I n the beginning there was a black ash tree, the Wabanaki remember. And since peoples of four Wabanaki nations — Maliseet, Micmac, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy — have lived in the land now called Maine for some 12,000 years, you might say that if anyone recalls the way things happened back then, it's them.
When the legendary hero Gluskabe shot his arrow into the furrowed trunk of that ash, its impact shook the tree's pointed, pinnately compound leaves. But the arrow hole made a portal of kinds: The Wabanaki people stepped forth from the tree trunk and into their world. That's when they learned, from Gluskabe, how to weave the tree's straightgrained wood into baskets. Art, in other words, was with the Wabanaki people
