The Mi'kmaq Anthology

by Lesley Choyce

  He hums his little whiny song. “Try the brook,” he suggests to them. “The brook that runs through the forest down below.”

  So once more, the Thunders call up their clouds, they call up lightning, they clap their wings and strike the brook. This time they kill three or four fish.

  “Well,” say the Thunders, tasting fish. “Those are queer things to get blood out of.”

  “Try the ocean,” says Klmuej. “Try some of those big fish. Plenty of them in the ocean.”

  Kaqtukwaq strikes the ocean, and kills a porpoise.

  “Wrong kind of fish,” sings Klmuej, Mosquito Person, right into the ears of the Thunders. “Wrong kind of fish.”

  “Wrong kind of answer,” roars Kaqtukwaq, and turns Mosquito into a hail-stone. But still they do not find any blood that tastes as good as the blood Mosquito Person drinks.

  Even today it is only once in a while that the Thunders manage to strike anyone of the People.

  The Boy Who Visited Muini’skw

  It is long ago in the camps of the Old Ones. A little boy lives with one band of the People. He has no parents; no one really looks after him. Sometimes he stays in one wigwam, sometimes in another.

  Late in the fall, the little boy decides to go berry picking. He goes wandering through the forest, looking for the little meadows and bogs where berries are growing — foxberries and cranberries, the kinds of red berries that are gathered right before winter sends the snow. But this boy is alone and he gets lost.

  He walks and he runs, he twists and doubles back, but still he cannot find the camp. The wind is very cold now. And soon it is night.

  Still he walks on.

  There comes a time in all his walking through the night when he sees something. It is a light, and he runs towards it, thinking it is home. But this is a strange wigwam.

  The firelight is shining out of the doorway. He steps into its warmth and speaks his greetings politely. Inside a woman is sitting, and two little boys.

  “Come in,” says the woman. Her voice is kind. The two little boys are excited to have a visitor.

  The mother of these two little boys is Muini’skw, Bear Woman. She has taken her cubs into their nicely made den for the winter. Muini’skw has Power. So this lost child sees her in her human form, resting from the work of gathering all their winter food. She offers some of it to the lost child. It is little heaps of mice, nicely dead and dried. He cannot eat it.

  She offers him nuts, nicely stored in grass bags. He eats those. She offers him berries, nicely packed in birchbark boxes. He eats those. There is water to drink, in birchbark dishes. Then he curls up with the cub-boys, under blankets of bear fur.

  Muini’skw and her family are so kind, and the den is so warm, that the lost boy decides to stay there forever. It is very sleepy in that wigwam by the fire.

  Back in his own camp, the orphan boy is not missed for several days. Everybody thinks he is staying with someone else. They finally discover that no one has seen him since he went out for berries. They search the whole forest. No one can find him.

  The boy is given up for lost. “Akaia,” wail the women, “that little boy is dead.” The winter snow comes in and covers the world, the People’s camp and the Bear’s den.

  The boy stays warm all winter, dozing with the two little cubs, waking now and then to eat the berries and nuts Muini’skw has stored for the cold times, drinking the water and watching his adopted brothers crunch up the nice little dried mice, bones and all.

  One day a warm wind begins to blow into the bear wigwam. Spring has come. The ice is breaking up. Muini’skw wakes up, and leads her two sons and the lost child out into the sunlight. It is the time when the smelt are running. Time for humans and for bears to go fishing.

  They walk down to the brook. Muini’skw wades out into the stream and sits down. She spreads her hands and begins to grab the fish and throw them up onto the bank. The little bears begin to eat them, but the lost child doesn’t know what to do.

  Muini’skw cleans some of them for him and lays them in the sun to dry. He chews. The smelts are oily and rich.

  The lost child jumps into the brook and begins to drive the smelts towards Bear Woman. They do this for several days, and the eating is good. The bears and the child begin to grow strong again.

  But humans know that bears like to hunt smelts. So when the People go out to hunt smelts, they also go out to hunt bears. One of the men from the lost child’s camp sees a strange thing: here are the tracks of a bear and two cubs, with the print of a human child’s naked foot, walking right along with the bears. “E’e,” says the hunter, “this is a very strange thing. I must watch and see.”

