The Wabanaki peoples are great storytellers. They recorded their history and made sense of their world through storytelling. Stories also serve as entertainment on long winter nights. Like many ancient cultures without a written language, the oral tradition is still an important part of the indigenous culture. In honor of Indigenous People’s Day, here’s a story for you to enjoy.
The People believed that a being called Glooscap (or Gluskonba or Gluscab) created all the things there are in the world. Glooscap was a Kookwes: a giant nearly 10 feet tall, with magical powers. There were other Kookwes, such as the North Wind, but they did not love the people, as Glooscap did.
Glooscap loved the people so much that he made them from the heartwood of his favorite tree: ash trees, which were tall and slender and danced gracefully in the wind. The People had hearts which were growing and green. They were made as all people were made, with their heads pointing North, their feet rooted firmly in the South and their arms pointing East and West.
Then Glooscap began to make more things in the world like animals, fish, plants and trees to help feed the people, and to use for making shelters and canoes.
While Glooscap made many wonderful things, he was not perfect, and so he made some mistakes along the way. One day while shaping fish out of clay, his hand slipped and the clay was pounded flat as a pancake. Glooscap thought, “Oh well!” and he tossed that fish into the ocean where it still lives today. The name of that fish can be found at the end of this article.
Other mistakes occurred because of his height. Glooscap created some animals to match his large size, such as moose, bears, and even beavers the size of cows. That became something of a problem when the giant beavers began gnawing and toppling huge trees and building large dams across big rivers forming huge lakes. That’s why there are so many lakes in Maine.
Glooscap realized that if he didn’t do something quick to fix his mistake, the whole area would soon be underwater. So, he went all over and caught the giant beavers one by one and patted them down to a much smaller size. They could still cut down trees, but only little ones, forming small dams and small ponds.
However, there was one beaver that must have been a little smarter than all the rest, because he led Glooscap on a chase all over the northern part of the State, before Glooscap finally caught him and patted him down to size. That explains why there are more lakes and ponds up in northern Maine.
There is more to this story, and also many more of Glooscap’s wonderful successes and his humorous mistakes, but for now, Kespeadooksit (kes-pea-ah-dook’-sit), the story is told. This legend has been adapted from the book Gluskap the Liar & Other Indian Tales, by Horace P. Beck. The Cumberland Press, Inc., Freeport, Maine, 1966 and from numerous other sources.
Answer: flounder