As we’ve finally finished the last two volumes required to complete the set of the 10-volume Castalia Junior Classics, I thought I’d share my favorite work from each volume, starting today. One of the things that I found truly startling about the stories from the 1919 edition that did not survive to the 1958 edition that I grew up reading were the tales of the American Indians. They are a little harsher and more cruel than one might tend to expect of children’s tales, especially these days. And the historical difficulties that the rival Indian tribes faced in uniting to oppose the flood of settlers from Europe become a little easier to understand when one realizes that the Indians were perhaps a little too competitive with each other, as evidenced by the behavior of their cultural heroes.
Four of the five stories of the American Indians that we chose to include feature Manabozho, the Algonquin and Ojibwe trickster demigod who is a little more human than the better-known Coyote of the Lakota, the Navajo and the Sioux. What follows is just one of the 89 stories presented in Volume I: Fairy Tales & Fables.
In the tales of the American Indians, Manabozho, or more commonly Nanabozho, figures prominently in their storytelling, including the story of the world’s creation. Nanabozho is the Ojibwe trickster figure and culture hero. Nanabozho can take the shape of male or female animals or humans in storytelling. Most commonly it is an animal such as a raven or coyote which lives near the tribe and which is cunning enough to make capture difficult.
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Manabozho, the Mischief-Maker
There was never in the whole world a more mischievous busybody than that notorious giant Manabozho. He was everywhere, in season and out of season, running about, and putting his hand in whatever was going forward.
To carry on his game he could take almost any shape he pleased. He could be very foolish or very wise, very weak or very strong, very rich or very poor—just as happened to suit his humor best. Whatever anyone else could do, he would attempt without a moment’s reflection. He was a match for any man he met, and there were few manitou that could get the better of him. By turns he would be very kind or very cruel, an animal or a bird, a man or a spirit, and yet, in spite of all these gifts, Manabozho was always getting himself involved in all sorts of troubles. More than once, in the course of his adventures, was this great maker of mischief driven to his wits’ ends to come off with his life.
To begin at the beginning, Manabozho, while yet a youngster, was living with his grandmother near the edge of a great prairie. It was on this prairie that he first saw animals and birds of every kind; he also there made first acquaintance with thunder and lightning. He would sit by the hour watching the clouds as they rolled by, musing on the shades of light and darkness as the day rose and fell.
For a stripling, Manabozho was uncommonly wide-awake. Every sight he beheld in the heavens was a subject of remark, every new animal or bird an object of deep interest, and every sound was like a new lesson which he was expected to learn. He often trembled at what he heard and saw.
The first sound he heard was that of the owl, at which he was greatly terrified, and, quickly descending the tree he had climbed, he ran with alarm to the lodge. “Noko! Noko! Grandmother!” he cried. “I have heard a monedo.”
She laughed at his fears, and asked him what kind of a noise it made. He answered. “It makes a noise like this: ko-ko-ko-ho!” His grandmother told him he was young and foolish; that what he heard was only a bird which derived its name from the peculiar noise it made.
He returned to the prairie and continued his watch. As he stood there looking at the clouds he thought to himself, “It is singular that I am so simple and my grandmother so wise; and that I have neither father nor mother. I have never heard a word about them. I must ask and find out.”
He went home and sat down, silent and dejected. Finding that this did not attract the notice of his grandmother, he began a loud lamentation, which he kept increasing, louder and louder, till it shook the lodge and nearly deafened the old grandmother.
“Manabozho, what is the matter with you?” she said. “You are making a great deal of noise.”
Manabozho started off again with his doleful hubbub, but succeeded in jerking out between his big sobs, “I haven’t got any father nor mother, I haven’t.”
Knowing that he was of a wicked and revengeful nature, his grandmother dreaded to tell him the story of his parentage, as she knew he would make trouble of it.
Manabozho renewed his cries and managed to throw out for a third or fourth time, his sorrowful lament that he was a poor unfortunate who had no parents or relatives.
At last she said to him, to quiet him, “Yes, you have a father and three brothers living. Your mother is dead. She was taken for a wife by your father, the West, without the consent of her parents. Your brothers are the North, East, and South; and being older than you your father has given them great power with the winds, according to their names. You are the youngest of his children. I have nursed you from your infancy, for your mother died when you were born.”
“I am glad my father is living,” said Manabozho, “I shall set out in the morning to visit him.”
His grandmother would have discouraged him, saying it was a long distance to the place where his father, Ningabinn, or the West, lived.
