mudjikeewis asked his son the same question. Since his father had confessed, Nanabozho felt honor-bound to do the same, and admitted it was the root of the bulrush.

  “I will find the black rock,” Nanabozho said, standing up.

  “If you do,” Mudjikeewis rejoined, “I will find the bulrush.”

  When Nanabozho and Mudjikeewis returned to the mountaintop, each carried a piece of the substance that could wound the other.

  Nanabozho struck first, bashing the rock against his father’s breast. Father and son fell into combat. Their fight carried them over rivers, lakes, meadows, and mountains. As they tussled on Isle Royale, the largest island in Kitchi-gami, Nanabozho smashed the rock against his father’s head, breaking off fragments that would form the Greenstone Ridge. By the time they reached the end of the world, Nanabozho had injured his father badly, but Mudjikeewis fought on, lashing Nanabozho’s flesh with the bulrush root.

  “Nanabozho,” Mudjikeewis implored, “you must end this fight. The Father of Winds is immortal. If you stop now, I will give you the power to vanquish manitos and windigos, the monsters that bedevil the people of the Earth. And when you have conquered them, I will give you your birthright: you will share control of the North Wind with your half-brother, Kabibboonocca.”

  Realizing that he could never kill his father, Nanabozho decided to be satisfied with teaching him a lesson, and with a chance to earn a rightful share of his inheritance. When the young man returned to his grandmother’s lodge, she healed the bloody cuts and purple bruises Mudjikeewis had inflicted on him. As she tended him, Nokomis told Nanabozho another story about his ancestry.

  “After I fell through the lake, your grandfather followed me to the Earth, in search of myself and your mother. Before he could find us, he was killed by a windigo—Megissogwan, the Pearl Feather.”

  As she talked, Nokomis touched her thin, brittle white hair.

  “When your grandfather was alive,” she said, “I always had oil to keep my hair lush and supple; now my hair is falling out.”

  Nanabozho promised to obtain oil for his grandmother’s hair, and to avenge the killing of his grandfather. For each of those quests, he needed a canoe, because his people derived oil from fish, and because the Pearl Feather lived on the opposite shore of Kitchi-gami. He built a canoe from birch bark, binding it with the roots of the tamarack and the larch, sealing the seams with balsam and fir resin. He named the canoe Cheeman, and trained it to respond to his commands. Nanabozho ordered Cheeman to carry him far out into the lake, where dwelled Nahma, the great sturgeon who was King of Fish.

  Dropping his cedar bark line into the water, Nanabozho called, “King of Fish, take my bait!”

  The King of Fish knew Nanabozho was trying to catch him, so he ordered Maskenozha, the pike, to take the bait. Nanabozho pulled on his line. The weight on the other end was so great that Cheeman’s stern tipped toward the sky. This must be the King of Fish! But as his catch neared the surface, Nanabozho saw it was the pike.

  “Let go of my line,” Nanabozho scolded. “I’m not trying to catch a pike; I’m trying to catch the King of Fish.”

  The pike obeyed, and once again, Nanabozho called, “King of Fish! Take my bait!”

  This time, Nahma took the bait. When Nanabozho pulled the King of Fish to the surface, the creature swallowed both the canoe and the fisherman.

  “Blech! I just swallowed Nanabozho!” Nahma exclaimed. “Nanabozho, you’re the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. I’m going to throw you up!”

  If Nahma expelled him into the depths of the lake, Nanabozho knew that he would surely drown. Nanabozho tried to push the canoe lengthwise across Nahma’s throat, so the fish could not swallow or vomit, but he could not do it by himself. Thankfully, a squirrel had tagged along on this fishing trip without Nanabozho’s knowledge. With the squirrel’s help, Nanabozho wedged the canoe just right against Nahma’s giant jaws. Then he took out his war club and battered Nahma’s heart until it stopped beating.

  When the King of Fish washed up on the shore, Nanabozho and the squirrel were still trapped inside. However, the giant carcass attracted hungry gulls, who tore the flesh off its ribs until sunlight peeped through. Nanabozho peered out of the opening.

  “My younger brothers,” he called to the gulls. “Make the hole larger so I can crawl out.”

  When the gulls finished gorging themselves, Nanabozho and the squirrel slipped through Nahma’s ribs. He rewarded the birds with the title Kayosh, or “noble scratchers.” The squirrel he named Adjijuma, or “animal tail.”

