The Eclipse and the Oak Tree


The old Shaman sat on the ground with the children of his people, here in this year that the white faces would later call 1720, but it was called the year of the eclipse by his people. His face was lined with the years he had lived, but his dark eyes sparkled as the children's faces turned to his, eager to hear about the eclipse they had seen the night before. They all leaned forward slightly as he began to speak softly...



-----I want to tell you a story that happened many years ago. This was so long ago that there were no oak trees here. There were no oak trees anywhere. This was long ago. A terrible drought came to this land, and there were many seasons when the sun was very hot, very close to the earth, and there was no rain at all for a very long time. The wild grasses dried up, giving no grain for the people to eat. The berries only grew by where the old streams had been, but they were so small and so dry that no one could squeeze even a drop of juice from them. The People were very hungry, and many had died."


One very small bushy-tailed squirrel was very, very hungry. I think he was about your age. He went up to his Mama, who was out looking for berries along the sides of the dry creekbed. She cried when she saw how hungry her son was, for she had nothing to give him. He went further up near the edge of the pine forest and found his father, who was looking on the ground and climbing trees with the other fathers, looking for any pinecones, but there were none to be found anywhere.


The little squirrel asked Raven, who was very smart, where he could find food. He was hungry and he knew others were hungry, too. Even Raven, who had flown every part of this land, sadly shook his head and told him, 'Oak, (for that was the young squirrel's name) you will have to seek help from the Great Spirit.' Well, Oak was not sure about talking with the Great Spirit directly, or even where to go to talk to him, but he went into the forest because that's where the tallest trees were, and there he found the Great Spirit and he told the spirit how hungry he was, and how hungry his people were.


The Great Spirit said that he could not give him food but he would give him a gift, a way to find more food. And so he changed the squirrel so that he had extra skin between his front and back legs so he could almost fly! Of course he could not fly like Raven and Crow and BlueJay, but he could climb to high places and soar to other places.


Well, the little squirrel found the largest boulder in the meadow and soared from it to another boulder, looking for any berries or clover or grain the mothers might have missed, but all he saw was the hot dry earth and dry stalks of grass and wheat. Then he went up to the edge of the pine forest, climbed the highest pine tree he could find, and soared from it to another tall tree, looking for any pinecones the fathers may have missed. All he saw was bare pine boughs, no matter how many trees he flew to.


Poor little Oak. He was hungry, he was sad, and now he was also tired. He was so tired he was getting dizzy, but he thought maybe if he found an even higher place...


So he went to the most sacred part of the forest, high up on the mountain, to where the tallest redwood trees lived. And there he found what looked like the largest and tallest redwood tree, and he climbed, and he climbed, and he climbed. It seemed he climbed for hours until he finally came to the very top of the tree. He stopped and rested, swaying back and forth a bit, looking around for food. But he didn't see any. He looked to the north, but there was no food to be seen. He looked to the west, where the sun had just set, but he could see no food there, either. He looked to the south, towards where the great river used to flow...


...but he could find no food there, either. Finally he looked to the east, and there, to his wondering eyes, appeared to be a large bowl of pounded grain rising from the top of the hill! (It was really the moon, but he was so hungry and dizzy he did not know that.) He was so excited he took almost all of the strength that he had left, and made a giant leap from the top of the redwood tree, up past the edge of the hill, and landed on the moon! He bumped his lip when he landed and it bled a little, but he didn't even notice. And then, like a cat at a bowl of cream, he started eating the top layer of the moon, then the second layer, and as his saliva dropped back down into the bowl of the moon it turned the moon a reddish color.


Now, no one had noticed squirrel's absence before this. Everyone was too busy helping to look for food. But suddenly Coyote and Brother Wolf (who always look at the moon at night, and use it to hunt) looked up and noticed the moon. 'AIEEEEE!' howled Coyote.


'Look at the moon! It is turning red!' And Wolf hid next to a boulder and peered over the top of it at the moon, afraid to ask what was happening. Raven and Owl flew up to the forest and asked the Great Spirit what was happening to the moon, and he very calmly told them, "Little Squirrel is eating it."


"Well, Coyote and Wolf could not figure out why he was so calm about it, but he explained that he often gave choices, and when the choices were made, he could not remove the consequences. So Squirrel would be allowed to eat the moon.


"But if we do not have the moon to hunt by, another source of food will be taken away from us!" they cried. And so the Great Spirit listened to them, and he went up and had a talk with the little squirrel about the consequences of his choice to eat the moon. He told him that he knew if he stopped eating, and put what he had already eaten back on the moon, that Squirrel would die, but asked him, "How many will die without the light of the moon to hunt with?"


And little Oak Squirrel sadly considered his full cheeks, and how nice it would be to have a full tummy, but he thought about his mother and father and his grandpas and grandmas and all the uncles and aunts and cousins and friends...and he started putting back what he had eaten. And the food being put back covered up the reddish-brown part of the moon, and it turned white again, and Moon began to smile.


Squirrel slid off the crescent of the Moon's smile, back to the tallest redwood tree, down to the ground, and there he sat, waiting to die, but knowing he had saved the moon for his people. And there the Great Spirit came to visit him, and picked him up as he slept, and carried him to the middle of the meadow, and the people gathered around to do him honor.


And where he slept there grew a wonderful tree, with bark that looked like the squirrel's fur, and a great bushy canopy of leaves that looked like his tail, with nuts called acorns which looked amazingly like his cheeks. And the tree was named Oak after him.



The Great Spirit told the people: "You must remember that this gift is for your people as long as they live in peace with each other, and that it will be here through drought and flood, and will spread all over these valleys and hills, but will not compete with the great pines and redwoods.


You must remember the moon, for when the acorns fall they are green, and are not ready to prepare for food until they turn the color of the reddish moon. Then you must put them into a stone bowl shaped like the moon and grind them until they turn the color of the full moon when it first rises over the hill. Then your people will always have food to eat, and shade in the heat of the day.


---And so it was that the oaks came to our valleys, and they belong to the land even as we do, and they are the most beloved trees of the Gray Squirrel.


-by Susan M. Chisam 9/27/96



s.m.chisam 2002 1
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws