The village, and behind the village, was the great salt lake that stretched the sky. The sounds Anung had heard were coming from the waves on the shore of this great body of water and from the countless number of people constantly working and playing and talking and shouting in and around the village.
The water that went on forever and ever was so vast it first brought fear to Anung’s heart. And then confusion, for he had not known his eyes could see so far as this distant horizon. He had always been able to see land on the other side of any lake. But as he sat there and watched the waves begin as a far off swell and then come rolling in one after the other to curl and crest white before they crashed on the shore, he saw in it the beauty of the Great Creator and that comforted him.
After Anung studied the water that stretched the sky, he turned back to look at the village. He had never seen so much activity of life as was happening there. Everywhere there were people, many people, doing everything Anung had ever seen done before, and everywhere there were many people doing so many things he had never seen done before.
It was stunning to see so much at one time.
To imagine the splendor of this great village we are wise to begin to see it instead as an ancient city.
There were more longhouses than Anung could count. Each longhouse was the length of the race he would run against the boys of his village to see who was the fastest among them. Each longhouse was nearly as tall as two men standing on top of each other. And each longhouse had at least two and some had as many as four smoke holes and as Anung watched more smoke rose from more and more holes.
People exited from a longhouse and disappeared into another, they gathered in smalls groups in the open spaces to talk, they tended the cooking fires that grew in number, they shouted greetings and welcomed each new band of arrivals, and they all seemed to take on more activity as the day went on.
Anung was delighted to see how many different tribes were gathered here. He recognized many from the Three Fires, the Anishinaabe, Pottawattamie, and Odawa. The Wyandot were familiar now. But there were many varieties of hair dressings and many different clothing styles that he had never seen.
The city was surrounded three times.
Like a great chief, this city wore a collar, a necklace, and a breastplate.
The collar was the wall of tree trunk posts that surrounded the village. Each post was as tall as two men and was sharpened at the top to a point.
The great village’s necklace was made from the dwelling and shelters just outside the walls built by the travelers from nearby villages or far away tribes. So many people had come from other tribes there was no room for all these dwellings inside the city walls, so they had clustered in their own little villages of fully built domed wigwams or tall teepees or quickly assembled shelters covered with bark, or grass mats, or hides from moose or deer or buffalo. These were so numerous they fully surrounded the city walls and more were being constructed.
The city’s breastplate was the collection of large and many newly planted gardens. There were rows and rows of established gardens. New gardens were being carved out of the fields. The black earth was dotted with fresh green sprouts of the Three Sisters and of Asemaa and every other kind of plant.
The city and its villages and its gardens covered most of the broad flat plain that led to the beach.
The beach was white sand washed by the great waters. A team of men were pulling a canoe across the beach to the water. This canoe was made from a massive tree trunk and was as large as four canoes from Anung’s village. While Anung watched many men launched the canoe through the waves but only one man stayed on board. He paddled for a moment and then raised a post in the middle of the canoe, and the post had a hide attached and Anung watched as it caught the wind that pushed the canoe along. This was just one more strange wonder for Anung.
Off a rocky point men in smaller canoes were pulling in their nets filled with fish. If so many people could be in one place Anung wondered at the number of fish living in this great salt lake.
Some children chased birds on the beach. Some children chased other children as dogs ran at their sides. Anung could not hear the laughter of the children, nor the barking of the dogs for they were lost in the greater sounds, but he could feel their joy.
Then, as he looked back at the life of the city unfolding, he saw how much of it shared in this joy.
When the travelers who had left Anung on the ridge top continued on to the city they sent word to the great chief that the fourth young man had arrived.
The chief declared the celebration would begin after sundown and the word quickly spread as preparation of a great feast became the task of all gathered.
Anung sat at the crest of the hill and watched as the people attended to their duties and more travelers passed by and headed down the hill to the city preparing for the long prophesied moment.
He could see people emerging from their shelters in full headdresses of feathers, and others with red cloth turbans, and animal head caps; women with hair long and flowing free and others with braids; there were heads shaved bald and clean and others shaved bald and painted and some men wore their hair long on their shoulders and some wore their hair straight up like porcupine quills.
He could see some of the people were painting the new hides they’d attached over the doors of their just built shelters and others tied clusters of feathers above the door.
Some of the people were painting themselves, or one another. Some just painted faces. Some men painted their chests and their arms.
They wore loin clothes and leggings, shirts and skirts and dresses, vests and knee high moccasins and they were all decorated with beads and shells and bits of quills and single feathers and feathered arrays.
If they carried weapons they were ceremonial. They were more likely carrying the peace pipe of their village, or a pouch with their magic.
