Native American Hero Tales - Reading Diary B

In the second half of the Native American Hero Tales unit, I read the stories of Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away, The Son-in-Law Tests, The Jealous Father, and Dirty-Boy. Of these stories, I found The Jealous Father to be the most interesting. This story was similar to “The Jealous Uncle” in the first half of the unit. In this story, though, a father becomes jealous of his own son and tries to desert him on an island. The boy finds a walrus to ride through the water to the mainland, which happened to be sent there by the boy’s mother. He rides the walrus through the water until it is shallow enough for him to stand. The boy’s father sent a storm, though, which ended up killing the walrus as soon as the boy got off of it. On the shore, the boy encounters an old woman that was sent by his mother. This woman tells him of the dangers he will encounter on his way back to his village, and how he can escape it. Some of the situations that he gets in and his ways of escaping the situations are very interesting. First, he comes across a tent with two old blind women that use their sharp elbows to stab visitors to death. They tell him to sit between them, but he places a bag there instead, causing them to stab each other to death. Next, he must dig a hole and hide in the ground to avoid hunters and their dogs. The dogs find the boy, though, so he sticks a stuffed ermine out of the hole. The hunters see this and kill their dogs for lying to them, which seems a little extreme. The boy gets away, though, and eventually makes his way back to his home, where he kills his father and then he and his mother turn into birds and fly away (which seemed kind of random to me).

(Picture of a boy stuck on an island. Source: Wikipedia)