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The Fire Plume Legends Of The American Indians

Read by Jay Silverheels
Edited by John Bierhost

The four stories brought together in this collection are among the earliest tales recorded by the pioneer ethnographer Henry Row Schoolcraft, whose researches over a hundred years ago–awakened the interest of the public at large and paved the way for the golden age of American anthropology.

Born in 1793, Schoolcraft spent his youth in New York and Vermont, traveling west for the first time in 1817. In 1822 he was appointed Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie and a year later married the half-white granddaughter of a Chippewa chief. Dissatisfied with the services of available interpreters, he took up the study of the Chippewa language, mastered it, and began the difficult business of recording texts. In the 1840's, by now recognized as an authority on everything Indian, Schoolcraft was appointed by Congress to prepare a survey of the native cultures. The resultant six volumes, published between 1851 and 1857 under the general title Historical and Statistical Information Respecting . . . the Indian Tribes of the United States, comprise a rich source of primary data, still mined by scholars.

The stories included in the present album were first published by Schoolcraft in two earlier works: Travels in the Central Mississippi Valley (1825) and Algic Researches (1839). Of these four "Legends," the most important is undoubtedly the Chippewa tale of the Red Swan. Superficially a love story, it is in fact a subtle culture-myth, explaining in symbolic terms how the Indian, in days gone by, progressed from the state of the hunter and learned to plant corn and live in villages. The red swan represents the sacred knowledge of the sun, which the hero obtains, or wins, for the benefit of his people.

In theory, life and knowledge come ultimately from the light of the sun. The sun itself is both man and woman. As it rises in the east it appears as a youth, whose scalp of white wampum symbolizes the rays of dawn. As it sinks in the west, it becomes the young man's sister, the beautiful "red swan" of evening. Completely vanished, however, it is imaged as a feeble old man, whose scalp has been taken away by enemies "as numerous as the hanging leaves"–in fact the stars, who have stolen the sun's light. To prove his worth, the hero retrieves the scalp and returns it to the aged sun, who puts it on, becoming once again the radiant young spirit of dawn. As a reward he gives the hero his sister, the Red Swan herself, who thus becomes, symbolically, the bride of the human race.

The romantic story of Wawanosh,, also a Chippewa take, is said by Schoolcraft to have been obtained from this wife, Jane Johnston. The Broken Wing, with its gentle moral, is yet another Chippewa tale–one of a series of curious animal fables collected by Schoolcraft in the 1820's and '30's.

The Fire Plume comes from the Ottawa, a tribe closely related to the Chippewa. In a sense it serves as a companion piece to the The Red Swan–the myth that explains how the good life was won. The Fire Plume tells how that life–the traditional life of the Indian before the coming of the whites–was tragically lost. The hero himself represents the old ways. Like the sun, he sinks beneath the waters of the lake, seeming at last to disappear "forever." But though the story ends in a lamentation, it contains–like all messianic myths–the seed of a hope. If the hero is comparable to the sun, will he not some day rise again? The fire plume, or "feather of flames," is of course an image of the sun itself.

–John Bierhorst

Play song

Name

Performed by

Description

Native Words

Translation

Notes

The Fire Plume Ottawa
Wawanosh Chippewa
The Broken Wing Chippewa
The Red Swan Chippewa