Reading Notes: Blackfoot stories, Unit A
This week, I dug into some Blackfoot folk tales. I found that many of them were convoluted and a little confusing — some left some loose ends and included confusing details. But here are a few of my favorites and my plans for retelling them:
The Wolf Man
In my retelling, the man and his wives' story would be relocated to space. They would all live in a giant space station (in a scientist/researcher community with other astronauts), and when the husband gets tired of living with unproductive wives, he would jet the three of them off in a separate ship. Instead of setting a trap for him to kill him, the wives would shut him out of the ship "accidentally" one day while he does maintenance in his suit outside the ship. The man could be found by some extraterrestrials and assimilated into their ways when his wives leave him for dead. And in my ending, I'm not certain I want the man to return to his human culture as he does in this original.
The Buffalo Stone
This story was an interesting piece of superstition/folklore, and I think it might be most interesting to tell it from the point of view of the I-nis'kim, since the stone bears all the power in the story. The buffalo stone probably experiences great internal conflict when men find it, since helping men means destroying the buffalo. Making that stone a sentient narrator would be interesting for this tale.
The Rolling Rock
I love this trickster tale. I enjoy the ending and the original plot line, so I think I would just want to modernize or update the setting of this story. There could certainly be another scenario in which this story's trickster themes would shine through.
Bibliography: Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Grinnell (1915)
A grey wolf. Courtesy of Retron. Source: Wikipedia Commons. |
In my retelling, the man and his wives' story would be relocated to space. They would all live in a giant space station (in a scientist/researcher community with other astronauts), and when the husband gets tired of living with unproductive wives, he would jet the three of them off in a separate ship. Instead of setting a trap for him to kill him, the wives would shut him out of the ship "accidentally" one day while he does maintenance in his suit outside the ship. The man could be found by some extraterrestrials and assimilated into their ways when his wives leave him for dead. And in my ending, I'm not certain I want the man to return to his human culture as he does in this original.
The Buffalo Stone
This story was an interesting piece of superstition/folklore, and I think it might be most interesting to tell it from the point of view of the I-nis'kim, since the stone bears all the power in the story. The buffalo stone probably experiences great internal conflict when men find it, since helping men means destroying the buffalo. Making that stone a sentient narrator would be interesting for this tale.
The Rolling Rock
I love this trickster tale. I enjoy the ending and the original plot line, so I think I would just want to modernize or update the setting of this story. There could certainly be another scenario in which this story's trickster themes would shine through.
Bibliography: Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Grinnell (1915)
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