The legend of Bokwewa, the deformed, humpback magician in Chippewa oral tradition, has gone through numerous revisions and rewritings. American authors such as Cornelius Matthews and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft published similar, yet individualized versions of the tale. Thus, the tale has been relatively widely disseminated and popularized.
In its most basic form, the saga of Bokwewa tells the story of two brothers living far away from everyone. Bokwewa is the older of the decidedly different brothers. As the humpback wise man, Bokwewa is physically weak but mentally strong, whereas his brother Kwasynd is physically strong, handsome, and a good hunter, but dull witted. One day, Kwasynd came home after a hunt and asked Bokwewa if they were the only people alive, and Bokwewa admitted that they were not. Kwasynd then decided to go seek other men as well as find a wife. Once the brother returned with a wife, the little family lived happily and contentedly for a while, until a young man, by some accounts an evil spirit, kidnapped Kwasynd’s wife while her husband was out hunting. Bokwewa, although possessing powerful magic, could not stop the enemy. When his brother returned from the hunt, he immediately wanted to search for his bride, but Bokwewa warned him that it was a bad idea, although Kwasynd ultimately changed Bokwewa’s mind. Bokwewa told his brother to watch out for two specific traps, the first of which was a poisoned vine and the second a cluster of frog’s eggs disguised as bear fat, Kwasynd’s favorite food. The brother, of course, forgot Bokwewa’s advice and ended up spellbound by the magic of these traps. After waiting for his brother’s return for several years, Bokwewa decided to rescue him and quickly found the evil beings that ensnared him. They attempted to do the same to Bokwewa, but he was too smart. In some versions of the story, he was unable to convince his brother to come home and ended up leaving alone. When Bokwewa left the realm of humans, he took with him the magic he was able to perform.
In Cornelius Matthews’s retelling of the legend, Bokwewa had a special bond with his brother’s wife, who seems strangely supernatural, able both to perform magic and to live without sustenance. In this version, Bokwewa waited two years before he started to search for his brother, and very quickly found himself ensnared by the people from the south and the wife nowhere to be found. When he learned that she had traveled to “a country beyond,” he set out to find her. On the way, he passed several people traveling the same road, all carrying various heavy burdens. Once he reached the “happy land,” Kwasynd’s wife met him and told him that he was now home in his native land.
Similar to Matthews’s version of the legend, in Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s retelling of the myth, Kwasynd found a dead woman on a burial scaffold, whereas other versions do not necessarily mention where he found his wife. This revision toward a more grotesque form of the story is only one of Schoolcraft’s revisions. He also changed the ending of the tale, so that Bokwewa and Kwasynd are finally reunited. In his version, Schoolcraft empowered Kwasynd, who is alone among the kidnapper tribe, to free himself, making it a tale of individualism and overcoming naiveté.
Some scholars have speculated whether the Bokwewa story might be related to other stories about humpback heroes and creatures, such as Kokopelli, a humpback, trickster-like figure who acts as a culture hero, found among the Southwestern tribes, or the Chippewa Bebukowe, an evil humpback spirit being that often threatens families and communities.
Marianne Kongerslev
See also Brothers Who Followed the Sun, an Iroquois Legend; Culture Heroes of the Native Americans
Further Reading
Barnouw, Victor. 1977. Wisconsin Chippewa Myths & Tales: And Their Relation to Chippewa Life. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Green, Thomas A. 2009. Native American Folktales. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Macfarlan, Allan A. 1968. North American Indian Legends. Mineola, NY: Dover.
“Ojibwe/Chippewa Legends, Myths, and Stories.” 2015. Native Languages of the Americas website. http://www.native-languages.org/chippewa-legends.htm. Accessed October 27, 2015.