Swampy Cree Naming Stories
BORN TYING KNOTS
When he came out, into the world,
the umbilical cord
was around his toes.
This didn't trouble us,
that he was tying knots THAT EARLY.
We untied it.
Later, he heard his birth
story.
It caused him to begin tying knots again.
He tied things up near his home,
TIGHT, as if everything might float away
in a river.
This river came from
a dream he had.
House things were tied up
at night. Shirts, other clothes, too,
and a kettle. All those things
were tied to his feet
so they wouldn't float away
in the river he dreamed.
You could walk in
and see this.
Maybe the dream stopped
because it was no longer comfortable
to sleep with shirts tied to him.
Or a kettle.
After the dream stopped,
he quit tying things,
EXCEPT for the one night he tied up
a small fire.
Tied up a small-stick fire!
The fire got loose its own way.
QUIET UNTIL THE THAW
Her name tells of how
it was with her.
The truth is, she did not speak
in winter.
Everyone learned not to
ask her questions in winter,
once this was known about her.
The first winter this happened
we looked in her mouth to see
if something was frozen. Her tongue
maybe, or something else in there.
But after the thaw she spoke again
and told us it was fine for her that way.
So each spring we
looked forward to that.
WALKED TOWARD THE LYNX
He knew a lynx has two voices.
There is one that is a growl
and can teach a baby pheasant to fly QUICKLY,
and frightens us too, sometimes.
And one other voice. It is when a lynx
scratches its claws on bark.
This boy would hear that scratching
and walk toward it.
If he was a lynx-ear
he could have heard it CLOSE UP!
Or a whisker.
Which is what
he wanted, I think.
I saw him climb trees where he'd seen
a lynx, and find the place
where the scratch marks were left.
Then he would rub his fingers over them.
One finger at a time, gently,
or all of them at once.
His fingers heard the lynx talk again
that way.
TOOK HONEY WITH HIS FACE
He knew how bears got away
with it. He watched one
stick her nose deep in a hive
and get good honey on the face.
He knew this way
from watching.
So he dressed that way too,
with an old bear skin all over him
and mud-leaves on his face and hands.
AND STUCK HIS FACE IN A HIVE!
STUCK HIS FACE IN!
Got his feet stung.
But he got honey that way.
No one told him to use the wet
torch-stick smoke
to get out those bees.
No one told him this for a long time.
They liked watching his way
too much!
He took honey that way
a few times.
Then someone told him
how to use smoke.
Or he saw it done
from hiding.
LARGER EARS
She had large ears, and this seemed
to please her. Even the time a man
joked at her ears
and said they were BATS,
she chose to believe it!
She said to him, "Yes. You are right. They are bats!
I'm glad you came to tell me.
And I will send them into your house
THIS VERY NIGHT to hover
and listen over your face!"
This quickly stopped
his joking.
Also, she liked to listen to large sounds
with those large ears.
Maybe the two things
went together.
Before storms, she would sit along the edge
of a lake, EVEN AFTER IT BEGAN RAINING,
to listen to thunder!
Sometimes she shouted back
to it, "Louder! I can hardly hear you!"
Even though the rest of us
had our hands over our ears, as we sat
inside houses.
Listening with our smaller ears.
WHO ONCE LIVED ALONE
One summer this boy chose to live
by himself. It was never a secret, no, he just
said, "I'm going to live
by the next lake, to the north."
We could tell he had thought about it
a long time. He built a dwelling there.
It had rain fall on it, and had sun fall on it.
And the foxes didn't try to move in,
so, then for certain, it was his home.
He lived there all summer. We seldom heard him,
or knew where he was, except some nights
we knew he was out on the lake
because the loons were quiet.
There also were nights we wondered
how well he was eating, and that's when we walked
to where he lived.
Walked out at night to see
the bending pole. It was a pole
he had stuck in the ground.
This came about because he fished with long
stick poles, and he had stuck one of them
in the ground near his dwelling. After each day's fishing,
he bent that pole to let us know his luck.
When it was bent low by the rocks tied to its string,
we knew he was catching fish.
When the pole was straight up,
we left fish for him.
