Chief Lightning Bolt Page 10

  The warriors also made no effort to drive the animals they were preparing to slaughter to sites that were easily accessible, which would spare the women and children additional hard labour when bringing in the harvest. In fact, they often did the opposite and endeavoured to slaughter the animals in the most difficult places, just to enjoy the spectacle of watching them slave. Their cruelty was without equal.

  During the current Hunt, they had barely brought down enough meat to last the Winter before they hurried back to the village to laze about and feast. And, as was customary for them, no effort was made to prepare for an emergency situation. A rare and unSeasonable heat wave struck without warning. Within a few Sunrises most of the harvested meat had spoiled before it could be preserved. This setback could have easily been corrected by an additional Hunt, except most of their equipment was in an advanced state of disrepair and almost useless. Even with this, if they had made an immediate and vigorous effort, enough could have been repaired, or replaced, to enable them to make a reasonable try at acquiring a new meat supply.

  However, even with hunger now a very real possibility for the community, they procrastinated and put only a half-hearted effort into preparing for another harvest. By the time they had made barely sufficient repairs and got their reluctant efforts under way, Winter had descended with a vengeance. Within a few Sunrises, snow had piled up in huge drifts and made a further Hunt very difficult. However, if they had made the effort, with a great deal of determined hard work, it would still have been possible to bring in enough food to sustain the community.

  But, displaying their meanness to the fullest, instead of taking up the challenge, they settled on a cruel and easy solution to sustain their life of leisure. They cut back food rations to bare subsistence levels for their dependents and saved the best for themselves. Within a few Sunrises the children, women and Elders began suffering the pangs and ravages of near starvation.

  The Great Spirit, viewing all this from the Land of Souls, went into a seething rage. He instructed Glooscap to intervene and help the women, children and Elders, and to cause the guilty men to suffer greatly for their behaviour. Glooscap obediently caused an illness to occur in the men that prevented them from eating, becoming violently ill even at the sight of food. The only thing they were able to retain was some water. After twenty sunsets had passed, many of the offenders were near death from starvation. In desperation they called upon the Great Spirit for help.

  In response, the Creator instructed Glooscap to visit them in their dreams and inform them individually that He was outraged and repulsed by them because they had been so cruel. That night, after each drifted off into a fitful sleep, Glooscap intoned,

  “The Great Spirit has directed me to inform you that your behaviour has been so monstrous and evil that it is almost beyond redemption. But, there is a slight chance for you to find forgiveness. If you wish to have Him consider forgiveness for the terrible deeds that you have committed against humanity, you must first atone. If not, the punishment will be great. Upon death, you will not be permitted to enter the Land of Souls, and your death will not be long in coming because your inability to eat will continue.

  “To persuade the Great Spirit to consider forgiving you, this is what you must do. He demands that in a public forum you beg the forgiveness of the village’s women, children and Elders for the harm you have caused them. Then you must convince Him that you will live your remaining life with deep humility and will, without the slightest deviation, have the utmost respect for the rights and dignity of your fellow human beings. I strongly recommend, if you hope to live, that you begin your act of contrition when you awake.”

  Immediately upon awakening each man solemnly and tearfully promised the Great Spirit that he would from that Sunrise forward live his life fully devoted to the welfare of his fellow citizens and never again place in danger their lives by being lazy and irresponsible. The Great Spirit, believing they spoke with sincerity, instructed Glooscap to assist the few men left standing, who had been spared the ravages of the virus, with a Hunt. They alone had survived because they had refused to follow the cruel decision of the vast majority of men who kept food from their dependents. With Glooscap’s assistance, they were able to harvest enough food to return the repentant men and their dependents to health.

  With their health restored, the men called a village meeting and finished making peace with the Great Spirit by publicly begging their brothers and sisters for forgiveness. Even after they had apologized and the People had forgiven them, these same men could not completely shake off their feelings of guilt and shame, even with the passage of many Seasons.

  ***

  The lessons taught by this legend helped assure that the Mi’kmaq People were never again burdened by hunters without honour and integrity. Ever afterward, the goal for hunters was a great matter of honour, to meet or exceed the superhuman effort that was made by the few men who had brought in enough food to save the People, even with the help of Glooscap. Any man who displayed a tendency towards laziness from then on was considered a man without honour. He was shunned by the community until he mended his ways. Thus, the preservation of one’s honour became a matter of the highest priority among the People, and laziness and self-centred meanness became all but unknown in Mi’kmaq society.

  Lightning Bolt, Crazy Moose and their peers had all learned this message well. In manhood they were very protective of their honour and would have felt the depths of shame if it was tarnished.

  With their equipment in top shape for the next Hunt, the men got down to the chore of finishing preparations for selecting a new Village Chief. Because of the extensive democratic requirements of the Mi’kmaq Nation, the process to elect a replacement, which had been set in motion by the death of the Village Chief, was normally slow and cumbersome and sometimes took several Moons to complete. This was especially so when the People had a multitude of candidates that they needed to assess, to assure that the eventual winner would be possessed with a high degree of honour, wisdom, intelligence and all the other characteristics required to provide the community with wise and dependable leadership.

