I have begun to believe my mind is full of tiny little topics that act like pimples.
No one can predict the order they start to fester in, or when they’ll get ripe and burst.
Wednesday, 3 September 2014
The Big Footed Snake
The Big Footed Snake
A Bringer of Blessings
When
I was a young man growing up in Alberta one summer I
worked for the Forestry Department and was part of Stand by Crew to fight Forest fires. I was
stationed at the Entrance Ranger station north of Hinton just up the road from
the Entrance Trading Post.
It
was a crazy job where you sat around painting rocks along the driveway until
the siren went off and we went to work. 6 of us all with 70# of backpack,
shovel, pick, food, water plus plus plus pile into the back of the Forestry
Truck with Siren flashing lights and crazy Ranger Joe Pasamera at the wheel.
We
would race to the end of goddamned nowhere to drag another 100# of Mercury Fire
Pump over hill and dale for a couple of hours to get to the fire and then get
to work. That was usually non-stop for a couple of days or so but if we
couldn’t handle it the major crew arrived to relieve us. We were first
responders: First in, first out and back to painting rocks. Hard bloody work
but the company guys and a lot of beer made it a good remembrance.
The
Entrance Trading post was sort of the community meeting place for all the local
Indians. I was fortunate enough to make a large number of them friends and was
welcome all over the little village. I was able to join in ceremonies as a
welcome guest and had a seat as a front row observer. I am a detail freak and
one of the first things I noticed was the beauty of their traditional costumes:
Particularly the buckskin, bead work and best of all porcupine quill patterns
that were a marvel of precision design. I wanted to have one
I
spent almost a quarter of my summer pay ($125 a week and found) and managed to
find a friends mother who made me a complete outfit of buckskin with a really
beautiful array of bead and quills. It hung in the corner of my bedroom where I
could always see it for seven years until marriage forbade its use. I was a
dancer and wore my warrior outfit when I was on the hunt at all the local
Country dance halls. I was a good looking young guy, a master of bullshit and
pretty good with my dukes if any of the local boys resented me trying to
romance his baby out to my car. Unfortunately if you take your wife to the
dance you put on your good clothes and act nice to everybody. The lady frowned
on fisticuffs and there went the Warrior.
I
always looked at my breastplate and moccasins and wondered where the designs
came from particularly the porcupine quills. Now 50 years later I finally found
out the source in a collection of Native America Lore at
Long ago, in that
far-off happy time when the world was new, and there were no white people at
all, only Indians and animals, there was a snake who was different from other
snakes. He had feet-big feet. And the other snakes, because he was different,
hated him, and made life wretched for him. Finally, they drove him away from
the country where the snakes lived, saying, "A good long way from here
live other ugly creatures with feet like yours. Go and live with them!"
And the poor, unhappy Snake had to go away.
For days and days, he
travelled. The weather grew cold and food became hard to find. At last,
exhausted, his feet cut and frostbitten, he lay down on the bank of a river to
die.
The Deer,
E-se-ko-to-ye, looked out of a willow thicket, and saw the Snake lying on the
river bank. Pitying him, the deer took the Snake into his own lodge and gave
him food and medicine for his bleeding feet.
The Deer told the
Snake that there were indeed creatures with feet like his who would befriend
him, but that some among these would be enemies whom it would be necessary to
kill before he could reach safety.
He showed the Snake
how to make a shelter for protection from the cold and taught him how to make
moccasins of deerskin to protect his feet. And at dawn the Snake continued his
journey.
The sun was far down
the western sky, and it was bitter cold when the Snake made camp the next
night. As he gathered boughs for a shelter, Kais-kap the porcupine appeared.
Shivering, the Porcupine asked him, "Will you give me shelter in your lodge
for the night?"
The Snake said,
"It's very little that I have, but you are welcome to share it."
"I am
grateful," said Kais-kap, "and perhaps I can do something for you.
Those are beautiful moccasins, brother, but they do not match your skin. Take
some of my quills, and make a pattern on them, for good luck." So they
worked a pattern on the moccasins with the porcupine quills, and the Snake went
on his way again.
As the Deer had told
him, he met enemies. Three times he was challenged by hostile Indians, and
three times he killed his adversary.
At last he met an
Indian who greeted him in a friendly manner. The Snake had no gifts for this
kindly chief, so he gave him the moccasins. And that, so the old Ones say, was
how our people first learned to make moccasins of deerskin, and to ornament
them with porcupine quills in patterns, like those on the back of a snake. And
from that day on the Snake lived in the lodge of the chief, counting his coup
of scalps with the warriors by the Council fire and, for a long time, was
happy.
But the chief had a
daughter who was beautiful and kind, and the Snake came to love her very much
indeed. He wished that he were human, so that he might marry the maiden, and
have his own lodge. He knew there was no hope of this unless the High Gods, the
Above Spirits took pity on him, and would perform a miracle on his behalf.
So he fasted and
prayed for many, many days. But all his fasting and praying had no result, and
at last the Snake came very ill.
Now, in the tribe,
there was a very highly skilled Medicine Man. Mo'ki-ya was an old man, so old
that he had seen and known, and understood, everything that came within the
compass of his people's lives, and many things that concerned the Spirits. Many
times, his lodge was seen to sway with the Ghost Wind, and the voices of those
long gone on to the Sand Hills spoke to him.
Mo'ki-ya came to where
the Snake lay in the chief's lodge, and sending all the others away, asked the
Snake what his trouble was.
"It is beyond
even your magic," said the Snake, but he told Mo'ki-ya about his love for
the maiden, and his desire to become a man so that he could marry her.
Mo'ki-ya sat quietly
thinking for a while. Then he said, "I shall go on a journey, brother.
Perhaps my magic can help, perhaps not. We shall see when I return." And
he gathered his medicine bundles and disappeared.
It was a long and
fearsome journey that Mo'ki-ya made. He went to the shores of a great lake. He
climbed a high mountain, and he took the matter to Nato'se, the Sun himself.
And Nato'se listened,
for this man stood high in the regard of the spirits, and his medicine was
good. He did not ask, and never had asked, for anything for himself, and to
transform the Snake into a brave of the tribe was not a difficult task for the
High Gods. The third day after the arrival of Mo'ki-ya at the Sun's abode,
Nato'se said to him, "Return to your own lodge Mo'ki-ya, and build a fire
of small sticks. Put many handfuls of sweet-grass on the fire, and when the
smoke rises thickly, lay the body of the Snake in the middle of it."
And Mo'ki-ya came back
to his own land.
The fire was built in
the centre of the Medicine lodge, as the Sun had directed, and when the
sweetgrass smouldered among the embers, sending the smoke rolling in great billows
through the tepee, Mo'ki-ya gently lifted the Snake, now very nearly dead, and
placed him in the fire so that he was hidden by the smoke.
The Medicine-drum
whispered softly in the dusk of the lodge: the chant of the old men grew a
little louder, and then the smoke obscuring the fire parted like a curtain, and
a young man stepped out.
Great were the
rejoicings in the camp that night. The Snake, now a handsome young brave, was
welcomed into the tribe with the ceremonies befitting the reception of one shown
to be high in the favour of the spirits. The chief gladly gave him his
daughter, happy to have a son law of such distinction.
Many brave sons and
beautiful daughters blessed the lodge of the Snake and at last, so the Old ones
say, his family became a new tribe-the Pe-sik-na-ta-pe, or Snake Indians.
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