HISTORY

HISTORY OF THE FIRST FLUTE

This is one of many stories that were told to me by my Grandmother and Grandfather while I was growing up. Later in my life I have learned that a Lakota Elder has passed it on to them.

Once many generations ago, the people had drums, gourd rattles and bullroarers, but no flutes. At that long-ago time a young man called Blue Jay, went out to hunt. Meat was scarce and the people in his camp were hungry. Blue Jay found the tracks of an Elk and followed them for a long time. The Elk, wise and swift, is the one who owns the love charm. If a man possesses Elk Medicine then the girl he likes can't help being drawn to him. He will also be a lucky hunter.

However, the young man I'm talking about had no Elk Medicine. After many hours Blue Jay finally sighted his game. He was skilled with bow and arrows and had a fine new bow and a quiver full of straight, well-feathered and flint-tipped arrows. Yet the Elk always managed to stay just out of range, leading him on and on. The young man was so intent on following his prey that he hardly noticed where he went. When night came, Blue Jay found himself deep inside a thick forest. The tracks had disappeared and so had the Elk and there was no moon. Blue Jay realized that he was lost and that it was too dark to find his way out.

Luckily he came upon a stream with cool, clear water. He had been careful enough to bring a hide bag of wasna (dried meat pounded with berries and kidney fat), a strong food that will keep a man going for a few days. After Blue Jay had drunk and eaten he rolled himself into his fur robe, propped his back against a tree and tried to rest. But Blue Jay couldn't sleep because the forest was full of strange noises, the cries of night animals, the hooting owls and the groaning of trees in the wind. It was as if he heard these sounds for the first time.

Suddenly there was an entirely new sound, of a kind neither he nor anyone else had ever heard before. It was mournful and ghost like. It made him afraid, so that he drew his robe tightly about himself and reached for his bow to make sure that it was properly strung. On the other hand, the sound was like a song, sad but beautiful, full of love, hope, and yearning. Then before Blue Jay knew it, he was asleep.

He dreamed that the bird called wagnuka (the redheaded woodpecker) appeared singing the strangely beautiful song and telling him, "follow me and I will teach you." When the hunter awoke, the sun was already high. On a branch of the tree against which Blue Jay was leaning he saw a redheaded woodpecker. The bird flew away to another tree and another but never very far. It looked back all the time at the young man as if to say, "come on!" Then once more Blue Jay heard that wonderful song and his heart yearned to find the singer.

Flying toward the sound and leading the hunter, the bird flitted through the leaves while its bright red top made it easy to follow. At last it lighted on a cedar tree and began hammering on a branch making a noise like the fast beating of a small drum. Suddenly there was a gust of wind and again the hunter heard that beautiful sound right above him. He then discovered that the song came from the dead branch that the woodpecker was tapping his beak on. Blue Jay also realized that it was the wind which made the sound as it whistled through the holes the bird had drilled.

"Kola (friend)" said the hunter. “Let me take this branch home. You can make yourself another." Blue Jay took the branch which was a hollow piece of wood full of woodpecker holes that was about the length of his forearm. He walked back to his village bringing no meat, but happy all the same.

In his tipi the young man tried to make the branch sing for him. Blue Jay blew on it, he waved it around and no sound came. It made him sad and he wanted so much to hear that wonderful new sound. He purified himself in the sweat lodge and climbed to the top of a lonely hill. There, resting with his back against a large rock he fasted, going without food or water for four days and nights, crying for a vision which would tell him how to make the branch sing. In the middle of the fourth night, wagnuka, the bird with the bright red top, appeared saying, "Watch me." Turning himself into a man he showed the hunter how to make the branch sing. Saying again and again, "watch this, now." And in his dream the young man watched and observed very carefully.

When Blue Jay awoke he found a cedar tree. He broke off a branch and working many hours, hollowed it out with a bowstring drill just as he had seen the woodpecker do in his dream. Blue Jay whittled the branch into the shape of the bird with a long neck and an open beak. Blue Jay painted the top of the bird’s head with washasha (the sacred red color).

Blue Jay prayed. The young man smoked the branch up with incense of burning sage, cedar and sweet grass. He fingered the holes as he had seen the man-bird do in his vision meanwhile blowing softly into the mouthpiece. All at once there was the song, ghost like and beautiful beyond words drifting all the way to the village where the people were astounded and joyful to hear it. With the help of the wind and the woodpecker, the young man had brought them the first flute.

In the village lived an itanchan (a big chief). This itanchan had a daughter who was beautiful but also very proud and convinced that there was no young man good enough for her. Many had come courting but she had sent them all away. Now the hunter who had made the flute decided that she was just the woman for him. Thinking of her, Blue Jay composed a special song and one night standing behind a tall tree he played it on his siyotanka in hopes that it might have a charm to make her love him.

All at once the winchinchala heard it. She was sitting in her father’s tipi eating buffalo hump meat and tongue, feeling good. She wanted to stay there in the tipi by the fire but her feet wanted to go outside. She pulled back but her feet pulled forward and her feet won. Her head said "go slow, go slow!" but her feet said "faster, faster!" Then she saw Blue Jay standing in the moonlight as she heard the flute. Her head said, "don’t go to him, he's poor.” Her feet said "go, run!” and again the feet prevailed. So they stood face to face.

The girl's head told her to be silent! But her feet told her to speak and speak she did saying, "Koshkalaka (young man) I am yours altogether." Later she told him, "Koshkalaka (warrior) I like you. Let your parents send a gift to my father the Chief. Let your father speak for you to my father. Do it soon! Do it now!" So the two fathers quickly agreed to the wishes of their children. The proud winchinchala became the hunter's wife, and Blue Jay became a great chief.

All the other young men had heard and seen of the things that Blue Jay had done for the village. Soon they too began to whittle cedar branches into the shape of bird heads with long necks and open beaks. The beautiful love music traveled from tribe to tribe and made young girls’ feet go where they shouldn't. And that's how the flute was brought to the people thanks to the cedar, the woodpecker and this young man who shot no Elk but knew how to listen.