Children hear traditional stories on snowy morning
Karen Peterson
Karen Peterson
Pablo Elementary School students listen to James Spencer play a soft sounding flute during the morning.
Karen Peterson
Storyteller James Spencer finishes the details on a story and then plays his flute.
Karen Peterson
Children laugh when Spencer gets to the funny part of a story.
Karen Peterson
Spencer shares the sound of drum music with the children.
Karen Peterson
Karen Peterson
Karen Peterson
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
PABLO – When snow blankets the ground, it’s time to tell coyote stories as the tradition goes for many Native American tribes.
James Spencer, storyteller and musician, traveled from Lapwai, Idaho to share stories from the Nez Perce tribe with several local schools including Pablo and Dayton Elementary Schools.
The Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana brought Spencer to the area to speak at the schools and at their 18th annual Black Tie Fundraiser dinner on Thursday.
Museum board member Gretchen Schnitzer volunteered to drive Spencer to the different schools. On Thursday morning, the two arrived at Pablo Elementary School.
Spencer stood in front of a couple hundred pre-school through forth-grade students in regalia traditional to his tribe. He wore a split-horn bison cap and different beaded items. He began by saying “good-morning” in his native language.
The stories he was about to tell weren’t told in the springtime or the summer when his ancestors were traditionally busy gathering food, he said. The stories were told in the winter around a campfire as a way for people to gather when it was cold outside.
“This knowledge was passed down from generation to generation,” he said of the legend-based stories.
He started with an adventure about a time when the coyote lived in a valley and walked upright, and many of the animals were changing physically. One day, the meadowlark told the coyote that a huge lizard-like creature was causing problems. The coyote gathered up a few hand-made tools to defeat the monster.
The coyote, along with other animals, was swallowed up by the monster. While the coyote worked to free them from the monster, the raccoon decided to help. He got so sweaty that he wiped his hands across his face. “This is why the raccoon has rings on his face,” Spencer said. The elementary children laughed.
The coyote used his tools to dismantle the monster from the inside out and everyone got free, although the muskrat’s tail was stuck under the monster. The coyote pulled him out and all the fur came off his tail. “Now, all of his descendants don’t have fur on their tails,” he said.
Spencer picked up a cedar flute and said the Nez Perce also shared music around the campfire. As he played a soft whispery song, children yawned and rubbed their eyes in the early morning hours. He started playing the drum to the tune of Mighty Mouse to wake the kids back up.
Spencer told another story the kids could find a message in. It started with an elder asking a child to look at the trees and describe what they saw. The Nez Perce children would say something like “trees,” he said.
The elder would ask the child to look closer until they could see the individual trees. The elder would say to the child: “You see all these different kinds of trees growing in harmony since the beginning of time? They don’t fight and no one is less important than the other. They all do something to make the world a better place.”
Spencer finished by saying that everything from the smallest animal to the biggest has a way of teaching people something, even a rock. He gave the kids a comical example: “Imagine if a rock hit you in the head. You would learn that it’s hard, and next time you should duck.”
The children laughed and headed back to class. Spencer headed out to another school.
