Reading Notes: Blackfoot Stories (Part A)

For this week I read stories originating from the Blackfoot Indian tribe. The stories I read often served the purpose of describing an aspect of nature. They would explain the relationship between different seasons, why some animals migrate each year, and how to pray to the gods of the different weather entities.

The Wolf Man

• A man has two bad wives that never help at home or pull their weight around the house
• They become upset that he moved their family away from the village so they plot to kill their husband
• They place his regular sitting spot over a concealed pit fall which he ends up falling into and becomes badly injured
• he used a buffalo skull as a seat
• The wives leave him to die and return to the village and pretend to be sad
• A pack of wolves came, and one of them helped the man out of the pit and took him back to their elder wolf who healed him
• The man becomes a brother to the wolves and when he was cured by the old blind wolf, he received a wolf head and hands
• In return for their help, the man lived with the wolf pack and tripped the snares of the locals before the wolves would get trapped so they could roam freely and get their meat
• the villagers seem to automatically know it is the man-wolf tripping the snares so it may be interesting to write an about an event that makes the existence of the man-wolf known to them
• Eventually the villagers capture the man-wolf and bring him into the light of the lodge where they recognize him
• they suggest that he punishes the wives who treated him poorly but he leaves their judgement up to them

Examples of some common signs of the Plains Indians.

The Camp of the Ghosts

• A man's wife passes away and he can't live without her so he tries to go to the spirit lodge to bring her back
• The old woman goes to the ghost camp to try to bring back with her the spirits of the some of the man's relatives so that he could be guided by them to the camp
• if the man were to open his eyes at any point during the trip he would die and never come back
• he had to lie to the spirits saying that his grandmother requested he come so that he would gain entrance to the ghost camp
• The chief ghost burnt sweet pine to mask the scent of living human which allowed other ghosts to get close to the man
• The man had to stay in the ghost camp for four days before he would be able to see his wife and begin to take her back
• At the end of the 3rd night, the ghosts gave the man the Worm Pipe and his wife's spirit
• The man had to keep his eyes shut for all four days of the journey back to the village and once he got there they had to sit in a sweat lodge outside of the village
• had they not done this the man would die and his wife would disappear
• The old woman took back her medicines and the man became human again
• would be interesting to write about what kind of medicines the man took that allowed him to enter the spiritual plane

Bibliography

Blackfoot Indian Unit

Image information: Signs of the Plains Indians found on wikipedia