Reading Notes: Native American Hero Tales, Part B

  The story in the second part of this unit that I have chosen to focus my reading notes on is "The Son-in-Law Tests."

The story begins by introducing the reader to an animal trickster named Wemicus and explaining that he has a daughter. His daughter is married to a man, making this man Wemicus' son-in-law. His daughter had a lot of husbands but Wemicus, being the trickster that he is, killed off all of them but the current through his tests. This current man had been able to outwit Wemicus and his tests thus far. 

The two went hunting for beaver in the spring. Wemicus' daughter warned her husband that her father might try and burn his moccasins, that's what he did with her other husbands. That night when they were at the camp during their hunting trip, the father told him the name of the lake was "Burnt moccasins lake." Both the father and son-in-law's moccasins were drying over the fire. Anticipating what was to come, the son-in-law switched his moccasins with Wemicus'.

The son-in-law awoke to Wemicus burning his own moccasins, telling him "Something is burning; it is your moccasins." To that, the son-in-law replied: "No, not mine, but yours." Thus in the snow-covered ground, Wemicus had no moccasins. The son-in-law slept in his moccasins after this. 

The next morning, the man left Wemicus to deal with his no-shoe issue, which he solved by pushing a red hot boulder in front of him to melt the snow. The son-in-law returned to his wife and told her what had happened. "I hope Wemicus will die," she said about her father. 

Wemicus soon returned and suggested they go on another venture, where the new test involved poisonous snakes. The wife warned the son-in-law and he was able to outsmart this test as well through a magic tobacco hack. To this, Wemicus presented him with another test. 

This test consisted of jumping over a ravine, which the son-in-law was able to do and Wemicus was not. He then went on to present to him yet another test, and a few more, all of which the son-in-law was able to pass. 

The final test Wemicus put this man through consisted of them making canoes of birch-bark to race in. They began their race and Wemicus was winning, this was largely due to the son-in-law's lack of effort, but he was winning nonetheless. Until the wind upset Wemicus' canoe and Wemicus was transformed 

into a pike, and this is the origin of the pike.

I think it would be interesting to do a modern take on this story with some kind of monster-in-law twist.

("Native American moccasins Plains tribes 19th century CE 4," Web Source)

Bibliography:

"The Son-in-Law Tests"

Story source: Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929).

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