  The next day, near sundown, when bears like to come to the streams, the man returns. He hides himself near the place where he has seen the tracks, and he waits.

  Something is coming. He hears noises, little noises of twigs snapping, and little noises like talking. Down the track comes Muini’skw, Bear Woman. She is in her bear shape. Her sons are in their bear shapes. The man sees a small boy talking to two cubs. He can understand the boy, and the boy can understand the cubs, but when the cubs speak, the man hears only the quiet snuffles and snorts and whines of little cubs.

  Muini’skw goes into the water. The boy begins to drive the smelts towards her. “Pejitu’jik!” yells Bear Woman, “They are here!” She scoops up so many fish at a time she looks just like a woman emptying a scoop-net. The fish fall onto the bank in glittering piles, and the young bears eat them. Finally Bear Woman hauls herself out of the stream and begins to clean and dry fish for the human child to eat.

  The human man in the bushes watches all this, and when the bears have gone, he goes back to camp.

  “I have found the little boy that is lost,” he announces. “He is living with bears. We must go and rescue him.”

  The camp is in an uproar. What should they do? They decide that the next night all the men will go to the bear’s fishing place to see if they can take the boy away from Muini’skw. The man who had seen her will lead the way.

  That night Muini’skw has a dream. “Hunters are coming,” she tells the lost child. “They will take you, and you will go with them, for you are a human child, and I am Muini’skw, Bear Woman.”

  This makes the boy very sad, for she and her children are his family.

  Muini’skw tells the human child that she has sheltered him and now he must shelter her. He must ask the human hunters not to kill her.

  “But how will they be able to tell you from the rest?” asks the boy.

  Muini’skw takes him outside and asks him to climb the tree near her wigwam. “Look around you,” she says. “Look all over the valley. What do you see?”

  “I see smoke rising, smoke from many campfires,” replies the lost child. “Some is thin, from little fires. Some is thicker, from bigger fires.”

  “Those big fires are from the dens of the female bears,” says Bear Woman. “They have big families to feed, because their cubs spend the winter with them. So they have to cook more, and their fires are bigger. Look for their big smokes and let them alone to tend their fires.”

  So the lost child promises Muini’skw that there will be peace between the bears and his people.

  In the twilight of that day, Bear Woman takes the three children down to fish.

  The hunters are hiding all around the stream. They have been very careful not to cross the bear’s tracks so she would not smell them, and when Muini’skw arrives they wait until all her family are busy fishing. The noise of the running water and the excitement of catching smelts will distract the bears. Then the People close in around Muini’skw, quietly, quietly, around the three children, making a circle, narrower and narrower, until at last they rush in and grab up the human child.

  How he yells and growls! He snarls and bites just like a bear. Stiff black hairs are just beginning to sprout from his body. And yet he weeps like a human child as they begin to take him away from Muini’skw.

 
Muini’skw herself doesn’t attack the hunters. Deep growling roars come from her mouth as she begins slowly to move her own cubs away from the men. She doesn’t run. She doesn’t charge. Muini’skw roars, and the lost child weeps. The hunters allow her to pass.

  The People and the Bears walk in opposite directions.

  The lost child is taken home. He is about five years old now. They give him human food and human talk, and gradually he quiets and becomes tame.

  “What did you eat when you were with the bears?” they ask him.

  “Nuts,” he says. “She gave me nuts. And berries. I ate fish.”

  “Where did you sleep?”

  “In the wigwam of Muini’skw. I slept with the little bears. They kept me warm.”

  This lost child is given a new name: Muin, Bear.

  This boy grows up to be exceptionally strong and is the grandfather ancestor of many of the People. We call his children muinewiktuk wetakutmu’tijik, “they are related to the Bear, to the Bear they come from.” They remember Muini’skw. They look for the thick smoke, which is the breath of many bears rising from their dens in winter, and they know. They leave those dens alone.

  Sources and Notes

  Retold from stories collected by Silas Rand (“A Child Nourished by a Bear.” and a variant on the same. 1894: 259-261, 262): from Wallis & Wallis (“A Boy Who Lived with the Bears.” 1955: 431): and from Elsie Clews Parsons (“The [Bear] Ancestor of the Sylliboy Family.” 1925: 96-97).

