"Now is the winter of our discontent." Shakespeare definitely said it best. Last weekend all but Florida in the contiguous United States had snow on the ground. Even when it was raining, people had reason to complain for, while snow melts slower with less flooding, California and Nevada were looking at a decade level of flooding even as it lessened their drought. It's not likely to improve, once we get past a brief warm-up, because the full moon was the 12th and the weather after that always seems to get worse. Possibly caused by the tides and then the storms off the ocean?
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| Great Slave Lake has one ice road known as the Dettah ice road, connecting Yellowknife, the Northwest Territories capital, to the small First Nations fishing community of Dettah -- also in the Northwest Territories. |
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I was torn between presenting a story from somewhere warm or one looking frankly at winter. Winter won out because it's so much easier to find. Today's story come from the Dene people of northwestern Alberta, Canada, and especially the country's southern Northwest Territories on the Mackenzie River from the people also known as the
Slavey or Slave Indians. Before you jump to wrong conclusions, they come from the Slave Lake region and "The people now known as
Slavey in English were not necessarily taken as slaves" Wikipedia cautions.
The story comes from a 1901 issue of
Journal of American Folk-Lore and is one of two stories read at the American Folk-Lore Society's annual meeting over a hundred years ago at the end of 1900.
Since I'm familiar with Michigan's Anishinaabe tale often called
"The Summer Maker" given here in 2013, I enjoyed its similarity at times, plus noted its prehistoric worldwide flood at the end. It's also wonderful in showing "It could be worse" since winter has a way of leaving me thinking the worst has happened.
Journal of American
Folk-Lore. Volume XIV (1901)
LEGENDS OF THE SLAVEY
INDIANS OF THE MAC-
KENZIE RIVER.
Read at the Twelfth
Annual Meeting of the American Folk- Lore Society at
Baltimore, Md., December
28, 1900.
I. THE LONG WINTER.
Before the present state
of the world was established, and when
there were as yet no men,
a very long winter set in. The sun was
never seen, the air was
dark, and thick clouds always covered the
sky and hung low down. It snowed continually. After this had
lasted three years, all the
animals were suffering very much from
want of food and still more from want of
heat. They became
greatly alarmed. A grand council was held, which beasts,
birds,
and fishes attended. It was noticed that no bears had been seen
for
three years, and that they were the only creatures which did
not go to the council.
The meeting decided that
the great thing was to find out what had
become of the heat, whose
long absence was the cause of all their
sufferings, and if
possible to bring it back again. In order to do this
they resolved that as
many of them as possible, representing all
classes, should go on a
search expedition to the upper world where
they thought the heat was
detained. When the council broke up
they all set out, and
after much travelling far and wide through the
air, some of them were
fortunate enough to find the door or opening
to the upper regions, and
they went in. Among those which were
fortunate enough to get
in were the lynx, the fox, the wolf, the car-
cajou, the mouse, the
pike, and the mari (dogfish or fresh-water ling).
After exploring for some
time they saw a lake and beside it a camp
with a fire burning. On
going to the camp they found two young
bears living there. They
asked the cubs where their mother was,
and were told she was off
hunting. In the tipi a number of full,
round bags were hanging
up. The visitors pointed to the first one
and asked the young
bears, —
" What is in this
bag ? "
" That," said
they, " is where our mother keeps the rain."
" And what is in
this one," pointing to the second bag.
" That," they
answered, " is the wind."
"And this one?"
" That is where
mother keeps the fog."
" And what may be in
this next one ? "
" Oh, we cannot let
you know that," said the cubs, "for our mother
told us it was a great
secret, and if we tell, she will be very angry
and will cuff our heads
when she returns."
" Oh, don't be
afraid," said the fox, "she will never know that you
told us."
Then the cubs answered,
" That is the bag where she keeps the
heat."
The visitors had
ascertained what they wanted, and they all went
out of the tipi to hold a
consultation. It was decided to retire to a
distance, as the old bear
might return at any time. But first they
advised the young bears
to keep a lookout for any deer (caribou)
which might come to the
opposite shore of the lake.
It was resolved that the
lynx should go round to the other side
of the lake, turn into a
deer, and show himself so as to attract the
attention of the young
bears. Meantime the mouse was to go into
the bear's canoe and gnaw
a deep cut in the handle of her paddle
close to the blade. The others
were all to conceal themselves near
the bear's tipi. The
scheme proved successful. When one of the
little bears saw the
supposed buck across the lake he cried out,
" Mother, mother,
look at the deer on the opposite shore." The old
bear immediately jumped
into her canoe, and paddled towards it.
