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The Origin Of Dogs - Anishinabek From Isaac Murdoch - Story Teller


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THE ORIGIN OF DOGS

 

"Here is an Ojibway Legend that I told at the Ojibway Cultural Foundation Conference, which they so generously transcribed, and is featured in the book, 'Anishinaabewin Niizh.

 

The story describes the origin of how dogs came to the Anishinabek and their Sacred Role they play in our Villages. Hope you enjoy. smile emoticon

 

A long time ago, they used to have a ceremonial wiigwaam that pointed East to West. In the springtime they would go there, and they would have a ceremony in that wiigwam. A lot of people would come there but something happened. Over the years, they forgot to bring something inside there.

 

Everything was wrong when they forgot the drum. The people in that big springtime ceremony became very greedy. In the big wiigwaam, there was a man, sitting near the Eastern door. This man was a big man, and he was very greedy. He had all kinds of moose fat, and moose bones, laying beside him and he didnt share any of it with anybody. In that ceremony, people were just laying around, they werent even doing anything.

 

The greedy man at the Eastern doorway was mean. When the big greedy man spoke, he always shook his fist. During one of these ceremonies, somebody got very sick in the village. So a lady went to the wiigwaam to get help. She went to that ceremony to get help. It was the sister of the sick person who brought her brother down.

 

She said, My brother is very sick. Hes going to die." That greedy man at the Eastern door said, Dont bother us here. Well she says, What am I supposed to do?" "The greedy man said, I dont know. So she grabbed her brother by the arm, and carried him to the middle of that wiigwaam in the middle of that ceremony that they were having. Her brother just curled up in a ball. I guess he was going to die.

 

The sister said, Whats wrong with you people? How come youre not doing anything to help my brother? This is supposed to be a ceremony!

 

That greedy man said, You get out of here!

 

Thats what that greedy man at the Eastern door told her. Well, she got pretty mad, so she took off. She took off crying. And she started to run near there was a rock there by the lake. All of a sudden she saw a nice big beautiful white birch tree near by. And she thought, Im going to get that birch bark bark, and once my brother dies Im going to wrap him up in that birch bark. That is what she did. She went to that tree and started to cut down the birch bark. What they used to do to get birch bark was get a long stick. At the end of that long stick, they split the end, and they put a piece of flint in that stick. That is how they cut their bark. They would then stick it into the tree and theyd go down the bark until it peels. At that time of year, the longest day of the year, once you make that cut, the bark just wants to pop off.

 

As she was doing this, she looked on the ground, and she noticed something was staring at her. It was a rabbit. A little bunny rabbit was staring at her. And she looked at that rabbit, and she said, Can you help my brother? That rabbit just blinked at her, like rabbits do. It hopped away.

 

She finished cutting the bark off the tree. She got it down. She rolled it up. She grabbed a willow, she cut along the willow and got a strand of that willow bark and tied up that birch bark. She put it on her shoulder and went back down to that wiigwaam, where her dying brother was in that ceremony. She placed that birch bark beside him. The greedy man at the Eastern door, he just stared at her, chewing on his fat. That greedy man just stared. The lady looked at him and said, you know what, youre a real mean man. He didnt even say anything, he just kept eating his fat.

 

At that point, all of a sudden, the greedy man at the Eastern doorway looked through the door, and he said, Somebodys coming. Well, you know Anishinaabe, as soon as you see somebodys coming through the door, everybodys got to just stare. They just got to stare real hard: whos coming through that door? All of a sudden, the man came in. He was tall and he had two big eagle feathers sticking out from the back of his head. Those eagle feathers were immaculate. They were golden eagle feathers, the ones with the black tips. The ones that all the people want to have, those kinds of feathers. He was very striking, this man. He had beads all over his outfits. He was very handsome, and he had a certain thing about him. He stood at that Eastern door.

 

The greedy man said, Hold on stranger. Youre not allowed in here.

 

The man that stood there, the man with the feathers, said, You dont even know my power, you dont even know what I can do.

 

The greedy man looked at him and said, Before you enter this door, before you enter this lodge I want to see your power.

 

The man with the feathers looked at him, and smiled and said, You have a bad attitude, dont push me.

 

The greedy man looked at him and walked up to him, and pushed him. The minute that he touched him, that man with the feathers jumped up high in the air, he jumped up real high. When he landed on the ground the whole ground shook and you could hear thunder way in the ground. The man with the feathers looked at him and said, Thats my power.

