Glooskap Encounters Winter, and Why Foxes Are Shy

Although astronomically winter always starts on the solstice, according to meteorologists winter starts here on December 1. In other words, December 21 may be the time when our hemisphere is tilted farthest away from the sun but the wintry weather actually kicks in three weeks earlier. We've already had a little bit of snow in Boston this year, so despite our current warm spell I concur with the weathermen on this one.

In honor of the wintry weather here is a Penobscot folktale about Glooskap, who I've written about a few times in the past. He's the culture hero and trickster god of the Indian tribes of Northern New England and the Maritime Provinces. A being of gigantic size, strength and magical power, Glooskap is the protector of mankind but also sometimes gets involved in comical adventures. Sometimes things don't turn out quite the way Glooskap plans.

A Glooskap (or Glooscap) statue from Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.

The story, which I found in Frank Speck's 1935 collection "Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs" in The Journal of American Folklore, goes something like this.

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A long, long time ago Glooskap was living with his grandmother, the Woodchuck. Winter had come and brought with it heavy snow and very cold weather. All around Glooskap the Penobscot were starving and freezing to death.

Glooskap said, "Grandmother this is terrible! I must put a stop to this thing called winter. Where does it come from?"

Grandmother Woodchuck said, "Winter comes from the far, far north. It is so cold that no one can live there. If you went there you would die!"

"I must try," Glooskap said. "Make me six pairs of snowshoes - two made from caribou hide, two from deer hide, and two from moose skin."

Grandmother Woodchuck did as he asked, and Glooskap set out to put an end to winter. He walked north through the snow and ice for many days. He walked for so long that he wore out first the moose snowshoes, then the deerskin ones, and finally even the caribou snowshoes. He walked on for many days even after the final snowshoes had fallen apart, until he finally came upon a house made of ice.

Glooskap entered the house, and the door closed shut tightly behind him. Inside the house was an old man.

Glooskap addressed him using the polite term for an elder. "Grandfather, could you open the door? It is very cold in here."

The old man mimicked Glooskap, saying back to him "Grandfather, could you open the door? It is very cold in here."

Glooskap could feel himself freezing solid. Through chattering teeth he said, "Grandfather, I am nearly frozen to death."

The old man laughed and again repeated Glooskap's words to him. "Grandfather, I am nearly frozen to death."

And then Glooskap froze solid and died. The old man dragged Glooskap's giant body outside of the house and threw it in the snow, but in the spring Glooskap thawed out and came back alive. The ice house had melted away and he started the long walk back home.

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That's a pretty stark ending. The moral seems to be winter is coming, and there's not much you can do about it. Now of course there is another tale where Glooskap steals summer from some magicians and finally teaches the wintry old man a lesson, but isn't it really more appropriate for the spring? Right now we just need to make peace with winter. I don't want to end this post on a really depressing note though, so here's a raunchy story about what happened to Grandmother Woodchuck while Glooskap was away. It also incidentally explains why foxes are shy.

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While Glooskap was away up in the north Grandmother Woodchuck sat up in her wigwam every night, waiting for him to come home.

Some mischievous foxes who lived nearby learned of this and decided to play a trick on her. One night they came to her door, and one fox imitated Glooskap, saying, "Grandmother, I am home." When Grandmother Woodchuck opened the door the foxes urinated in her face and then ran off into the dark, laughing.

The foxes thought this was so funny that they did it again the next night. And the next. This went on for several months, until Grandmother Woodchuck was nearly blind from being sprayed with fox urine. You would think she would learn a lesson after the first few times, but she was so concerned about Glooskap that she still opened the door every night.

That spring Glooskap finally made his way back home after thawing out. He stood outside her wigwam and said, "Grandmother, I am home."

Grandmother Woodchuck said, "You damn foxes fooled me all winter, but I won't be fooled again. I've had enough. Go away! I'm not opening the door."

Glooskap said, "No grandmother, it is me!" He stuck his hand in the door, and when Grandmother Woodchuck felt his hand she knew Glooskap was really home.

