Monday, October 13, 2014

Reading Diary Week 9: Native American Marriage Tales


This was a weird story to say the least. It involved buffalos turning into humans, and was revolved around one family. The family was torn apart several times, and in the end were reunited. They were reunited even after the father was killed, brought back to life, and transformed from a buffalo back into a human. This was a very odd story.

This was a rather graphic story. First of all, it starts with polygamy, and nothing good can ever come of that! One wife kills the other, than the children kill the other children. It is a horrible and sad story. No one really has a happy ending or ends up victorious.

The page for this says it no longer exists. I am guessing I won’t need to read it.
It’s starts back up on the second part of this story, so now I am slightly confused because I didn’t have access to part 1. From what I can tell, there are buffalo seeking a girl. There is a battle scene in which the buffalo are trying to strike a tree down. The buffalo lost and was killed, and told by the tree that humans would start hunting buffalo. Then the next part of the story was a really awkward story where a rock was trying to marry a girl. The rock was mean so they were trying to run away from him, but he was very powerful and somehow the girl and all of her family rose up into the sky and escaped. This made me think that she killed everyone so their spirits could be safe. I didn’t fully understand it, but once again thought it was very odd.

Two girls were on the beach playing with whale and eagle bones, when a whale swiped up on girl, and an eagle took the other. The girls became their imprisoned wives. However, they were able to escape, go back to their families, and kill their husbands when they came back to try to get them. This is yet another weird story from this unit.

Interesting story. I couldn’t decide if it was a woman dressed as a fox, or a fox disguised as a woman in the end though. But the hunter would go out and come back and his place would be as if a wife had fixed everything up while he was away. So one time when he left, he waited to see who would enter his house, and it ended up being a fox. But when he went to go see the fox, he found that it was a woman. It was kind of confusing but an overall cute story. I thought it was odd the fox-woman just left at the end and they didn’t have a happily ever after though.

This was yet another odd story. I am starting to feel like these stories don’t have much of a plot to them, or even a moral. In this one, a husband catches a fish, and a fish pulls the woman into the sea in return. The woman is held captive by some killer whales, then a shark comes and a big brawl happens. In the end, the woman and man are reunited though. You could maybe rewrite this to the plot of the movie Taken.

This was a very gruesome story. A wife went to the lake and saw a snake everyday. I think this was code for getting it on with another man. The husband found out, killed the snake and her. Then let his children eat the mother. Then the mother’s head was rolling around trying to speak to the children. The children kill the father, and somehow end up being able to feast all of the time. It was a horrible story that I would not recommend to anyone.

This is kind of a star-crossed lover ordeal. A woman falls in love with a bear, and so her father kills the bear. The girl is so upset that she ends up turning herself into a bear and killing a ton of people in their village. She kind of becomes a monster. Her family is even afraid of her and sets up a trap to catch her. They ended up killing her but not before she killed four of her brothers. Then the siblings that were alive brought back the others to life. They didn’t have anyone else living in the area though since the bear woman had killed everyone so they descended into the sky and became different stars. This was a weird and very unrealistic ending, with once again no moral. 


So a young girl has a dog and she loves it dearly. Every night the dog turns into a man though and sleeps with her. She then gets pregnant and the father kills the dog/man. She then has like four children who are dogs. One day she discovers they are changed into humans though and could do that all the time so she has them stay as humans. Then the kids get really good at hunting and fishing and are made chiefs of the land they were once pushed out of. This was one of the more and easy to understand stories in the unit thus far.

This was a more risqué story because it talked about intercourse. I was shocked by the discussion of it. But a man already had two wives, and for some reason was so attracted to another woman that he went with her. The scene where she took him reminded me of a cult. In the cult they would hunt and kill each other. They would eat each other, save the bones, and then throw the bones in the lake. When they threw them in the lake though, the person would revive and come back to life. It was really odd, but he chose to stay in this community. Another weird thing that happens when the story continues is that the woman are kind of passed around to different men. The man didn’t like that and started to transform himself into a buck and fight off other men that tried to get near his wife. Then one day the wife, the hunter, and their new son decided to go back to where the man was from and see everyone there. They traveled back, and his former wives had remarried since they never thought they would see him again. But it was there that they taught people how to properly kill deer. They needed to keep good care of their bones and put them in the lake to revive them, and if they did that all would be happy. This was an odd but not a terrible story.

A girl talks to turkeys and one day they talk back to her. They ask if they can help her get dressed up and go celebrate the holiday that is occurring in her town. This reminds me a little bit of Cinderella. So the turkeys dressed her up in the finest clothing and jewels. When she went to the ball then, everyone was astonished at how beautiful she was. The chiefs of the dance then came over to her and asked her to dance. She danced the night away and forgot about her turkeys. Then it was too late, and by the time she went to go back to the turkeys they had assumed she forgot about them and they had left. They were trailing up the mountain and signing about how she had forgotten them. She tried but could not catch up to them, and her dress had dissolved by this time. All she was then was a poor girl who didn’t even have her turkeys anymore.

A girl and her stepmother had issues. The stepmother sent her out to get berries mid winter, which is of course impossible. So the girl went and found a cabin, in the cabin she found some of her relatives that she had never known. They gave her berries, fine clothing, and the ability to make gold by spitting. When the girl returned, the stepmother was surprised and sent her own daughter out to follow the girl and do what she did. But the stepsister was rude to the men, so they didn’t give her new clothes or special powers, just berries. The chief’s son then wanted to marry the girl who could spit gold and so he did. When she got pregnant, the stepmother was a midwife and instead of giving her the baby, gave her a cat saying she had given birth to a cat because she was weird. Then when she had a second child, handed her a snake saying she once again was odd. The stepmother then told the chief that since she was having odd children, that she should kill his wife and marry her actual daughter. So the chief had his wife bound with iron and thrown into a lake. However, the guys from the cabin, her brothers, were in the lake. They untied and saved her, telling her about how she had actual children and the stepmother was just crazy. The chief married the stepsister but didn’t like her because she was gross. The stepmother found out the children of the girl were alive and so she poisoned and killed them. However, they were brought back to life with some spittle. Although the way of getting the spittle was very confusing. The chief was told the truth about his children, and the stepmother and her daughter were imprisoned and hanged. The stepdaughter who had been a swan since she had been thrown into the lake, returned to her natural form, was reunited with her husband and children, and lived happily ever after. Good but very long story. Also there was something about the sun and moon and the children that really confused me. I may have to read this over again if I choose to rewrite it.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Katelynn, I just tried both links to the Splinter Foot Girl story and they seem to be working fine, but if you remember what link you tried that did not work, I would be so grateful! Here is the story:
    Splinter-Foot Girl
    If you ever have a problem with broken links, just let me know!

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