Longhouses were arrayed to present an open space in the center of the city and that is where young men were stacking branches for a large fire as, one by one, old men in full ceremonial dress arrived at this fire circle.
Some of these old men began to beat their drums, big drums, small drums. Some used a beating stick to play their drums. Some used their hands. Other men had rattles.
More cook fires were started inside and outside the village walls as the women were forming work groups. Some women were baking corn breads and others were making fry breads. Some women were roasting venison and moose. Other women were stirring stews of fish and tubers, and soups of fish and leeks, or boiling greens.
Outside the village Anung watched the growing collection of young men, in their warrior dress, taking turns shooting arrows at a tree’s target. When one fellow hit the center Anung watched him dance.
Anung felt the wind shift, blowing now from across the water, and over the city, and it bathed him full in his face with new sensations.
Now he could hear the children’s laughter.
He tasted salt in the air from the great salt lake that stretches the sky.
The savory smells from the cook fires invited his full hunger.
Anung was sure his journey’s end was here. When he looked out over the water he could see there was no place else to go.
His dream had taken him on a journey to the edge of Turtle Island.
When the travelers first spoke of the chief of this city Anung thought he must be the greatest of all the chiefs. After beholding the splendor, he was sure of it.
He was happy to think his quest was ended. He would find this great chief and sing of his village, of his fathers and mothers, and of the wonders he had seen during his journey.
Then he would return to his village. He was eager to return, for he missed his mothers and his fathers. He had much to tell them, new wisdoms and new stories.
He stood and saw Turtle was there waiting for him, so he picked him up and they followed a family down the hill to the great city. When the lookout saw the fourth young man coming down
the hill he sent the message to the great chief.
Anung Sings for the People of the City
The great chief was standing outside the city’s main gate when Anung approached. Behind him stood the three young men the great chief had dreamed would come to this place in search of the great chief. They were eager for their fourth brother to arrive.
Like Anung, they had recently been boys, and they did not hide their eagerness to discover what came next.
The elders of the city were gathering and the chiefs and elders from the many tribes from the many villages who had traveled from near and far to be there stood with them, gathering all around, all the people in their tribal dress.
The great chief stood tall among them. He was dressed plainly, in a long buckskin tunic shirt and leggings. The front half of his head was shaved and he wore a small cluster of feathers in his hair that grew long in the back. He placed his hand on Anung’s shoulder and welcomed him and then Turtle. He turned to all those gathered and told them to take care of this weary young man.
Turtle helped Anung understand all those who welcomed him, and the directions of all who would serve him. He was led to his place in the chief’s longhouse where he was given a beautiful buckskin vest to wear, the fringes decorated with cowry shells.
They led him to the chief’s cook fire where he was given the best portion of roasted venison.
After he ate they followed him as he wandered through the darkening city to explore in the last of the daylight the great salt lake that stretches the sky. He tasted the salt water and spit it out and he laughed at himself when he was surprised it was salty.
As it grew dark the white-capped waves grew even more lovely and Anung was happy to have made this long journey.
They returned when the drums called them to the great fire circle built inside the village walls and they joined all who had gathered there.
Many people were gathered around the fire. Ring after ring after ring of people from all the First Nations were gathered there and many of them had been chanting songs of their tribes and the voices of all the people were heard.
Soon the drums turned the many voices into one song of praise for Gitche Manitou. After they sang four cycles of this song of praise the great chief stood among the people to tell of his dreams.
These dreams first found him before this city had been built.
These dreams first came to him when he was a boy on his own vision quest.
The village he lived in when he had his dream was near the river to the South. This place where now he stood was where his people would camp while they set their nets off the rocky point, for the waters there were always filled with fish, in every season.
In his first dream he saw that four boys would each leave their villages from far away to come to this place where now they were gathered together. The four boys would come to this place from far away in search of the greatest chief of all the First Nations people. His first dream told him that he must greet them when they arrived to warn them that the most difficult, the most dangerous part of journey was still to come.
The four young men looked at each other in surprise, for they all believed their journeys had ended here.
In his second dream this great chief was told to build a city of great acclaim on this site, far greater than any village, and in this dream he saw row after row of longhouses surrounded by a tall wall and abundant gardens.
The third dream showed him that he was to build this great city to attract many wise elders who would come to this place to see it and then stay to live together to learn from each other. And many brave men would come, the greatest warriors and hunters, and stay to learn from each other and to study the powers found in the wise men’s words. This great city would become a home to Nokomis from the villages all around who know the ancient wisdoms and to strong women who would teach the men what only women know. These great leaders of their people would build the best tools. They would use these tools to make the finest crafts. And they would know how to prepare all the food a man would need for many days of travel.
