For the past few months I’ve really been enjoying a book by Ella Elizabeth Clark called Indian Legends of Canada. It was printed by McClelland and Stewart Limited in 1960, and reprinted in 1981, my birth year. I’m pretty sure new works wouldn’t include the word “Indian” in the title, they’d probably be more sensitive and use something like Native, Aboriginal, or First People’s.

Regardless, the book is full of legends and stories beyond the ubiquitous creator-culture-hero-trickster cycles that seem to be the stereotypical native legend told to white kids in elementary school. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest we had plenty of coyote/raven/salmon myths told to us all orbiting around a similar theme. Sadly, the full breadth of the cultures these stories represented was left out. This little book is available on Amazon, with the cover I like least.

What is relevant to us today is this awesome little story from the Mi’kmaq people whose territory stretched from what is now northern Maine to Nova Scotia, PEI, and New Brunswick. English transliterators called them Micmac, which is how they are referred to in the book. Yet another error. But I’ll stop bitching and begin the tale!

The Little People

Introduction

The Little People are human beings, but very small. They live in caves, or they burrow in the ground. You may sometimes hear their footsteps in the forest on a still day, though they themselves are rarely seen. They generally remain quiet during the day but come out at night to revel and dance, to do mischief and perform wonderful deeds.

Once in a while, in the forest, you will come upon stones piled together so as to make a little house. If you move them and go away, when you return you will find them placed just as they were before you touched them. You will also observe many tiny footprints; if you follow them, they will lead you to a hole in somerock. If you really see these little people and associate with them, they will make you small like themselves.
But you will not notice the change, and you will return to your normal size as soon as you leave them.

One day, long ago, when a girl was bathing in a river, she noticed a curious object floating down the current. As it came closer, she saw that it was a tiny canoe paddled by an equally tiny man. Cirious about him, she took the canoe in her hand and carried it home with her.

Her parents, when they saw the little man, were alarmed.
“Take him back at once!” they exclaimed. “Take him back where you found him, and let him go.”

Crying with disappointment, the girl left the wigwam, but she played with the little man for some time before she carried him back to the stream. She set the canoe adrift at the very spot where she had picked it up, and then stood watching it. Coming to a rapid, it seemed to be in great danger of being swamped. Very much alarmed, the girl ran toward the rapid, but the little man guided the canoe skillfully through the white water and into the smooth stream beyond.

Before passing out of sight, the dwarf promised her that he would come back again. So every day she went down to the river to look for him.

One day when picking berries with some other girls, she saw a dozen tiny canoes coming up the river. In the first one was the little man she had played with on his earlier visit. He proved to be the head chief of a band of Little People. The dwarfs landed on the bank of the stream, and cooked a meal there. When they had finished eating, they said to the Micmac girls, “We will take you across the river in our canoes if you wish to go.”

The girls laughed.
“How can we go in canoes so small that we can pick them up in our hands?”

The Little People coaxed, but the girls only laughed again. At last to humor him, she did so. To her astonishment, the moment she put her foot into it both the canoe and chief grew as large as any canoe and chief of the Micmacs. But to her companions on the shore, she appeared very small.

At last she persuaded the girls to step into the other canoes. The instant they did so, she saw them have the same experience she had had: the boat and the paddler seemed to grow large, each girl seemed to become small. The Little People took the whole group across the river. As soon as the girls stepped ashore, the canoes and the crew shrank to their former size and floated on downstream.

Such a short little allegory, I love how it ends without an apparent moral.

I can’t leave this book alone, it’s tiny and fits in the hand just like a miniature canoe. Long live story.