Even during his days as a young boy, it was clear to the elders that Animi-ma’lingan had a powerful companion spirit that watched over him—a spirit, perhaps, which must be feared. Thus, even as a boy, Animi-ma’lingan was given gifts of tobacco in the hope that his manito would smile on the giver.
As a youth, Animi-ma’lingan quickly gained the wisdom that comes with painful experience and disappointment. Unable to hunt or play the games of other boys, he attempted fishing, then the chipping of arrowheads, proving himself a negligible talent at best. But it was to the legends of the tribe that he turned most of his attention, and on many evenings while the other boys were still running and shrieking past sunset with their small bows and blunt spears, Animi-ma’lingan could be found with the eldest members of the band, speaking of the old ways and the times of their fathers and fathers before them. By the time he turned twenty summers, most called him simply the Old Man, a title of honor among the Anishinaabek.
“You are very strange,” the other boys taunted. But so strange that they gave him a wide berth, especially since the elders were ever hovering at his back, deeming him as bright as the sunrise for the attentions he paid them. That, and his mother was widely considered to be a witch in possession of an evil eye, capable of turning a bad boy into a toad, or worse.
In time, no one knew more about the band than the Old Man, Animi-ma’lingan, and then he moved on to the lore and histories of other bands until his fame spread as a scholar. Eventually, it came to pass that ancient warriors had themselves borne on litters to his village to whisper their stories in his ear, anxious to share the sunlight of their lives before passing to the land of the spirits. And he, Animi-ma’lingan, the Old Man, remembered every tale, and told them often around all the fires that filled the rest of his life.
Thus, at the youthful age of twenty-one, he was inducted by acclaim into the good hearts of the Mide-wi-win, the Society of the Shamans, where he was taught the secrets, songs, and medicine of the Ojibwe from many lives ago.
In those days, the great lodge of the Mide-wi-win was still located at the rapids of Boweting along the river where the waters of Kitchi Gami flowed into the great lake of the Wendats. Most of the Mide shamans were men who were ill-suited to be warriors or hunters; some preferred to dress in gaudy clothing, even as women, and to lie with other men. But this was not held against them, for they had been led by their dreams to their path in life, and dreams were sacred to the Anishinaabek.
Young Animi-ma’lingan was awestruck by the size of the Mide-wi-win lodge. Although his own village had been fairly large, its biggest lodge could hold forty people at best. But the grand lodge of the Mide-wi-win could hold three hundred. One hundred paces long and twenty wide, the lodge was partially sheathed with the branches of balsam firs, allowing crowds in the hundreds to view the ceremonies and magic within. The lodge was home to the shamans who had dedicated their lives to honoring and keeping Ojibwe’s secrets, and for their kindness and healing they were called the good-hearted ones.
But if they were good hearted, the shamans could also be stern. “Tell us how the earth was born,” the gruffest among them demanded on Animi-ma’lingan’s first night by their fire.
“Father, it was born of an egg,” Animi-ma’lingan replied without pause.
“An egg?” More than forty faces of the good hearts leaned closer in their circles around the fire, their faces as sharp as hawks. Eya, a lesser man would have shriveled under their gaze, but Animi-ma’lingan had the gift of a serpent’s tongue, quick as lightning.
“Yes, Father. When the egg hatched, it became the Great Turtle, and Kitchi Manito covered it with the earth. This is what we walk upon today.”
“And what laid this egg?” the shaman demanded.
Animi-ma’lingan stared into the fire, gazing up at the sparks floating like fireflies through the smoke hole above. Solemnly, he raised both hands to the twisting sparks. “You are testing me, Father,” he said, “but you know as well as I that it was our grandmother, the earth, who laid the egg.”
