Confused the family all ran over to the sound coming from the pot and discovered the blood clot had turned into a baby boy. They were all so overjoyed to have a new member of the family but confused because a baby had never been born this way before. The family busied themselves with helping to take care of the new baby boy.
Later that night, the father had a strange dream. A young man came to him and told him that he should take the baby to each of the four corners of the house and the baby would become an adult. When the father woke up, he told the rest of the family about the strange dream. The family decided that it wouldn't hurt the child to walk him to the house's corners, so the mother started on it. After she started for the second corner, she noticed the baby was getting much heavier than before. After the third corner of the house was passed, the mother couldn't carry the heavy baby anymore. The father took him from her and started walking towards the last corner of the house. As the father reached the last corner, the baby whispered to him to put him down on the floor. The father put the baby on the floor, and he transformed into a young man.
Authors Note: In the original story, there was a young man who came to a similar family. The young man married the three daughters and looked after the father and mother for some time. Then he started to resent the old man and woman, so he let them starve. The old man was forced to go and help the young man go and hunt and this story revolves around one of the hunts. The young man shot a buffalo and made the old man follow after it. The old man found a large blood clot from the buffalo's trail and put it in his arrow bag. When the old man returned home, he told his wife to boil a pot of water and put the clot near it. Then a baby was formed from the clot. The baby told the old woman to take him to the four posts of the house. When she finished, the baby turned into a grown man. I decided to keep that part of the story, but I wanted to change some things around. I didn't like the greedy young man from the story so I decided to cut him out. You can find the original story here! It's called Kut-O-Yis, the Blood Boy and is from the Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Ginnell.
(Caption: Blood from the finger by Pixabay)
Hey Marissa,
ReplyDeleteInteresting story! That's pretty weird how a baby who turned into an adult could form out of a blood clot. I wonder what caused the father's blood to behave unnaturally and clot and form into a baby. Was there something special about the arrows that caused this? I think it would help if there was some dialogue added to the story such as when they heard a baby crying and when the baby transformed into a young man.
Hi Marissa, this is a very well told yet strange story. I have never read the original story, but your author’s note helps explain it very well. I think that the idea of a baby being formed from a blood clot is interesting. I did think it was more normal to have a baby be formed from a human blood clot rather than a buffalo like the original. Great job on the details!
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