Week 10 Extra Reading: Tales from the Blackfeet

I was going to go with Apache stories this week, but the way they were written was too hard for me to follow. So instead I decided to read tales from the Blackfoot Native Americans. After some brief research on Wikipedia, I’ve found out these people are from British Columbia and Montana, so they’ve survived in harsh territory.

To read more Blackfoot stories, visit the unit here!

The Dog and the Root Digger

In this story, Napi, one of the great chiefs, goes undercover as a dog to discover where all the buffalo have gone by visiting a lone tent in the middle of the plain. A friend goes with him and turns himself into a root digger (a tool) to also disguise himself.

A man, his wife, and their child are the only ones living in the tent. The child takes the dog (the chief in disguise) and root digger as his companion and playthings. Through this way the chief and other man discover that the lone family has been hiding all the game inside a cave and they release them all back onto the plain so that other families can have their meat.

What really struck me in this story was how Napi and the root digger hid themselves as the buffalo were exiting the cave while the man who had put them there watched for the dog and root digger to come out. It was almost exactly like what I had read in the Odyssey when Odysseus and his men escape the cyclops’ cave by latching onto the underbellies of sheep! It’s amazing how similar stories can be even when they’re told in different time periods by completely different cultures.

Buffalo in Yellowstone

Image: Wikipedia

The Camp of Ghosts

I really liked this story just because I’m a sucker for cheesy romance stories where one will do anything to bring their beloved back to them. For example, if anyone has seen ‘The Crow,’ that’s a perfect example of the kind of love stories I’m into.

A man and his wife have a son but she dies soon thereafter. For days he weeps and mourns and, because he can bear it no longer, he goes out in search of his wife who passed away.

He leaves the child with his grandmother and begins his journey.

He enters into the land of ghosts through the direction and counsel of old women he meets in dreams. When he finally comes to the camp of ghosts he stays there for four days on the agreement that his wife will be returned to him on the fourth day and that he can travel home with her.

There are a lot of rules and contingencies on her going back with him. He can’t open his eyes while traveling, he cannot hit her, he must allow her to carry a pipe, etc. etc. He is also instructed to take a sweat as soon as he arrives home because there’s ‘something about the ghosts that is hard to get off.’ Maybe it’s ectoplasm? Bleh.

They return home safely, have a sweat together, and live together again for a long time, happy and healthy. But this guy screws it all up and makes as if he’s about to hit his wife with a branding iron, so she vanishes forever. Way to go.