  “Grandmother,” Nanabozho told Nokomis, back at her lodge, “you can find oil for your hair down at the lakeshore. Take all you need. I will use the rest for my next quest.”

  When Nanabozho finally paddled to The Pearl Feather’s lodge, he saw that it was surrounded by Pigiu-waugumee, or Pitchwater, a gooey, gummy slime that floated atop the water and entrapped anyone who touched it. Nanabozho planned to pass through by rubbing Nahma’s oil on his canoe. But the slime itself was guarded by two fire-breathing dragons. Killing them would require a quiver full of arrows. Nanabozho built a bow from maple wood, stringing it with deer sinew, but he had no arrows for his new bow. Only an old fletcher (as arrow makers are called), a friend of Nanabozho’s grandmother, knew the craft of arrowheads. So Nanabozho paddled back to the lodge and asked Nokomis to fetch him as many arrowheads as she could carry. While she was gone, Nanabozho told Nokomis, he would dance his war dance in the lodge, but secretly he followed her. He studied how the fletcher pounded flint into sharp and lethal points so he could learn the craft himself. He saw another unfamiliar sight, too: the fletcher’s daughter, a slender, long-haired girl named Minnehaha, which means Laughing Water. Nanabozho, who had lived with only his grandmother and the woodland animals for company, felt an unfamiliar fluttering in the pit of his stomach. After he conquered the Pearl Feather, he decided, he would return to the fletcher’s lodge to see Minnehaha.

  Nanabozho fasted seven days before his quest, purifying his body to win the favor of the spirits. Then he set off again across the lake, commanding Cheeman to take him to the serpents’ lair. As he approached, the serpents recognized him.

  “You shall not pass, Nanabozho!” they shouted.

  The serpents’ tails were as long as the tallest trees in the forest. Their flashing scales were every color on Earth: the blue of the lake, the yellow of the sun, the orange of the autumn leaves. They could not move, but their flames could incinerate a man a hundred paces away. To deceive the serpents, Nanabozho shot arrows between them, as though at a distant target. When they looked to see what he was trying to kill, Nanabozho ordered Cheeman to slip past them. Once he was behind the serpents, he shot them easily, since they could not turn to breathe their fire on him. Then, he rubbed oil on his canoe and glided through the sticky Pigiu-waugumee as though it were the smooth waters of the lake. He beached Cheeman just as the oil ran out, and climbed to the top of the hill where the Pearl Feather lived.

  Approaching the Pearl Feather’s lodge, Nanabozho shouted, “Surround the manito!” in three distinct voices, so the Pearl Feather would think himself besieged by enemies. When the manito emerged from his lodge to see who was attacking him, Nanabozho began firing arrows at him. But none of the old fletcher’s arrowheads could break through the Pearl Feather’s wampum armor. The manito chased Nanabozho with a club. When the Pearl Feather aimed a blow at Nanabozho’s head, the young man did a back flip and kicked the manito in the teeth. The manito tried striking Nanabozho’s feet, but Nanabozho jumped in the air and seized him in a headlock. After an entire day of combat, Nanabozho was exhausted. Only three arrows remained in his quiver. As he was beginning to fear he would meet the same fate as his grandfath
er, a woodpecker alighted on a nearby branch. The birds had always been Nanabozho’s friends and allies.

  “Nanabozho,” the woodpecker chirped, “shoot your arrows at the lock of hair on the crown of the manito’s head. Only there is he vulnerable.”

  Nanbozho quickly fired his last three arrows at the Pearl Feather’s topknot. The final arrow struck its target. Defeated, the manito collapsed face first in front of his lodge. Nanabozho scalped his grandfather’s killer and rubbed the blood on the woodpecker’s head, coloring those feathers red forever after.

  Cheeman bore his master home. As he approached his grandmother’s lodge, Nanabozho pounded his war drum triumphantly. Nokomis emerged to sing and dance on the shore. Nanabozho showed her the Pearl Feather’s scalp. Hearing of Nanabozho’s victory over the Pearl Feather, Mudjikeewis kept his promise and allowed his son to share control of the North Wind with Kabiboonacca. But Nanabozho could think only of another prize: Minnehaha. He sought her out and asked her to be his bride. Nokomis threw them a great wedding feast. The guests ate Nahma, the King of Fish, and Maskenozha, the pike. They ate pemmican and venison, bison and wild rice. Nanabozho’s friend, Chiababos, serenaded the couple with this song:

  “My heart sings to thee when thou art near; like the dancing branches to the wind, in the moon of strawberries.

