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