  This is the story of an orphan who wanders into the forest by himself and gets lost. Many Micmac tales are about those who are alone, who are outside the normal group life of the People. Almost all stories are set “in the forest,” away from the camps of the People. The forest is the unknown, the shape-changing reality where things are not always as they seem. To be alone in the forest is to be in peril. So, stories underline how important it is to have friends, to have alliances, to be related, to be part of a group.

  It is important for the group to care for all of its members, and when the People shuffle that little boy around from one wigwam to another, when he is not “related” by adoption into any specific family, when he is not taught the things he needs to know — how to avoid going astray in the woods, for example — then he is lost to them. This is a loss, as any skills or powers he might develop will no longer be used for the good of the group.

  And this little boy does have Power. He can see the fire of a Bear Person, he can see Muini’skw. Because he is acceptable to her, she adopts him, she becomes his “mother,” his ally, his spirit-helper. His skills are put to use for her group- he drives the fish towards her. Eventually the bond between them will protect her from being hunted by his descendants.

  When the People realize their loss, when they search for him, weep for him, and eventually seize him back from the bears, dress him, feed him human food, talk to him and teach him human ways, then he becomes human. His transformation into a Bear Person, complete with fur, is reversed.

  This story is also full of information about the habits of bears.

  Ki’kwa’ju and Ki’kwa’jusi’s

  Somewhere in the forest, Wolverine is living — Ki’kwa’ju, Wolverine. His little brother is with him — Ki’kwa’jusi’s.

  Winter is coming. Wolverine and his brother move through the forest, hunting, hunting, making a good supply of food up, to last them through the moons of cold.

  Now they have come to a lake, a big lake, a deep and beautiful lake, a lake covered with water birds — birds of all kinds, too many for the eyes to see, for the hands to count.

  Here are the Wild Geese, Simumkwak.

  Here are the Black Ducks, Apji’ jkmujk

  Here are Wood Ducks, Teal, and Brant.

  And here are the Whistlers, the Goldeneye Ducks. Little Wolverine, Ki’kwa’jusi’s, he says to his brother, “Look at all these birds! Look at all this food. We shall have meat to eat, good fat meat. We shall have goose grease all winter long. But how are we going to catch them?

  “Ah,” says Wolverine, Ki’kwa’ju, watching all those birds floating before him on the water, on that beautiful lake of water.

  “We shall see,” says Ki’kwa’ju. “But first let us build a wigwam here on the shore. A large wigwam. A strong wigwam with a very heavy door.”

  So Ki’kwa’ju and his little brother are building a wigwam. They make it big. They make it strong. And it has a thick, heavy door.

  Then Ki’kwa’ju makes his plans. Ki’kwa’ju has Power. He will fool those birds, he will trick them, he will call them to their destruction.

  “This is what you must do,” he says to his little brother. “Go out onto that point of land which stretches so far into the lake. Call the birds. Call the Wild Geese. Call the Big Ones, the Little Ones. Call the Black Ducks, the Teal, the Brant. Invite them to feast with us.”

  The little Wolverine, Ki’kwa’jusi’s, he goes out onto the point of land. He walks to the far end sticking way out into the water, and he begins to call the birds: “I am calling you to come feast with us. I am calling for my older brother, Ki’kwa’ju. He wishes you to come to our wigwam, there, on the lake shore.” When all the birds have heard him, he turns and begins to walk back home.

  Inside the wigwam, Ki’kwa’ju is preparing. He puts on his ceremonial robe, his best clothing. He paints his face and chest. Ki’kwa’ju has Power, and now his Power fills him. He goes to the seat of honour at the back of the wigwam, behind the fire, the seat facing the door. Ki’kwa’ju sits there, he sits there and then he leans back, his eyes half closed, waiting. He watches the door.

  From outside he is hearing a shout. It is his younger brother inviting the birds inside. Ki’kwa’jusi’s pulls the door open and the birds begin to enter.

  Ki’kwa’ju, Wolverine, he says nothing.

