"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

27 February 2022

Imbued.

Reed, Ojibwe Woman on the Shore, Ponemah, Minnesota, 1908


Her mind in childhood had been thoroughly imbued with the lodge-lore, imaginary legends, and the traditions of the forest which cover the whole aerial sphere of the heavens, and render the doctrines, the existence of gods and spirits familiar to the youthful ear and eye.  They were to her familiar as household work.  She could look into the bright tracery of the stars and clouds, and read them in the sublime pictography of the wise men and sages of her forest ancestry.

Jane Schoolcraft on her mother's storytelling, from The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft

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