Gitchi Odjig (also Kitchie Odjig, Gitche Ojig, or Gitchi Ojig), the “Great Fisher,” belongs to the culture hero category of folktale characters. Usually characterized as an anthropomorphic (human-like) figure, Gitchi Odjig also sometimes appears as a weasel or similar animal. The stories involving Gitchi Odjig are set in a mythical time before the appearance of humans, but the figure’s feats and quests have repercussions for future generations of humans.
Like other questing culture heroes, Great Fisher helps create or maintain order in the world. Stories and legends about Gitchi Odjig describe the character as a slayer of monsters and a creator. Some tales describe Gitchi Odjig as the brother, friend, or cousin of Nanabozho, the trickster culture hero, and in some cases Gitchi Odjig shares some of Nanabozho’s trickster traits. In one tale, for instance, before the weasel and lynx acquired their distinctive appearances, he tricks Lynx into smashing his face into a boulder, giving the lynx its flat face.
In one of the most widely told stories of Gitchi Odjig’s feats, he is credited with bringing summer to the world of humans, as well as creating the Big Dipper constellation. The story, like many tales from the oral tradition, has many variants but the common theme is the Fisher as the questing hero who brings warmth to the people and sacrifices himself.
The story begins in a time long ago in an era of eternal winter. However, the people knew that summer existed somewhere and they wanted it. An evil man, sometimes described as a sorcerer or demon, lived with the Herring and had captured the summer birds (ni’benis’e), bringers of warmth and sun. One person discovered this and the people decided that somebody should go liberate the summer birds. Gitchi Odjig, the Fisher, volunteered and went on a long journey to the South Country where he found the summer birds trapped and guarded by Herring. Gitchi Odjig, earning his name “Great Fisher,” caught the Herring and put some resin on his mouth to silence him, tore the summer birds’ bindings, and helped them escape. However, the Herring managed to free its mouth and started to cry out to warn the creature who had stolen the summer birds, and he began pursuing Gitchi Odjig. The Fisher ran as fast as he could but was followed by the hunter, who chased him into the sky while trying to kill him with his bow and arrow. Gitchi Odjig managed to climb high into the sky to escape, even though the hunter broke his tail in the pursuit, and he is still there in the shape of the Big Dipper.
In a very similar rendition of the tale, Fisher goes to the land of the Sky People with Wolverine, who opens a hole in the sky to let the sun shine through and bring summer to the people. The heroes are discovered and as the Sky People chase them, Fisher climbs into a tree and is wounded by the Sky People’s arrows and falls out of the tree. As a reward for his heroism, Gitchi Manitou (the Great Spirit) places Fisher in the sky as the rotating Big Dipper (Fisher the great hunter) constellation, which reminds people of the changing seasons.
Erdrich, Louise (1954–)
Louise Erdrich is a major award-winning and highly productive American author and poet who grounds much of her writing in the world and struggles of her Ojibwe forebears. In her work, Erdrich famously blends aspects of Ojibwe myth and legend with the concerns of contemporary Native Americans, as well as alluding to European American traditions that also form part of her personal and artistic identity. Erdrich initially burst on the scene in 1984, when both her debut novel, Love Medicine, and her first poetry collection, Jacklight, were published. Erdrich may best be known to younger readers through The Birchbark House, which recounts life in an Ojibwe village. Erdrich has been compared to Faulkner—another luminary author who famously appropriated as well as created American mythologies—for her development of a cycle of novels set in and around a reservation in the fictional Argus, North Dakota, beginning in 1912.
C. Fee
Gitchi Odjig stories are found among many Algonquian-speaking tribes of the North Central Woodlands such as the Ojibwe (also called Chippewa, Ojibway, or Anishinaabe). The widespread occurrence of the tales attests to the cultural significance of this kind of story, which can help explain the physical world or offer entertainment in long winter months.
Marianne Kongerslev
See also Culture Heroes of the Native Americans; Great Hare; Great Spirit; Wenebojo
Further Reading
Coffin, Tristram P., ed. 2014. Indian Tales of North America: An Anthology for the Adult Reader. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Dempsey, Frank. 2008. “Aboriginal Canadian Sky Lore of the Big Dipper.” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 102 (2): 59. Available online at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2008JRASC.102...59D.
Snowder, Brad. 2015. “American Indian Starlore.” Skywise Unlimited website. https://www.wwu.edu/depts/skywise/legends.html. Accessed November 2, 2015.
Speck, Frank G. 1915. Myths and Folk-lore of the Timiskaming Algonquin and Timagami Ojibwa. Ottawa, Canada: Government Printing Bureau.
Warren, William Whipple. 2009. History of the Ojibway People. 2nd ed. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.