  The search to find qualified candidates was not difficult. The office of Chief was the prerogative of males only, so the education young boys received from Elders and parents in early childhood was structured to develop in them high ideals of character, in preparation for the possibility of one Sunrise being considered for office. Thus, as they grew into manhood, Mi’kmaq young men strove to live in a manner that would engender the People’s trust by supporting loyally the laws of the country and devoting their lives to assure the welfare of others.

  Two of the most important skills the People looked for as regards political office were the ability to communicate and use logic to persuade. These characteristics were very important because the man selected to fill the office had to be extremely capable of using oration, logic and persuasion. Indeed, there was no other option to get people to follow your ideas and guidance, save for demonstrating through your actions and words the strength of your resolve. The use of force by a Mi’kmaq leader to compel others to carry out his wishes was not an option open to him. Mi’kmaq society was a democracy; the People’s will was paramount.

  As a tool to help assure that their young people grew into adulthood with great respect for the democratic practices used to select leadership, the Elders used the legend about the Despotic Dictators. This is how they told it:

  The Mi’kmaq Nation, in ancient Sunrises, was governed over by cruel and uncaring men. They forced citizens on pain of death, or barbaric punishments, to obey and carry out their commands. For the slightest infraction people were tortured, and a favourite pastime was ordering the death penalty for minor as well as major infractions.

  Thus abused constantly, the People lived in terror and silently prayed to the Great Spirit for deliverance from their tormentors. Generation after generation they kept the faith and con
tinued to believe that some Sunrise the Father would respond. However, after the passage of thousands of Moons, many were despairing of ever being rid of them.

  The Great Spirit, after watching with a heavy heart the mistreatment of succeeding generations of the People, and hoping that they could find a way to revolt and overcome, finally decided they would never be rid of their persecutors without His help. His decision was not taken lightly, because He felt it was up to men to make their own way. He had hoped that somewhere along the line of succeeding generations of Dictators that some would see the grievous error of their ways and adopt a more humane approach towards the People. To limit interference, His help was not to be in the form of Divine physical intervention but human, with the possibility of failure.

  Thus, unknown to the People, He caused a boy to be born during a severe Winter storm. The boy was destined to help lead them in revolution against their heartless Masters. As a big blizzard raged during his birth Sunrise, he was named Big Blizzard. To assure that he would have a very good chance in adulthood of unseating the Dictators, the Father endowed him with exceptional human intellectual abilities and a caring conscience. He also, knowing that strength and courage would be needed, assured that Big Blizzard was without a peer in strength and courage.

  Not known to any human, including his parents, the Great Spirit’s hand was apparent in the boy’s early childhood. By the arrival of the first anniversary of his birth he was already displaying an exceptionally high intelligence and courage of conviction. The Dictators, recognizing Big Blizzard’s outstanding abilities, took him under their wings when he was three Springs old and began to indoctrinate him with their ideology, grooming him to become one of them.

  Big Blizzard, as is typical of many young people, enjoyed the trappings of power and partook of its benefits freely. The daily suffering and degradation of the People were noticed by him, but initially caused him no concern. However, as his birth Seasons passed, the pervasive suffering and misery of the People began to instill in his conscience a dislike for what he saw. This caused him to think about ways to alleviate their suffering. However, his progressive ideas of making peaceful revolutionary changes to the system were replaced by plans for violent change, following a horrific event during his eighteenth Winter. It brought home to him the full extent of the suffering of the People.

  The thing that turned him completely against his mentors was the horrific policy that they implemented to cope with the minor discomforts they were suffering because of the severe Winter weather that settled in and stayed. The snow was deep, the cold was bone-chilling and the winds seemed to blow without end. In the midst of it, to assure their own comfort, the Dictators forced the People to give up most of the warm furs that they had set aside for Winter clothing and bedding. Because of this heartlessness, the citizens were suffering the rigours of the severe Winter in abject misery. Many were dying from malnutrition, diseases and exposure.

  Then, as if this weren’t bad enough, they decided to tax the will of the People to survive even further by issuing an edict requiring that each wigwam give them one-third of their food stores. This demand condemned many of the remaining people to almost immediate death.

  As he watched the results of this inhumanity, Big Blizzard felt great revulsion. This caused him to hatch in his mind a plan to unseat the Dictators. But they were supported by a well-fed and fully equipped army. He knew this would be a difficult task that involved great personal risk. In addition, he also knew that the People, his hoped-for allies, had nothing of substance to offer or contribute to the effort except a strong desire to be free. However, he prayed that when the revolution began, it would impel the People to find the courage to rise up.

