Wenebojo (also known as Nanabozho, Nanabush, Manabush), the trickster of the Great Lakes tribal nations, figures prominently in the folklore of the region. Not only a selfish buffoon, Wenebojo also often functions as culture hero, slayer of monsters, and creator of worlds. Contemporary Chippewa writers sometimes incorporate elements of the Wenebojo tales into novels and poetry, giving the character renewed life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Usually associated with a hare or rabbit, or sometimes an anthropomorphic (human-like) figure, Wenebojo is of divine origin, having been fathered by the Sun, who, in the form of a gust of wind, impregnates a young girl. Wenebojo’s trickster traits include lying, stealing, tricking, and shape-shifting. Tricksters are always on the move, and many Wenebojo stories begin with “Wenebojo was going along …” This constant wandering is also often fueled by Wenebojo’s hunger or desire for any kind of pleasure, which often leads him into trouble. However, the trouble usually brings with it useful transformations for the benefit of humans.
Anthropologists and ethnographers collected many of the stories and legends that are available to today’s readers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, although the stories have been told for many centuries. Many scholars perceive trickster stories as fundamental for an understanding of Native American tribal societies and religions as they not only provide entertainment, but also provide reasons or explanations for cultural taboos and moral guidelines.
Like other cultural heroes, Wenebojo is credited with helping to create the world and maintaining order in it. Although he is not a god, he possesses several divine qualities such as rebirth, transformation, and healing. In one story he becomes responsible for rebuilding the world. The iterations of the story vary, but for some reason, Wenebojo ends up at the top of a pine tree trying to escape a flood that he has caused. When he realizes his predicament, he asks other animals floating or swimming by to dive to the bottom of the new ocean to get him dirt and mud. However, they all fail and end up drowning. Muskrat is the only one who manages to come back, but Wenebojo must breathe life into her to save her. Wenebojo then starts kneading the mud and dirt to form a piece of land that slowly grows. In some versions of the story, he asks eagles and hawks to help spread the land until it is big enough to walk on. In other versions, he is rescued by a turtle and builds the land on its back.
Wenebojo also becomes symbolic of culture and community through stories of his deeds. In one story, Wenebojo steals fire from an old man who lives far away and who refuses to share his fire with other people. Using his trickster power of shape-shifting, Wenebojo transforms into a rabbit and tricks the old man’s daughters into letting him into their lodge, thinking he is lost and cold. However, when a spark flies off the logs in the fire and lands on Wenebojo’s back, he runs back to his grandmother, Nokomis, with the ember, which they then share with the rest of the people. Furthermore, other tales describe Wenebojo’s heroic triumph over an evil gambler who enslaved or captured the people, and only through beating the gambler at his own game does he best the enemy.
However, in addition to functioning as a tribal culture hero, Wenebojo is also a selfishly buffoonish trickster whose tricks mostly backfire and end up hurting him, sometimes fatally. What usually gets Wenebojo in trouble is his enormous insatiable appetite. Once when walking along, he sees a moose skull on the side of the road and bends down to see if there is any meat left on it. Seeing some inside the skull, Wenebojo transforms into a small snake and slithers into the skull, but he forgets to crawl out before turning back into his usual shape and ends up with his head stuck in the skull, unable to see where he is going. He finally frees himself when he slips and bangs the skull against a rocky river bottom, almost drowning in the process.
In a similarly foolish way, in one case, Wenebojo walks along when he spots geese and decides that he is hungry and wants goose. He lures some goslings onto the riverbank by telling them he will tell them some stories. Tricking them into dancing with their eyes closed, he wrings their necks one by one until he is discovered and some of the birds escape. Wenebojo then starts to roast the goslings but becomes tired and decides to take a nap. He tells his buttocks to keep watch and wake him if someone tries to steal his food. When people walking by smell the roasting birds and attempt to steal them, the buttocks warn Wenebojo twice, but because he scolds them for waking him, they do not do it the third time, and his birds are stolen. Waking up to find he has been robbed, Wenebojo punishes his buttocks by burning them. Charred and sore, he then rubs off the burned skin by sliding down a hill, thus creating plants as he slides. Seeing the blood trailing after him, Wenebojo walks through a willow patch and decides that the red willow people will mix with tobacco from then on.
The trickster stories provide both amusing cautionary tales and, in the example above, functionalist explanations for the world or why certain things are used for specific purposes.
In 1956 the anthropologist Paul Radin published the first full-length study of a Native American trickster figure, the Winnebago Wakdjunkaga (tricky one). The tales in Radin’s The Trickster are often almost identical to stories of Wenebojo, and culturally and geographically, the figures are also fairly close. Radin generalizes from Wakdjunkaga stories to discuss the figure as psychologically important; trickster is “a figure foreshadowing the shape of man,” whose feats are (re)told in a so-called trickster cycle of stories. In a similar way, Wenebojo stories can be told as a cyclical collection but also function as individual stories. This cyclical nature of the collected tales, as Radin notes, indicates a certain circular conception of life.
In response to Radin’s study, psychoanalyst C. G. Jung discusses the trickster as transformation archetype of the collective unconscious (the part of the human psyche that all humans share) and thus draws attention to what he perceived as the universality of the trickster figure. Thus, to Jung, the trickster is a part of everyone’s psyche.
Contemporary Anishinaabe (Chippewa) authors sometimes make use of traditional Wenebojo tales in terms of both narrative structure and character development. Louise Erdrich mimics the trickster cycle in a series of novels set on the fictional Little No Horse reservation. The novels jump back and forth in time and can be read independently of each other. Certain prominent characters appear in most of the novels, significantly the trickster Nanapush, the storytelling old man, who even briefly returns from the dead. Similarly, Gerald Vizenor, in addition to editing and retelling old Anishinaabe myths in Summer in the Spring (1993), uses Wenebojo as a model for several characters in several novels. Thus, Wenebojo continues to play a role in tribal storytelling and literary performances of culture.
Marianne Kongerslev
See also Culture Heroes of the Native Americans; Great Hare; Tricksters, Native American
Further Reading
Barnouw, Victor. 1977. Wisconsin Chippewa Myths and Tales and Their Relation to Chippewa Life, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Bastian, Dawn E., and Judy K. Mitchell. 2004. Handbook of Native American Mythology. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Erdoes, Richard, and Alfonso Ortiz. 1999. American Indian Trickster Tales. New York: Penguin.
Jung, Carl G. 2001. Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. New York: Routledge Classics.
Radin, Paul. 1988. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. New York: Schocken Books.