Finding Kluskap: A Journey into Mi'kmaw Myth

Notes

notes Introduction 1. The term Mi’kmaw will be employed throughout this book as an adjective and in reference to a single person. When referring to the entire nation, I will use the term Mi’kmaq. 2. Sinclair, “Trickster Reflections,” 29. 3. Sullivan, “Tricksters,” 9350–51. 4. Kelley, “North American Indian Religions,” 6661. 5. Morra, “Preface,” xii. 6. Perley, “Tricksters,” 9357. 7. See Ricketts, “Tricksters,” 9355; Fee, “Trickster Moment,” 60; Leggatt, “Quintessential Trickster Poetics,” 221; Baker, “Coyote Columbus Café,” 221; Lynch, Native American Mythology, 44. 8. Fagan, “What’s the Trouble with the Trickster?” 5. 9. C. H. Long, Significations, 51. 10. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 6. 11. Wach, Essays in the History of Religions, 177. 12. Carrasco, To Change Place, 33. 13. C. H. Long, Significations, 154. Jonathan Z. Smith has similarly noted that the New World “for the first time in Western intellectual history raised the theoretical issue of the ‘other’ as a project of language and interpretation,” in short, a “hermeneutical project.” J. Z. Smith, “What Difference a Difference Makes,” 20–22. Chapter 1 1. All citations in this book are taken from the Scholars Press edition (1983). 2. C. H. Long, Alpha, 38. 3. Ibid., 65, 146. 4. Leland, Algonquin Legends, 50, 59, 65, 106. 5. Rand, Legends, 339–40; Leland, Algonquin Legends, 15–17. 6. Leland, Algonquin Legends, 60–61. The theme of regeneration was common to a number of different myths. William Elder recorded another of these in 1871, in which Kluskap is told by a hunting companion, “‘The sky is red again, this evening; we shall have a bitter cold night.’ It is now Glooscap’s turn to struggle with the cold. So he goes home, and sends Little Marten out for fuel, and they build a great fire. But so excessive is the cold, that, by midnight, it is all out, and the old woman and Little Marten are frozen stiff. Next morning, Glooscap calls out, ‘Noogŭme -,’ numchâseé!’ (‘Grandmother, get up!’) ‘Abistăna -ooch numchâseé!’ (‘Marten, Get up!’) And up they spring, as well as ever.” Elder, “Aborigines,” 14. 100 notes to pages 8–15 7. “Souvenir of the Micmac Tercentenary Celebration,” 26–27; Leland, Algonquin Legends , 66–68, 148, 208, 304. 8. C. H. Long, Alpha, 190–92. 9. Nowlan, Nine Micmac Legends; R. H. Whitehead, Stories; Paul, We Were Not the Savages; Joe and Choyce, Mi’kmaq Anthology; Joe, Song of Eskasoni; Runningwolf and Smith, On the Trail. 10. A. Hornborg, “Environmentalism”; A.-C. Hornborg, Landscape; “Kluskap as Culture Hero”; Mi’kmaq Landscapes; “Readbacks or Tradition?” 11. A. Hornborg, “Environmentalism,” 247. 12. Readback is a phenomenon in which informants are said to provide anthropologists with material the informants acquired from other anthropologists. See A.-C. Hornborg , “Readbacks,” 9. 13. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Fifth Estate. 14. A. Hornborg, “Environmentalism,” 16. 15. In a recent article, Hornborg makes a break with the Kelly’s Mountain fiasco, writing instead about Mi’kmaw cosmology and, in particular, that of the pre-contact period. I find this work equally problematic. Hornborg admits that there are distinct problems associated with the attempt to locate evidence for pre-contact cosmology in colonial texts; nonetheless, she relies exclusively on these texts rather than at least augmenting her research with oral history. In addition, her brief references to Kluskap in this essay are erroneous. She claims, for instance, that from the late nineteenth century onward, Kluskap “increasingly assumed the role of a messiah who would return to his people to deliver them from the hardships inflicted by the colonizers” (314). In point of fact, Silas Rand (whom she credits with being the earliest collector of Mi’kmaw myths, which he was not—an error she makes elsewhere too), refers specifically to this kind of redemptive motif. “The Micmacs expect his return in due time, and look for the end of their oppression and troubles when he comes back.” See A.-C. Hornborg, “Visiting the Six Worlds.” 16. A.-C. Hornborg, “St Anne’s Day,” 238. 17. A. Hornborg, “Environmentalism,” 263. 18. Higashikawa, “Note on the Kluskap Story-Cycle”; Higashikawa and Kimura, “Kluskap and Mi’kmaq Spiritualism.” I am indebted to Tatsuo Murakami, Sophia University (Tokyo), for obtaining copies of these articles for me. 19. Parkhill, Weaving Ourselves into the Land; Spence, Myths of the North American Indians; Campbell, Historical Atlas of World Mythology. 20. R. H. Whitehead, Stories, 222. 21. Leland, Algonquin Legends, 15, 1–3. 22. Roth, Acadie, 40–41. Elder, “Aborigines,” 13, likewise wrote, “He...