  “Thy smiles cause my troubled heart to be brightened, as the sun makes to look like gold the ripple which the cold wind has created.”

  COYOTE: TRICKSTER OF THE GREAT PLAINS

  he Plains Indians told a lot of stories about the animals in their midst. They talked about the mother who told the owls to carry off her bad little girl, about how the turtle has a cracked shell because he was thrown into a fire, about how a little boy lopped off a prairie dog’s tail, ensuring that animal would always wag a stub there. But the animal they talked about most was Coyote.

  Coyote was the trickster of the Great Plains, always begging, wheedling, and deceiving the other animals into giving him a meal—or into-becoming one themselves. The trickster appears in the stories of people all over the world: the Norse had Loki; the slaves of the Southern plantations had Br’er Rabbit. Tricksters use smooth talk and guile to outwit their fellow creatures, with varying degrees of success. In Coyote’s case, sometimes his schemes worked out, as when he stole fire from the gods and gave it to the people. Just as often they backfired to great comic effect. The Plains Indians loved to recount Coyote’s adventures because they violated all the social taboos that ordinary members of the tribe had to follow. Here are a few I can tell you.

  I’ll start with a story in which Coyote comes off looking clever. One afternoon, Coyote was walking down a hill and saw a gaggle of turkeys. His mouth watered, and he tried to think of a way to put the turkeys in a vulnerable position. So he offered to teach them a new dance. To instruct them, he sang this song:

  Lift your necks high, then low/ Wave your tails, to and fro

  Turkeys aren’t very bright, so they followed Coyote’s instructions. When the turkeys lifted their necks, Coyote bit them, and took the birds home to cook for his wife and children.

  Just as often, though, Coyote was not as clever as he thought, and his tricks got him into trouble with animals more intelligent than himself. When Coyote was feeling too lazy to hunt his own meat, he stuck a thorn in his paw, and showed it to a raven.

  “Raven,” Coyote said, “I am hungry, but I stepped on a thorn and my paw is so tender I cannot run after the antelope.”

  Like all the animals, the raven was suspicious of Coyote, but took pity when Coyote showed him the thorn. The raven fired an arrow into the sky, which landed in his wing. When the raven pulled it out, there was a fatty chunk of buffalo meat on the tip, and he shared this bounty with Coyote. Coyote marveled at this trick. When the raven wasn’t looking, Coyote stole his bow and shot another arrow into the sky. The arrow landed in Coyote’s thigh, and he ran away screaming until he had the sense to pull it out, finding only his own flesh and blood there.

  And then there was the time Coyote spotted a rabbit and chased after him. Coyote hoped to eat the rabbit, but his prey escaped into a hole.

  “Rabbit, I am going to cook you and eat you,” Coyote shouted into the hole. “I’ll throw milkweeds in there and set them on fire to smoke you out. By the time you come out, you will be a delicious meal.”

  “I’ll simply eat the milkweeds,” the rabbit said.

  “Then I’ll throw sunflowers in there,” Coyote threatened.

  “I love sunflowers,” the rabbit said. “I’ll eat them and spit the seeds back at you.”

  “Very well. I will throw pinecones in there.”

  The rabbit was silent for a moment. “Pinecones are too hard and scaly to eat. Please don’t throw pinecones in my hole. Pinecones will kill me.”

  So Coyote gathered all the pinecones he could find and carried them back to the rabbit’s hole. He stuffed them in the opening, set them ablaze, and blew on the flames.

  “I am dying,” the rabbit wheezed. “If you blow any harder, the smoke will suffocate me!”

  Coyote put his snout to the hole to fan the flames. Just then, the rabbit turned and kicked the burning pinecones out of the hole with his long legs. Coyote’s fur burst into flames. He ran for miles until he found a stream to douse the fire.

