Week 10 Story: The Dolphin Stolen by Indians

There was a happy dolphin who lived in the lake outside an Indian tribe. The dolphin often leaped around in the water because he was very content with his life. The Indians who were troubled with the hardships of living off the land took note of this and made a plan to capture the dolphin in hopes he would bring some of his happiness to the tribe.


That night, as the dolphin leaped out of the water, the Indians threw a net around him and brought him to shore. Dolphin's fellow dolphin friends quickly took notice of his his absence and set out to find where he had gone.  As they were spying upon the village they saw that the happy dolphin had been captured and was being held hostage.  Unable to rescue him themselves because the Indians would surely know what they were trying to do, they relied on their land friend dog, for help.  

The next day dog ran into the Indian's tribe and started knocking things over, running as fast as he could through the tribe and wreaking havoc.  This was enough of a distraction for the happy dolphin to make his escape.  While the Indian's were doing all they could to capture dog, the happy dolphin was able to escape and jump back into the water.  

The happy dolphin and his friends celebrated and played together in his safe return.  They then migrated away from the Indian tribe never to be caught again.  The tribe continued in their misery for the rest of time, and the dolphins celebrated for eternity. 

The Happy Dolphin. Web Source. 

Author's Note: My inspiration for this story was taken from "The Woman stolen by Killer Whales" from Tales of North American Indians by Stith Thompson.  In the original text, a Native American Woman was washing her hands in the water when a killer whale grabbed her and drug her down to their killer whale home.  The woman's husband found out and made a plan with shark to rescue her.  The shark distracted the killer whales and during this the woman was able to escape and go back to her husband on land.  I changed the story to where a dolphin was captured by humans instead of the other way around.  

Reading Notes, Marriage Tales: Part B

The second half of these tales was very much like the first.  The first story entitled "The Dog Husband" involved a young girl who had a dog that she was very fond of.  At night, the dog would become a man and sleep with girl.  After some time, she became pregnant.  When her parents found out, they were very ashamed and left her to die.  The crow took pity on her and told her to listen for crackling fire and then go to it.  She gave birth to 5 pups and was barely able to take care of them because her father had killer her dog lover.  However, her pups transformed into humans and became great whale hunters.  Eventually the people moved back to where the girl and her children were because of the bounty in whales and the boys became chiefs of the tribe. 

The last story in this series was called "The True Bride".  This story involved an evil stepmother, her true daughter, and her step daughter.  The stepmother was very mean to her stepdaughter and sent her out in the middle of winter to collect berries even though there were no berries at that time.  The girl went anyway and on her journey came across a house with four men.  The four men had her shovel snow off the roof where she found plentiful berries.  They also gave her fine clothes and the ability to spit gold.  When she returned, the stepmother sent her real daughter on the same quest in hopes that she would return with the same things.  The daughter was haughty to the four men and instead returned with only berries, and the ability to spit foul smelling toe nails. 

The chief's son married the gold-spitting girl because she was very valuable.  After some time, she became pregnant and the husband was called away for a meeting at the time of birth.  The evil step-mother helped deliver the baby, however when the baby came out, it would fall through a hole she cut in the floor and instead handed the wife a cat.  This happened again with a snake.  It was then decided that the wife should be killed because of her weird children and that he should marry the stepmother's real daughter.  She was cast into the lake, but before she drowned, the four brothers rescued her, told her about her real children, and transformed her into a goose.  Eventually with the help of her loyal dog, all was found out and the step-mother and real daughter were hung.  She who spits gold, her husband, and children lived happily. 

The Loyal Dog responsible for She Who Spits Gold's happy ending. 

Web Source. 

Reading Notes, Marriage Tales: Part A

The first story in this series of marriage tales was called "The Piqued Buffalo-Wire".  This story was very odd in my opinion and a little hard to follow.  Essentially, a man took advantage of a female cow and later she bore a human son.  The son then went on a quest to find his father, which he eventually did.  When the son brought the man back to his cow mother, she turned into a woman and they lived happily for quite some time.  That was until the husband struck the wife with fire and her and her son ran away.  The father then went on a quest to find them.  He had to correctly identify his son four times in order to win them back.  He guess incorrectly on the fourth guess and was trampled to death by the herd of cows.  However a piece of his bone was recovered and with the use of a sweat lodge he was restored to life, and he, his wife, and his son lived happily and started their own native tribes.

The next story called "Bear-Woman and "Deer-Woman" was also interesting.  The Bear ate the deer and brought the head back to the deer's children.  The children immediately knew that is was their mother's head and in return smothered the bears children to death with smoke.  They then ran away from the bear and crossed the river by a crane's neck.  When the bear followed, the crane dropped its neck halfway across and the bear fell to her death.

Out of the remaining stories in this series, I found "The Woman Stolen by Killer Whales" to be my favorite.  I could see myself retelling this story for my story this week. 

Killer Whale. Web Source. 

I found all of the stories to be very dark, and involving a lot of animals, ruthless killing, and interactions between humans/animals.  A lot of the other units have involved animals and humans interacting with each other, but not to this extent.  On multiple occasions, the stories involved intimacy between them which I found very odd. 

Bibliography: Native American Marriage Tales from the book "Tales of North American Indians" by Stith Thompson. Read for yourself here!