(Adapted from Mi'kmaq tales recorded in 1923 on the island of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia by folklorist Elsie Clews Parsons.)

Long ago, in the time of the people who are gone, life was very difficult. The winters were harsh and long. Food was scarce. The people in those days were lost. They could not trust one another. Feud, hunger and sickness killed many children. The forest was full of witches and cannibals. It was a dark time.

Seven young men decided they must do something. They consulted the elders. The elders told them to go in search of Ugluchopt.

Ugluchopt is wise and as old as the world itself. He lives all alone in his wigwam far away to the north. He is too old to hunt, fish or gather firewood for himself. The witches of the forest bring him the sweet meat of porcupines and tend his fire while Ugluchopt sleeps, dreaming of the time before men and the time after.

The seven young men began their journey at midsummer. They paddled an old skin canoe, following the rivers north. Soon, the land they knew lay far behind them.

As they paddled further and further away from the known world, they saw many strange sights.

They saw two giants fighting.

They saw a boy fishing alongside a sow bear and her cubs, swatting salmon from the river like a bear.

They saw little people pecking pictures in stones along the shore.

They heard the keening of witches in the forest, and saw thunderbirds wheeling and diving in the sky.

At the end of the seventh week of their journey, the young men came to a clearing on the bank where two great rivers meet. There was a long lodge with a door at each end. An old man sat beside it.

The boldest of the young men asked him, 'Grandfather, do you know where we can find Uglochopt?'

The old man shook his head: no. But, he invited the young men to eat with him and his wife and to sleep in their lodge that night.

After they had feasted on spruce grouse and moosemeat and groundnuts and the young men had laid down next to the walls of the lodge, the old man let the fire die down. He began drumming on a piece of bark and singing strangely. As he sang, the bones of the birds and moose they had eaten began to twitch and jump. The young men watched in amazement as the bones danced into the fire.

As they young men watched, a young moose and six spruce grouse appeared in the fire and escaped through the doors of the lodge.

In the morning, the young men wondered if they had been dreaming. The boldest asked their host, 'Grandfather, how should we call you?'

'You may call me Brings-Back-Animals,' the old man replied. 'Every night, I sing the animals back to life from all the bones that are thrown away. That is why when you kill an animal, you must use every part that you can, even the sinew and hair. You must never give the bones to your dogs to gnaw. Anything you cannot use you must bury or return to the water. Only if you do this will the animals come back.'

He led the young men to the river and blew softly on a shell whistle. The waters filled with fish. He blew again and the fish departed. 'This is the only knowledge I can give you: respect the living creatures that you eat, and they will always return to you.'

The young men left Brings-Back-Animals. They paddled for another seven days, and then, when the river became too shallow, they left their canoe and walked. After two weeks, they came to the wigwam of Ugluchopt.

The bark of Ugluchopt's wigwam glistened silver like still water. It was old, old, old. Ugluchopt lay on his side near a fire that was nearly cold. The old man lay so still the young men feared he was dead, but when they spoke his name he opened his eyes and gestured for them to enter.

The young men stayed three days. They brought water to Ugluchopt, gathered wood and stoked the fire. They boiled sweet porcupine meat in a bark dish with heated stones. They held a smaller dish steady while Ugluchopt drank the broth. When they went to turn him over, they saw that his body had rooted into the ground like a tree. Tiny roots covered his side and arms.

On the third day, Ugluchopt lit his pipe, passed it to the young men and sighed.
'I am glad you came so far to visit me,' Ugluchopt said. ' I had been laying on that side for more than 600 years. Now, what can I do for you?'

The boldest young man spoke first, as usual. His father and brothers had been killed in the wars. Since then, he had proven himself to be the fiercest warrior in his village. He was always the first to speak and the first in battle, and gave no quarter to any man.

He looked Ugluchopt in the eye, and said, 'Grandfather, I want to be so tough no man will raise his hand against me. I want to live a long life.'

Ugluchopt looked at him strangely for a long while, then replied, 'Very well. You'll have your wish. Walk out of my wigwam and lift up your arms toward the sun.'

The young man did as he was told, and when he turned to face the sun, he was transformed into a gnarled and twisted cedar tree. He stands there to this day, and if you stop in a cedar swamp and listen, you will hear the scrabbling, scratching, sighing sound he makes as he reaches for the sky.

The second young man swallowed hard. His brothers and sisters had died of sickness. He said to Ugluchopt, 'I want to heal my relations.'

Ugluchopt smiled. 'Take these roots from my side. When someone falls ill, brew a tea from the roots and give it to them to drink.' And so Ugluchopt gave the people medicine.

The third man wanted to be able to run very fast, not like a deer, but like the wind which never tires. Ugluchopt granted his wish, and gave him the knowledge of languages also, for speech goes everywhere at once, like the wind. This man became the first news bearer and the best scout.

The fourth man wanted to be a great hunter. Ugluchopt gave him knowledge of animals, how to track them and how to hide himself from them, how to knap stone and build a twice-bent bow and shoot an arrow straight and true.

The fifth man wanted to be a great trapper and fisherman, and Ugluchopt gave him knowledge of beaver and muskrat and salmon and sturgeon and smelt. He taught him how to make nets and traps and harpoons and how to use them.

The sixth man wanted to be a craftsman, a maker of invaluable things. To him, Ugluchopt gave the skills of a tool maker, a basket maker, a snowshoe and tobaggan maker.

The last man was the best paddler in the canoe; he wanted to be a builder of boats. Ugluchopt gave him a crooked knife made from a beaver's tooth and a drawknife made from a moose's leg bone, and taught him how to build canoes of birch bark that were lighter and faster than those made of hide.

The six men returned to the people, bringing them Ugluchopt's gifts of knowledge and the respect for wild creatures they had learned from Bings-Back-Animals. Their neighbours marvelled at the story of the bold warrior who had become a twisted cedar tree, and reckoned it wiser to live well than to live long.

Ugluchopt could have told them that knowledge is not wisdom. But this is something men and women must learn for themselves. Even so, the dark days and seasons became lighter, and the people prospered.