Reading Notes: Blackfoot Stories, Part B


The story notes were taken from Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Grinnell.

This next section of the readings was pretty interesting as well. I'll be focusing on the stories about Kut-O-Yis which was the majority of the readings. It starts off telling of an older man and his wife who have three daughters. A young man comes to hang out with the family and he's a great hunter. He feeds the family for a while and the man decides to try to make him stay with them. He offers the young man his three daughters as wives and all of his dogs. It works for a while but after some time the young man gets greedy. He stops feeding the old man and the mother-in-law and lets them starve. The young man still made the old man come with him to help hunt. One day when they were out hunting and the old man was following the injured animal, he found a large blood clot. The old man took it home and started to boil it in water. Then a baby crying sound came and the old woman and the old man were happy. They told the daughters that came to investigate that it was a girl because if they knew it was a boy, he would be killed. The greedy young man was happy because he thought he would have another wife. 
The baby talked to the old woman and told her to walk him to the four poles of the house and he would become a man. When they reached the fourth pole the baby jumped from the old woman's arms and transformed into a man. The young man asked the old woman why they had no food to eat when the son in law and daughters had plenty. They told him why and he told them he would give them food. They went out the next morning to hunt before the son-in-law came. They killed a buffalo and the son-in-law came up while they were cleaning it. The son-in-law was going to kill the old man but Kut-O-Yis killed the greedy man. After the wrongs had been right, he went on his way to do the same thing to other people in need. 

(Caption: Buffalo by NPS)

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