This week I chose to read the Native American Marriage Tales
by Stith Thompson. I soon found that there was a theme of animals, mainly
female, that were able to transform from animal to human. The Piqued Buffalo-Wife, was interesting because the man chose to
wife a buffalo and had a son with her! I didn’t understand why the buffalo, the
man’s wife, tried running towards him and hooking at him… but I had such a
creative mental image of her turning into a woman as she did! I also wasn’t
expecting the herd to trample the man if he guessed the wrong son! It sounded
like a very harsh punishment to me. The
Fox Woman kept with the theme of transforming animals as well. I would have
been so freaked out if I was aware that someone I didn’t know was coming into
my house while I was gone and cleaning it! I thought it was really creative how
the fox was able to take off her skin and turn into a woman as it pleased. The
entire time I was wondering why the man didn’t know he had a wife and also why
the fox assumed she was his wife. I liked the story on The Woman Stolen by Killer Whales because of all the vivid details.
It was cool to think of a whole underwater life of fish chiefs and all of the
fish having homes! The Rolling Head
story was my favorite of the first section. I was appalled when the dad ended
up killing both the woman and the snake and feeding them to his children! I had
a crazy mental image of a head chasing the children when the story said the mom’s
head rolled towards them. I could use this one for my story telling this week
because I didn’t like that the story never expanded on what happened to the
mother’s head… it just moved on!
(Photograph of killer whales. Source: Flickr)
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