Posted June, 1997
Sourced to Nelson King, FPS, The Philalethes. (* see additional notes below)
Contributed by RW Curtis N. Balmer, PGC, Harmony #8, Kittatinny #164
Some very startling information has just come into my possession, information that will shake the very foundations of what we today know as Ancient Freemasonry, information that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ancient Freemasonry did not originate in Great Britain, but was started in the United States of America, and not by stone masons, but by the Plains Indians, many many years ago.
For you see that on the great plains an Indian Chief took for himself three wives. For the first wife, he built in one corner of the teepee a bed on the skin of a wolf. For the second wife, he built in another corner on the skin of a deer, and the third wife was built a bed on the skin of a hippopotamus.
Lo and behold, some nine months later, the miracle of life unfolded. The wife whose bed was on the skin of a wolf gave birth to a son, also the wife on the skin of a deer gave birth to a son. But all things were not equal. The wife whose bed was on the skin of the hippopotamus gave birth to twin boys.
This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ancient Freemasonry was started by that Indian Chief many, many years ago on the great plains of the United States of America.
For there we have demonstrated Pythagoras' 47th Problem of Euclid, that the sons of the squaw on the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of the squaws on the other two hides.
Update, February 9, 2000On your webpage you have credited Nelson King with a pun that I first read in: "Himie Koshevoy's Treasure Jest of Best Puns," written and compiled by Himie Koshevoy, Evergreen Press, Vancouver, British Columbia: 1969 [page 96]. Mr. Koshevoy, retired Managing Editor of the Vancouver "Sun," Toronto "Star," and Toronto "Telegram," notes that a similar version appears in "Bennet Cerf's Treasury of Atrocious Puns," Harper & Row: 1968. He further implies that Cerf may copyright his gathered puns, but that won't stop Koshevoy from gathering and publishing them without a copyright, because they are classics and have been repeated around the world.
Just thought I'd mention it.
Yours truly,
Trevor W. McKeown