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Traditions of the Arikara

Chapter 7: 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.

2. THE SPIDERS GIVE BIRTH TO PEOPLE.[3]

There was once an old Spider-Man who lived by himself with his wife. One day the Wolf and his friend went to visit these old folks. The Spider-Man was dirty, his eyes were red, he had no hair on his head, and he was very dirty all over, and he emitted a bad odor. His wife also was very dirty; her hair was thin and very coarse. The Wolf had never seen people who looked like these people.

Lupus ab homine quaesivit quem ad modum cum uxore concumberet. Homo respondit: “Non dicere sed ostendere volumus.” “Recte,” dixit Lupus. Cum autem hominem mulieremque conspexisset, ilium tantum genitalia esse, itemque mulierem repperit; quocirca fetorem emiserunt. Atque uterque de genere araneo fuit.

Deinde Lupus: “Efficiemus ut pulchriores videamini, et concumbere aliter ac nunc possitis.”

The Spider-Man and the woman were both willing. So the Wolf and his friend went and got some wild sage and fixed up some medicine. They dipped the wild sage into the water and rubbed it all over the two Spider people. As he rubbed the wild sage over them they became very different, they looked better, and they did not smell bad. Deinde Lupus virum docebat quem ad modum cum uxore concumbere conveniret, quidque facere oporteret ut liberos gignere posset. Nisi Lupus haec fecisset, ut aiunt, nulli de genere humano geniti essent. Namque ille Araneos docuit quem ad modum concumbere oporteret ut liberos gignerent. Qui autem ex eis geniti sunt humani fuerunt, unde homines omnes sunt.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Told by Two-Hawks.