The Little People of the North Woods

By Lois Beardslee
Sun contributor
The following is an excerpt from the collection Calm Days and is the first in a series of nine pieces the Glen Arbor Sun will run this summer, exploring the lore of Michigan’s Native Americans as well as current issues.
Epanigishimoog is resting. This monstrous, overwhelming being, the Wind Himself, is sound asleep. This is an opportunity on Lake Superior. This is when the Little People spring forth from the forest floor, fall into their tiny boats, and play and explore where the lake offers itself up to every bit of land touching its otherwise restless borders. Great, hulking cliffs are warm and touchable. Islands and coves known only to the clattering hooves and scratching toenails of caribou, moose, bears, and otters come alive with Superior’s people, the Anishnabeg.

There are those who believe that the Little People are figments of our imaginations, that the Ojibwe believe in fairies. But we are the Little People ourselves, dwarfed by our environment, by old growth timber, by lakes and rivers that are so immense they seem endless. We are one and the same. Sometimes we are very big, and sometimes we are very small. When Epanigishimoog sleeps and Superior opens her arms to us, we are very small.
The water is so clear today that we hang over the edges of our tiny boat, intrigued. Cliffs rise up straight below us, and we float on the dense water that rises above their peaks. We see fifty feet down, clearly, as though we are eagles in a cloudless sky. Lake trout roll their marble-sized eyes up at us and loll but a few feet to one side or another. There is no constant lapping, sloshing, crashing of waves to hide us from the wildlife, not even a ripple. We will see no swimming bears today. The caribou will not come to visit. Only Little People like us and smaller mammals like beavers and otters skitter about on a day like today. We are as much a part of this lake as the crayfish.
We land our small craft and scramble on rocks that are rarely dry and safe to the tread of an awkward human being. Our eager hands cradle open geodes and vast cauldrons worn smooth by ice-dropped boulders swirled for years in heaving waves. We walk on coarse lava that is creased and caked like old gravy, frozen since the moment that liquid rock hit cool air. It is only here, at Superior’s fingertips, that the centuries of soil and softer rock are cleansed from the surface of the lava. No lichens can survive here to tear at the surface structure of this hardest of rocks. We clamber about, we Little People, small, non-invasive, flitting, elusive, and timeless. We are among the secrets of this lake.
The island is so small that I have never dreamed of landing on it. It is perhaps five acres. It is close to the big island, but surprisingly, separated by a chasm a hundred feet deep. Its rocky shore is somehow different from the adjacent island. It is out on the open water’s side of the big island. Epanigishimoog rarely leaves this islet alone. I have never dared venture around it. I assume I am being given a tour of its perimeter. I keep my eyes down and ahead for unknown shoals. But Grandfather guides the boat directly onto the rocks. I shift my weight toward the back, and the high front end barely scrapes. We set the anchor on the shore, although today no gust will move the vessel while we are away.
“I’ll go this way. You two go around on the other shore.”
“But Miisho, I want to go with you!”
“No. Follow your mother. Go on. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
In a few minutes, we meet on a rock bluff at the narrow, inland tip of the island. By late morning, this calm day has become so warm that we have left a trail of clothing layers among the rocks. We kneel to sip water directly from the big lake.
“Ohhh…” he says with such disappointment. “I wanted to show you a caribou.” I am quizzical. I have seen a hundred caribou. Why would a caribou hunker down on this tiny islet with so little forage?
“I figured if I walked around this way, I would make it come right out at you.”
I’ve had caribou run right past me. It’s terrifying. So I smile and shrug. I look to the bigger island, where I know the caribou bed down, perhaps 200 feet away from here. I peer into the cedars. Are they watching us? Are they laughing at us?
I return to my knees, for another drink, wondering what sort of sight I am to those caribou, a rare mammal drinking at the water’s edge on a calm, hot day. As I swallow, I catch a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye, before I hear the deafening clatter of those immense hooves. Confused by our prattle, then startled by the actual sight of us, the great beast pulls its weight forward and dashes with unruly momentum into the water. His chest and chin are clearly reflected in the water’s mirror-like surface before him. As he propells himself, I see each leg under the surface in its strong paddling motion. It is the biggest caribou I have ever seen in my life.
“One of the cows calves in there.” Mishomis points to an old Indian copper mine, a man-made depression in the rock, now full of small trees and lichens. “He just comes to visit.” He is referring to the caribou as if it is an old friend. I can imagine them, the two old bulls, in quiet conversation.
The old man is laughing with his whole body. He loves being right. His arms dangle down, and he is helpless, giddy. Today is about teaching. It is about knowing everything about one’s environment that one needs to know to survive. The Little People can never have hoped to hunt and live off of animals as immense as bears, caribou, and moose without knowing everything there is to know about them.
Mishomis is not showing off. He is teaching lessons about the Anishnabeg that are bigger than hunting. We no longer rely strictly upon hunting for our food. He is teaching me about self respect and the knowledge that Indians always have been cunning. Our environment and our resources have changed. But we are still smart and adaptable. We are still strong. We know this about ourselves, even if it is one of the best kept unintentional secrets in North America. The Little People should never remain small. We should always know how and when to make ourselves big. As the old man convulses with laughter in front of the fading wake of the great swimming caribou, he stands there as a giant.
And now it is time to become small again, to slip off of the tiny island without further disturbing mother and calf.
Today is a day of transformations. It is a day to feel good about ourselves. It is a day to smile at the silliness of strangers who believe that we are superstitious, ignorant fools who are mistaken in our beliefs that we have actually seen our elders transform themselves into creatures and fish. Today has been a day for flying over mountaintops, while trout, pike, and sturgeon sail through canyons below.