The deer walked leisurely
along the beach pretending not to see the
canoe, so as to tempt the
bear to paddle up close to him. Then all
at once he doubled about
and ran the opposite way. The bear
hastened to turn her
canoe by a few powerful strokes, throwing her
whole weight on the
paddle, which broke suddenly where the mouse
had gnawed it ; and the
bear, falling at the same time on the side of
the canoe, upset herself
into the water. The other animals were
watching the hunt from
the opposite side, and as soon as. they saw
the bear floundering in
the water, they ran into the tipi, pulled down
the bag containing the
heat, and tugged it, one at a time, through the
air towards the opening
to the lower world from which they had
come. They hastened along
as fast as they could, but the bag was
very large, and none of
them were able to keep up the pace very
long ; but whenever one
became tired out, another would take the
bag, and so they all
hurried along at a rapid rate, for they knew that
the bear would soon get
ashore and return to her tipi, and that when
she discovered her loss
she would make haste to follow them. Sure
enough, she was soon in
hot pursuit, and had almost overtaken them
before they reached the
opening to the underworld. By this time
the stronger animals were
all exhausted, and now the mari took the
bag and pulled it along a
good way, and finally the pike caught it up
and managed to get it
through the hole just as the bear was upon
the party. But every one
of them passed safely through at the same
time, and the moment the
bag was within the underworld all the
animals seized upon it
and tore it open. The heat rushed out and
spread at once to all
parts of the world and quickly thawed the vast
accumulation of ice and
snow. Its rapid melting flooded the earth,
and the water rose till
it threatened to drown all the animals which
had survived the long
winter. Many of them saved their lives by
climbing up a
particularly big tree which was much taller than any
of the others in the
woods. There was also a high mountain which
others reached and were
saved. The poor beasts now cried loudly
for some one to remove
the water, and a great creature, something
like a fish, appeared and
drank it until he became as large as a moun-
tain. So the dry land
returned, and as summer had come again, the
trees and bushes and
flowers which had been covered by the ice
leaved out once more, and
from that time till now the world has
always been just as we
see it at the present day.
Robert Bell.
Ottawa, Canada.
Shortly after the story was presented and then published, another version was published by G.E.Jamme as
"Dogrib Legend of the Flood" in
The Coast, volume 11, pages 180-181 and can be found in a free Google Books publication. Jamme spends some time in his 1906 article telling about his hearing the story from the people at Great Slave Lake. Beyond that look at the story's original tellers, there are some interesting differences. I suggest also going to a book by the late
Ella Elizabeth Clark to read how she combines the two versions in her
Indian Legends of Canada.
However you choose to re-tell the story, it's definitely winter, the time when the Native Peoples of North America all told stories to get through the winter. I think that's a great idea!
*********************
Here's my closing for days when I have a story in
Keeping the Public in Public Domain.
*****************
This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, "Keeping the Public in
Public Domain." The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our
cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were
compensated. I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent
on works of the 20th century. My own library of folklore includes
so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from
them. I hope you enjoy discovering new
stories.
At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly
creates projects requiring
research as part of my
sharing stories with an audience. Whenever that research needs to be
shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that
week. This is a return to my regular posting of a
research project here. (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my
research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)
Response has convinced me that "Keeping the
Public in Public Domain" should continue along with
my other postings as often as I can manage it.
Other Public Domain story resources I recommend -
- There are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for
folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's database, Yashpeh, the International Folktales Collection. I have long recommended it and continue to do so. He has loaded Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or
expression you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
- You may have noticed I'm no longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest
database, although his offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for
those of us seeking specific types of stories. There's another site, FairyTalez
claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales, folktales, and
fables" and they are "fully optimized for phones, tablets, and PCs",
free and presented without ads.
Between those two sites, there is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials,
"Wait, there's more!"
- The email list for storytellers, Storytell, discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional suggestions:
- David K. Brown - http://people.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/stories.html
- Karen Chace - http://karenchace.blogspot.com/search?q=public+domain
- Richard Martin - http://www.tellatale.eu/tales_page.html
- Spirit of Trees - http://spiritoftrees.org/featured-folktales
- Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/
- Tim Sheppard - http://www.timsheppard.co.uk/story/storylinks.html
This reminds me, you're going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine
to find some of these old links. Tim's site is so huge, probably
updating it would be a full-time job. In the case of Story-Lovers, it's
great that Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online after she could no
longer maintain it. For an example of using the "Wayback Machine", list
member, Papa
Joe is on both Time Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer
maintains his old Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his
Library (something you want to see!) is gone, but you can still see
it. I put in his site's address, then chose 2006 since it was a later
year and clicked until I reached the Library at
http://www.pjtss.net/library/.
You can see why I recommend these to you.
Have fun discovering even more stories!
