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Ojibwe The Birth of Nenabozho Introduction by Rand Valentine The four stories in this section were told a century ago by Waasaagoneshkang, an Ojibwe man whose name, according toWilliam Jones, the original transcriber and translator of the stories, means ‘‘He Who Leaves the Imprint of His Foot Shining in the Snow.’’1 As with many authors of oral traditional literature, we know almost nothing about him. He is described very briefly in introductory notes to the original texts as ‘‘an old man, bent with age, living at Pelican Lake, near the Bois Fort Reservation, in Minnesota. He grew up on Rainy River, Rainy Lake, and the Lake of the Woods’’ (Jones 1974, xvii). The narratives were recorded under dictation, with Waasaagoneshkang pausing at the end of each sentence to allow Jones sufficient time to write down forms. Given such an unnatural method of delivery, the general organization, stylistic quality, and accuracy of transcription of the stories are truly remarkable. Waasaagoneshkang provided many narratives in this fashion, including an extended account of the birth and many exploits of Nenabozho, a central figure in Ojibwe oral tradition.2 He is sometimes described by scholars unaccustomed to ambiguity as paradoxically both a trickster and a culture hero, in that he is very racy, and manyof his actions involve imaginative deception while at the same time establishing the basic institutions and practices of Ojibwe life and landscape. The stories associated with him form a loosely defined suite, which different Ojibwe storytellers arrange and elaborate in different ways according to their artistic sensibilities , their audiences, and their purposes for a given telling. There are recognizable Nenabozho stories of particular subtypes, based on organizational structure and thematic content. For example, Christopher Vecsey (1983) has suggested that there is a core set of cosmologic narratives, which basically establishes the order of the world and many Ojibwe cultural institutions. The stories in the cosmologic ‘‘cycle’’ typically include Nenabozho’s birth, his theft of fire, battles with one or more of his manitou brothers, his travels with a pack of wolves who eventually part ways with him after providing a talented young wolf to be his helper and provider, the subsequent murder of his wolf companion by the underwater manitous , his killing of the chief underwater manitou in revenge, a retaliatory flood, the birth of nenabozho 487 and Nenabozho’s subsequent recreation of the earth. Alongside this particular sequence , there is also another ancient and widespread group of stories that deals with Nenabozho in the form of a giant who battles giant mythic creatures such as a family of beavers and a skunk. There are also stories involving comic and cunning hunting methods, such as capturing ducks or geese by hosting a ‘‘shuteye’’ dance or swimming underwater to tie their feet together. There are many stories of misidentification, such as when Nenabozho mistakes a distant bed of bulrushes blowing in the wind for a group of dancers and can’t resist trying to outlast them in their dance. There are many stories in which Nenabozho fills the role of what folklorists call a bungling host, in which he goes visiting and his host produces food for him by some extraordinary method, which Nenabozho then tries to copy, only to make a fool of himself. There are stories in which Nenabozho attempts various sexual escapades, rarely succeeding in his schemes. In many stories clever schemes backfire, though they can sometimes have beneficial results for humanity. Given Nenabozho’s prominence in Ojibwe oral tradition, it is no surprise that of the two volumes comprisingWilliam Jones’s fieldwork in Ojibwe country a century ago, one entire volume is devoted to Nenabozho stories. Waasaagoneshkang recorded a large number of such stories with Jones, including the cosmological sequence as outlined by Vecsey (1983), interspersed with several other familiar stories, in such a way that it is difficult to know if the storyteller intended them as a logical sequence and a coherent whole. Translations of three of his narrations were published in Coming to Light, in a piece introduced by Ridie Wilson Ghezzi. Here I include the first three in the originally published sequence, along with the seventh, and Ghezzi’s work provides two others in this sequence, the twelfth and the fourteenth.3 Obviously, real justice to Waasaagoneshkang’s artistry will only be served with the publication of the full sequence, along with the Ojibwe, which would easily fill a volume in itself. The stories...

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