Week 11 Story: The Boy born from Blood

There once was a family who lived in the forest alone. The only sounds that could be heard around them were the sounds of wildlife and nature. The family had a father, a mother, and three daughters. The father and mother had built a log cabin when they came upon the right place. The father was beginning to grow old and was not able to provide for his family as much as he wanted to. The daily routine consisted of the father getting up early in the morning to go and hunt animals for lunch and dinner. The mother and daughters stayed home and tended to a garden or went to look for berries to eat. One day when the father was out hunting, he pricked himself with his arrows. The blood started falling from his finger, and he rushed home so nothing would come to attack him from the scent of blood. On the way home, he felt something strange while holding his finger. When the father got home, he let go of his finger, and a large blood clot fell from his hand. Confused about how a blood clot the size of his hand could've come out of his finger; he asked the wife and the daughters about it. The wife and the husband decided to put the clot over a hot pot of steaming water. After a few minutes, the sounds of a baby crying filled the house.

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)