His fourth dream told him that the journey for three of these young men would end here. But the fourth young man must continue across the great salt lake that stretches the sky. He must find his way across the first water, the remains of the flood waters that once covered the earth and that still surround Turtle Island. For the great chief’s dream told him that the old legends were true, that there was another island across the water, a much bigger island, the island of the first sun.
The great chief understood that his city must be built to prepare one of these young men for his journey across the flood waters to find the island of the first sun. For his dream told him that is where the greatest chief will be found. And one of these young men must continue his journey to find the greatest chief to tell him the stories and sing the songs of all of the people of Turtle Island.
And this young man will then return to his people, with the wisdom he learned from the greatest chief.
His dreams showed him how men of this village would make great canoes out of the biggest trees. The men of this village have paddled those canoes on a course to the island of the first sun many times. They have taken many trips to locate this faraway place so they might tell the chosen one who will continue his journey what they find.
Some of these men paddled their canoes until they could not be seen by their wives or children.
Some never came back.
Others returned after many days without ever finding the land they were searching for.
Many were too afraid to venture any further when they got to the point they could barely see shore. They returned.
In his dreams the great chief saw how the best craftsmen and women would work together to stitch the finest buck skins together and mount them across a great stick frame that resembled in many ways the frame of a giant’s snowshoe. The dreams showed how this hide could catch the winds and capture their power to push the canoe along the waves faster than many men could paddle.
The men of this village built this sail and ventured far across the great water, but they still did not find any land.
They decided that only the chosen one would find it.
His last dream told him that as the great chief it was he would decide which young man would travel on to find the greatest chief.
The chief asked the elders of all the tribes gathered there to tell him how they would select the young man who would continue on. After much discussion they agreed that each young man must sing the song he would sing when he stands before the greatest chief. The elders and chief would then watch the people as each song was sung, and the people’s response would tell them who was to be the chosen one.
Anung sat near the fire with the young men.
He was afraid to sing his song in front of so many people.
When he first stood at the shore of the great salt lake that stretches the sky he was struck silent. Now, being there before all the people gathered around the fire, he felt like he did when standing in front of those waves for the first time. He was afraid that when it was his turn to sing his song that this tightness in his throat would only get tighter and he would not be able to make a sound.
The young man who arrived at the village first stood to sing first. He was Wabanaki. He had the shortest distance to travel and had arrived during the warm summer days. His head was shaved but for a knot on top that was decorated with feathers. He had painted a thick red stripe above his eyes and a thin black stripe below them, and wore a quill breastplate.
He sang a Wabanaki song. His song told of the days he had traveled over rivers and lakes. His song told of his arrival at the village. He sang about what he learned by studying the great waters, for it had revealed many of its secrets to him. In his song he told of building his own canoe to travel far out on the great salt lake that stretches the sky.
The people had seen this Wabanaki out in his canoe, even in the fiercest storms. They nodded as he
sang his song and told each other it was a good song to sing.
The young man who arrived during the snowstorm rose to sing next. His hair was long and rested on his shoulders that were covered by his buckskin shirt. He wore no paint, and just one feather hung down from the back of his head.
He sang a Natchez song. He sang of the wisdom his people gained living in the rhythms of the Father River that floods Turtle Island every Spring but always returns to its course, leaving the land it had just covered with water now rich with the best soil it carried down from the North. He sang of his travel to the rising sun where he found the shore of the first waters far to the south of this great Owasco city.
He sang of the days he walked the shore and his song asked the spirits of the wind why one day the waves gently licked the shore and the next day they crashed in a great white-headed fury.
And he sang of the way the people cared for him arriving at the Owasco village in the middle of a great snowstorm.
The people remembered the furious winds and blinding snow the day this young man who looked a boy stumbled into their village and they told each other he was brave.
The third young man who arrived just as the snows started to fall stood to sing next. He had journeyed from the Blue Misted Mountains. He began his song in Cherokee. Much of his head was shaved as well but the hair left grew into a long tail down his neck. The top half of his face was painted red. On his bare chest rested a necklace of bear claws.
He sang of the great nation of clans and tribes his people built along the rivers that course through the Blue Misted Mountains. There were many rivers, filled with fish, and many villages with many great chiefs. Some of their villages were nearly as large as this one. Their shelters were not so large as the longhouses, but there were many of them, built with logs, and there were great council houses where the people gathered to advise the chiefs.
He sang of a great nation where the peace chiefs were as powerful as the war chiefs.
Anung's Journey Page 5