In the 1900s, most Indian children in the United States and Canada were involuntarily taken from their families by state and federal governments and placed in Indian boarding schools. Keewaydinoquay Peschel was able to escape this fate. This book offers a rare glimpse into what one little girl did with this incredible gift she had been given. She was a child of mixed cultures and religions with an insatiable curiosity about how and why things work. This often got her into trouble, but also provided some of her best stories. Keewaydinoquay grew up to become a world-renowned herbalist, teacher, medicine helper, writer, and storyteller. She spent her life helping all other beings, not just human beings. All these stories, as told in her own words, are from Keewaydinoquay for all of us. She lived these lessons and now shares them in hopes that we humans are ready to take seriously the responsibilities that are incurred by the honor of having our place among the families of creation. Cedar songs KEEWAYDINOQUAY PESCHEL By WETAHN LEE BOISVERT Trafford Publishing Copyright © 2013 Lee Boisvert All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4669-8620-6 Contents Acknowledgements...........................................................ixIntroduction...............................................................xiFirst Life.................................................................1Second Life................................................................27Third Life.................................................................43Fourth Life................................................................95Appendix...................................................................271 Excerpt CHAPTER 1 First Life ... the scent of Cedar      Sometimes     Jesus sleeps at our place.     Born to the clean, sweet scent of hay     And spare room to see the stars and trees,     A style of life in the simpler way.     So when the preacher screams and rants     Or priests get boring with their chants,     And Christendom has gone amiss,     ... We let him sleep in our wigamis. Adult Naming The problem for me was that I was neither here nor there. Theonly one who noticed there was something wrong for me wasPearse. He'd had a wife and a daughter, but his wife had died in childbirthand they both were buried in the yard next to his cabin. He lived aloneabout two miles from us. He said, "Why, Zhatay (my family nick name), what's the matter?It looks like you've been crying." I said, "No, I haven't." And he said, "Well, it's not raining." He finally got me to [talk about it], and I said, "All the kids Iknow, they all belong to something. But I don't belong here, and Idon't belong there, and I don't belong anywhere." He said, "Well, you certainly do. Your grandfather was a veryfamous man. You can speak his name anywhere in the state ofMichigan and every Indian knows who he is. Not that they'd allagree with him, but they all know who he is. And you belong in theMidéwewin." And I said, "Do you belong to the Midéwewin?" He said, "Well, yes, I do, but that's not the reason I was tellingyou. I was just saying that your family does belong there, and that you,their granddaughter, belong there, too." So he talked to my parents [about my need to belong, and aboutsending me out on a vision quest]. But neither of my parents waswilling to do anything about it. Pearse said, "Well, if I stand with her, will you permit that?" And they said, "If you would be her sponsor, we would feelhonored. It would be good to know that you were her sponsor." So Pearse, who at the time seemed to me like an old man,paddled me across the Grand Traverse West Bay and East Bays, alongthe shore near Acme and all the way up past Good Hart, then pastLittle Traverse Bay to where Petoskey sits now, and all the way alongWaugashonce Point to someplace near where Mackinaw City is today.There was a point they used to call Ghost Point, where they werehaving a big ceremony for young people coming of age. This was thefirst time they had had one for girls in ten years. * * * [Vision quests were] still illegal [back then]. The first thing [theelders] greeted us with was what to do in case the police came. Theysaid they would beat on the drum and we should all run into thewoods and not come back to camp at all but slowly make your wayback to where you came from. They had different [fasting sites for us each to stay in already]picked out. Instead of having people go out and pick sites of theirown, they had put numbers on them. We were supposed to go out andsee what site appealed to us and come back and say what number thesite was. By the time we got there most of the sites had been taken,and the ones left were the least desirable ones. In all three days I only saw two animals at my fasting site.Somehow I had gotten the idea that you had to see an animal ... thatthat was the way it worked ... and then that animal is your guardian.The two animals I s