There was a man known as Unnatural Uncle who would kill his
nephews when they were only a few years old. After he killed a nephew for the
second time, his wife told the woman who had been giving birth to the boys that
if she has another one she should hide it. The mother has another son shortly
afterwards, but the wife tells Unnatural Uncle that it is a girl and the women
dress the boy as one. After a while though, he discovers that the child is
actually a boy. He takes the child deep into the woods and traps him into a
log, but the boy escapes using a sour cranberry and returns to the village.
The next day the uncle takes the boy to gather ducks and
eggs. They go on a long walk again and the uncle pushes the boy off a cliff and
walks away. The boy had eagle feathers with him and used them to safely glide
down. He returns to the village later that night, much to the uncle’s surprise.
Again the next day the two go out, this time to collect clams. The boy gets
trapped in an extremely large clam, but has a knife in his pocked and manages
to escape and once again return to the village.
The uncle once again summons the boy the next day and just
as he had the three days before, the boy tells his parents not to worry, but
does say that he may be gone for a while. The uncle makes a box for the boy to
play in and then shuts the lid of the box and ties it shut before sending out
to sea. After a long time out to sea in the box, it finally washes up on a
beach where the boy hears voices. Two beautiful girls free the boy from the
box, where he discovers that he is in Eagle land with the Eagle people, who can
freely change from eagles to humans. The older of the girls becomes the boy’s
wife, but he says that he misses his home. The boy changes into an eagle and
flies to his old village but does not see his parents. He does see his uncle
though, who he captures and flies away with. He drops the uncle in the sea,
killing him, and then returns to his parents, who he brings back to the Eagle
land where they stay.
Bluejay and some of his friends usually go seal hunting with
each other. Another man, Grouse, that lives in the same house as the other five
men was poor and would not go along. The men would return with seals for
themselves but would never give anything to Grouse. One day they go for another
hunt and try to catch a seal, but it grabs ahold of their canoe and drags it
far out to sea. The next day they discover that it is a wooden seal that Grouse
had made and told to go drag their canoe. They get lost on their way back to
the village and one of them even dies. People of another village then rescue
them and the chief there challenges Bluejay to a climbing competition, which he
wins and then kills the chief, named Squirrel. They four men then leave to
return back to their village.
They happen upon another foreign village, though and Bluejay
is challenged to a diving contest this time. Through trickery, he wins the
contest and kills the chief of this town, named Hair-seal. The four men set off
again to find their home. They happen upon two more villages and win two more
challenges. The last challenge was won by trickery though, which angered the
village people who then begin to chase the four men. They finally return home,
safely, and every time they went hunting after that they would give Grouse a
seal.
A virgin girl who lived with her grandmother would go pick
roots every day. She was warned not to pick ones that had a double stem but did
it anyways one day. This root turned into a baby, who she ignored and then
returned home. The baby followed her home and was taken in by the grandmother,
but she ignored him as he grew up. The woman secretly agrees to herself that if
the boy brings back an acorn from where she picks them everyday in addition to
killing a white dear, she will call him her son. He follows his mother one day
and sees where she picks acorns and then he picks some for himself. He also
killed a white deer while he was there and returned home. After this he sets
off on a journey to the home of the immortals. He gets led into a home there
and when he walks in someone says that he is his son-in-law.
Later that day he is invited to dinner with the immortals,
all brothers, and is given meat that humans cannot eat, which he eats with no
problem. He is then told to go fetch some wood, but instead leaves and cuts
wood up that was given to him by his grandmother and then returns with it. He
then is invited to play a game with all of the brothers and beats everyone he
plays using a stick the grandmother gave him. He also succeeds at the challenge
of shooting down a bird that Indians cannot shoot down, using the bow the
grandmother gave him. He then returns home and takes his mother and the
grandmother to where he is married and they live there forever.
It used to be that giant animals, such as the Elk and the
Eagle, would eat humans. A man named Jonayaiyin, who also has a brother named
Kobachischini, is sent to go kill the animals. Jonayaiyin goes to the desert to
kill the Elk and he puts four arrows into the heart of the Elk with the help of
a lizard and a gopher. The Elk then begins to chase him through a tunnel the
gopher dug for him by ripping up the ground with his antlers. The Elk is
eventually stopped by spiders and then dies. Jonayaiyin takes the hide of the
Elk and splits it with the lizard and the antlers. He then decides he wants to
kill the Eagle.
