Marriage Tales
Buffalo (Source: Pixabay)
The Piqued Buffalo Wife
-Blackfoot story
-young man fathers a buffalo cow's child
-the child sneaks into the other camps to play with the other children
-wanted to find his father
-headman called all older man and the boy couldn't find his father
-father was among the unmarried men of the camp
-boy brought his father to where his mother was
-buffalo cow became a woman and went home with her husband and child
-she warned her husband to not "strike at her with fire"
-struck at her with fire, she and the child turned into buffalo and ran away
- man covered himself in "buffalo-wallow" to try and find them
-was told he had to go through an ordeal to be reunited with his wife and child
-the buffalo calf that was his son told him he would know it was him b/c he would hold up his tail
-man was trampled
-found a piece of bone and brought him back to life
Bear-Woman and Deer-Woman
-Lassik story
-grizzly bear and doe were both wives of chickenhawk
-grizzly bear kills the doe
-cooks her head in the fire
-the does children killed the grizzlys children
Splinter-Foot-Girl
-Arapaho story
-7 people on a journey on the war-path
-they went hunting to find food and one of the hunters cut his leg on a thorny plant
-his leg swelled up so much that it burst and a child came out of it
-the grew very fond of the child
-her name was Foot-Stuck-Child
-a buffalo wanted to marry her so sent a magpie with the message to the hunters
-they said no
-eventually became his wife
-had a hand-painted buffalo robe
Splinter-Foot-Girl (cont.)
-been a year since she has married buffalo
-blackbird said that the mole and badger can help the hunters get their daughter back
-finds a stone and asks for help, but it says its not strong enough
-they found a cottonwood tree they climbed to get away from the bull
-bull found her empty robe and was angry
-the bull and his herd track them
-they find the tree the girl is in and start attacking it
-the take of its bark and break their horns on it
-when the bull attacked the tree the last time he got stuck.
-the tree told the men to shoot him and kill him and then cover him with the pieces of wood that had fallen off
Splinter-Foot-Girl (End)
-the rock wanted to marry the girl and sent the magpie to tell her fathers
-the magpie warned that he was not a good man and to refuse him
-had to let the girl go but her fathers knew the mole and badger would help her
-mole and badger tricked the rock to fall into a hole they had made
-her and her fathers escape into the sky and live in a tent covered with stars
The Eagle and Whale Husbands
-Greenland Inuit story
-2 girls were playing on a beach with eagle and whale bones
-one decided to marry an eagle, the other a whale
-an eagle came a took one girl to a high cliff
-she took the sinews of the birds he brought for her to eat and made a rope to escape
-she went back to her people where the eagle found her
-they tricked him to spread out his wings and shot and killed him'
-a whale took the other girl deep into the ocean and tied her to the bottom
-her brothers who were nearby built a boat to rescue her
-they got her back and the whale chased them
-when the whale got to shore, he turned into a piece of whalebone
The Fox-Woman
-Labrador Eskimo tale
-a hunter who lived on his own kept coming back to his home to find it cleaned and food ready and waiting for him
-he decided to watch and see who did it
-he saw a fox enter and thought it was about to steal food
-when he entered the house he saw a beautiful woman who was beautifully clothed
-he asked her why she did everything and she said as his wife it was her duty
-she had an odor that the man complained about, so she left
The Woman Stolen By Killer Whales
-Tahltan tale
-a fisherman caught a strange big fish and he had his wife kill it and cut it up to dry for food later
-when she dipped her hands in water to clean them, a killer whale grabbed her for revenge for killing his friend
-the shark offers to help get his wife back
-the shark rescued the woman and fought the killer whales
The Rolling Head
-a Cheyenne tale
-a solitary-family lived alone
-husband painted the wife's face and body before leaving for hunting
-the woman went to a lake to get water
-met a snake who told her to come out to him and she did and did it every day her husband was gone
-the husband followed her to see what she was really doing at the lake
-the man saw his wife with the snake and killed them both
-he cut up his wife's meat and cooked it and fed it to their children
-the head of their mother chased the daughters
-the girls were taken care of by two panthers and two bears
-their father joined them again, but they regretted what he had done to them, so they made the lions kill him
The Bear-Woman
-Blackfoot tale
-a woman who had 7 brothers and one little sister
-she had many suitors but refused to marry
-mother was dead but she and her siblings lived with their father
-had a bear for a lover, but didn't want anyone to know
-her little sister followed her one day and found out about her lover and told their father
-father went out with other people and killed the bear
-the elder sister scolded her younger sister for telling on her
-she told her little sister to go and get some flesh from the dead bear's paws
-little sister was upset because a dog's pups kept biting her when she left their lodge
-older sis offered to paint her to look like a bear and then went to go get the meat
-older sis a powerful medicine woman
-little sis warns bros about big sis being able to turn into a bear
The Bear-Woman (Cont.)
-tricked the elder sister
-younger sister and brothers leave the country
-after killing their elder sister, they decided to live in the sky as stars
Bibliography
Tales of North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929).
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