This information seemed rather to please than to discourage Manabozho, for by this time he had grown to such a size and strength that he had been compelled to leave the narrow shelter of his grandmother’s lodge and live out of doors. He was so tall that, if he had been so disposed, he could have snapped off the heads of the birds roosting on the topmost branches of the highest trees, as he stood up, without being at the trouble to climb. And if he had at any time taken a fancy to one of the same trees for a walking stick, he would have had no more to do than to pluck it up with his thumb and finger and strip down the leaves and twigs with the palm of his hand.
Bidding goodbye to his old grandmother, who pulled a very long face over his departure, Manabozho set out at a great pace, for he was able to stride from one side of a prairie to the other at a single step.
He found his father on a high mountain far in the west. His father espied his approach at a great distance, and bounded down the mountainside several miles to give him welcome. Apparently delighted with each other, they reached in two or three of their giant paces the lodge of the West which stood high up near the clouds.
They spent some days in talking with each other—for these two great persons did nothing on a small scale, and a whole day to deliver a single sentence, such was the immensity of their discourse, was quite an ordinary affair.
One evening Manabozho asked his father what he was most afraid of on earth.
He replied, “Nothing.”
“But is there nothing you dread here—nothing that would hurt you if you took too much of it? Come, tell me.”
Manabozho was very urgent, so at last his father said, “Yes, there is a black stone to be found a couple of hundred miles from here, over that way,” pointing as he spoke. “It is the only thing on earth I am afraid of, for if it should happen to hit me on any part of my body it would hurt me very much.” The West made this important circumstance known to Manabozho in the strictest confidence.
“Now you will not tell anyone, Manabozho, that the black stone is bad medicine for your father, will you?” he added. “You are a good son, and I know you will keep it to yourself. Now tell me, my darling boy, is there not something that you don’t like?”
Manabozho answered promptly, “Nothing.”
His father, who was of a steady and persevering nature, put the same question to him seventeen times, and each time Manabozho made the same answer, “Nothing.”
But the West insisted, “There must be something you are afraid of.”
“Well, I will tell you,” said Manabozho, “what it is.”
He made an effort to speak, but it seemed to be too much for him.
“Out with it,” said the West, fetching Manabozho such a blow on the back as shook the mountain with its echo.
“Je-ee, je-ee-it is,” said Manabozho, apparently in great pain. “Yes, yes! I cannot name it, I tremble so.”
The West told him to banish his fears, and to speak up; no one would hurt him. Manabozho began again, and he would have gone over the same make-believe of pain, had not his father, whose strength he knew was more than a match for his own, threatened to pitch him into a river about five miles off. At last he cried out, “Father, since you will know, it is the root of the bulrush.” He who could with perfect ease spin a sentence a whole day long, seemed to be exhausted by the effort of pronouncing that one word, “bulrush.”
Some time after Manabozho observed, “I will get some of the black rock, merely to see how it looks.”
“Well,” said the father, “I will also get a little of the bulrush root, to learn how it tastes.”
They were both double-dealing with each other, and in their hearts getting ready for some desperate work. They had no sooner separated for the evening than Manabozho was striding off the couple of hundred miles necessary to bring him to the place where the black rock was to be procured, while down the other side of the mountain hurried Ningabinn, the West.
At the break of day they each appeared at the great level on the mountaintop, Manabozho with twenty loads, at least, of the black stone, on one side, and on the other the West, with a whole meadow of bulrush in his arms.
Manabozho was the first to strike—hurling a great piece of the black rock, which struck the West directly between the eyes, and he returned the favor with a blow of bulrush that rung over the shoulders of Manabozho, far and wide, like the long lash of the lightning among the clouds.
First one and then the other, Manabozho poured in a tempest of black rock, while the West discharged a shower of bulrush. Blow upon blow, thwack upon thwack—they fought hand to hand until black rock and bulrush were all gone. Then they betook themselves to hurling crags at each other, cudgeling with huge oak trees, and defying each other from one mountain top to another; while at times they shot enormous boulders of granite across at each other’s heads, as though they had been mere jackstones. The battle, which had commenced on the mountains, had extended far west. The West was forced to give ground. Manabozho pressing on, drove him across rivers and mountains, ridges and lakes, till at last he got him to the very brink of the world.
“Hold!” cried the West. “My son, you know my power, and although I allow I am now fairly out of breath, it is impossible to kill me. Stop where you are, and I will also portion you out with as much power as your brothers. The four quarters of the globe are already occupied, but you can go and do a great deal of good to the people of the earth, which is beset with serpents, beasts and monsters, who make great havoc of human life. Go and do good, and if you put forth half the strength you have today, you will acquire a name that will last forever. When you have finished your work I will have a place provided for you. You will then go and sit with your brother, Kabinocca, in the north.”
Manabozho gave his father his hand upon this agreement. And parting from him, he returned to his own grounds, where he lay for some time sore of his wounds.
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