Reading Notes: Part B, Blackfoot Stories

At one point in time women did not know that men existed and men did not know that women existed. There was an old man who came across the group of men and stayed with them for a while. Then he saw the women and went to talk to them. The women where scared of the man and ran away. The Old man then went to the woman chief and she sent a message through him to the chief of the men. The men responded to getting married and they all came to the women's camp. The woman chief went first to choose a husband, she chose the man that the old man described to her. He said no because she was covered in blood and he didn't recognize her. She went back down and changed and told everyone else that they could not choose that man because of what he did. He was the only man that was not chosen and this made him angry. He went and began to break down the piskun and the woman chief turned him into a pine tree.

The next story was about how the bobcat came to get its face and the birch tree came to get it's marks. The old man had roasted prairie dogs and ate until he fell asleep. When he fell asleep a bobcat came and ate the rest of the prairie dogs. When the man's nose finally woke him up he told him what happened and  the man ripped the tail off the bob cat and smashed his face flat. The man was aggravated with his nose and burnt his nose, the birch tree saved his life so he made it pretty by gashing the bark with his knife.

The next story is about the horned grebe. The Old Man was walking near the river and the ducks asked him to play them some music, while he played a song he told them they had to keep their eyes closed or they would turn red. While he was playing the song he was killing ducks, one of the ducklings opened his eyes and saw what was happening and told everyone to run and that is how he became the horned grebe.

The next story is about a man who found a boy who was strong that he thought he would give his daughters hand's of marriage to. The father gave the boy all of his possessions except a lodge for him and his wife. The boy was helpful for a while but then became stingy. One day while they were hunting the boy missed the buffalo and only wounded it. The old man saw a clot and put it in his quiver, he took it home to cook and the clot turned into a baby boy. After four day the boy turned into a man. The man helped the father kill a buffalo, when the son-in-law found out that the old man had went to hunt he was angry. When he approached the old man the boy hid behind the dead buffalo but after a while came out and killed the son-in-law. He also punished the daughters, the youngest however received less because she helped her parents out. After that he went from village to village helping people who were being taken advantage of, he killed those who had done wrong to those people. He ended up destroying seven things that were bad.


Bibliography:
Blackfoot Stories
By: George Bird Grinnell
The Smart Woman Chief
Bobcat and Birch Tree
The Red-Eyed Duck
Kut-O-Yis, The Blood Boy

Blackfoot Warrior

By K. Bodmer

Laura Gibbs Blog