Title: How Lady Slipper Flowers Came To Be

General Information About Item:

• Origin Story
• Language: English & Ojibwe
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: S.K
• Date Collected: May 26, 2020

Informant Data:

•  Informant S.K is a female Dartmouth student in the class of 2021. She was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and currently lives there. She is a Native American Studies major at Dartmouth and is involved with Native Americans at Dartmouth (NAD). Informant S.K. is affiliated with the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. She considers her relationship to her culture very strong because the school she went to as a child emphasized a Native-based curriculum. She had a lot of great Native role models in this school that strengthened her knowledge of her Ojibwe heritage.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: This is a story that is often told in Informant S.K’s Ojibwe culture. There are several Ojibwe words used in the item and they are italicized for easy spotting. The Ojibwe people are a woodlands dwelling group that is Native to North America. In the Ojibwe culture, storytelling is prevalent and is revered as a sacred activity. Lady Slippers are delicate and only bloom every 14 years.
• Social Context: Informant S.K. learned about this story in grade school through a program her school offered called book of the month. Each month there would be a book highlighting a Native culture. Normally, this story would be told by an elder and in a much more formal process. It would probably be told with much more Ojibwe and in the winter because that is when storytelling is done.

Item:

• How the lady slipper flower came to be is a story about a young Ojibwe girl that saved her village because she selflessly made a dangerous trek across a frozen lake in the dead of winter. After her trip she was so exhausted that she passed out and left a path of bloody footprints. Where her footprints were, the lady slipper flower bloomed.

Transcript:

• “A long time ago in an Ojibwe village, there was a girl who loved her family, her people, and her community. She looked up to her brother the most. Her brother was the messenger because of how smart and fast he was. He would go to other tribes to communicate and send messages from his chief back and forth. And she always wanted to go with him, but he never let her because she was a little girl. One day a terrible sickness fell over the village. The chief told the messenger that he needed to go to the neighboring tribe to get the mashkiki (medicine) that they needed to cure the sickness. So the messenger said he would go the next day, but he caught the sickness, so he couldn’t go. The sickness started spreading and getting more intense. The little girl, seeing her brother and community getting sick, decided to go to the neighboring village. It was the middle of the winter in Minnesota. That didn’t stop her. She put on her warmest moccasins, her warmest jacket, and bundled up and left in the middle of the night when everyone else was sleeping because she knew people would tell her not to go on this dangerous journey. She walked across the frozen lake and got to the village and told them what was happening. They gave her the medicine bundle and told her that they would all make the journey back to her village in the morning because of how dark and dangerous it was to be traveling in the dark and in the storm. They gave her broths and warm liquids and let her rest, telling her again that they would take her back to her village in the morning. So when they were sleeping, she went back to her village. She fell into the frozen lake when she was walking back, but was able to crawl out. Her moccasins were gone, so she continued walking back barefoot for most of the trek in the middle of the winter. By the time she got to the edge of her village, she was so weak that she fell and passed out from exhaustion. The people heard her and came and grabbed the medicine bundle. They noticed that there was a path of bloody footprints that led to her. So they took her in and gave her soups and warm liquids and teas to make her feel better, so they used the medicine she got to heal the people and the young girl. In the springtime, where her bloody footprints were is where the lady slipper bloomed. The lady slippers honor her selflessness and the sacrifice she made.”

Informant’s Comments: 

• “A lot of tribes and bands of Ojibwe people in Minnesota have this story, so in no way is the way I heard it the only correct way. I respect all tribal interpretations of this story.”

Collector’s Comments:

• I grew up in another Ojibwe community (Bay Mills Indian Community) and I never heard this story. It was really exciting to hear something new and relevant to my own culture from another Ojibwe woman.

Collector’s Name: Caitlin Wanic (’21)

Tags/Keywords:

• Oral Storytelling
• Origin Myth
• Ojibwe
• Flower Story