Good morning!
Today I want to tell you about several names for the winter months, according to different aboriginal groups, or "first peoples" of North America.
I learned about these names in many places, but in particular in the book, Thirteen Moon Months, by Joseph Bruchac. [Available to borrow from the shelf outside the Nursery]
Now first of all, I have some questions for you about turtles -- do any of you have a pet turtle? Has anyone ever held a turtle, or looked at a turtle's shell up close?
Did you know many different aboriginal peoples say that our earth was created there, on Old Turtle's back? Can you feel yourself sitting on the floor, that rests on earth, that rests on Old Turtle?
Let's look closely at this drawing [show drawing with no numbers in each scute] of a turtle's back shell, or carapace, --you can see it has different sections, like large scales -- anyone know what these are called? scutes.
Something really interesting about these scutes is that all turtles have the same number of these sections -- [show second, numbered picture] let's count them...they have 13 scutes.
You may wonder what the connection is between turtles and the winter months, the very period when turtles are hibernating....!
Many aboriginal people say the thirteen scutes stand for the thirteen cycles of the moon every year, and they have given these moon months names that have to do with the natural world all around us. Of course, different groups living in different parts of the continent may give different names to the moon months, but I would like to tell you a few tiny stories about some aboriginal names for the winter months that we usually experience as December, January, February and so on....
The Iroquois, a group of Canada's First Peoples who originally lived in what is now New York state and Ontario, say the winter is the time for the telling of stories, and traditionally they would gather round the winter fires in their longhouses made of bark to listen as their elders' tales filled the long dark nights.
The Iroquois call themselves the Haudenosaunee, which means "People of the Longhouse," and they say the fire is important to the telling of tales, say that we should call upon the fire to join in the telling...
Let's imagine we are also gathered around a great fire, ready to listen...
In the circle of the seasons, we have already passed the time of the shortest day, the moon month that some call the Thirteenth Moon, or simply the time of "Big Moon."
The Iroquois call it "Long Night Moon."
The Plains Ojibwa call it "Winter begins Moon;" the Dene who live farther north call it "Midnight Mass Moon," because of Christmas services;
And the western Assiniboine call it "Brother to Hard Time Moon" because it begins the time of real cold and dark and the struggle to keep warm, dry and to have enough food.
Now in this New Year, in the month we non-First Peoples call January, the Assiniboine call this just plain "Hard Time Moon."
Also out on the prairies, the Northern Cheyenne call the First Moon the "Moon of Popping Trees" -- I've never heard that sound, but the Cheyenne people say that when the night air is bitter cold, as it has been here in Montreal this past week, then the Frost Giant walks the land.
When he hits his great club on the trunks of the cottonwood trees, we hear them crack, or "pop" beneath those blows. When people hear that sound, they know to stay indoors.
But Coyote, the wise one, learned the Frost Giant's magic song, and when Coyote sings it, the giant sleeps. So Cheyenne children know that if they hear Coyote howling, it is not too cold to go out. But if they can't hear Coyote, only the popping trees, then they must stay indoors where traditionally the fire was bright and buffalo robes kept them warm during the Moon of Popping Trees.
Now we are almost into the month commonly known as February -- but among the Potawatomi people, around the western Great Lakes, the next moon has at least three different names, because of all that is happening, even in the bitter cold when the world seems so frozen. They call it the "Moon of Snow" or the "Moon of the Wolves" or the "Moon When Baby Bears Are Born."
In their stories a little girl once was lost in a blizzard, and they feared she must have frozen to death. But when spring came, she was found, growing happily as part of a bear family, which had taken her in, kept her warm, and let her drink the mama Bear's milk. So the Potawatomi say that even when they snowshoe by a bear den in this moon, they will not disturb it, because it is the Moon When Baby Bears Are Born.
March is known to the Anishnabe of Quebec and Ontario as "Maple Sugar Moon" -- of course, when the days do get longer and milder, and the maple sap start to rise, we know it is sugaring off season, and here in Québec we go to the cabine à sucre for special maple treats...
Long ago, however, the Anishnabe say maple syrup was really easy to get in everymonth -- in fact, it dripped thick and sweet, directly from the trees, all year round -- all you had to do was break a twig off and open your mouth underneath it!
But then the Anishnabe people got lazy, and in their stories they say their Creator found all the people asleep under the maple trees, almost drunk on maple sweetness, and no one was tending to the villages.
So Creator poured lots of water into the trees, and now the people have to wake up, make fires, and boil down the sap to make syrup. They only have one month to do that hard work, because the sap only runs fast in the Maple Sugar Moon.
When the sap runs, we know spring is coming, and the last month I have a story about today is April, when spring really comes to life here. The Cree people in the North call this fourth moon, "Frog Moon."
The Cree say that when the world was young, the Trickster met with all the animals to decide how many moons winter would last. The Moose answered that "There should be as many moons in winter as hairs on my body," and the Beaver had an almost equally unending idea, saying "There should be as many moons in winter as scales on my tail."
But the little frog said, "There should be only as many moons of snow as toes on my back foot." The Trickster decided this was right, and so it is that winter lasts only five months. When it ends, the small peeper frogs sing their victory songs, and we can look forward to hearing them in that month which bears their name, "Frog Moon."
So all across this northern continent, the winter moon months pass, from the Longest Night Moon of the Iroquois, and the Midnight Mass Moon of the Dene, to the Moon of Popping Trees, then the Moon When Baby Bears Are Born, and on into the beginnings of spring, with the Maple Sugar Moon of the Anishnabe, and the fourth moon, the Frog Moon of the Cree. All of them are a part of the cycle of thirteen moons, which the Aboriginal people tell us are based on Old Turtle's back . . .
