[The Story of Canada, first published in 1992, reappears this fall from Scholastic Canada, in a revised and updated edition with new cover and other illustrations by Alan Daniel. So I'm doing Story of Canada days here -- an item a day for the next eleven days, one detail per chapter. Other postings on regular matters should be interspersed among them.]
From Chapter One: A Hundred Centuries
1992 edition cover
"The mothers of the five nations chose fifty chiefs for a great council. Dekanahwideh gave them the law that has governed the People of the Longhouse ever since. His followers -- the people we call Iroquois -- called him Peacemaker. They still attempt to follow his law and his teaching.See why it makes a great Christmas gift?
"Dekanahwideh is one of the very first heroes we can name in the story of Canada, but every Native nation revered the women and men who founded it or led it to greatness. On the Pacific Coast they remember the warrior Nekt and his fortress of Kitwanga, high above the Skeena River. Among the Hurons of southern Ontario, one leader after another took the proud name Atironta.
"There were spirit heroes too. There were tricksters -- Raven on the Pacific coast, the old man Napi on the plains, and Nanabush in the spruce forests. Sometimes tricksters helped and taught the people, sometimes they teased and tested them....."