As an inductee, Animi-ma’lingan had permission to examine the birch scrolls, which told the story of the Ojibwe in pictures. There were hundreds of scrolls packed along the log shelves of the lodge, containing all of the secrets of the Ojibwe; their medicine, magic, and deeds of war. The shamans had also recorded messages from spirits and animals, legends, and records of times that had been both good and bad. Eya, Animi-ma’lingan also found maps of canoe routes through all of the Great Turtle Island leading to every direction: from the maze of lakes to the north to the salt waters far to the east and south and across the western plains to the wall of purple mountains. All this going back to the time of the Old Ones, the Great Flood, and perhaps even beyond to the time when men had married the animals and learned the secrets of survival.
The scrolls were fashioned of long strips of birch bark, longer than the height of a tall man and as wide as a forearm, stitched together with basswood slats.
One scroll, held most sacred, was so worn with age that its pictographs had faded to shadows.
“What does it mean?” Animi-ma’lingan asked the eldest Mide among them, said to have lived the span of nearly three generations. The old one was Wabeno, Man of the Dawn Sky, an interpreter of dreams. Since his childhood, Wabeno had often heard the voices of manitos speaking in his thoughts, and even the voice of Kitchi Manito, a frightening encounter. His face was as wrinkled and puckered as a withered crabapple.
The old priest sucked at his pipe and squinted at the scroll as if it would unravel its secrets on its own. “Once, it is claimed, many strings of lives ago, the Ojibwe, the Odaawaa, and the Potawatomi were all one people united as the Anishinaabek,” Wabeno said. “The pictures tell us that they lived in a town far to the east on the salt water. It was a large town, larger than one could see across from a high hill, and filled with thousands of our people.” The priest paused and relit his pipe with a pine splinter, his mind wandering elsewhere. Then he ran a finger as thin as that of a child’s below the pictures scribed in bark and began again. “But sickness overwhelmed them and Kitchi Manito sent our uncle Manabozho to lead them west,” he said. “A great, shining shell, a Mide shell, arose in the west, guiding them to their new home.
“The Anishinaabek gathered by the river that drains the big lakes to the sea and established a new Mide-wi-win lodge. Yet, once again they were destroyed by an illness which blew from the east. Again the Mide shell appeared in the sky to the west and they moved to the great falls of Kitchi-gaugeedjwung. Yet again came sickness and war, and one more time the magical shell of the Mide appeared in the sky, this time leading us to Boweting.” Wabeno pulled at his pipe, lost in some private memory of the past before returning to his story. “Each time, many hands erected a Mide-wi-win lodge so that we might remember the old ways which had been lost in the move. The old rites were spoken aloud once again and the Anishinaabek were made pure, whole. And my son, that is why you and I and the People are here today.”
“But what next, Father?” Animi-ma’lingan asked. “Will we be driven west again?”
Wabeno nodded and hummed. “Oh yes, yes, I think it will be. One more time, though you may not see the Mide shell in your lifetime.” Wabeno patted the young shaman’s shoulder and struggled to his feet. “You can keep looking,” he said, gesturing for Animi-ma’lingan to keep reading the pictures without him. But the scrolls were not easily read without the aid of an elder who knew what each picture meant. So Animi-ma’lingan carefully put the scroll back in its cover of deer hide for safe keeping.
So it was that for five years, Animi-ma’lingan sat with the shamans of the Mide-wi-win, studying the scrolls and their meaning. Some were mere nonsense, which even the oldest of the Mide could not understand, and some were old records of no significance, best used for kindling. But gradually, the story of the Anishinaabek was revealed, and he learned that before the beginning of time, there was nothing but the great salt water, Zhewitaganibi, in which there swam
a turtle as large as the earth itself. Feeling lonely, Kitchi Manito covered the turtle’s back with dirt and created the world. Then, the Great Spirit created plants, animals, and man for his amusement and to keep him company. But even then, his creation was not finished, for the first two men and women that he created could not speak, nor even think, and they often fell prey to hunger and sickness. So in his wisdom, Kitchi Manito sent Manabozho, the master of life, to earth to give human beings the gifts of speech and reasoning, and thus came the first shamans and the Mide-wi-win. Manabozho also gave the Mide-wi-win the drum, the rattle, and tobacco for use as medicine.
