Ojibway and Cherokee

storyteller spins tales of ghosts

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Ghost stories revolving around Native Americans were the order of the day Sunday afternoon at the Second Annual Riverblast Minnesota River Festival in Riverside Park.

Ojibway and Cherokee storyteller Duke Addicks of St. Paul spoke first about the woodland Indians who lived in this area a thousand years ago. They ate wild rice and grew squash, pumpkins and tobacco.

One of his yarns went like this:

A particular Indian chief was getting old, had no sons and just one daughter. Indians in the village hoped somebody would marry the chief's daughter, but it seemed nobody was good enough. Some of the tribe thought she would marry a ghost.

Finally a trader that gave obsidian, buffalo hides, grizzly bear claws and copper to the chief received his daughter's hand in marriage. The couple arrived at the young man's village in the middle of the night. People were singing and dancing and fires were blazing. Inside the lodge, the woman noticed wood beams carved in the shapes of animals.

The next morning, the woman was shocked to find her husband was nothing but a skeleton. The furs had maggots, the roof was cracked and the rest of the people in the village were only skeletons, except for an old woman.

The old woman told the newlywed that she had married the chief of the land of the dead.

Months later, the young woman gave birth to a child. The old woman told the young mother to not let the sun shine on her baby for four days or it would become a skeleton during the day.

Addicks' next story was about a ghost that kept coming to a farmhouse and frightening young children. The ghost lived between the refrigerator and the wall behind the appliance.

The final ghost story was a true story about Addicks' uncle who kept appearing in his home after he died. This type of story is fairly common to him.

"I've had many people come up to me they had similar experiences with deceased relatives that reappeared and spoke to them," Addicks said. "Many people go back and forth between the living and the dead. When more than one person talks about a similar experience, I tend to believe them."

Addicks is a volunteer interpreter and storyteller at the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge on the Minnesota River near the Twin Cities.

Polka music cut the air at Riverblast into the evening Sunday after Addicks completed his stories and talked with interested listeners off stage. Polka music featured the Northside Dutchmen and concertinaist "Smiley" Wiltscheck.