Glooskap healed his grandmother's eyes, and she explained what had happened. Glooskap was furious. He took his bow and arrows and went hunting, and killed every fox he could find. Then he trapped one fox alive and brought it to his grandmother.

Grandmother Woodchuck tied the fox to a pole whipped it with switches until it apologized. When she set the fox free it ran off into the woods and was never seen again. And because of this, foxes are now shy and avoid people's houses.

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I don't recommend shooting foxes (they're too darn cute!), but I don't recommend pranking elderly grandmas either. Happy meteorological winter!

Glooskap and the Giant Frog

A few weeks ago I borrowed a copy of John Hanson Mitchell's 1984 book Ceremonial Time from the library. It's a fascinating book that tries to tell the history of one square mile of Littleton, Massachusetts over 15,000 years. 

Let's face it, 15,000 years is a long long time. Littleton probably only has about 300 years of written history, so Mitchell turns to some unusual methods to unearth what happened in the past. For example, at one point he encounters what he thinks may be the spirit of an ancient Paleo-Indian shaman in the woods near his house. To help him understand this experience he enlists the help of some local American Indians.

One of them, a woman named Tonupasqua, tells him several stories about Glooskap, the mighty culture hero of the New England Algonquins. I've written about Glooskap before. He's a gigantic, super-strong, ancient magician who helped make the world safe for mankind. Sometimes he's a little bit dim, but in other stories, including this one from Ceremonial Time, he's a trickster.

A state of Glooskap in Nova Scotia.

According to the story, a long long time ago when the world was young a gigantic frog lived in New England. He was quite greedy, and built a huge dam to contain all the water in one enormous lake. This lake flooded the land where the humans lived, but they were powerless against the gigantic frog.

Unfortunately, the frog wasn't the only monster people had to deal with. There was also a giant bear whose favorite meal was human flesh.

The humans asked Glooskap to help them with these monsters. Glooskap tried several times to fight the frog, but whenever he got near it it would hide in the lake.

One day while it was sitting underwater the frog devised a sinister plan. Glooskap lived nearby in a large cave - why not hide at the back of Glooskap's cave and eat him when he came home? So it hopped out of the lake and hid at the back of the dark cave.

Glooskap came home from hunting, but hesitated outside his cave. He could sense something was wrong.

"Cave, are you glad to see me?" he said.

The frog said nothing.

Glooskap said, "Magic cave, are you glad to see me? Every evening when I return home you greet me. If you don't greet me I'll know something's wrong."

This was, of course, a lie. His cave never said anything, but the frog didn't know this. Pretending to be a magic cave, the frog croaked out, "Welcome home Glooskap!"

His suspicions confirmed, Glooskap quickly rolled a giant boulder across the entrance and trapped the frog inside.

At this point, the monstrously huge man-eating bear came strolling along. It said, "What's in the cave, Glooskap?"

Glooskap said, "Sweet, tasty humans who are hiding from you. I'll roll back this boulder so you can go inside and eat them. Sound good?"

The bear thought this did indeed sound good, so Glooskap rolled back the boulder.

The bear stuck his head in the cave, and the frog immediately shot out his giant sticky tongue and pulled the bear into the darkness. As the two giant animals began to fight Glooskap once again rolled the boulder across the entrance.

The bear and the frog fought for a long time. They fought so hard that the earth shook violently, which caused the frog's dam burst, releasing all the trapped waters. Finally, the two giant animals died, each mortally wounded in the battle.

When Glooskap told the humans what had happened they rejoiced, and the land once covered by water became fertile land where they could garden and hunt without fear of the giant bear.

There are several different versions of this myth, but I like this one. It definitely provides a different perspective on our landscape! 

Why Woodpeckers Have Red Spots

Cute red feathers, or ancient bloody marking?

As I was walking home this afternoon, I heard a loud tapping noise. "Tap tap tap tap tap!" I hear woodpeckers all the time, but this was the fastest and most frantic woodpecking I think I've heard. Maybe the warm weather today was driving the woodpecker into a frenzy!

Like all the woodpeckers I see in Boston, this one had a red spot on the back of his neck. Evolutionary science would tell us the red spot developed as a random mutation that possibly survived because it gave the woodpeckers who had it an advantage over those that didn't.

