Reading Notes: Native American Marriage Tales, Part A

Native American Marriage Tales

The Eagle and Whale Husbands (Greenland Eskimo): From the Native American Marriage Tales unit. Story source: Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929).

• One day, two little girls were playing on the beach with some bones (eagle and whale)
• While they were playing, one of them said that she wanted an eagle for her husband
• The other said that she wanted a whale as her husband
• Immediately after, a whale spout out at sea
• The eagle took one girl and flew away with her
• The whale took the other to the bottom of the sea
• The eagle carried his bride (the little girl) to the top of a cliff and brought her birds to eat
• She took the birds and tied their tendons/ligaments together to form a rope that reached from the top of the cliff to the ocean
• When the eagle was gone one day, the girl called out to a man in a kayak and asked him to send a boat for her rescue
• The boat appeared soon later and she used the rope she made to slide into the boat
• Once she returned to her parents, she told them of this
• When the eagle realized his bride was gone, he soared above the houses below
• One of the girl's family members called out to the eagle and told him to spread his wings if he wanted to marry the girl
• When the eagle did this, the person shot him dead
• The whale carried his bride (the other little girl) to the bottom of the sea and secured her via a rope to the ocean floor
• This was boring to the girl and the only thing she had to do was pick the lice from his body
• She had two brothers that lived by the ocean 
• They began building boats that would withstand the ocean for the girl's rescue
• when she anticipated their arrival, she loosened the rope that she was secured by, twisted it around a stone, and left with her brothers in the boat
• once the whale noticed that the girl had disappeared, he chased after her
• When he was close to the boat, she threw something at him
• this made him slow down, but he chased after her again
• She threw something at the whale again
• This slowed him down but he kept chasing
• She threw one more thing at him
• This slowed him down but once he finally caught up, she was on the shore
• The whale was transformed into a piece of bone

(Whale bones. Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons)