1687: Touching the Fellowship of Every Place Beneath the Sky
An Account, Faithfully Rendered into English from the Speech of the Wampanoag, written at Lefame.
When the world was first set in order, Kiehtan the Maker looked upon his work and found it uneven. The rivers were too proud, running swiftly, and the mountains too silent, holding all sound within. The beasts came forth one after another, boasting their kind—the bear saying, “I am strongest,” the deer, “I am fleetest,” the heron, “I am noblest, for I move between water and air.” The Maker, hearing all this self‑praise, grew weary, and thought, It is not good that any creature stand alone without its measure.
So He made two of every kind, but not as halves unequal. He said to the bear, “Thou shalt know thy strength by the gentleness of another.” To the heron He said, “Thy grace shall be seen only when another looks upon it.” Then He made Man and Woman, and spoke thus:
“Ye shall not contend, saying one is greater; for neither is whole without the other. As the river meets the shore and no man can tell where one ceaseth and the other beginneth, so shall ye flow together. The man shall be sun to the woman’s moon, yet both one light when reflected upon the water.”
Now there were among them two spirits, one young and one old. The young spirit ran swiftly through the forests calling, “Life is forward!” but the elder remained in the shadows saying, “Life is round.” They quarrelled, and the noise of their dispute shook the leaves from the trees. The Maker called them before Him and said:
“When ye were one, the world was silent, for all time moved together. But ye desired difference, and I granted it, that the seasons might change and the hearts of men find story in their going. Yet mistake not motion for mastery, nor stillness for loss. Youth is the morning of age, and age the evening of youth—one day, seen from different ends.”
Then the two spirits were content, and sat together beneath a pine. The young said, “I am the hand that strikes the bark from the tree.” The old replied, “And I am the hand that teaches where to strike.” From them was taught that place, whether hill or hollow, holds neither pride nor humility, but the same breath moving through differing shapes.
Therefore the Wampanoag tell that all things under Heaven are measured one against the other, yet none above. The man looketh upon the woman and seeth himself continued; the child upon the elder and becometh what he shall remember. Earth upon sky, sky upon the sea—they are one mirroring the next, as thought answers thought before the tongue can form it.
When this tale is told at night, the elders say the air thickens, for every spirit hearing it would draw nearer, desiring its own likeness. Some will smile and declare the story strange; yet those who listen more deeply say they can hear in it the breath of their own hearts making answer, as it was in the beginning and shall be again when all divisions sleep.
You are here: States of Grace > Philosophy