Willie's Tales

Shiiki chuuluns,

Shiiki chuuluns shiiki shiiki shiiki,

Chuuluns shiiki.*

Thus last week sang Willie Long Bone, 71-year-old Delaware Indian, perched on a high stool, pounding a deerskin drum. Willie Long Bone sang for fun, but his audience, a seminar of the Linguistic Institute of America convened on the University of Michigan campus, plied their pencils feverishly, transcribing his words into phonetic symbols. Then for their benefit Willie translated his songs and long, chanted stories into English.

Reason the scribbling audience paid such close attention was that Willie Long Bone was speaking a nearly dead language. Despite a general increase in the U. S. Indian population, the number of Delawares is dwindling, and only about 40 of the oldest still speak the pure tongue.

One of Willie's tales, which he learned from his grandmother and which takes hours to tell because it is replete with rich and often racy detail, concerns the tribulations of the Delawares after two women had misbehaved sexually with a dying bird. When the bird, dead, applied for admittance "up above where he should go," he could not get in because he was denied. That night a manitou (spirit) visited the Delaware chief, told him the tribe must atone for the wrong done to the bird. The manitou suggested that all the young women dance naked before all the men for four days. They started to do so, but an old woman spoiled the atonement by throwing a blanket around her granddaughter.

"That night"--Willie translated--"the manitou came again to the chief and . . . ordered, 'Twelve babies you bring in. Those old men sing to those babies and keep on singing to those babies until those babies starve to death. At that point you fellows quit singing.' "

Again the atonement was spoiled, when a fond mother snatched her wailing baby from among the sacrificial twelve. When Willie came at last to the end of his story, he made the gesture of breaking a stick and said Ngahh, meaning "I break," or "the end."

Willie Long Bone learned English at a Government school, fathered a son who graduated from Drake University. Recently Professor Charles Frederick Voegelin of DePauw University discovered Willie on his 80-acre allotment in Oklahoma, brought him to Ann Arbor for the summer session. Willie has already made some 50 phonographic recordings of Delaware songs and tales. Between performances he walks around the University of Michigan campus in faded overalls, a floppy straw hat. For his singsonging he gets $2 a day and expenses.

*"It's good, the bird, It's good, the bird, it's good, it's good, it's good. The bird it's good."

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