Category: Creation stories

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1920s Creation stories Folktale Native American

Old Man and the Bullberries

Old Man and the Bullberries

By Grey Wolf
Annotations by Catherine Bowlin
A man beats a blueberry bush with a stick above a river.
Gwenyth Waugh. Old Man and the Bullberries. 1920. From the third volume of The Brownies’ Book, 80.
W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., The Brownies’ Book, www.loc.gov/item/22001351/.

OLD MAN was walking along, very thirsty, so the first river he came to, he flung himself down to drink. Right after he had filled up, he noticed a branch full of bullberries [1], lying under the water. 

“Say, that is fine,” exclaimed Old Man. “Berries! I guess I’ll dive in and get ‘em.” 

He dived in, swam around under water, and felt for the berries; but not one could he find. 

“That’s queer!” he gasped, coming to the surface. “I’ll look again.”

When the water cleared, he stared into it again. Sure enough, there were the berries.

Old Man dived a second time, and the poor fellow nearly suffocated, trying to stay under water long enough to find the berries. Finally he came up and blew a long breath and climbed out on the bank. After a minute, he turned to look and the berries were there as before! 

“I don’t stay under long enough, that’s the trouble!” exclaimed Old Man. He found a stone and tied it around his middle and jumped in. He went down, like a stone, and flopped on the hard bottom of the river. Once there, he thrashed his arms about, looking for the berries. It was no use. At last, choking and bubbling, he tried to rise, but could not. The stone held him down.

“Do I die now?” he wondered. 

“No,” answered his tomahawk,––“cut the cord!”

Old Man cut the cord, and the rock fell on his toes.

“OUCH!” he gurgled.

He shot to the surface. Now he was so exhausted that he had to lie on his back to recover breath. Suddenly he noticed, right above him a berry bush, leaning out over the river. It was the reflection of this bush that Old Man had dived for! 

“So!” cried the Old Man to the berry bush, “you fooled me, did you!” He jumped up and picked out a stick and attacked the berry bush, beating it until he had knocked all of its berries.

“There!” he cried, as he ate the berries, “that is your punishment for fooling Old Man. After this, even the women will beat you!”

It was so. From that time, whenever the Indian women wanted berries, they beat the bullberry bushes with sticks, having first spread blankets to catch the berries. Old Man taught them that. 

Gray Wolf, Chief of Winnebagoes. None. [Between 1865 and 1880] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/95518265/.
Grey Wolf. “Old Man and the Bullberries.” The Brownies’ Book, ed. W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 1, no. 3, New York, N.Y.: DuBois and Dill, March 1920. 80. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/22001351/>.

[1] Bullberries, also known as Buffalo berries, are shrubs found in the Great Plains and in more northern parts of Ho-Chunk territory.

Contexts

As is usual with Native American folk tales, not much is known about the origin of this story or the author. It is possible that Grey Wolf may be Gray Wolf, Chief of Winnebagoes, though there is not much known about Chief Gray Wolf either. The Winnebago Tribe, also known as the Ho-Chunks, lived in what is now central Minnesota and northern Illinois, and now the Tribe lives in Nebraska.

There is at least one contemporary children’s story related to Native characters and berries. Paul Goble’s Iktomi and the Berries: A Plains Indian Story, published in 1989, tells the story of a Trickster figure, Iktomi, who repeatedly dives for buffalo berries in the water.

Resources for Further Study
  • Alexander, Hartley Burr. Native American Mythology. Dover Publications: Mineola, New York, 2005. (Link to Google Book)
  • Bastian, Dawn E. and Judy K. Mitchell. Handbook of Native American Mythology. ABC-Clio, 2004. (Link to Google Book)
  • Gill, Sam D. and Irene F. Sullivan. Dictionary of Native American Myths. Oxford University Press, 1994. (Link to eBook)
Categories
1910s Birds Column Creation stories Myth Native American

Tradition of the Crows

Tradition of the Crows

By Louis George (Klamath)[1,2]
Annotations by Jessica Cory
The bird seated on a branch, facing right in profile.
“The Crackle, or Crow-Blackbird” by Ernest Thompson Seton, 1893. The drawing is held in the Cooper Hewitt gallery at the Smithsonian Design Museum.

The crows were once beautiful birds, loved and admired by all the fowls of the air.

The crows at that time dressed in the most gorgeous colors, and their heads were decorated with red feathers that glistened like fire when the sun reflected upon it. The crows had many servants, who attended upon them. The woodpecker was the head servant, and his helpers were the sapsuckers, yellow hammers, and the linnets. They faithfully performed their duty of combing the beautiful heads of the crows, and would now and then pluck a feather from the crow’s head and stick it in their own, at the same time making the excuse that they were pulling at a snarled feather, or picking nits from his head.

So one day the crows got very angry at losing their beautiful feathers from their heads and when the servants heard of this they immediately formed a plot against the crows.

So one morning, as the servants were attending upon the crows, they overpowered them and plucked all of their red feathers from their heads and rolled them in a heap of charcoal, thus coloring them black to this very day. Any one can see for himself, the crows are not on friendly terms with their former servants, for they still possess the red heads that the crows once had. [3] 






George, Louis. “Tradition of the crows.” The Red Man, 2 no. 10 (June 1910): 42.














[1] In the original document (and on additional Carlisle School paperwork), Louis’ name is spelled “Lewis.” However, on the school application, apparently filled out by this mother, Jennie Martin, it is spelled “Louis.” Following what was likely his mother’s chosen name, I’ve used “Louis” here.










[2] Louis George is noted by the Carlisle Indian Industrial School as belonging to the Klamath Nation. Today, the Klamath Tribes encompass the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin peoples. Their ancestral territory is in modern-day southwest Oregon and northern California. 










[3] While it is likely that the Klamath have traditional stories involving crows or ravens, as many tribes do, I was unable to find this particular story replicated elsewhere.


















Contexts





The Carlisle School, located in Pennsylvania, was the most well-known of the residential schools for Native Americans in the US, which existed from 1860 until the late 20th century.  It was founded by Henry Pratt, infamous for his views on the necessity of Native American cultural destruction. Native children were forced to attend the school, where they were given new names, forbidden to speak their languages, and frequently abused and even killed. Because the Carlisle School published this Native student’s story, we should recognize how power and censorship shape such texts.










Resources for Further Study





  • Becky Little explains a bit of the history behind the residential school system in the U.S., and looks specifically at the Carlisle School in particular.
  • Mary Annette Pember (Red Cliff Band of Wisconsin Ojibwe) writes of her mother’s experience as a student at Saint Mary’s Catholic Indian Boarding School, exploring the intergenerational trauma, disconnection, and other long-lasting impacts that such schools caused.





Pedagogy





When teaching about the history of Native American boarding schools, it’s important to couch these forced “educations” within the larger context of attempted genocide and settler colonialism, as well as to explore the often traumatic outcomes for Native Americans for which these institutions are responsible.









Contemporary Connections





While Canada has formerly apologized to its Indigenous citizens for the impact that the residential schools had on the affected populations (though Indigenous Canadian peoples still face systemic and individual discrimination and many scholars, such as Dian Million and Audra Simpson, have explained the complexities of reconcilliation), the United States has refused to offer any sort of apology or reconciliation to its Native peoples.  
















		


	


	

		
	


	



	




	


		


			
			
				

			
		


	


	
			

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