Week 10 Reading Diary: Native American Hero Tales

This reading diary will cover stories from the Native American Hero Tales unit. Story source: Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929).

The Jealous Uncle
This was a pretty long story, three pages in length to be exact, but I enjoyed it. In this story the uncle who they called Unnatural Uncle would kill his nephews shortly after birth, his wife made a deal with the mother to say that the next was a girl to protect the baby boy from death. They did this until his teens but eventually uncle figured it out. Then uncle made four attempts at taking the nephews life but was unsuccessful at each. On the fourth he put him in a box out to sea, he washed up to Eagle land and the chief there married him to his daughter. He missed his family so he put on the eagle skin and flew home. The uncle was mistreating his parents so the nephew dropped him into the ocean knowing he couldn't swim. He then went to his parents and flew them with him to his new adopted land. I was glad that the uncle didn't win and that the nephew came back for his parents.

Bluejay and His Companions
A bluejay and his four companions would go out seal hunting and would share with Grouse, a quail, only the bad fatless parts of the seal. He never complained but instead made a big black seal out of wood and set it into the sea. The next day the men caught it and it pulled them far out to sea for a day and a half. When it stopped they realized it was Grouse's doing. They then paddled back towards land and came upon 3 or 4 villages of people. But each of these villages challenged them to some kind of task or battle and each time they won so they were free to leave and carry on. They finally made it back home with one less man and from then on they gave Grouse the biggest, fattest seal.

Grouse the bird

Dug-From-Ground
This story wasn't as entertaining or as easy to follow as the other two. From what I gathered from it, a daughter dug op plants from the ground and her mother warned her not to dig up any with two stocks. But she did it and then a baby followed her home and became her son. The grandmother raised him and the mother refused to look at him, she went out each day a picked acorns. He followed her and picked some and killed a deer and then she called him her son. He then left home and went to a village, he completed several tasks and won all of them and lots of money. After years of being away he went back for his mother and grandmother and picked up their house to move to where he had been.

The Attack on the Giant Elk and the Great Eagle
Giant animals once ruled the earth and they killed humans. There was one human however that decided he was going to end the lives of the giant elk and giant eagle. He used the skin of a lizard and the burrowing of a beaver to kill the elk, but not before the elk created the mountains of the world. Then he took the antlers and killed the great eagle mother and father and her stunted the growth and power of the three baby eagles. A old bat helped him down from the eagles nest and in return he gave the bat the eagle feathers. She kept losing them so he gave her no more and she accepted this fate.