“It was then that the Anishinaabek were truly born,” Wabeno told Animi-ma’lingan. “Thereafter, Manabozho often walked among them in the guise of a kind-hearted man. But that was not all, for even then, the Anishinaabek were lost souls without the bonds of family and clan. From the depths of the sea rose six Mide spirits of immense power in human form, which entered the lodges of the Ojibwe to live among them. One of the Mide wore a blindfold, as his gaze was too powerful for men to behold. Unable to resist his curiosity, he removed the blindfold and struck a man dead.”
As punishment, the Mide spirit was sent back to the darkness from which he came, but the spirits who remained created the first five clans of the Ojibwe. “The clans brought our people together and gave us the bonds of kinship,” Wabeno said. “From these five clans there arose all of the other clans that we know today. And it was after this time of legends that the Anishinaabek built their town by the sea.”
“Father, where did we come from before this?” Animi-ma’lingan asked.
Wabeno waved the question away. “No one knows,” he said. “The time of the Great Flood and the Old Ones is lost to us, but the Anishinaabek have always had movement in their bones, always moving, first to the east, then to the west.”
At every move there had been battles as the Anishinaabek pushed into territory held by other tribes. The bloodiest had been with the catbird people of the Mundawaek. The Ojibwe had fallen upon them and wiped them from the earth. Those who survived were adopted into the tribe as the Marten clan.
Animi-ma’lingan learned that it was during this time of upheaval that the Anishinaabek had split into three peoples, with the Potawatomi heading southeast to learn the secrets of gardening, while the Odaawaa remained in the east, earning renown as traders. Only the Ojibwe kept moving west until they arrived at the hunting grounds of the Dakota and the Odugamies. The Odugamies were driven from the coast of Kitchi Gami and the Ojibwe had lived there ever since. Or so one story went.
Despite his years, Wabeno lived on, and Animi-ma’lingan came to call him Father, for he was the only true father the boy had ever known. One day as they sat smoking their pipes, speaking of simple things, Animi-ma’lingan asked where the Anishinaabek had lived before Kitchi Manito brought them to the earth.
Wabeno gave a little laugh. “Who can say?” he said. “This is a thing we will never know, along with other things more numerous than the birds in the sky. How can we know that grandmother earth laid a turtle egg as you told us by the fire so long ago? No one can truly know this. But I will tell you what I believe,” he continued. “Once, we lived in the sky, far up among the stars. And one day the men living there dug a hole in the sky and looked down upon the earth, finding it good. They saw animals, trees, rocks, water and all the things they did not have in the sky. But most of all, they saw women living there, and from that moment on they could not live without them. The men of the sky climbed down the Tree of Life, and we have been here ever since. And this is why when a hero dies among us, Kitchi Manito places his star back in the sky where the spirit trail wanders, for that is where men truly belong.”
At this Animi-ma’lingan nodded, his face strained pale in thought.
Wabeno laughed to look at him.
“Son, you are too serious,” he scoffed. “Who knows what is true?” He waved at the scrolls piled along the walls around them. “All of these scrolls are the work of men. Only the spirits know and they are often as tricky and deceiving as men themselves.”
“But the story of the town by the sea, that must surely be true,” Animi-ma’lingan said.
Wabeno answered with a shrug. “There is another scroll which claims that the Anishinaabek came from the land of the Cree far to the northeast where they lived by a saltwater bay that is shallow and bitter cold. And there are even older scrolls that say we came from where the north star lives. The scrolls say many things, and many have been lost through the years of our wanderings. Who is to say? When we meet our ancestors in the spirit land, we will know all.”
Soon thereafter, Wabeno and the elders of the Mide-wi-win gave Animi-ma’lingan a mission.
They sensed in him a restless spirit that would never be satisfied with the life of a djasakid, a juggler of spirits who worked on the patient’s mind to drive away illness. Nor was he suitable as a nenan dawiiwed, who healed through the use of herbs. Animi-ma’lingan had shown little aptitude for either, though he had received training in both. But the Mide-wi-win had need of a questing young man adept at soaking up tales and remembering them as if they had been spoken yesterday.
