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Maude Kegg Stillwater

According to the Preface written by John Nichols, who collected Maude Kegg's stories in the 1970s, at the time of this printing in 1990 she was 87 years old. She lived at Vineland near Onamia on the Mille Lacs Reservation. She told the stories told to her by her grandmother, Margaret Pine.
A long time ago the old lady used to tell me all kinds of stories; when I sleep with her she tells things, she tells me about things. "It was a long time ago," she says, "there at what they call Giigoonh-zhagomod (Stillwater, Minnesota)," she says. Once long ago there were two men sleeping, one being the other's brother-in-law, perhaps they were setting traps around there. Long ago they used to sell furs. That man killed a fish; one of the men killed and cooked a fish. Well he's hungry. His brother-in-law was also hungry. "There's no way I can eat that fish, that pike," the other one told him. "I can't eat it," his brother-in-law says to him. "Well, you're just going to have to eat it anyway." "Don't! I don't want to eat it." He coaxed his brother-in-law to eat it. Then that man said: "Don't you dare go to sleep, don't go to sleep. Just go and keep on dipping up water so I can eat the fish," he says to him. Then sure enough, when it got dark, he at the fish. "Heh, my brother-in-law, I'm thirsty," he says to him. All that man does then is keep dipping up water in the pail. All the other man, his brother-in-law, does is drink up the pail. Then it was dawn and the one bringing the water fell asleep. He wok up with a start and his brother-in-law was gone. Then there was his brother-in-law, floating across the lake. The big fish floating there told him this. This is what it told him: "You will know that I will be there from henceforth. There at what will be called Giigoonh-agomod. 'Where the Fish Floats', he told him. The lake must still look that way today. There must be a piece of land crossing the lake there. That's all.
from
Maude Kegg, "Nookomis Gaa-Inaajimotawid: What My Grandmother Told Me," Oshkaabewis Native Journal 1:2 (1990, Special Ed.): 53-55.

The Ojibwe People's Dictionary is developed and maintained by:
Nora Livesay, Editor
John D. Nichols, Founder and Linguistic Editor

with support and collaboration from the University of Minnesota's Department of American Indian Studies and University Libraries.

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