Snow Boy

"Generally, the time for telling was after dark and
almost always
during the
coldest months. That stories must be told only in
winter is a very
old rule,
widespread in Native America. Delawares used to say
that if tales
were told
out of season, 'the bugs would chase you' or 'all
the worms would
take after
you'. Some said the ground had to be frozen; if it
were not, and
stories
were told, snakes and lizards would crawl into bed
with you. As
explained by
others, there should be stories only 'when things
around cannot
hear'- never
in summer, when 'everything is awake'.

SNOW BOY

[There's an old Lenape story that tells how people
once became
cannibals
when the snow was so deep they couldn't find
anything to eat but each
other.
Other stories tell the good side of winter: for
example how corn
magically
appeared in an old stump during the cold months when
people were
starving.
The story of Snow Boy is actually two tales in one.
The first part
tells the
bad side - how winter sucks the life out of your
fingers. The second
part
gives the good side - how the body of the snow
person, spread out on
the
ground, helps hunters track game.]
One time long ago, a young girl had baby boy. No one
knew his father.
They
said he had no father. When he was old enough to
crawl around, he
would get
angry at the other children sometimes and when angry
would take hold
of
their hands and suck their fingers.It was seen that
their fingers
turned
black and stiff as if frozen from the cold when he
had sucked them.
When he
got a little older, he told the people that he could
not stay with
his
mother no longer, that he did not belong there, that
he must go.
"My name is snow and ice." He said that he had been
sent by those
above to
show them how to track anything-people or animals.
And he told them
how to
do it.
"When I come again," he said, "you can track
anything: remember when
snow
falls, it is I who come to visit you."
Then he told his mother to take him down and put him
on a piece of
ice-to go
down the river, for it was early spring. They took
him down and put
him on a
cake of floating ice. And beside him they put a bark
vessel full of
sweetened, pounded and parched corn, kahamakun, for
they thought he
might
need food. Then he drifted away down the river.
Until recent years, the Delawares would go down to
the river with a
little
bark vessel of kahamakun as an offering to the snow
boy. When a large
piece
of ice appeared, they would give two or three
whoops, and the ice
would
spring in towards the shore. Then they put the
little bark boat on
the ice
and talk to Snow Boy. They tell him they are glad to
see him again
and tell
him to take this corn with him. Then they ask him
for help in
tracking game.

by James Running Turtle
(Indian-Outlaw)