The Great Hare is a minor deity known to Great Lakes Algonquin as Nanabozho, who is a larger-than-life hero, magician, and trickster whose foolishness often endeared him to the Ojibwe. Nanabozho is a shape-shifter who sets off on adventures in the form of a rabbit, known by the name “Michabo” (Algonquin for “Great Rabbit”). In some communities, the name “Michabo” is interchangeable with “Nanabozho” even when in human form. Nanabozho offers painful lessons regarding creation, overcoming adversity, and transformation.
Nanabozho appears in stories that convey the indigenous history of the Algonquin and is believed to be the “Sleeping Giant” located on Silbey Peninsula as viewed from Thunder Bay, Ontario. Looking across the waters of Lake Superior from the Canadian lakehead, one can see a formation that resembles Nanabozho lying asleep with hands folded on his chest and face directed toward the heavens. When the Ojibwe were new to this world, the Great Spirit (Gitche Manitou) took pity on them and sent them a teacher (the son of the West Wind and grandson of the Moon), who had the ability to shape-shift into bears, trees, snakes, and even rocks to trip up enemies. The infant boy, already the impatient trickster, was hungry and changed himself into a rabbit so that he could eat the abundant grass and not starve. He first appeared to his grandmother as a small white rabbit, and thinking that she had lost the baby, she adopted the creature and called it “Nanabozho” (meaning “her rabbit”).
In chronicled history, the arrival of the French in the Great Lakes region in the 1640s marked the onslaught of European diseases that ravaged the Ojibwe. The first European settlement, a fur trading post, was established in 1679 on the Kaministiquia (Ojibwe for “with Islands”) River, which has two distinctive islands at its mouth at Thunder Bay on Lake Superior in Ontario. The French armed the Ojibwe with guns for use against their indigenous enemies. The Ojibwe and Dakota tribes made a peace treaty, and Ojibwe served as middlemen for Dakota-French trade. The North West Company was established at Fort William, becoming a hub for fur traders. By 1800, Ojibwe occupied most of Ontario, northern Minnesota, and parts of North Dakota and Manitoba. In 1848 Jesuits established a mission to serve sick and starving Ojibwe at Thunder Bay. The U.S. government enacted a treaty with the Ojibwe that reduced their lands to a reservation. In 1850, Sandy Lake, Minnesota, became a tragic scene when hundreds of Ojibwe died from consuming spoiled government rations. Rich silver deposits were discovered on an island at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River, but in 1883 the waters of Lake Superior flooded the mine and it was never reopened.
Ojibwe oral traditions are important in recounting the tribe’s history, its ethics, and its social norms. American geographer Henry R. Schoolcraft (1793–1864) married a woman of mixed race (Ojibwe mother/Scots Irish father) named Jane Johnston (1800–1842) and subsequently collected many Ojibwe tales of Nanabozho. Jane Schoolcraft was invaluable in providing access to the Ojibwe community and its traditions. Henry Schoolcraft was a member of the legislative council for the Michigan Territory from 1828 to 1832 and served as superintendent for Indian affairs from 1836 to 1841. During the winter of 1826–1827, the Schoolcrafts produced and published The Literary Voyager or Muzzenyegun, a magazine focused wholly on the Ojibwe.
Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches, Comprising Inquiries Respecting the Mental Characteristics of the North American Indians (1839) included Native American allegories and legends, among which were stories about Nanabozho. These stories stimulated interest in collecting American Indian folklore, and Schoolcraft is credited with introducing Anglo-Americans to Native American oral traditions. Commissioned by the United States Congress, Schoolcraft published his six-volume Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States between 1851 and 1857. Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches and The Myth of Hiawatha and other Oral Legends (1856) may also have influenced Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (1855).
Meredith Eliassen
See also Great Spirit; Trickster Rabbit
Further Reading
Arnold, A. James. 1996. Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Barr, Elinor, 1988. Silver Islet: Striking It Rich in Lake Superior. Toronto: Natural Heritage/Natural History.
Reid, Dorothy M. 1963. Tales of Nanabozho. New York: Henry Z. Walk.
Schoolcraft, Henry R. 1839. Algic Researches. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Williams, Mentor L. 1969. Schoolcraft’s Indian Legends. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
Young, Egerton R. 1903. Algonquin Indian Tales. Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell.