O Tannenbaum

As part of a group presentation on pine trees, a student read us a story on Monday, which started thus:

Those of you that have hiked or driven through the great Ontario Provincial Park that forms most of the Sibley Peninsula and have gazed in wonderment at the magnificent 'White Pines that literally cover the area right up to the Sleeping Giant, may be interested to know that, according to legend, these did not get there by accident. About two thousand years ago, a tribe of Ojibway Indians lived on the shore of Thunder Bay in the vicinity of Sibley Peninsula and had for their Chief a very wise and much traveled Indian, of great birth.

The language of this tale was archaic, and as it went on, it seemed to me more and more suspect. "Two thousand years" was just the first of several clues that this was very particular kind of story. We heard that said venerable chief, on his deathbed, bade his son plant a seed (from a bag he'd filled on distant travels) every time a "papoose" was born, which the son did, raising a forest. Until... 

One night, while he lay asleep in his tepee, he was suddenly awakened by a strange sound, his tepee seemed to glow with a bright light and there, at the foot of his bed of furs, stood the Spirits of his father and two other Great Chiefs. The Spirit of Golden Eagle spoke very softly. "My son, you have kept your promise well and we are well pleased. We have come to give you a great duty to perform. Tonight, the greatest Child the world has ever known will be born. Pick the finest seed that you have and go to the highest place and plant it at once. All men will see the tree that springs from it, and wonder…"

If it wasn't obvious by now what was going on, we learned that the seed produced the fastest-growing and tallest tree ever seen, one admired by humans and animals alike, until

This great and magnificent tree lived for thirty years and then one Friday, it was struck down during one of the terrible storms for which Thunder Bay is noted. Now, nothing remains of this beautiful White Pine, but the memory of it is kept alive each year as we place the little gifts for our children under the starlit fragrant bough of our own.

I asked the class today if they'd noticed anything curious about the story, and one said she did find it odd that it seemed to end with a Christmas tree. Bingo, said I, and repeated the story, emphasizing two thousand years, greatest Child, thirty years, Friday... and, for most of the rest in the class, it clicked. Could it be that this wasn't ancient "Indian" lore? On an internet search only slightly less cursory than the student's, I wasn't able to find the story's origin - but we were able to speculate. Who would be interested in telling a story in which "Ojibway Indians" have for two millennia been Christians without realizing it? What would it mean for the very trees and animals of the New World to be witnesses to the Christ event? What happens when European settlers tell their descendants this story?

A teachable moment - and we didn't even get into the comparable cooptation of prechristian European trees on which this built! Aware (aghast!) at the power a story has to order or disorder a world, we were ready to start appreciating how differently Turtle Island might be known if one started with the story of Skywoman Falling.