Reading Notes: Native American Marriage Tales, Part B

Native American Marriage Tales

The Dog Husband: From the Native American Marriage Tales unit. Story source: Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929).

• Long ago lived a little girl and a dog who she love very much
• She took the dog with her everywhere and at night, the dog would sleep at the bottom of her bed.
• Every night, he would change into human form and would lay with the girl, but he would return to his dog form so that nobody would know
• The girl became pregnant and her parents found out that the dog was the cause
• This made them very ashamed - they tore down the house and moved from the place, leaving the girl to die
• Crow had pity on the girl and told her that once she heard the crackling of two clam shells and coal, to go find the fire
• So she went once she heard the crackling noise
• The girl gave birth to 5 dog pups, but her father killed the dog (her love)
• She had to care for them herself, so she gathered clam and other shellfish on the beach for a living
• Every time she would leave to gather clams, she would hear a noise of singing and dancing that seemed to be coming from her house.
• After several times of hearing this, she set her clam-digger in the sand and clothed it to look like it was her digging in the sand
• She snuck back to the house and peeped through a crack to see
• She saw the four boys dancing and singing and the girl watching her mother "digging clams" outside
• The mother waited a moment and walked in to scold her children for not always being in their human form
• she wanted them to be in human form - it would have saved her much embarrassment
• The mother then tore down the dog blankets and threw them in the fire
• After this, they all remained in human form 
• She made them bows and arrows, and taught them how to hunt 
• She also made them bathe every day to acquire spiritual power for catching whales
• She made them harpoons, lines of twisted cedar, etc.
• The boys went out whaling and were successful 
• The entire beach stank with whales

(Antique whale. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

• Crow noticed one day a fire at the village (the old village of the other people) of the mother and her children
• At night she came over and saw the dead carcasses - none had been cut up
• When she reached the house, she saw the children all grown up 
• they gave her food but didn't send her with anything
• The girl told Crow to weep once she returned home to inform the people that the woman and her children were dead, but instead she secretly took a piece of whale meat with her
• She told the people about all of the whale carcasses - uncut on the beach
• That night, she fed her children with the whale meat
• one ate it so fast that she choked and coughed a piece of meat onto the floor
• So, all of the people believed Crow
• The people decided that they wanted to move back to the old village 
• The boys became chiefs and always kept the people supplied with whales to eat