Mary Louise Defender Wilson

Mary Louise Defender Wilson:
The First Flute Used For Courting
[audio:https://www.wisdomoftheelders.org/s2_progs/202_tis.mp3]
with Mary Louise Defender Wilson

Arlie Neskahi :
Today on Turtle Island Storytellers, Dakota elder Mary Louise Defender Wilson tells the story of a young man who went into the forest for food and returned with the first flute used for courting.

Mary Louise Defender Wilson :
There was this young man, a very fine young man who belonged to this family. The family weren’t real wealthy, but they were good people. The young man was a very good hunter. He had a fine bow and he made very, very good arrows and he was always getting food for his relatives and his family.

This one day, the relatives said they were hungry. So he said, “Well, I will go hunting.” And he went out into the area away from the village. Here, he found some elk tracks. And at that time, people knew that the elk was good medicine for courtship. But this young man didn’t have any elk medicine. He was looking for the elk to shoot it, so his relatives and family would have food. He kept following the tracks.

Shields, North Dakota. Map courtesy of the U. S. Geological Survey. www.usgs.gov

Here, all of a sudden, he saw the elk itself. So he followed it. And the elk was as such that he could never get in a position where he could shoot it, but it would always keep leading him on and on and on, and the young man was so intent on getting it for food that he didn’t paying attention where it was leading him or anything.

And all of a sudden it started to get evening. Pretty soon, it was dark. And here they were way inside a forest and it was dark and the young man didn’t know from which direction he came. He just knew that he couldn’t find his way out in the dark. He knew he had to sleep there that night, so he found a place by this nice clear stream. And he had his pemmican lunch with him. So he ate his pemmican and he drank some water. He wrapped himself up real good in his robe and he lay down and he tried to lay down and tried to go to sleep, and for some reason he kind of started to get fearful.

He said, “I always hear the owl hooting. They never scare me. I hear the coyotes howling. That doesn’t scare me. I wonder why I want to be afraid.” He kept thinking, “I don’t know why I want to be afraid.” But then he was so tired, he just fell asleep.

Here, when he fell asleep, he had a dream. And in this dream, he heard this sound. It was a sound that was kind of sad, kind of mournful. But yet, the sound was so beautiful and it just made him kind of feel some way and he heard that in his dream. And he slept kind of late. The sun was way up in the sky when he woke up the next morning. And so he sat up and he was sitting, kind of leaning up against a tree. And here he heard this noise in the tree and he looked up. And sitting in this tree was this red headed woodpecker. And it seemed like this woodpecker was saying, “Follow me.” And it kind of flew to the next tree. So he got up and it seemed like it was saying that to him.

So he kept following it as it flew from tree to tree he could always see its red head and he just went along and followed it and followed it. And all of a sudden, he heard this sound that he heard in his dream when he was asleep, that beautiful mournful sound. And he looked around. And it was coming from this cedar tree. And this woodpecker was sitting there pecking away some holes in this tree and the wind would hit that tree and it would make that sound. So he went up to it and he was standing there listening. Whenever the wind would come, that sound would come. So finally he broke off the dead branch with the holes in it, and he said to the woodpecker, “I am going to take this. You can make another one.”

He didn’t have any food but he went home with that branch, the dried branch with the holes in it. And he went into his home and he tried to blow on it, but it wouldn’t make any sound. So he really felt bad. He thought, “When it was out there, and the wind blew and it made this beautiful sound. ” And he thought, “Well, maybe I should pray about it. There’s a reason why this happened to me.”

So he went to a lonely hill and he took a sweat bath and he prayed. And here while he was praying, he had this dream or this vision. And again, this woodpecker came to him, and said, “I am going to show you how to make this flute. You will have to watch very carefully and do it exactly the way I tell you. Don’t you do anything different?” So he showed this young man exactly how to do this.

So then he got this cedar tree branch. And he went back to his home and he carved. He made those holes in the branch, exactly the way the woodpecker showed him. And he blew on it. Sure enough, that sound came, that sad but that beautiful sound came from it. And he was so happy that he did that.

Mary Louise Defender Wilson

In the village, there was this leader who had this beautiful daughter, very beautiful daughter, but she was proud. She just rejected all the men who wanted to be her suitors, and who wanted to court her. She thought, “Well, you know, these aren’t good enough for me.”

This one evening, she was sitting in their home with her family. And they were eating all this fine food. As she was eating, all of a sudden, she heard this sound and this sound seemed to call her. And she thought, “Why do I feel this way. It sounds like this sound is calling me.” But she got up and she went outdoors. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” she thought, but it sounded like the song was just pulling her and taking her. And she went into the trees here stood this young man and he was playing this flute. And she liked him very, very much. And they were married. The story says that they had a good life.

As time went on, the women and the young girls of the village had that time of the month. They all had to go to a separate lodge. And in this separate lodge, they would do their quill work. They would do their painting. They would do all their creative work.

And those girls and women would sing. They would sing, “I want this young man to sing this song for me.” And the young men would hear those songs, and they would play them on a flute.

Music:

Fingerspaint

Douglas Spotted Eagle

Visions and Rhythms, Vol. 2

Natural Visions

Neskahi :
Mary Louise Defender Wilson was honored in 1999 with a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has recorded two CDs which are available from Makoche. There’s more about her at our website, wisdom of the elders dot org. Special thanks to Makoche records. You can find them on the web at m-a-k-o-c-h-e dot com.