Late one afternoon, Animi-ma’lingan was summoned to the sweat lodge of the Mide priests. Leaving his clothing at the entrance, he entered to find Wabeno and the high-most elders of the Mide-wi-win sitting in a circle in the darkness, their faces lit only by the dim light of glowing rocks. Bearing wooden trays, two women carried smoldering rocks into the lodge, which had been warmed in a fire outside.
Animi-ma’lingan was directed to sit across from Wabeno, who held a bundle of grass. Wabeno dipped the leaves in a birch bucket of water, sprinkling the rocks to make them steam as he sang his thanks to Kitchi Manito. A pipe carved with the head of a raven was passed from north to east, south and west around the circle, offered to the four directions by each who drew on its shaft, arriving finally at Animi-ma’lingan.
“Brother, we have talked for many days of what use you may be to the Mide,” Wabeno began. “I myself have traveled among the spirits to ask what they have planned for you, as have others gathered here.”
Animi-ma’lingan held still, but his eyes widened in expectation. He felt like a quaking rabbit laid bare before the gaze of a wolf.
“The spirits told us nothing,” Wabeno said, spitting into the fire and chewing at his toothless gums. “But they are cunning and not given to revealing secrets,” he continued with a dry chuckle. “My son, they have marked you for something, a fate they hold close. But they have left it for us to set you on their path, and it is fate that we, too, have need of you.”
Animi-ma’lingan could see the old men of the Mide nodding within the gloom of the sweat lodge as the pipe began its rounds again. This time it was offered to the six directions, including the sky and the earth.
“There are shadows on the shore of the Turtle Island,” Wabeno said. “From the Misi Sipi in the west, to the salt water to the east, we have heard reports of dead men arriving for more than a lifetime now. They are wdjibbon, shadow men, who have no color, clan, nor women. No one knows how they live without these things.”
“Shadow men? Are they demons, Father?” Animi-ma’lingan asked, feeling suddenly very young amid the company of the elders.
“They may very well be,” Wabeno nodded in the darkness.
“Are they coming for us?”
“Who can say? But we will know them well enough if they do. Their faces are as shaggy as the flanks of a bear, and some appear to have been scalped, yet have no wounds to mark their heads. They are ugly and they smell. But this is not all.” Wabeno leaned closer and lowered his voice. “For the wdjibbon are just one of many troubles. The Haudenosaunee grow stronger in the east and there are raiders without end from the west. We are pressed between them like maize in the grinding stones. Even the Wendat cannot be trusted when they do not need our furs for their corn.”
“You have set the mountains before me, Father,” Animi-
ma’lingan said, spreading his hands as if to carry their weight. “How can I help? I am only a clubfoot and a poor learner of the Mide’s medicine.”
A smile crept over the creases of Wabeno’s face.
“You are called Outruns the Wolves for good reason,” he said. “And that is how we will use you, as the eyes and ears of the Mide-wi-win. When you leave here, it will be as a wandering trader, taking copper and furs to the four directions. You will bring home tobacco, maize, and trinkets for women, but more precious will be the memories of what you have learned. You will be our giimaabi.”
A spy. In his mind’s eye, Animi-ma’lingan saw himself wandering far south among the Potawatomi and beyond to dangerous places, perhaps to his death. Traders were not always welcome in faraway villages; sometimes they were singled out for death to avenge some grievance with a neighboring tribe, killed only because they spoke the same language or wore the same moccasins.
“No one will suspect you with your club foot,” Wabeno said, guessing his thoughts. “We will place you among friends and send you hidden in the company of others. Your task will be to simply look, listen, and return. You will survive by telling stories.”
“Father, I would be honored to be the eyes of the Mide-wi-win,” Animi-ma’lingan said without hesitation. There could be no other choice.
“I know, I know,” Wabeno said, nodding. “The spirits told me that much, at least.”
“But how will my stories protect me?”
Wabeno gazed at him through the darkness, his face as calm as the surface of a pond. “This I do not know,” he said at last. “But the spirits know.”
Windigo Moon Page 11