Icanchu's Drum

At the fall Sacred Path Retreat, Strongbear had planned to tell four stories. Due to the fire danger and high winds, he was only able to tell three before an evacuation was ordered. Here, then, is the fourth story that we never had the chance to hear.

Once upon a time the world got consumed with a great fire that broke out and began to spread in all directions. And everything on the entire earth was burned and was consumed until all that was left was ashes. And there was nothing standing and you couldn’t tell one thing from another; for they had all mixed into the same gray matter of ash. And it happened that at that time people disappeared as well and they returned back to ash.
And everything would have been turned to ash except that it happened that two bird beings, Icanchu and Cano, had been off doing something else. They had missed the great inferno. They weren’t there when the fire broke out and therefore they weren’t consumed by the flames. But, now they were flying back looking for their hole for the place where they used to dwell. For they couldn’t tell one place from another as each place looked like the same ashes spread in all directions.
While they were despairing over the possibility of finding home again the trickster appeared to them and said. “Listen I’ll tell you how to find your home. Stretch your hands before you and point your middle fingers straight ahead. Fly until that middle finger turns downward. When that finger goes down to the ground you too go down to the ground. That will be your home; that will be your dwelling place.”
Now Icanchu and Cano had knowledge in how to proceed. So the two of them proceeded to fly along with their middle fingers pointing out when, sure enough, their finger turned down and aimed at the ground. Then the two of them flew down to the ground. When they got there they began to look around for something to eat. For they had become hungry from all of that flying and searching about. So they began to dig down into the ash for they couldn’t find anything to eat at all for everything had been burned and turned to ash.
Down inside the ash Icanchu found a small piece of charcoal. Icanchu looked upon that piece of charcoal. For some reason he began to play it like a drum. Icanchu that bird being there in the conflagration at the end of time began playing the charcoal piece that he found amongst the ashes as if it were a drum. And he played and he played and as long as he was playing something inside him began to dance. Pretty soon Icanchu was playing that charcoal drum and he was dancing. After a while he became so tired that he stopped.
He put the charcoal down there in the ash. He himself lay down as well. He fell asleep and night came and rolled over the world. Icanchu slept there amongst the ashes.
In the morning when he woke up he looked. There where he had place the charcoal was a green sapling growing straight up from the charcoal; growing straight from the ash from which it was anchored. Icanchu began to sing to that sapling green growing up from that charcoal. And as he sang there to it, it began to grow very quickly. Suddenly it grew into a tree that stood there before him.
After a while when the branches had spread in all directions, Icanchu picked up some rocks and began to throw them at the branches of the tree. Each time rock would hit a branch, it would break off from the tree and it would fall to earth. It so happened that each time one of those branched hit the earth it turned into another kind of tree. And in this fashion by throwing rocks and breaking branches, Icanchu caused all of the kinds of trees that had been in the world before the great fire to begin growing again. Pretty soon all kinds of trees were growing. Finally when he had knocked all of the branches off of that tree, another tree grew from its center. This was the tree that was the stem of healing. From that tree came all the medicines that people had lost. All of those medicines returned as that tree grew from the center. And then there was medicine on the earth and there were all kinds of trees. They grew there from the ashes.
Pretty soon the forest returned the animals came as well because they had something to dwell in and something to eat from. Pretty soon people came along again. After a while the world was going along the same way it used to be before the fire. Except that there was a little dust of ash on everything.
At least that what they say when they tell this story in this little tribe that lived by the great river trying to imagine this world and whether it comes to an end or does it keep going somehow. That’s what they tell when they begin thinking about these things. In terms of this story, that talks about things continuing and beginning on and on. In terms of this story we have come right upon the end.