Reading Notes A: Blackfoot Stories

The first story was like most of the stories I have read in the Native American section of this class. It talks about two animals and shows a lesson both of them learned in it. It also shows why they are the way they are today. I found that a lot of these stories give reasonings for why things are the way they are. There was another story that talked about why a rock has a hole around it. It said that a man was running away from a bear after he made the bear angry and they ran around the rock for sometime. After running around for a while there was a hole created around which helped the man survive. Later on in the story he also wanted to get some berries which required him to go underwater and almost caused him to drown. When he came back out of the water he was mad and hit the bush which cause the berries to come out. He then declared that this is how berries should come out of the bush and that is why people used to hit bushes so that the berries would come out.

There was also stories about bringing people back from the dead which was a very interesting one to me. It seemed like a simple story yet complicated at the same time. When the man wanted to get his wife back he had to do all these things just to have a chance. After he got her he was given instructions of never to hit or she would die that second. One day he had gotten upset and pretended to hit her then she vanished and was never seen again.

A lot of these stories have a moral lesson in them somewhere. It's nice to see that the Native Americans had such a strong believe in their morals because that's how these stories were made.

Bear attacking a man, Source

Source