Braiding Sweetgrass

other elders.
The era of the First Fire found Anishinaabe people living in the
dawn lands of the Atlantic shore. The people were given powerful
spiritual teachings, which they were to follow for the good of the
people and the land, for they are one. But a prophet foretold that
the Anishinaabe would have to move to the west or else they would
be destroyed in the changes that were to come. They were to
search until they found the place “where the food grows on the
water,” and there they would make their new home in safety. The
leaders heeded the prophecy and led the nation west along the St.
Lawrence River, far inland near what is now Montreal. There they
rekindled the flame, carried with them on the journey in bowls of
shkitagen.
A new teacher arose among the people and counseled them to
continue still farther west, where they would camp on the shore of a
very big lake. Trusting in the vision, the people followed and the
time of the Second Fire began as they made camp on the shores of
Lake Huron near what is now Detroit. Soon, though, the
Anishinaabe became divided into three groups—the Ojibwe, the
Odawa, and the Potawatomi—who took different routes to seek
their homes around the Great Lakes. The Potawatomi traveled to
the south, from southern Michigan all the way to Wisconsin. As the
prophecies foretold, however, the bands were reunited several
generations later at Manitoulin Island, forming a union known as the
Three Fires Confederacy that remains to this day. In the time of the
Third Fire, they found the place foretold in prophecy, “where the
food grows on the water,” and established their new homelands in
the country of wild rice. The people lived well for a long time under
the care of maples and birches, sturgeon and beaver, eagle and
loon. The spiritual teachings that had guided them kept the people