  First the Wild Geese come in. They are the biggest of the birds, and they sit next to Ki’kwa’ju. Next come the Brant. Then the Black Ducks are coming in and sitting, and then all the other birds, the big ones first, then the smaller ones are all coming in, until only the tiniest birds are left. These sit down next to the door.

  When all of the birds are sitting in the wigwam, around the fire, Ki’kwa’jusi’s himself comes in. Carefully he pulls in the big heavy door. He shuts it tight and holds it shut. His older brother has told him what to do. His older brother has told him what to say.

  “Welcome,” says Ki’kwa’jusi’s. “This is the house of my older brother, Ki’kwa’ju, Wolverine. Ki’kwa’ju asks me to tell you that he has Power. If you see him in his Power shape, wearing his ceremonial clothing, you would be destroyed. So, my older brother asks you, he asks you to keep your eyes shut very tightly. Keep your eyes shut until I tell you it is safe, or your eyes will burst when Ki’kwa’ju shows his Power shape.”

  This is what Ki’kwa’jusi’s is saying, and all the birds obey him. They shut their eyes as tight as they can squeeze them, and they wait.

  Now Ki’kwa’ju is getting up. He stands in his Power shape, and he moves towards the first bird, one of the Wild Geese. Ki’kwa’ju smiles. And then he throws himself, silently and quickly, he throws himself on the first Wild Goose. He wraps himself around that bird, he holds its wings and feet tightly so it cannot move and, before it can make a noise, Ki’kwa’ju bites its head right off.

  Ki’kwa’ju rises. He lays the body of the first Wild Goose down on the floor of the wigwam, and then he grabs the next bird the same way, binding the wings and feet tightly, biting the head off. It is very quiet in the wigwam. All the birds are keeping their eyes tight shut. And Wolverine is moving between them and the fire, moving down the rows of birds. His Power shape is death to them, and he brings it to them, one by one.

  His younger brother, Ki’kwa’jusi’s, is watching from the back of the wigwam. He is holding the door. He watches Wolverine kill all the Wild Geese, the Simumkwak. He sees him kill the Brant one by one, until all are gone. The Black Ducks, the Apji’jkmujk, they are soon all lying stiff. And this be
gins to bother Ki’kwa’jusi’s, Wolverine’s younger brother.

  All this slaughter is not necessary. They cannot begin to eat all that Ki’kwa’ju has already killed, and yet he is still biting the heads off the littler birds, the Teal and the Whistlers.

  Very carefully then, Ki’kwa’jusi’s moves just a little bit away from the door. He bends down to one of the tiniest birds near him, and he whispers.

  “Open your eyes,” he says. “Open your eyes just a very little.”

  The small bird is afraid. What if his eyeballs burst? But his eyelids drift open just a crack, and that is enough. He sees Ki’kwa’ju. He sees this Wolverine and what he is doing, and he screams.

  “Ketmeto’ lkw!” he shrieks. “We are all killed!”

  Now all the birds open their eyes. Immediately they leap into flight, screaming and crying out and beating their wings, but they cannot get out. They hit the walls of the wigwam. The whole place is filled with noise and beating wings.

  Ki’kwa’jusi’s, Wolverine’s younger brother, is cunning. He falls down, he pretends the birds have knocked him over and he lets go of the door. And so this big solid door, the door of the trap Ki’kwa’ju has made, it falls open, and the birds are rushing out.

  Ki’kwa’ju is furious. He is still grabbing as many as he can in the uproar, and he is still biting off their heads. But Ki’kwa’jusi’s, Wolverine’s younger brother, is clever. He pretends to help. He catches the last bird by the leg, so that Ki’kwa’ju will not suspect.

  Ki’kwa’ju is angry. He grabs his younger brother. “You have done this,” he says, “and I am going to beat you.”

  “Moqwe,” says Ki’kwa’jusi’s “No, no, those birds knocked me down, they forced open the door. I could not prevent it. It is the birds!”

  Ki’kwa’ju becomes calmer. His Power is quieter now. He settles down to the task of plucking all his kills. He pulls the feathers off. He guts all the birds. He saves the hearts, the livers, the gizzards. Ki’kwa’jusi’s helps him. They slice the meat and dry it, storing it up for winter.