MICHIGAN HISTORY SERIES

ANN ARBOR—Imagine the southern third of lower Michigan as the playing field for a game of lacrosse, with Detroit as the goal at the east end and Chicago at the west. According to Menomini Indian folklore, this is exactly what happened when the Beings-above challenged the Beings-below to a mighty game of lacrosse. As recounted in the University of Michigan Press book “Birds of Algonquin Legend,” even the wild turkey, known to the Ojibwa as me-zis-sa, took part in the game, able to fly powerfully when it had to.

“The Beings-above called on their servants to play for them,” the story goes, “the thunderers, the eagles, the geese, the ducks, and all the fowls of the air,” including the wild turkey. “And the Great White Underground Bear called upon the fish, the snakes, the otter, the deer, and all the beasts of the field to play for the Beings-below.” The teams assembled. The deer, mink, otter, fishes, and all the “land-beings” appeared in human forms. The fowl came as themselves, splendidly feathered. The chiefs of the underworld left their homes and gathered on a mountain where they could see the whole playing field. Nanaboso, demigod, son of the North Wind and grandson of Nokomis, sometimes known as Old Man, also watched the game. “Someone tossed the ball high in the air and the wild struggle began with deafening howling and whooping,” the story is written.

“The players surged back and forth, first one side gaining, then the other. At last someone wrested the ball through the others and sped it toward the Chicago goal.” The Beings-above were about to succumb to the team posing as humans, when Nanaboso stepped in, and by shooting arrows at the underground gods watching the game, stopped the contest. Storytelling was an art form among the Algonquins of Michigan and the upper Midwest where storytellers were prized for “being able to tell the tales in the old way, as they ought to be told,” Robert E. Nichols Jr. wrote in the introduction to his book.

But accuracy was not the only quality on which a storyteller was judged. Eloquence, dramatic delivery, touches of humor and innovations on old themes were considered. “The Ojibwa enjoyed the long narrative,” Nichols writes. “Among the Menomini, some storytellers could start in the autumn and relate a different story around the fire every evening until spring, receiving token rewards of tobacco for their efforts.” Storytellers then, as those of today, also used gesture or sign language to dramatize their words?words that often instructed young and old in natural and cultural history, standards of conduct, inculcating such principles as bravery, chastity, humility, and reverence.

According to one story taken from “Ojibwa Myths and Tales,” at one time the buffalo didn’t have a hump. But the behemoth continued racing across the prairies led by the foxes trampling the nests of the Northern Bobwhite, the bird the Ojibwa called mush-do-da-sa, “the meadow bird.” Again Nanaboso stepped in and hit the buffalo’s shoulders with a stick causing the shoulders to “hump up” fearing another blow. “But Nanaboso just said,” Nichols wrote, “You’ll always have a hump on your shoulder and always carry your head low for shame.” So the foxes ran away, dug holes in the ground and hid. And Nanaboso, the legend says, told them, “You’ll always live in the ground, because of the way you treated the little birds.” And that, Nichols writes, is why the buffalo has a hump now and why foxes have holes in the ground as their homes. “The Algonquin legends persist,” Nichols says, “as do the birds in their annual round, and both still tell us of life and living.”

University of Michigan