Anung Sings for the People of the City

The great chief was standing outside the city’s main gate when Anung approached. Behind him stood the three young men the great chief had dreamed would come to this place in search of the great chief. They were eager for their fourth brother to arrive.

Like Anung, they had recently been boys, and they did not hide their eagerness to discover what came next.

The elders of the city were gathering and the chiefs and elders from the many tribes from the many villages who had traveled from near and far to be there stood with them, gathering all around, all the people in their tribal dress.

The great chief stood tall among them. He was dressed plainly, in a long buckskin tunic shirt and leggings. The front half of his head was shaved and he wore a small cluster of feathers in his hair that grew long in the back. He placed his hand on Anung’s shoulder and welcomed him and then Turtle. He turned to all those gathered and told them to take care of this weary young man.

Turtle helped Anung understand all those who welcomed him, and the directions of all who would serve him. He was led to his place in the chief’s longhouse where he was given a beautiful buckskin vest to wear, the fringes decorated with cowry shells.

They led him to the chief’s cook fire where he was given the best portion of roasted venison.

After he ate they followed him as he wandered through the darkening city to explore in the last of the daylight the great salt lake that stretches the sky. He tasted the salt water and spit it out and he laughed at himself when he was surprised it was salty.

As it grew dark the white-capped waves grew even more lovely and Anung was happy to have made this long journey.

They returned when the drums called them to the great fire circle built inside the village walls and they joined all who had gathered there.

Many people were gathered around the fire. Ring after ring after ring of people from all the First Nations were gathered there and many of them had been chanting songs of their tribes and the voices of all the people were heard.

Soon the drums turned the many voices into one song of praise for Gitche Manitou. After they sang four cycles of this song of praise the great chief stood among the people to tell of his dreams.

These dreams first found him before this city had been built.

These dreams first came to him when he was a boy on his own vision quest.

The village he lived in when he had his dream was near the river to the South. This place where now he stood was where his people would camp while they set their nets off the rocky point, for the waters there were always filled with fish, in every season.

In his first dream he saw that four boys would each leave their villages from far away to come to this place where now they were gathered together. The four boys would come to this place from far away in search of the greatest chief of all the First Nations people. His first dream told him that he must greet them when they arrived to warn them that the most difficult, the most dangerous part of journey was still to come.

The four young men looked at each other in surprise, for they all believed their journeys had ended here.

In his second dream this great chief was told to build a city of great acclaim on this site, far greater than any village, and in this dream he saw row after row of longhouses surrounded by a tall wall and abundant gardens.

The third dream showed him that he was to build this great city to attract many wise elders who would come to this place to see it and then stay to live together to learn from each other. And many brave men would come, the greatest warriors and hunters, and stay to learn from each other and to study the powers found in the wise men’s words. This great city would become a home to Nokomis from the villages all around who know the ancient wisdoms and to strong women who would teach the men what only women know. These great leaders of their people would build the best tools. They would use these tools to make the finest crafts. And they would know how to prepare all the food a man would need for many days of travel.

His fourth dream told him that the journey for three of these young men would end here. But the fourth young man must continue across the great salt lake that stretches the sky. He must find his way across the first water, the remains of the flood waters that once covered the earth and that still surround Turtle Island. For the great chief’s dream told him that the old legends were true, that there was another island across the water, a much bigger island, the island of the first sun.

The great chief understood that his city must be built to prepare one of these young men for his journey across the flood waters to find the island of the first sun. For his dream told him that is where the greatest chief will be found. And one of these young men must continue his journey to find the greatest chief to tell him the stories and sing the songs of all of the people of Turtle Island.

And this young man will then return to his people, with the wisdom he learned from the greatest chief.

His dreams showed him how men of this village would make great canoes out of the biggest trees. The men of this village have paddled those canoes on a course to the island of the first sun many times. They have taken many trips to locate this faraway place so they might tell the chosen one who will continue his journey what they find.

Some of these men paddled their canoes until they could not be seen by their wives or children.

Some never came back.

Others returned after many days without ever finding the land they were searching for.

Many were too afraid to venture any further when they got to the point they could barely see shore. They returned.

In his dreams the great chief saw how the best craftsmen and women would work together to stitch the finest buck skins together and mount them across a great stick frame that resembled in many ways the frame of a giant’s snowshoe. The dreams showed how this hide could catch the winds and capture their power to push the canoe along the waves faster than many men could paddle.

The men of this village built this sail and ventured far across the great water, but they still did not find any land.

They decided that only the chosen one would find it.

His last dream told him that as the great chief it was he would decide which young man would travel on to find the greatest chief.

The chief asked the elders of all the tribes gathered there to tell him how they would select the young man who would continue on. After much discussion they agreed that each young man must sing the song he would sing when he stands before the greatest chief. The elders and chief would then watch the people as each song was sung, and the people’s response would tell them who was to be the chosen one.

