Living Our Language_ Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories - Anton Treuer [86]
[8] And the ones still living today, I can’t put them in a nursing home. I can only take care of them myself. There was one old man, he was called Bezhigoogaabaw. I looked after him myself as he became an elder. Then too I didn’t feel bad about that old man’s passing. I loved that old man as he was like a grandfather to me. He was over one hundred years old when he died. That’s how much I loved him; I loved that old guy.
[9] And it’s not [time] for me to leave as I’m helping him. And I’m seventy years old too. But I’m told, “No.” And they don’t believe me. I tell them how old I am. I should tell them, “I’m [still] spry.”
[10] That must be it.
Using a Rabbit Snare Wire
[1] When you want to go snaring, this here is everything you will need to use—a coat, your moccasins, your mittens, and your snare wire, a rucksack, and snowshoes. And you have to get these things ready when you want to go snaring. That’s everything you use.
[2] And there now when you leave, you go into the deep forest, looking for rabbit trails, and where you find that rabbit path, that’s where you set your snare wire. And there you put your snare wire together. And you place sticks where the trail is. Then you hang your snare there. And when you’ve finished hanging your snare there, you leave again looking for more.
[3] And [maybe] that owl’s sitting there, wanting to steal the rabbits you snare. That owl is a chronic rabbit thief.
[4] And again you leave, looking for more of those rabbit trails, as that’s where you want to set snares. Then that’s as many trails as you’ll find.
[5] And those rabbits you snared, they must be dressed out. When you finish those rabbits, now then you cook them, putting in water, and you put in there whatever you want to mix in there, salt and pepper. Now that’s how you cook him, and you cook that rabbit there and whatever you want to add in with it, and you put it there on the table so you all can eat well. Plates are put there, spoons and a fork. That’s where you all will eat. And now you all eat that rabbit there and whatever you all added in, potatoes too.
[6] Then after you eat, this is how that belly of yours will look, from overeating; you got a potbelly. That’s how you finish your meal when you’re going to eat.
[7] And when you want to go hunting too, here it’s the same thing too, as you shall get dressed [and,] having donned what you’ll go hunting with, you’ll go around searching for that deer. That’s how the Indian did things when he left for what he wanted to eat, hunting. And it’s the same if he wanted to eat fish; then he left, going over and setting net there, embarking in a canoe. Long ago the Indian got what he ate from there too.
HARTLEY WHITE
HARTLEY WHITE (b. 1925), whose Indian name is Zhaawanose (Walks from the South), is a conspicuous figure in language revitalization efforts at the Leech Lake Reservation. A highly principled man, he advocates issues he believes in loudly and passionately, without regard for the obstacles that sometimes block his path.
Hartley was raised at Sugar Point on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, an area steeped in the history of Ojibwe struggle for land and lifeways. The entire area of Bear Island and the surrounding mainland lakeshore was a hub of commerce, politics, and religious ceremony for the reservation throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The last battle between the United States Army and Indians occurred at Sugar Point in 1898, as soldiers came to arrest the local chief Bagone-giizhig. A shoot-out ensued in which the Ojibwe emerged victorious, killing a policeman and a handful of soldiers without