Wiskadjak Stories

For the Ears of the Young and the Old

Or

People of Child Bearing Age Should Not Listen to This

On cold winter nights, when Wisakadjak or Nanaboozhoo, or any of the other spirit beings will probably not overhear you talking about them, these are times for young people and the Elders to spend many hours by the fire telling tales far in to the night. It is a very special time for the young and old. Magical deeds from when the world was young to brave, adventurous deeds to silly things that will amuse the listener and the teller can fill the evenings with laughter and learning and an appetite for more and more stories until they have all been told.

But these are only for the very young and the very old. People of child bearing age, even if they had heard those stories when they were young would not like them. When they get to that age they have no more time or imagination for spirit stories. They are always far too busy and far too full of their own importance to pay attention, and that is too bad.

It seems that when people begin to grow up they forget all about the stories from the past. Young men spend all their spare time proving how strong they are, how handsome, and how much more they have than anybody else. And the young women are just as busy making themselves beautiful for the men they want to trap that they would be embarrassed to be caught listening to such stories.

It is only after they realize that all their self-importance has brought on the responsibility of providing for themselves and their children that they begin to remember the great gift of these stories. Longing for them once again really does no good though because it is too late. Now there is too much work to do. There are too many worries and responsibilities. There isn't even time anymore to be strong and important or even beautiful. There is only hard work ahead of them. They can hardly wait to be old.

Perhaps Wisakadjak has played a little trick on people. Maybe he stole their imagination. Or maybe he put something into their brains to keep them busy thinking about themselves long enough to forget about getting stuck with all the work and worry needed to get along in the world. By the time they notice it is too late. These days they call that thing 'ego'. It is very hard to get rid of until old age. This sounds like something Wisakadjak would think up. It's a pretty good trick. He is always doing things like that, even these days. He even did it to me once.

I never thought about Wisakadjak for a long time until one day, when I was getting older and more and more tired of all my worries, an old Indian sought me out from among a group of people. This was a strange thing because we had never met before. He told me he could see I was a very kind man. Well, I like to think of myself as being kind but then, doesn't everybody? How did he know this, I wanted to know.

"Oh, that is easy", he explained. "You have very large ears".

That was a surprise. I never thought about ears much either, especially my own. You see, I don't look at myself very often. That is because I also have a very large nose that doesn't please me very much. The thought made me smile at the stranger.

"I see too", he spoke again, "that you are a happy person - that you have a good sense of humor. You probably enjoy a good joke".

That kind of talk was starting to make me nervous. It sounded like he was flattering me on purpose so I might be in a favorable mood to give him something he wanted. These old Indians are known to do that sometimes. Before I could ask him about it, he said he could tell about my disposition because of the wide space between my two front teeth. Now I was really confused. Where would he get such an idea?

"Don't you know about such things?" he asked.

When I said no, it was he who was surprised. He told me that in his village back in India where he came from everybody knows about the legend. In fact, in many parts of India it is common knowledge. Somebody who looks like me would be very popular over there. Then he bade me goodbye before I could ask about the legend and I never saw him again.

That made me want to see what the Indian saw so I took a good look at myself. Sure enough, the space between my two front teeth was almost wide enough for an extra tooth. And when I turned sideways, there was my ear. It was so big that I was surprised not to have noticed it before. What I did notice too, was that my nose was even bigger that I had suspected. Too bad the Indian had not said something nice about that too!

That's when I started to think about Wisakadjak again. He has been described in many ways. Sometimes he is a giant. Other times he is a supernatural being, and at other times he can change himself into anything he wants. But the description that came to mind was as having giant rabbit-like ears - even bigger than mine.

Could it be that Wisakadjak had visited India in the old days? That would be a good trick. He is, after all known to be kind and helpful to people and animals in many ways. He also has a sense of humor. Often he enjoys playing tricks on people and animals. He is not very good at it though because his tricks usually backfire on him and he ends up being embarrassed by his own mischief. I can relate to that too. It never works for me either.

I wonder what name Wisakadjak would be known by in India. If it weren't so far away, I would go there and ask somebody.

I could tell you some stories about Wisakadjak if I wanted to. Perhaps I will one day.