Reading Diary Week 9: Native American Marriage Tales

For this week’s reading diary I decided to focus on one of my favorite stories from the Native American Marriage Tales unit: The Bear Woman.

Upon first reading this I immediately thought of Beauty and the Beast, of a woman who fell in love with a bear. I thought this would be a love story about a woman who fell in love with a bear and then by some magical powers was turned into a bear and lived happily ever after with her bear husband. This is a unit about marriage, so it seemed logical. However, I was very wrong. But, I was pleasantly surprised with how the actual story unfolded.

            One of the points that made me ponder, was when the big sister and little sister pretended to be bears in the woods. The big sister warned the little sister not to touch her kidneys. While they were playing, the little sister accidently forgot and touched her sister above the kidneys. She watched as her sister turned into a bear and ran away into the town and killed many of the people. My thought when reading this was: did the big sister want her little sister to touch her in the spot to make her turn into a bear?

            She warns the sister not to touch her there, but it could be in hopes that the little sister would be curious and touch her there anyways. So, my next thought was why would she want to be turned into a bear when she knew she would most likely kill innocent people? Then I had the idea that maybe she did not go off and kill innocent people, but the people that killed her bear lover. Maybe it was planned as revenge to make those people pay for killing her true love.

            I enjoyed the ending of the story with the arrows being able to kill but also being able to revive the four dead brothers. They decided the only safe place to live was in the stars and they became the constellations. I love astronomy and think the sky is a beautiful work of art. I enjoyed this tale for providing one tribe’s tale of explanation for the beauty in the sky.






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From the second half of the unit I focused on the story: The Youth who Joined the Deer

The story of the deer and the people really had me thinking about the relationship we have with animals. I think this is the purpose of the story after all. It speaks volumes about the beliefs and rituals of the Nlakapamuk people. When first reading the part of the story where it explains that the Deer people lived by hunting and killing each other and then reviving themselves through throwing the bones in the water, I thought this was very clever. I thought this was just a story about a group of people who had found a clever way to keep their people alive and thriving.

I also found it interesting that some of the young deer were always anxious to be killed for the benefit of the people. It seemed like it was almost a privilege to be killed and then provide food to nourish your people. It seems like a sacrifice. But then again, these people know they will be revived, so is it really a sacrifice? To sacrifice something usually entails that something must be lost in order to gain something else. But these people are not essentially losing their lives.

                The section about the rutting-season and the bucks with the deer-man’s wife was not my favorite part of the story. I felt bad that the deer-man was jealous and territorial of his wife. He did not want the younger bucks with his wife. It might have been put into the story to show the “animal instincts” of the deer to mate with multiple partners, and show a contrast between the deer and people. I was, after all, appalled at the mention of the “other younger bucks [who] came and beat him off and took his wife.” But, then I began to think that in the beginning of the story it mentioned that the man had multiple wives even before meeting his deer-wife. This can actually show a similarity between the humans and the deer.

                The ending explains that the hunting of deer is sacred and I think throughout the story it has showed the relationship between humans and deer. That the humans and deer have many similarities and the deer should be respected. When hunting, the deer’s bones must be returned to the water to be revitalized, or at least burned and really die. The bones are not to be thrown about as the deer will get offended. The ending shows the beliefs of the Nlakapamuk in the relationship between the humans and the deer.