  In the Land of Souls, the Great Spirit was viewing the development with pleasure. To help assure that Big Blizzard’s revolutionary plan would work, He caused His helper Glooscap to visit him in a dream and offer reassurance. To this end, Glooscap told him that night that the Great Spirit would not openly use His formidable powers to dislodge the Dictators, but He was in complete support of Big Blizzard’s plans to do so. Because of these encouraging words, when he awoke, Big Blizzard felt a great surge of confidence in the rightness of the path he had chosen.

  He started feeling out some very carefully selected friends in the ruling class to determine if they felt any compassion for the People’s hardship. To his relieved surprise, several spoke out in private about the pity and shame they felt because of the horrible suffering they saw every Sunrise. He also discovered that they believed in their hearts that all human beings were created equal and that everyone should receive equal treatment. When asked if they would join him in attempting to overthrow the Dictators, they readily agreed. The Great Spirit, watching the progress, was overjoyed that the first seeds of democratic principles had finally taken roots in the minds of some of the ruling class.

  The inspired conspirators, under Big Blizzard’s leadership, organized a small secret society to finesse plans for the struggle to unseat the Dictators. They also started to rough out the democratic tenets needed to establish the free society envisioned. For this task they used three principles: equality, honour and sharing. The idea was that laws enacted from such a base would in time make dictatorships, dishonourable conduct, intolerance and greed all but obsolete in the new society.

  Because of the danger of being caught, they worked together in the knowledge that speedy actions were in the best interest of starting a revolt with any chance of success. They completed the planning stage in only ten Sunrises, recruiting carefully selected warriors to take on the task of recruiting more.

  Although it increased the danger for them substantially, more men had to be brought into the core group from the ruling class to support the magnitude of the operation. As expected, the recruiting soon led to rumours of the plot spreading among the citizens. At the same time, the mounting tensions generated in them an undercurrent of excitement. When the Dictators were made aware of the rumours, they decided to take immediate, and if necessary, forceful action to determine their validity. However, having absolute control of the Nation’s powerful army, they were supremely confident and didn’t feel threatened.

  Big Blizzard, because his name had been mentioned in connection with the rumours, was summoned to appear before them. They, knowing that petty jealousies were rampant among the upper class, and that many among them constantly tried to curry favour, tended to treat the whole matter as a figment of someone’s vindictive imagination. This was a very feasible assumption; it was an open secret that many among the aspiring ruling class deeply resented Big Blizzard’s imminent position in the Dictator’s list of preferred leaders. Because of this, ugly rumours about his character and loyalty had been floated before, and more could be expected.

  When questioned, Big Blizzard, with the conviction of the righteous in such situations, convincingly denied knowing of a plot and stated a belief that the rumours were indeed the product of jealous peers. The Dictators, accepting the explanation without reservation, dismissed the charges.

  However, the encounter brought home to Big Blizzard the fact that the time for full implementation was at hand. He reported the details of his meeting with the Dictators to his inner circle. He also shared with them his conclusion that they must put their plan into action immediately. They concurred and the revolt began. They decided to do so by first bringing the plot out into the open at a face-to-face meeting with the Dictators.

  Thus, armed with not much more than their determination to change the political and social environment of their Nation, they arranged, with great apprehension in their hearts, a meeting with the Despots. The meeting, they knew, with almost complete certainty, would quickly result in a sentence of death for all participants. Without regard to this certainty, they met with the Dictators and delivered their message. As expected, their proposal to reform the system was immediately rejected and they were all sentenced to death. Upon hearing th
e response, they speedily implemented a previously devised escape plan and were out of the village and into the forest before they could be arrested. Once into the forest they speedily made their way to a previously selected secret location from which they quickly began the recruitment of a volunteer army.

  Their call for more volunteers to unseat the Dictators spread like a fire throughout the country and ignited in the population an unquenchable thirst for freedom. The response exceeded all expectations. Within a few Sunrises hundreds of warriors, in many cases with nothing much to offer than their determined bodies, began arriving in the dozens as if out of nowhere.

  Such an enthusiastic response was heartwarming to Big Blizzard and his colleagues. They had thought, because of their long oppression, that the People might be too timid to risk the retribution of the Dictators by openly giving support to a rebellion. However, their enthusiastic response indicated to them that success for the revolution was within grasp.

  Within half a Moon, the ragtag army of freedom fighters numbered in the thousands. With makeshift and meagre weapons, they were strategically dispersed to attack from locations across the country. With their army in place, the leaders picked a Sunrise to begin the war for freedom.

  By this time, the Dictators were well aware of the planned uprising. However, related to their remarkable overconfidence, they all but ignored what was going on around them. In their supreme arrogance, they believed that their overwhelmingly superior army would crush the rebels, like so many maggots, in a few Sunrises, if rebellion actually broke out. They were so contemptuous of the threat the rebels posed that they didn’t order the army to take any extraordinary defensive actions. Because of their contempt, it was impossible for them to consider that the forces opposing them were motivated by something that would make them unstoppable, a determined thirst for freedom.