Stories and Poems for Northeastern Native Tribal Families: From A Circle Tied to Mother Earth

Crow Challenges Hobomook
LONG AGO, IT WAS THIS WAY.
The Trickster, known to the Nipmuc
people as Hobomook, decided
he was going to have some fun.
He was going to play some cruel jokes on the
Nipmucs during the Summer Harvest. The people
were gathering nuts, berries, and other goods.
They filled their baskets. They had been laboring
hard all day. When the Nipmucs were not looking,
Hobomook touched their baskets of goods as he
chanted a curse and transformed all the delicious
food into small hard stones. He then ran, hid
behind a tree, and peeked out from the side.
When the Nipmucs realized what had happened,
they were very upset. All of their hard work had
been for nothing. Hobomook sat behind the tree,
laughing so hard that his belly jiggled.
Back at the village, a woman was cooking a big
pot of delicious rabbit stew. When she went inside,
Hobomook touched the pot then ran off. When
the family came out to eat, they were shocked and
disgusted. Hobomook had changed the wonderful
stew into a kettle of boiling mud. Hobomook was
now rolling around on the ground, laughing and
kicking his feet together.
Not far from the village there were large cornfields.
There were several women of all ages, gathering
corn, singing songs, and filling the large baskets
full of ripe and scrumptious corn. After all the work
was done, the ladies decided to go get something
to drink. Hobomook went up and down the rows,
dancing and smiling, as he touched each basket
of corn. He turned every sweet and tender ear of
corn into a pile of fish bones. When the women
returned, they were horrified and went back to
the village with their baskets full of fish skeletons.
A meeting was called by the Sachem. The people
gathered at the Long House. The Nipmucs were
bitter, for now they knew this was the handiwork of
Hobomook and they wanted to get him. However,
being a Trickster, he could be very dangerous to
tangle with. They asked the Pau Wau, who is today
known as the Medicine Man, what should be done.
While they were in their meeting Konkontu, the
Crow, was making his daily trip to the cornfield.
The Nipmucs always shared corn with Crow
because he is the one who brought it to them in
the first place. When Crow reached the cornfield,
he shuddered. He saw that all the tasty corn was
gone. There were just rows and rows of fish bones.
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