Week 10 Essay: Bad Blackfeet

This week I read the Blackfoot Stories, and one of the things that really stood out to me was the “bad guys”. There were several villains that Kut-O-Yis, a warrior Indian born from a buffalo’s blood clot, had to face. There were four different stories pertaining to Kut-O-Yis and the bad guys he battled. However, I will be focusing on the bad guy in the story Kut-O-Yis, The Blood Boy (cont.).

In this story, the son-in-law of an old man and his wife was the evil doer. Although he was similar to the other bad guys in that he was oppressive in nature, there was one thing that was very different about the son-in-law. He started off as a “good guy”; he loved his wives very much and always provided for them and their parents. However, something changed and he shifted to the dark side.

The son-in-law was notorious for requesting that the old man go out and help him hunt by driving the buffalos out of the log-jam of the river. The old man always obliged, but was never rewarded with any of the meat from the killing. Once Kut-O-Yis was grown and he saw how the son-in-law treated the old man and his wife, he took it upon himself to be the one to put a stop to his tyranny.

One day Kut-O-Yis and the old man went to the log-jam without the son-in-law so that whatever they killed, they could keep for themselves. Once the son-in-law heard that the old man had gone down to the log-jam without him, he was very angry and set out to kill the old man once and for all.

The old man and the son-in-law had a brief battle that Kut-O-Yis watched from a hiding place. Once the old man and the son-in-law had shot each other four times with their arrows, Kut-O-Yis stepped in to end the battle. The son-in-law was very afraid of Kut-O-Yis and tried to deny that he had ever treated the old man badly, but Kut-O-Yis would not be fooled and killed the son-in-law.

In the end, similar to other “bad guys”, the son-in-law died a coward, begging for his life to be spared. Once Kut-O-Yis had done his deed for the old man and his wife, he went on to battle the evils of the next camp.

Blackfoot Indian, painted by Karl Bodmer.
Source: Wikipedia

Week 10 Storytelling: Bobcat Tales

Bobcat kittens
Source: Wikipedia

Hello, friends. My name is Lauren. I am bobcat. You probably have an image in your head of what I look like: bobbed tail; flat face; long, slender body. But I am here to tell you that I have not always looked this way. You see, I used to have a long bushy tail, much like the fox’s. I also used to have a long snout, much like the wolf’s, and a round, sturdy body, like the tiger’s.

You may be wondering how I obtained the appearance I have now. It all comes down to Old Man, the toughest Blackfoot Indian I have ever met. Old Man had spent many hours roasting prairie dogs. I knew he had put much effort into preparing his feast because I had watched him toil over the fire pit all afternoon and evening. After he finally finished his work, he laid down to take a nap.

I knew I had to be patient and wait for him to fall into a deep sleep before I tried to steal some of his prairie dogs. He woke up once when a raven was flying over. But after he realized it was just a raven that posed no threat, he dozed back off. He then woke up a second time when there was a coyote lurking in the distance. However, he was not concerned with the coyote either, so he fell back asleep.

I realized that this was my chance. After waking up two times and dismissing the nearby creatures, I knew he would not wake up again when I crept over to steal some of the prairie dogs.

So, I snuck over to the campsite Old Man was sleeping at. Carefully and quietly, I began eating the prairie dogs. I ate until I had my fill but I decided to grab up a few extra to take back to my cave. Just as I thought I had made it away safely, I heard Old Man yelling from behind me. Next thing I knew he was chasing after me, but I was too full from eating all those prairie dogs to run away from him.

Before I knew what had happened, I found myself laying on a rock. My tail had been ripped off; my snout had been smashed in and was bleeding, and my body felt like it had been stretched out like a rubber band that had lost its elasticity. And that my friends, is how other bobcats like myself came to look the way we do.

Author's Note

In the original story, Bobcat and Birch Tree, the story is told by a third person narrator. The plot is basically the same, but includes an additional component that tells how the birch tree obtained its striped appearance. I decided to tell this story from the bobcat's point of view, just to change things up a little bit! Although the bobcat maintains the same basic story as to how it gained its appearance, I thought it would be more personal to hear it from the bobcat's perspective.

Bibliography

Book: Blackfeet Indian Stories
Author: George Bird Grinnell
Year: 1915
Web Source: Un-Textbook

Week 10 Reading Diary: Blackfoot Stories

Blackfoot Stories 

Bobcat and Birch Tree

I thought this story was very interesting. I always like to read about how things were "created" in different cultures, or at least why they look the way they look. It brings up an interesting question: What did the bobcat and the birch tree look like before the old man got ahold of them?

The Red-Eyed Duck

Another story of origin! It was intriguing to read about how the horned grebe got its red eyes according to the Blackfoot tribe. I also liked this story because it incorporated song and dance. It is nice to see what art forms are important to different cultures.

Kut-O-Yis, The Blood Boy (end)

I thought this was the most interesting of the Kut-O-Yis stories since the evil things he was battling were women. Typically I think of men as being the powerful ones or the tricksters that threaten others in a culture. However, from what I read of the Blackfoot stories, women seem to possess a substantial amount of power.