Anung sat near the fire with the young men.

He was afraid to sing his song in front of so many people.

When he first stood at the shore of the great salt lake that stretches the sky he was struck silent. Now, being there before all the people gathered around the fire, he felt like he did when standing in front of those waves for the first time. He was afraid that when it was his turn to sing his song that this tightness in his throat would only get tighter and he would not be able to make a sound.

The young man who arrived at the village first stood to sing first. He was Wabanaki. He had the shortest distance to travel and had arrived during the warm summer days. His head was shaved but for a knot on top that was decorated with feathers. He had painted a thick red stripe above his eyes and a thin black stripe below them, and wore a quill breastplate.

He sang a Wabanaki song. His song told of the days he had traveled over rivers and lakes. His song told of his arrival at the village. He sang about what he learned by studying the great waters, for it had revealed many of its secrets to him. In his song he told of building his own canoe to travel far out on the great salt lake that stretches the sky.

The people had seen this Wabanaki out in his canoe, even in the fiercest storms. They nodded as he sang his song and told each other it was a good song to sing.

The young man who arrived during the snowstorm rose to sing next. His hair was long and rested on his shoulders that were covered by his buckskin shirt. He wore no paint, and just one feather hung down from the back of his head.

He sang a Natchez song. He sang of the wisdom his people gained living in the rhythms of the Father River that floods Turtle Island every Spring but always returns to its course, leaving the land it had just covered with water now rich with the best soil it carried down from the North. He sang of his travel to the rising sun where he found the shore of the first waters far to the south of this great Owasco city.

He sang of the days he walked the shore and his song asked the spirits of the wind why one day the waves gently licked the shore and the next day they crashed in a great white-headed fury.

And he sang of the way the people cared for him arriving at the Owasco village in the middle of a great snowstorm.

The people remembered the furious winds and blinding snow the day this young man who looked a boy stumbled into their village and they told each other he was brave.

The third young man who arrived just as the snows started to fall stood to sing next. He had journeyed from the Blue Misted Mountains. He began his song in Cherokee. Much of his head was shaved as well but the hair left grew into a long tail down his neck. The top half of his face was painted red. On his bare chest rested a necklace of bear claws.

He sang of the great nation of clans and tribes his people built along the rivers that course through the Blue Misted Mountains. There were many rivers, filled with fish, and many villages with many great chiefs. Some of their villages were nearly as large as this one. Their shelters were not so large as the longhouses, but there were many of them, built with logs, and there were great council houses where the people gathered to advise the chiefs.

He sang of a great nation where the peace chiefs were as powerful as the war chiefs.

Then this young man brought surprised smiles from the people when he sang in the language of the Odawa as he told of the many villages he passed during his journey to this place.

Then he finished his song in Owasco, the father of all Iroquois languages, and sang of the greatness of this city where he had met so many wise elders, where he had seen so many wonders and delights, and that he knew as soon as he met the chief of this village that he was the greatest chief of all the people.

The people turned to the great chief and nodded their approval.

Then it came time for Anung to sing his song.

But he could not sing. The joy he felt in hearing the others sing left him and his throat was tightening again. He could not even stand for his legs were weak.

The elder sitting next to Anung picked up his drum and handed it to him, and nodded to him, that he should play it for them. Anung stayed sitting, set his father’s drum in place, and with his beater stick he struck his drum so softly only those close to him could hear it. Then he felt the heartbeat of his Mother from his winter dream and he followed that beat, and when that beat was steady it grew louder and when it was true he began to sing his song.

He sang of the people of his village. To the beat of his Mother’s love filled heart he sang of all of his mothers who never let their children eat the last portion of a meal until they knew Anung had been fed. He beat the drum a little faster as he sang of all his fathers of his village who taught him how to honor the spirit of the deer he killed with his arrow. And who showed him how to respect Nokomis.

He beat the drum slowly again when he sang of how tired and hungry he had been when the winter’s cold and snow were more than he could survive, then a faster drum beat accompanied the song of Windigo chasing him through the snow and of his narrow escape and of his long winter nap with Mother Bear who nursed him until he regained his strength to continue his journey.

He ended his song as a lament, confessing his fear of traveling alone over the great salt lake that stretches the sky to an island no one has seen. He sang as he told them he has felt this loneliness many times before, whenever he was sad that he never knew his mother or his father.

The people of the city answered with their own soft crying songs, for as Anung finished singing he continued to drum and other men began to drum with him.

Some of the gathered people began dancing to the beat of many drums. The truth of Anung’s song was still heard in the drums and the people dancing made spirits shout.

As more of the people got up to dance, the great chief placed his hand on Anung’s shoulder and said here was the chosen one. The people sang his name and asked him to tell them more of his journey. As he told them his story many of the people came up to him to give him their gifts.