Algonquian folklore provides another explanation, however. I've already mentioned Glooskap before on this blog. During one of his adventures, he battled a giant monster who was making the water stagnant and undrinkable for the local humans. The monster was only vulnerable in one spot, and Glooskap didn't know where to strike. Luckily, a woodpecker showed him the monster's weak point, and Glooskap killed it with an arrow. He then marked the woodpecker's head with monster blood to thank it for its help. This story puts those cute little birds in a different light!

I found one version of the story here, but I think I've read it other places as well.

The Great White Hare

Symbol of spring, or ruler of the Underworld?

Easter is on the way, so my mind has drifted to bunnies and colored eggs. I couldn't think of any good lore about colored eggs, but I read a good story about a bunny (actually a hare) in Frank Speck's article 1935 article "Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs" in The Journal of American Folklore.

According to some of Speck's Penobscot informants, a long time ago there was a giant White Hare who lived on a far northern mountain which was inhabited by lots and lot of little white hares. Sounds cute, right? Not so. The White Hare ruled cruelly over his smaller subjects, who were originally men but whose brains had been removed and eaten by malevolent witches. Brainless, they drifted north to the White Hare's wintry abode where they were transformed into hares. (Speck points out that in many Algonquian cultures the White Hare is rules the land of the dead, so in this story the mountain could represent the afterlife, and those brainless men the souls of the dead.)

For quite some time the witches keep eating brains and sending men to the White Hare, whose mountain became covered with thousands and thousands of hares. Meanwhile, the poor Penobscot are starving to death. Winter has struck, and there's no game to be found. Plus, I guess, a lot of their hunters have been de-brained, so things are bad for the people left behind.

Eventually Glooskap saves the day. He braves the wall of perpetual blizzards that surrounds the northern mountain and, after an epic battle, slays the White Hare. He frees all the little white hares, who scamper away into the woods. The Penobscot are saved from starvation, because they capture and eat the white hares. Basically, the souls of the dead cycle back into the natural world, and sustain their living descendants. Oh, and Glooskap also slays the witches by sticking them head first into the ground like sticks.

This story does fit the Easter season pretty well. In addition to bunnies, it has death, resurrection, and feasting (although in a non-Christian context). You probably won't hear during Sunday services.

There is another version of the White Hare story, though, which doesn't feature Glooskap at all, but another hero named Snowy Owl. Snowy Owl defeats the witches, but doesn't go after the White Hare at all. At the end of the story the White Hare is still up there in the north, collecting hare-shaped human souls in his icy mountain abode.

Grandmother Woodchuck

One thing I love about Algonquin mythology is how the natural world and the human world interact in one big social system. A woman marries a bear and gives birth to his son, who turns out to be human. Two weasel sisters (who live as if they were human) accidentally marry two stars. A powerful wizard, who is a partridge, battles the evil porcupine sorcerers who killed his water-spirit wife. Underlying these myths is the assumption that all creatures are basically the same, and therefore deserving of our respect.

One of my favorite beings in these stories is Grandmother Woodchuck. She's the grandmother of Glooskap, a culture hero among the Wabanaki tribes. Glooskap reminds me a little bit of Hercules, since he's always fighting monsters and making the world safe for humans. There's a little bit of Merlin in him as well, because he's a powerful magician. But really he's a unique being in his own right. Unlike Hercules or Merlin, he's a trickster, purely good-hearted, and more than a little naive. Despite all his powers, he often makes dumb mistakes.

Grandmother Woodchuck is always there to help him fix those mistakes. In one story, Glooskap ties up the giant eagle who creates the world's winds, and doesn't untie him until his grandmother points out that the world will become hot, stagnant and uninhabitable without wind. In another, Glooskap captures all the world's animals in a magic bag woven from woodchuck hair. He only lets them go when Grandmother Woodchuck points out that everyone else will starve to death with no game to hunt.

As we approach Groundhog Day, it's nice to know that other cultures recognize the wisdom of this magical creature, because woodchuck is just another name for a groundhog. The word comes from the Algonquin word "wojak."