mishipizhiw
While I was up at Sault Ste. Marie I discovered the art work of Anny Hubbard, a traditional artist working with birch bark cutouts. It was from her I discovered the water spirit of Lake Superior, Michii Biijou.
Actually, there are lots of different spelling of the water spirit's name. This is probably due to the fact that the Ojibwe language, Anishinaabemowin, is an orally based one (though I am starting out with a book, but that is more due to lack of a proper teacher just now than anything else) and there are many dialects so spellings vary. Regardless, I discovered this information at Mishipizhiw: Spirit of the Water:
Among the pictographs at Fairy Point, at the west end of Missinaibi Lake [Ontario, Canada] are spine-tingling portrayals of Mishipizhiw (also known as Mishipizheu or Gitche-anahmi-bezheu), an animal Manitou associated with the underwater realm, and sometimes regarded as an evil spirit of rapids and troubled waters.
In Cree and Ojibway cultures of the region Mishipizhiw was both feared and revered as a demi-god of the water. Sometimes taking the form of a menacing, snake-like creature with sharp teeth, horns, and "power lines" emanating from its body, Mishipizhiw was also pictured as fiercely feline (the "Great Lynx", "great underwater wildcat," "underwater panther," or "fabulous night panther"). Like other Manitous, Mishipizhiw had the power to shape-change into various animal forms.
The Mishipizhiw Manitou is a dominant theme in Cree-Ojibway spirituality, and appears not only in pictographs, but also in traditional stories and legends. The Mishipizhiw water spirit has been portrayed by noted aboriginal artists such as Norval Morrisseau.
Personally, I think the author does a disservice to Mishipizhiw by using terms like "evil," which would be like calling a thunderstorm evil. Mishipizhiw is a force of nature. When people disrespect nature bad things can happen, but it has less to do with intent than cause and effect. Perhaps I am not understanding Mishipizhiw that well, perhaps someone will correct me. I am just beginning to learn.
In Louise Erdrich's wonderful travel story, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, she explains many things about Ojibwe pictographs. For example, the "power lines" noted above are signs of communication from the human world to the spirit lands. They indicate important teaching given by that particular spirit, lessons people should learn from. The horns are a sign of spirituality as well. Seen in this manner there is nothing threatening or "evil" about Mishipizhiw. In my art piece I made here I did not want to include those symbols she talks about, however, since I felt it was not my place to use (co-opt, some might say) Ojibwe symbols into art, things I only barely understand. So I decided to use the glow and halo of light I enjoy which symbolizes spiritual power to me. The figure of Mishipizhiw came from a design of an actual rock pictographs, though I darkened in the shape to give Mishipizhiw a more animal-like appearance. Enjoy!
***
Invoke my name, friend. Friend, invoke my name.
Sailors steer according to my copper
scales and trackers all fall silent in shame
at the sound of my voice. Let the healer
and the nurse find what they are looking for
as I pass by. I know why ants dream, crows
despair, chipmunks plot. Every pink lakeshore
rock is my prayer to you. When the torsos
and the legs of the wicked all wash up
on the lakeshore, yes, that is my prayer too.
Call me in. Invoke my name, my dearest
friend. Have trust in me and share your first cup
of tea with me. But there is no tea. You
do not call me in. You do not have trust.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Found this post quite interesting, also the one above it about Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha.” I also haven’t ever run across any specific commentary by Native American writers about “Song of Hiawatha” other than perhaps a random comment here and there.
I live in Minneapolis, where Longfellow lived (or anyway legend has it) for a time. There are a lot of places and things here also named after names in Longfellow’s poem: Hiawatha is the name given to a small lake, a street, and a commuter train line; Minnehaha is the name given to a waterfall, a creek, the city park that surrounds them, a street, and a shopping mall; Nokomis is the name given to a small lake and a school; and so on. There are also a street and a park named for Longfellow.
At the top of Minnehaha Falls, on a small island in the creek, is a bronze statue depicting Hiawatha carrying Minnehaha in his arms. On the base of the statue are a couple of lines quoted from Longfellow’s poem. The whole thing reduced to “local color” for tourists. (From what I’ve been able to piece together from the shredder of imperialist history, I gather that Dakota people lived here prior to the forced migration west of Ojibwe and other people from the Great Lakes region. Currently Minneapolis and St. Paul together are said to have the largest urban population of Native American people in the United States — Dakota, Ojibwe, and whoever else.)
In your post on Longfellow, one of the works you quote from mentions the early 19th century writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. You may be interested in checking out a webpage giving bio info about Schoolcraft’s Ojibwe wife, whose English name was Jane Johnston Schoolcraft:
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/schoolcraft_jane_johnston.html
According to the site at the above link (hosted at the U. of Minnesota), Jane Johnston Schoolcraft was apparently one of the earliest Native American writers to write literary works in English. Her mother was a renowned storyteller, and Jane Johnston Schoolcraft set out to put in writing, in English, many of the traditional stories she had heard from her mother. Her husband, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, took (or stole) heavily from his wife’s writings, though largely neglected to credit her. She was borne in the region of what is now Sault Ste. Marie.
That business about H. R. Schoolcraft claiming to have “discovered” the source of the Mississippi is (unfortunately) just too typical. I read somewhere a number of years ago — a small booklet I found somewhere, purporting to give Native place names of varioius places in Minnesota, though it didn’t give any info about the sources — that local Native people actually didn’t consider Lake Itasca to be the source of the Mississippi. The regarded the much larger Leech Lake (in the same region of the state) to be he source of the Mississippi, and considered the river that runs from Itasca to Leech Lake to be a separate river.
Interesting to consider. I’ve never been there, though on the map the river does go into Leech Lake on the west or southwest side, and emerges (or another river does) on the east side of the lake. Makes as much sense to consider them two separate rivers as to consider them the same one. (On the map, roughly three quarters of Leech Lake appears to be legally in sovereign Native territory, though I don’t know the formal legal status offhand.)
You may already be aware of it, but just in case not, a general online resource you may find useful is the Native Literature Directory website:
http://www.indians.org/Resource/natlit/natlit.html
Hope I haven’t been too long-winded. I like what you’re doing here. I’ll come back and look some more. Thanks.