TURTLE WAIT
I've always watched
turtles. One lived around here,
the one who caused my name.
At an early age I waited for turtles
to come up on their logs.
Everyone knew this
about me. I'd wait. Wait. And one turtle
would be the last out of the water. He had
moss, mud, sometimes sticks on his back
and he was a slow one.
Other turtle watchers gave up. But I would
wait until he came out
to tell me things
and no one else.
So, in that way he caused my name.
The last one to wait for.
Up on his rock or log.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
from BORN TYING KNOTS
Swampy Cree Naming Stories
told by
Samuel Makidemewabe
translated by
Howard Norman
Bear Claw Press (1976)
NAMINGS: AN INTRODUCTION
Two weeks travel on foot, northeast from Lake Winnipeg. Along certain stretches of one river here, Echoing River, trees come right down to the rocky banks forming acoustic corridors. You can echo your voice best here. The Cree call these places Mwoakoopawmiko tuskwi, or "Loon-wind-throats," for the eery vibratos that are sent out among the rock, air, water and trees. The sound of a duck splashing with its wings as it lifts from the river echoes a long way. So does a moose call, or the human voice.
There's a place near Split Lake, named Achewita hotoowuk, or "Their-horns-are-locked," after a stand of trees whose branches are intertwined high up. From a distance they look like great racks of antlers.
The whole of the country is in effect an oral map, for the specific place-names should be spoken aloud upon arriving at each one. This way you bring alive what happened, or still happens, there. When you arrive at a place, and live there in an attentive manner, you see where its name comes from. "Many-weather-place," "Place-otters-slide-to-the-left," and on.
* * *
In Cree the lynx is called Pi'sew, or "Wild Cat." But there is an older name. Sometimes it shows up during the telling of a Wichikapache ("trickster") story, about a time when only totem animals and Wichikapache roamed the earth. The language gets older during these stories. Often, when the lynx is mentioned, he is called: "Cat-who-nightly-screams-from-high-trees." Think, if you will, what this name encompasses in terms of the compactness of the Cree language, what specific knowledge it has gathered in, then how this knowledge it has gathered in, then how this knowledge places the lynx into thelarger realm of life: a classificatory system. We know it's a cat.* We know one of his voices. We know one time to listen, one place to look for him.
Now, if you want or need it to, comes a moment when this old lynx name leads you out into its world. You have the particulars preserved in the name: you can take them out into the trees. Then wait. Probably you will wait many nights.** Sometimes it works, you see a lynx. Or think you hear one. Most times the cat huddles quiet, or is padding around far from you. But by waiting there, in one place, you feel something of where the animal lives. You know the name better then. And that it came from others like you who waited, watched, recalled by telling you about the lynx.
* * *
The personal name-origins translated in this little book (selections above, ed.) were told to me by Samuel Makidemewabe, a Swampy Cree elder. He lived several places in northcentral manitoba Province, Canada. It's a vast lake, muskeg, dense boreal forest region. One of his jobs in the community he lived most often in, was to chronicle in stories how certain people earned their names during childhood. For the names included here are kuskatchikaos, or "earned" names. Makidemewabe wasn't present for all the incidences from which these names came from. He was right there for some of them. With the others, basic information was brought to him. These stories, then, illuminate every storyteller's option to embellish as long as the necessary core of historical fact is clearly presented. Every teller knows this about his craft. Some of these people whose names I was gifted to hear about are still alive. The youngest is many Talks who is about eighty. The woman named Quiet Until The Thaw is alive, and others. Some of these people I never was introduced to, except through these stories which certainly are intimate in their own ways. Makidemewabe said, "To say the name is to begin the story," which leads you into this book.
HOWARD NORMAN
FEBRUARY 1976
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Not to be taken for granted, as the Cree classification of animals is often complex. Bats are birds. Otters may be fish if, say in a story, they are talking underwater to fish, etc.
** Say the name over to yourself, in different voices, in melodies, and you have a lynx-song to wait with.
I share all of this from an original pamphlet, close to me, published by Bear Claw Press once upon a time in simple spool binding and now age-toned papers. Slowly but surely the book is moving back to the earth. (BA)
(photo)
aurora: eco time