  One of the most famous Coyote stories, one told by tribes all over the Plains, is about how Coyote talked his way into becoming a buffalo. There came a time when Coyote grew too old and tired to hunt or even to trick other animals into hunting for him. His fur had fallen out, leaving his once-lustrous coat mottled with mange. His teeth were too dull and loose to bite through a bison’s hide. His legs were too slow even to chase a prairie chicken. Despondent, he rested on a hillside, wondering how he would ever feed himself again. But then, he saw a young bull eating grass.

  “That bull has all the years of his life ahead of him, and grass to eat as far as the eye can see,” Coyote thought self-pityingly. “If I were a bull, I would never go hungry again, and I would have many more children.”

  Coyote walked gingerly down the hill on his sore legs. He approached the bull, who didn’t try to run away from such a sorry-looking sight.

  “What do you want, Coyote?” the bull asked suspiciously.

  “I want to be a young, strong bull like you,” Coyote said. “Bison are the most powerful creatures in the world. The people depend on you for everything: food for their fires, clothes for their backs, coverings for their tipis.”

  “I can change you into the shape of a bison, but I cannot grant you a bison’s power,” the bull said. “You will still be a coyote inside. If you find me a wallow, I will do this for you.”

  So Coyote hobbled across the prairie, exhausting his legs, until he found a wallow. The bull told Coyote to stand in it, then ran towards him head down, the point of his horn aimed at Coyote’s heart. Coyote leaped aside in fear.

  “Coyote, you must stand still,” the bull said. “If you run away, I cannot turn you into a bison.”

  Coyote decided that a quick death by goring was better than a slow death by starvation, so the next time the bull ran at him, he squeezed his eyes shut and didn’t move. The moment the horn grazed his chest, he was transformed into a bison.

  “Now, you can eat all the grass your belly can hold,” the bull said. Then he gave Coyote some tips for inhabiting his new body: “You must graze atop hills, so you can see hunters. Follow the ravines at night, and hide in the weeds. Always keep your nose to the wind, so you can smell people.”

  The new Coyote-Bison was young and strong again. He spent his days grazing in the sun, but he was lonely because he did not belong to a herd. Another old coyote approached him with a proposition.

  “Young bull,” the old coyote said. “I am old and starving and would like to eat grass all day like you. If you turn me into a bison like yourself, I will lead you to a herd with only one bull. We will run him off and have all the cows to ourselves.”

  “
I was not always a young bull,” Coyote-Bison said. “I was once an old coyote like yourself, but a bison turned me into this. Lead me to the herd, and I will do the same for you.”

  The old coyote led Coyote-Bison to the top of a hill, and pointed out where the herd was grazing. Coyote-Bison ran at him with his horn, but when he struck the old coyote, he didn’t turn him into a bison—he turned himself back into a sick, lame, helpless coyote! He was so angry he snarled at the old coyote until it ran away. Then he sought out the bull again.

  “Oh, bull,” he explained, “I was so excited to have young, strong legs again that I ran as fast I could. I tripped over a rock and turned into a coyote again. Please turn me back into a bison, or I will surely starve to death.”

  “Very well,” the bull said, “but from now on, you must stay close to me, because only I can turn you back into a buffalo.”

  For a second time, the bull ran at Coyote in a wallow. Once again he was Coyote-Bison, he joined the bull’s herd. The herd was hiding in a ravine when it was spotted by scouts from a nearby village, who ran home and told the hunters they had found enough bison to feed and clothe every man, woman, and child for the winter. The men of the village ambushed the herd, killing every animal except Coyote-Bison, whose youthful legs carried him faster than any of his fellows. The hunters pursued Coyote-Bison over hills and across ravines until he came to a cliff. Just as the hunters were about to shoot him, Coyote-Bison leapt over the precipice. As he fell, he was transformed back into his old coyote self.

  “I have escaped the hunters by becoming a coyote again,” he thought to himself. “What hunter wants the meat or the pelt of an old, broken-down coyote? Now I will go see the bull again. He will turn me back into a buffalo, and I will spend many more years happily grazing.”

  Once the hunters had returned to their village, Coyote hobbled back to the ravine. A journey that had taken an hour on bison legs took a day and a night on lame coyote legs. When he finally found the ravine, nothing remained of the herd—or of his friend the bull—but bones whitening in the sun. The hunters had stripped away all the hides and all the meat, leaving not even a morsel for a hungry old coyote.