He approaches the nest of the Eagle and faces in a direction
so that when the Eagle tries to claw him, the hide from the Elk stops the
talons. On the second try, the Eagle picks up Jonayaiyin and drops him in the
nest to feed its young. The young eagles tell the Eagle that the man is still
alive, but he does not believe them and flies away. Jonayaiyin then gives some
of the blood from the Elk to the young eagles and learns from them when the
Eagle will return. He uses the antlers from the Elk to kill the Eagle and then
also kills the father Eagle as well. He hits the young eagles so that they will
not grow any larger.
Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away
Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away
A couple was expecting a child when the man left to go
hunting one day and Red-Woman came and killed the wife. She also cut her open
and found twin boys. She throws one boy into the creek and one out of the tipi.
The man comes home from hunting and finds his dead wife and instantly knows it
was the doing of Red-Woman. A boy appears to the man one day and calls himself
Thrown-behind-the-Curtain. The man takes the boy in as a son and discovers that
there is another boy his age. He sends Thrown-behind-the-Curtain to go catch
the other boy, named Thrown-in-Spring. He captures him and the three live in
the tipi together. One day the boys go wake up their mother from the grave and
also go to see a woman called grandmother, although they were told not to go
see her. They also disobey their father when they were told not to go where a
giant serpent lived, but they kill it and escape. They father then tells them
not to go near three trees that are shaped as a triangle.
Many more times the boys disobey their father, who keeps
warning them that if they keep killing bad things bad fortune will come to
them. One day Thunder-Bird takes them on top of a hill and teals them to kill a
giant otter. They even accomplish this and live in the tipi for the rest of
their lives.
The daughter of the animal-trickster Wemicus had been
through many husbands because they would all fail Wemicus’s tests and be
killed. Her current husband though had withstood all of the tricks and sets out
once again with Wemicus. Wemicus makes many attempts to kill the husband, from
burning his moccasins to poisonous snakes to poisonous lizards. He then tries
to get seagulls to eat the man, but he kills a seagull and uses its wings to
fly away. Amazed that the man is still alive, Wemicus tries a few more plans to
kill the man. He remains unsuccessful and dies in a cone race, in which he
becomes a pike and that is where the pike originated.
A man named Aioswe had two wives. The man returns from
hunting one day and can tell that one of his sons has been sleeping with his
wife. The man takes his son hunting and abandons him on an island, but he gets
a ride back home from a walrus. The walrus tells the boy to let him know if he
hears thunder, but he does not do this. The walrus drops the boy off in shallow
water, but is then killed by lightning that was conjured by his father,
although the walrus was conjured by the mother. Once on land, the boy meets an
old woman who gives him a protective coat and warns him of dangers that he will
still face.
The boy begins to journey home and escapes two old witches
as well as large killer dogs. When he makes it home he tells his father that he
is going to set the world on fire. He shoots an arrow into the woods and a fire
starts and he also shoots an arrow into the water, which starts on fire as
well. Aioswe is burned in the fire, but his mother is not. They then turn into
birds and fly off together.
The chief of a camp has two daughters that have not approved
of any man that wished to marry them. Sun and Star, a brother and sister who
live in the sky, decide to come down and dress themselves as humans. They
become a sickly boy and his old grandmother. They also build themselves an old
looking house. Shortly after this, the chief announces that he will hold a
shooting contest and the winner gets to marry his daughters. Sun, who is called
Dirty-Boy, wins the contest but since he is disguised as an old man the chief
does not want him to marry the daughters, so he holds another contest the next
day.
Dirty boy wins the fishing contest the next day and the
chief tells his daughters they must marry him. On the way to his hut, one of
the daughters goes inside the house of Raven and marries the oldest son. The
other daughter goes to Dirty Boy and is told to take care of him during the day
but to return home at night. After three days, Sun and Star return to their
original forms and their house becomes very elegant. The new wife returns the
next day to find her handsome husband.
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