Long ago, near the big river which flows towards the
rising sun, there was a village of people who made their living through farming
and hunting.
Their most important crop was corn.
The old people always told them that the Corn Spirit deserved great respect.
There were songs of thanksgiving and special ceremonies to honor the corn and
thank it for keeping the people alive.
It happened that one year all things went well during the growing season. The crows and other birds did not raid the field. The sun shone just enough and the rain fell at just the right times. The spring was not too cold and the summer was not too hot. No one had ever seen such a year.
When the harvest time came, there was so much corn that the
people began taking it for granted. They wasted more than they ate. They threw
whole ears of corn to their dogs. The children played with the corn stalks and
trampled them underfoot. Even with all that they wasted, there was still a great
deal of corn left.
The villagers dried it and placed it in baskets and buried it as they did every
other year so that they would have corn during the winter. But they made their
storage holes carelessly. It was now time for hunting. They were sure they would
have no need for the corn at all until the next growing season. They showed no
respect or thanks for their good harvest. All of the people, both old and young,
acted this way.
Only one man, whose respect for the corn was so great that he
could not imagine wasting it, did not act this way. His name was Dayohagwenda
and he was very saddened by the way the others acted but no one paid any
attention to him. They were too eager to go hunting. They paid no attention to
Dayohagwenda and they left him behind when they set out on the game trails.
This year, though, the hunting season did not go well. Whenever the hunters came
close to an animal it caught their scent and ran. Their arrows, even when fired
at close range, would strike branches and miss or the strings of the bows would
break. The deer and the moose and the elk all were swifter than anyone had ever
seen and none of the hunters had any success.
Finally, all of the game animals disappeared and none could be found. The hunters came back to the village after many days, all of them empty-handed. They went to the lakes and streams, but the waters were empty of fish.
Then they decided to dig up the corn they had stored. It would
keep them alive through the winter. When they dug up the stored grain, however,
they found that the mice had crept in and eaten all of it. There was no food at
all left in the village.
Meanwhile, Dayohagwenda, the man who respected the Corn Spirit, was walking in
the forest. He was sad at heart and worried about the way his people acted. He
did not know how badly the hunting was going, but he knew that bad things happen
to people who forget to be thankful. As he walked he found himself on a trail he
had never seen before. It led to a clearing in the forest. There, in the center
of the clearing, was a small lodge made of bark on top of a mound of earth.
Weeds grew around the lodge and it was almost ready to fall down. A small old
man dressed in ragged clothing and covered with dirt sat in front of the lodge
weeping.
"Grandfather," said Dayohagwenda,
"why are you weeping?"
"I am weeping because my people no longer respect me," the old man said.
"Why are your clothes all torn?"
"They are torn because my people have set their dogs upon me."
"Why are you so dirty, Grandfather?"
"I am dirty because my people have let their children trample on me and have thrown me into the mud."
"Why is your lodge surrounded by weeds. Grandfather?"
It is so because my people no longer take care of me. Now it
seems I must go away and never come back to them again."
"Grandfather," said the man who respected the Corn Spirit, "I
know who you are. I will go back and remind my people how they must treat you.
Perhaps this time they will take care of you and you will be able to return to
us."
The small old man stopped weeping and nodded at Dayohagwenda. "Grandson," he said, "your respect is a good thing. I will stay with you. Now you must go back to the village."
Dayohagwenda turned and started back on the path. He looked back over his shoulder to say good-bye to the old man, but the clearing and the lodge and the small old man were gone.
When Dayohagwenda got back to the village, he discovered that
his people were in despair. They did not know how they were going to survive the
hard season to come. They had no game to eat and all of their stored corn had
been eaten by the mice. Some people were burning tobacco and praying for help.
Others were singing the songs of thanksgiving and respect which they had
neglected to do before.
"Listen," Dayohagwenda said, "I have been in the forest. There I
found a lodge overgrown with weeds and an old man who wore clothes the color of
corn husks. He was dirty and his clothes were torn. He said that his people had
deserted him and had driven him away. I turned to go, but when I looked back he
and his lodge had vanished."
The people listened. As Dayohagwenda spoke, they began to understand. The old man was the Corn Spirit and they had driven him away by being wasteful and disrespectful.
"The Corn Spirit will never return to us," the people said. "We will starve." "No," Dayohagwenda said, "he said he would stay with us. He will help us through the winter."
Then Dayohagwenda went to the place where he had stored the corn
from his own fields. He had dug his granary well and stored the corn properly.
All of the corn was still there. There was just enough to feed the people of the
village through the winter though no one was able to eat as much as they wanted
and the people were thin and hungry by the end of winter.
When spring came, there was just enough corn left over for planting. As the
people cared for their fields, doing the old ceremonies and singing their songs
of thanksgiving, the game animals began to return and the fish came back to the
streams.
That fall, when the people of the village harvested their corn, they were careful not to be wasteful and to treat the corn with respect. They remembered the lessons taught them by the Corn Spirit and their children's children remember those lessons to this day.
