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Traditions of the Arikara

Chapter 39: FOOTNOTES:
By George A. Dorsey
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Archaeology & AnthropologyMythology, Legends & Folklore

About This Book

A collection of Arikara myths and oral narratives gathers creation accounts, emergence variants, and a long series of transformer legends that explain origins of people, animals, dances, and sacred objects. Stories recount land brought into being by animal and culture figures, people fashioned by spiders, visits of a corn spirit, escapes from buffalo, marriages between humans and celestial or animal beings, and the deeds of trickster figures alongside a recurrent culture-hero poor boy. Many tales also serve as etiologies for ceremonies, dances, medicine societies, and ritual powers, often linking human life with animal and cosmic forces.

18. HOW BURNT-HANDS BECAME A CHIEF.[19]

Once there was an old woman and her grandson. They were very poor; they had nothing. The boy’s name was Burnt-Hands. Some warriors got together in the village and planned to go on the war-path. Burnt-Hands heard of it. He told his grandmother that he wanted to join the warriors on the war-path. She told the boy that when he went he must never tell Coyote stories on the war-path. She gave him a round burnt clay ball that had a handle to it. She told Burnt-Hands to go; that the clay ball with the handle was his war-club; that when on the way, when he should become hungry he should place it upon the fire, put kernels of corn upon it, and roast them.

These warriors went out to a camp in the woods. The young man came up with them and lay down by them. The next day they went and in the afternoon they sat down to rest. They made fun of the boy, and said, “Now tell us some Coyote stories.” But the boy refused, and said, “My grandmother told me not to tell Coyote stories while on the war-path.” They coaxed the boy to sing, but he would not sing.

The boy was hungry. As he saw that the men were not moving on he placed his clay ball upon the fire and put some kernels of corn upon it and began to roast them. While he was doing this he said, “I will tell some Coyote stories.” The boy began to tell how the enemy came and attacked a certain war-party. At the same time he kept on roasting his corn.

While he was telling these stories the enemy came, and when the men found out that they were surrounded they became scared. But the boy went on with his roasting of the corn. When he had finished roasting the corn he took a seat and ate his corn, and after he had eaten all, he went out and killed many of the enemy with the clay ball that he had roasted his corn upon, which was really a war-club. The enemy became scared at the boy and ran away.

So the men found out that the boy was a wonderful boy; and as he had killed many of the enemy, when they went home they made Burnt-Hands a big chief, gave him a good tipi and a wife. He moved his grandmother into the new tipi, and there he lived ever after.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Told by Two-Hawks.