#2 The Forks, Winnipeg: Iau Descends
It felt to me like we were standing on holy ground. Probably the same feeling I’d get if I was to visit the location where Moses saw the burning bush and where the tribes of Israel gathered around the base of Mt. Sinai to feel God descending with shaking and thunder and smoke. If I’ve put together the clues correctly, something very similar seems to have happened at the Forks.
On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-Stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red craigs of the quarry,
Called the tribes of men together.
From his footprints flowed a river,
Leaped into the light of morning,
O’er the precipice plunging downward
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.
And the Spirit, stooping earthward,
With his finger on the meadow
Traced a winding pathway for it,
Saying to it, “Run in this way!”
An indication that something special had happened here first came to light when an Anishinaabe elder approached Sid Kroker, the head archaeologist doing work at The Forks. The elder talked about an oral history which said that a great peace meeting of many tribes had taken place at the Forks. Kroker might have blown it off as a myth, but soon after a Cree elder came to him with a very similar story. Kroker kept it in mind as he dug, and he dug up many artifacts but either they were from an earlier era than described by the elders, or represented a single indigenous culture. But then as the city was preparing to twin Pioneer Avenue, just a short distance from where twenty of us were meeting on June 11, Mr. Kroker found something exceptional. There was a thick layer of artifacts, representing as many as nine First Nation cultures. And that was just in one small area. Dating the material he learned that this gathering took place about 740 years ago – right in the window described by the elders. And Kroker could tell that this meeting took place over several days or even weeks.
“Gitche Manito, the mighty,
Calls the tribes of men together,
Calls the warriors to his council!”
Down the rivers, o’er the prairies,
Came the warriors of the nations,
Came the Mandans and Dacotahs,
Came the Hurons and Ojibways,
All the warriors drawn together
By the signal of the Peace-Pipe.
And they stood there on the meadow,
With their weapons and their war-gear,
Painted like the leaves of Autumn,
Painted like the sky of morning,
Wildly glaring at each other;
In their faces stern defiance,
In their hearts the feuds of ages,
The hereditary hatred
The ancestral thirst of vengeance.
As we met on Wednesday, we looked towards Pioneer Avenue and imagined seeing a great gathering of teepees and a huge circle of diplomats smoking on peace pipes around a bonfire. It must have looked a bit like the tent city of the tribes gathered at the base of Mt. Sinai.
According to the elders, and backed up as First Nation history became known, a peace was created here at The Forks. A peace that would last hundreds of years until the coming of Europeans. But this begs the question, who could they have called a meeting like this? Who could have convinced nine plus warring tribes from great distances away to come to this very location to settle their differences? And how in the world could that peace have stuck? I believe the answer to these questions lies in The Song of Hiawatha. Longfellow wrote this epic poem based largely on stories he passed on from Anishinaabe elders on the other side of the present border in Minnesota. It would have been the same oral tradition as the elders who approached Kroker at the Forks. The details from the two sources are so similar that I’m convinced they describe the same event.
“Bathe now in the stream before you,
Wash the war-paint from your faces,
Wash the blood-stains from your fingers,
Bury your war-clubs and your weapons,
And as brothers live henceforward!”
Then upon the ground the warriors
Threw their cloaks and shirts of deer-skin,
Threw their weapons and their war-gear,
Leaped into the rushing river,
Washed the war-paint from their faces.
Clear above them flowed the water,
Clear and limpid from the footprints
Of the Master of Life descending;
Dark below them flowed the water,
Soiled and stained with streaks of crimson,
As if blood were mingled with it.
Gitche Manitou, also know to the Anishinaabeg as Gitche Aiu, The Great I Am, chose this place at the heart of Turtle Island to show us his heart and bring his peace. Like he had done at Mt. Sinai. As the river ran red behind them the warriors came out of the water clean and washed of their hatred and departed each to their own home but now in harmony with each other. Patty and I wanted to begin our own journey from this holy place. We wanted God’s heart and the message that he had spoken here to be re-established throughout His land.
