Nanabozho

The Great Trickster Hare

Domain: Creation, Cunning & Teaching
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Element: Water
Relics of Power: Handful of Earth

Speak with Nanabozho

The People

People

Native American peoples

Region

North America

Period

pre-colonial – present

These spirits and deities were worshipped by the many Native peoples of North America, from the Lakota to the Navajo and Iroquois. Their beliefs bind humans to the Great Spirit, to totem animals, and to balance with the land. Passed down orally, they survive in the Indigenous nations that endured colonization.

The Sun Dance gathered the Plains nations in fasting and sacrifice around the sacred tree. The Hopi dance with the kachinas, masked spirits of the rains, and the sacred pipe seals prayers and treaties — ceremonies still alive in today's nations.

The Sacred Scrolls

Nanabozho — also called Nanabush or Wenabozho — is the trickster-hero of the Anishinaabe peoples, such as the Ojibwe and Algonquin. Son of the wind and a human woman, he is part spirit and part man, creator and clown at once. He taught humans the names of the plants, medicine and the rites, amid trickery and comic misadventures. As The Great Trickster Hare, this deity occupies a position of supreme prestige in the nativos pantheon. Their domains over Creation, Cunning & Teaching reflect ancestral cosmic order maintained across millennia. In classical iconography, they are depicted with an aura of unshakeable majesty and sacred attributes that inspired reverence in emperors and peasants alike. Their influence extended beyond earthly boundaries, governing fates and harmony between the visible and invisible worlds. For ancient devotees, contemplating their essence was to understand the very fundamental forces of nature and human existence.

Sacred Symbols

The hare, the floodwater, the muskrat and the medicinal plants

Divine Lineage

Son of the spirit of the West Wind and a mortal woman; brother of wolves and other spirits.

The Legendary Myth

When a great flood covered all the land, Nanabozho floated upon the waters with the surviving animals. Several dove in search of a little earth from the bottom, but only the humble muskrat returned, dead, with a grain of…

Legends & Deeds

A celebrated secondary legend preserved in the oral traditions of the nativos recounts the journey when Nanabozho intervened directly in the lives of mortals.