Story Planning: Unnatural Uncle

The story "The Jealous Uncle" from the book Tales of the North American Indian was the most interesting to me. It talked about an uncle who would murder his infant nephews and how one of the nephew used unlikely objects to avoid his own murder. It is important to know that the nephew's aunt dressed the boy like a girl for his entire childhood to protect him from his jealous uncle. In the story, the nephew used sour cranberries, eagle-down and a piece of a knife in creative and useful ways. In my story, however, I would like to create three of my own odd objects that the boy will use in his escape. I want to incorporate a broken caribou antler, a corn husk and a fur coat into my story because they will prove difficult to use when the boy is trying to escape. The caribou antler will be used to misdirect the uncle towards another part of the forest. The nephew can burn the corn husk to summon his ancestors to protect him from his uncle. Lastly, the fur coat when worn, has the power to turn the nephew into the animal who's fur it belongs to. In the original story, the nephew escapes to a land where the people can turn into eagles by simply putting on their skin. This is an interesting idea because I have never read anything like that in this class. I also want to include the close-knit culture of the Native American tribes and how they value family and their traditions.


Native American mother and child.

"The Jealous Uncle" from Tales of the North American Indian by Stith Thompson.

Reading Notes: Stith Thompson's Tales of the North American Indians, Part B

After reading the rest of the stories, I have come to realize that Native American stories can be very violent and gruesome. All of the stories involved killing, but sometimes it was over-descriptive. It proved difficult to read at times because even the main characters would be killed suddenly. Many of the stories also include hunting of some type in the plot. In Part A, the uncle lured his nephew out to the woods because they were going hunting. In Part B from the story "Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away," the husband escaped his own death because he was out hunting for his family. The stories that the Native Americans tell most of the time involve a single person who is terrorizing a certain group of people. I can put a creative twist on this in my story this week because I can write up my own version of a serial killer or villain. I like how in these stories the people who fall victim to the villain's cruelty outsmart the them every time. I have noticed that, especially in these stories, the evil character looks senseless up against the innocent man being hunted. The characters in the Native American stories are especially savage; for example in the story "The Son-In-Law Tests," Wemicus forces his son-in-law to eat the lice from his head. Luckily, the son-in-law prepared for this and only pretended to eat them. Obviously this was written in a vastly different time period, but these stories take myths to a whole new level. The Native Americans include some of the same motifs throughout different stories, like the individual killers or different recurring objects. In two different stories, the author associated fire with moccasins and I am assuming this is a cultural reference. I would like to include specific culture references like this one in my own story.


The Crow Tribe, where the story "Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away" originated.

Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson

Reading Notes: Stith Thompson's Tales of the North American Indian, Part A

I decided to read a story that allowed me to read about the cultures of a variety of Native American tribes. This book, Tales of the North American Indian by Stith Thompson includes specific stories from the Hupa, Apache, Crow and Cree tribes.

The story called "The Jealous Uncle" interested me the most when it started off more gruesome than most of the stories I have read in this class. However, the fate of the main character was different than many of the stories from other parts of the world. The writer starts by talking about a man who would kill his nephews when they would get to be just a few years old. A new nephew was born, but he acted like a girl his entire childhood in order to be spared. When his uncle finally figured out he was a boy, he was set on killing him. The boy uses three unsuspecting objects to get himself out of his attempted murder, but unfortunately the uncle trapped him in a box and left him in the ocean to die.

For my story this week, I have the option to write a version of the original story of "The Jealous Uncle". I want to use the same premise for my story by including a terrorizing uncle, a nephew and three odd items. The part of the story where the innocent boy uses random objects to get out of the fatal situations is most entertaining because this allows me to use my imagination when creating three new objects for my character to use. This story, in particular, gave me some insight into the culture of storytelling in Native American tribes. In a Native American Studies class I took, we learned about the importance of storytelling to the Native Americans and how they cherish this time that they spend together with their family. They are a very close-knit group of people and I like being able to read some of these culturally significant stories. I want to incorporate this part of their culture as well in my storytelling assignment this week.


Tribe joined together to tell stories.

Tales of the North American Indian by Stith Thompson