 

Well, the greedy man at the Eastern door at that point didnt want to push him anymore, because he knew that he was somebody... somebody very special. They knew that the man that walked with two feathers on his head was a holy man. They knew that he had a power that regular people didnt have. Because he jumped so high, because when he hit the ground the earth shook. So he was permitted to go in. As soon as he walked in, he said, How come nobody is dancing for this sick person laying on the ground? How come all of you are just sitting there staring at him? How come nobody is dancing? Where are the drums?

 

Nobody knew what to do. Of course, they just sat there with their heads down; they didnt even want to look at him. He said, I command that you dance for this person thats on the ground. Dance for him, so that he can get well again. Still, nobody did anything. Maybe they were scared, maybe they felt ashamed, I dont know. But they didnt do anything.

 

All of a sudden, the greedy man at the Eastern doorway said, Look, somebody else is coming

 

Again, everybody looked at that door. Something came walking in and it was a wolf. A wolf came through that door, and when the wolf came in, it jumped over that man that was dying on the ground. A spark came from his tail in mid-air, and that spark spiraled down and went into that dying mans mouth. As soon as that spark went into his mouth, the man stood up, just like Im standing now, and he was cured. The holy man said, This is my brother. The holy man said, This is my brother, and his power is great. This is my four-legged brother, the wolf. And because he cured this man, you must give him offerings. You have to give him something to eat for what he did. He will accept all of those bones that are laying on the floor. He will accept all that fat that is laying around. He said, and he will accept all of that greedy mans food that hes got tucked away behind him.

 

So the wolf started to eat up everything off the ground. And he cleaned up that big wiigwaam, he cleaned it up nice. All of the fat was taken off and all of the wasteful food was all cleaned up. And of course, the greedy man at the Eastern door and his little stash that he had behind him was gone too. At that point, everybody was the same. Nobody had more fat then anybody else. Nobody had more zaasganag (fat grinds) than anybody else. Everybody had the same: everybody had nothing.

 

The holy man with the two feathers told the people, Im going to stay here, and Im going to show you how to do this ceremony again. You were told once, and you forgot, and Im going to show you one more time. He drew everything for them in the sand. He drew where the people were to be sitting. The women on this side, the men on this side, the fire here, the drum here everything was explained. Then he said But just to make sure that you guys remember, Im going to draw this for you. The wolf came up to him with the moose bone, and plopped it in his hand. With that moose bone, he went to that birch bark that was going to be used to wrap up that dying man, and he drew everything into that birch bark with that bone. And that big roll of birch bark had beautiful pictures of everything, of how that ceremony was supposed to be. Even the songs were put on there. This birch bark, they say that when they held it, it had a heartbeat; it was alive.

 

He walked over to the greedy man at the Eastern doorway, and gave it to him. He said, This is to remind you of what goes on in here. And you have to take whats in here, and you have to take it out there. As a reminder, my friend the wolf is going to stay and live with you. Hes going to live outside that Eastern doorway so that greedy people will never come back in here. So that people will not bring that sickness, that bad way, inside here anymore. Hes going to protect this lodge. All he requires is fat and bones.

 

And so thats what he did, he tied up the wolf outside the lodge on the Eastern doorway. He said, It is my time to go, my journey continues.

 

The people said, Dont go, dont go, stay.I cant stay I have to go, he says, and Im going to go West. So, as he walked towards that Western door, people started to sing for

him.

 

They were so happy he came, because that person changed everything for them. He gave them life again, he gave them hope. That drum was sounding strong. As he walked out that western doorway, people crowded up around the door just to see him go. That holy man walked down the hill. There was a little gully there. As he walked up that hill he wasnt a man, he was a rabbit. He was a little bunny rabbit hopping up that hill. They knew that the holy man was a rabbit, maybe turned into a man or maybe a man that turned into a rabbit. They knew the holy man would come back when he was really needed.

 

And so thats how they saw that Waabooz (rabbit) walking towards the sunset. To commemorate what that holy man did for them, to commemorate everything that he showed them, they drew his picture on the rock where the rabbit was first seen. They grabbed the sacred paint, the Onaman, and they painted him smoking a pipe, with his big ears, or feathers, to commemorate what he had done.

 

The Wolf never left the Anishinabek and is the dog as we know it.

 

Nahow Chi Miigwetch"

 

Reposted here with permission. I believe this is the book: https://books.google.com/books/about/Anishinaabewin_Niizh.html?id=qji0kQEACAAJ

 

Isaac often posts stories. Currently he has a drawing up of the story 12/6/2015 as the background on https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1637889403165496&set=a.1410637839223988.1073741827.100008333559927&type=3&theaterFacebook.

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