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Traditions of the Arikara

Chapter 51: 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.

24. THE BOY AND THE YOUNG HAWKS.[25]

Outside the village there wandered a small boy with his bow and arrows, shooting at small birds and gophers. Day by day he went out looking for game. Once he discovered a hawk’s nest with four eggs in it. He went out there every day, fearing that some one might take the eggs away. Finally the eggs hatched and the boy was much pleased to see the young hawks. He brought insects to the young ones for them to eat. He did this every day, and the birds grew and finally began to try to fly. He wanted to take them home, but he thought he would wait two or three days longer.

When he went out to bring the birds home he saw a man in front of him; so he ran, for fear the man would take his nest. But the man reached to the nest first and the boy cried: “Those are my birds. Do not touch them, for they are mine.” The man answered and told the boy to come in a hurry, and the boy came. When the boy saw the man he was frightened, for the man was a stranger. The man said: “You have pleased me by taking such good care of my sons, and these birds are your brothers.” Furthermore, the man told the boy that he had won much favor and that he would be rewarded, but he told the boy to leave the nest. The boy took some feathers from the young hawks to put on his arrows. He then went home, half believing that he was rewarded.

The boy came to be a good hunter. In the meanwhile he went out on the war-path with some others. When they discovered the enemy, he it was who fought where the arrows were thickest. Thus he became known as a brave.

Some years afterwards he was known far and wide, and even his own people were afraid of him. But finally he turned around and did that which was wrong among his people. Anyone who made any attempt to kill the young man would forget it just as he was ready to. Many a man tried to kill him, but always forgot. He was called “Make-to-Forget.” But one man was capable of killing him, and he did so, because he aroused the people so much by doing wrong deeds.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Told by Strike-Enemy.