For this week, I chose the Native American Marriage Tales unit.
The Piqued Buffalo-Wife: I'm surprised that this story starts with a situation of bestiality right out of the gate, but perhaps it's wrong of me to label it in such a way. I like how the situation has flipped when the father has to pick out his child out of the rest of the buffalo calves. I'm also surprised that the story ended relatively well for the family despite the father's mistake.
Splinter-Foot Girl: I love the variety of ways in which life is created in these stories. It reminds me a bit of some of the origin stories I read in the Ovid units. Also, the intervention of animals in this story as messengers strikes me as fascinating. It's as if trust is put into them to carry on the correct message. The image of buffalo bulls burrowing through the ground is quite impressive! I get the feeling that this was a story to set the order of nature--that is, set who holds dominion over whom.
The Fox-Woman: There seems to be a similarity to this story and the stories told in the Eskimo unit, because an animal's skin is considered a fundamental part of its form. Although, it seems that smell remains with the life-form no matter what shape it takes.
The Rolling Head: There's quite a bit of gore in this story, and I'm not used to seeing stories that involve a man killing his wife. And I just read that the children were fed the meat of their mother! I wonder what it would be like to be followed by the head of my deceased mother. Well, I guess a rolling head gathers no moss.
The Bear-Woman: It seems to be a consistent pattern that any marriage to an animals in these stories involves the mention of sexual acts between the human and animal lovers. The action in these stories seems to change without a moment's notice. The Bear-Woman could have been a little more direct by stating the touching of her kidneys would have dire consequences.
Thanks for this, Jake - I learn so much from looking at people's reading notes for these classes. I never would have thought to add a note about the animal roles in these stories but since several people mentioned bestiality, I definitely need to write up some notes about that. Anyway, I left a comment for Hannah here that you might want to look at also: Comment on Native American animal tales. People are very used to all the weirdness of fairy tales in the European tradition that they don't even notice sometimes how weird the stories are... but once you get outside the familiar, reading some stories that are totally new, the sense of weirdness is undeniable. The power of the human imagination is pretty remarkable, eh? Anyway, take a look at the comment I left for Hannah there if you get a chance. :-)
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