Essay: Eskimo Folk Tales

The stories in the Eskimo Folk Tales were my favorite tales to read in the past few weeks. They are so interesting with the context of their stories because some are very gory as well as sporadic like a dream. For example, in the story of The Wife Who Lied, when the woman returned to her people and had them think she was treated poorly in the other village, they took revenge. They wanted to hit the village where it hit them most which was to attack all the women in the village when the men were away. They could have easily waited till the men returned from their battle but they wanted to take revenge in a sinister kind of way by attacking the vulnerable women who didn’t have anything to do with the ‘bad’ treatment of the main character. Later in the story when the woman’s village destroys the village, two men in her village kill her. Not in any way either, they cut off her arms and let her bleed out in the forest because she lied about her ill treatment. The best example of a story having a dream theme to it was Makíte. The story starts off with a husband who lived with his wife and her family. The wife said she would leave him if he were unable to kill any seal. Since he can’t catch any seal’s, he runs away. When he runs away the family chases after him until he elongates his strides to outrun them. He came to an old house and when he opened the door, a loud scream was made then he saw the owner of the house. After a deal with the owner, Makíte sleeps in the house only to wake up to the housekeeper trying to kill him. He ran away and ran into another house but this time it was a house that had dwarfs trailing in and out of the house. Once he walked into the house, he saw a dark figure coming at the house through the window. The dwarfs prepared for war with the darkness. The darkness and the dwarfs summoned their own dog that barked waves. The dwarfs dog one and the waves drowned the darkness. Makíte then built a house there and lived there till he died.

An Eskimo by E. Nielsen (1890).

Week 10 Storytelling: Nightmare

            In the nightmare, lived in a village with a husband and his whole family. This man was very handsome and seemed extremely nice but his family gave me a weird feeling like something bad was going to happen at any moment. We all lived in a small cottage within the forest and we all seemed happy from what I can remember.

            But all of a sudden the bad feeling made itself present when I over heard the family wanting to eat me. I was so shocked I froze in my tracks thinking about what to do. My innate instincts kicked in and I ran for it. I didn’t tell my husband nor anyone. I just opened the front door and ran. But as I ran, one of the family members was outside and when he saw me, he yelled inside the house that I had ran away.

When I turned around after he finished speaking, I noticed that the entire family started to run towards me with a full sprint. All of a sudden my legs grew a few inches that caused me to have bigger strides so I was able to outrun them.

I then explored inside the forest admiring the huge trees. But as I continued to walk deeper into the forest, the trees got bigger and tighter together to where I felt claustrophobia. Scared, I started to run until I came upon a wooden cabin. The wood was rotten on some parts of the house and there was grass growing in the cracks of the house so I assumed it was abandon. Without knocking, I opened the door, which caused a loud scream. The scream was so loud I had to cover my ears until it stopped. I looked around frantically and saw a thin man standing inside the house. I don’t remember what he said but I know he wanted me to stay the night. Since it was late, I agreed and fell asleep on the couch.

            I woke up to a loud stabbing noise next to my right ear in the middle of the night. When my eyes opened, I saw the man trying to strike my head with a spear. I pushed him off and began to run into the forest again.

            After running a couple of minutes, I came upon a small house with a line of dwarfs waking in and out of the house. Squeezing behind one of the dwarfs to get in line, I walked into the house.  As the line moved inside, I saw a black figure coming from the horizon. When the line walked outside, I could see the figure getting closer and closer. The dwarfs prepared to fight the darkness with a dog. When the dog barked a huge wave crashed onto the darkness and drowned it. Then I woke up.

Nightmare by Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard (1743-1809)

Author’s Note: I used the story from Eskimo Folk-Tales called Makíte by Knud Rasmussen (1921). I used the outline of the story like the family chasing the main character out of the house, running into the creepy house and being chased by him, the dwarfs walking in a line into the house and the dwarfs dog barked a wave that killed the darkness. The only things I  added were the family man eaters, my legs growing and the small details of the forest. I created the story as a nightmare because as I read the story, I felt like the situations were so random and weird that it was some sort of dream.

Reading Diary B: The Wife Who Lied

The second unit of the Eskimo Folk Tales was not as strange as the first unit. But that is okay because the stories were still interesting and entertaining! My favorite story from the unit was The Wife Who Lied, which is one of the weirder stories in the second unit. The story is about a woman who is wed to a man in a different village, one that did not eat men. When she went to visit her people in her old village, she wore mittens on her feet and boots on her hands to show the villagers that she was being ill-treated. To me, this act was really strange to get the villagers attention. She could have easily lied a different way, telling the people of her village that she was not being treated well. If someone came up to me with reversed clothing, ill treatment is not the first thing I think about. Perhaps I my first thought would be insanity or lack of sleep but not ill treatment. Anyway, once her villagers saw this they went to attack her husband’s village while the men were away. They murdered all the women, excluded the three women who hid well, and stuck spears threw them. When the men came home, they were enraged because they knew the wife had run away and what village she was apart of. While they prepared for war against the enemies, the wife’s village summoned spirits and saw when the villagers would swarm them and take revenge. So they beat them to the punch, killing all the men and leaving the rest of the women to be chosen by the village. When it came down to chose the wife, two men took her to the forest and cut off her arms and let her bleed out because she lied about her ill treatment.  

A Luzon Negrito with Spear by Dr. A. B. Meyer's (2009)

Reading Diary A: The Coming of Men

The first unit of the Eskimo Folk Tales was a pleasant surprise. I feel like these stories are very random, like a weird dream or nightmare. With that said, I absolutely love it! It is so different and makes the reader use their wide range of imagination. For example, the story Makíte had different types of instances, people, creatures and powers that made me think of a dream. After Makíte ran away from his wife and her family because he was unable to catch seal like the wife’s brother, the family chased out after him. Once he outran them, however, he came across a weird house. What caused me to think it was a dream was because when he opened the door, there was a weird noise than a strange man who lived in the house. By sunrise, Makíte wanted to leave but the owner hunted him down. The way the story explains the visit at the house as well as the chase seemed very strange and almost terrifying. Thinking of a stranger with animal skins hanging from the ceiling and a creepy sounding house chasing after you is absolutely terrifying. The story just gets even crazier when Makíte stumbled upon a house of dwarfs that were waking a line inside and out of the house. This was interesting to picture for me because I saw a line of dwarfs circling inside then out the house in a line with cartoon music. The weirdest part is when something dark appeared in the west when Makíte joined the line. The dwarfs then attacked the darkness but not with weapons, but with dogs that summoned waves to drown the darkness. That was super crazy to imagine, causing me to think I would dream something weird like that. I loved how weird this and the other stories were.

Inuit Woman by Crisco (1907)