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Thursday, March 26, 2009

THE BOY WHO SET A SNARE FOR THE SUN. : Red Indian Folk Tale

At the time when the animals reigned in the earth, they had killed all
the people but a girl and her little brother, and these two were living
in fear, in an out-of-the-way place. The boy was a perfect little pigmy,
and never grew beyond the size of a mere infant; but the girl increased
with her years, so that the task of providing food and shelter fell
wholly upon her. She went out daily to get wood for the lodge-fire, and
she took her little brother with her that no mishap might befall him;
for he was too little to leave alone. A big bird, of a mischievous
disposition, might have flown away with him. She made him a bow and
arrows, and said to him one day, "My little brother, I will leave you
behind where I have been gathering the wood; you must hide yourself, and
you will soon see the snow-birds come and pick the worms out of the logs
which I have piled up. Shoot one of them and bring it home."

He obeyed her, and tried his best to kill one, but he came home
unsuccessful. His sister told him that he must not despair, but try
again the next day.

She accordingly left him at the gathering-place of the wood, and
returned to the lodge. Toward night-fall she heard his little footsteps
crackling through the snow, and he hurried in and threw down, with an
air of triumph, one of the birds which he had killed. "My sister," said
he, "I wish you to skin it, and stretch the skin, and when I have killed
more, I will have a coat made out of them."

"But what shall we do with the body?" said she; for they had always up
to that time lived upon greens and berries.

"Cut it in two," he answered, "and season our pottage with one half of
it at a time."

It was their first dish of game, and they relished it greatly.

The boy kept on in his efforts, and in the course of time he killed ten
birds--out of the skins of which his sister made him a little coat:
being very small, he had a very pretty coat, and a bird skin to spare.

"Sister," said he, one day, as he paraded up and down before the lodge,
enjoying his new coat, and fancifying himself the greatest little fellow
in the world--as he was, for there was no other beside him--"My sister,
are we really alone in the world, or are we playing at it? Is there
nobody else living? And, tell me, was all this great broad earth and
this huge big sky made for a little boy and girl like you and me?"

She told him, by no means; there were many folks very unlike a harmless
girl and boy, such as they were, who lived in a certain other quarter of
the earth, who had killed off all of their kinsfolk; and that if he
would live blameless and not endanger his life, he must never go where
they were. This only served to inflame the boy's curiosity; and he soon
after took his bow and arrows and went in that direction. After walking
a long time and meeting no one, he became tired, and stretched himself
upon a high green knoll where the day's warmth had melted off the snow.

It was a charming place to lie upon, and he fell asleep; and, while
sleeping, the sun beat so hot upon him that it not only singed his
bird-skin coat, but it so shrivelled and shrunk and tightened it upon
the little boy's body, as to wake him up.

When he felt how the sun had seared and the mischief its fiery beams had
played with the coat he was so proud of, he flew into a great passion,
and berated the sun in a terrible way for a little boy no higher than a
man's knee, and he vowed fearful things against it.

"Do not think you are too high," said he; "I shall revenge myself. Oh,
sun! I will have you for a plaything yet."

On coming home he gave an account of his misfortune to his sister, and
bitterly bewailed the spoiling of his new coat. He would not eat--not so
much as a single berry. He lay down as one that fasts; nor did he move
nor change his manner of lying for ten full days, though his sister
strove to prevail on him to rise. At the end of ten days he turned over,
and then he lay full ten days on the other side.

When he got up he was very pale, but very resolute too. He bade his
sister make a snare, for, he informed her, that he meant to catch the
sun. She said she had nothing; but after awhile she brought forward a
deer's sinew which the father had left, and which she soon made into a
string suitable for a noose. The moment she showed it to him he was
quite wroth, and told her that would not do, and directed her to find
something else. She said she had nothing--nothing at all. At last she
thought of the bird-skin that was left over when the coat was made; and
this she wrought into a string. With this the little boy was more vexed
than before. "The sun has had enough of my bird-skins," he said; "find
something else." She went out of the lodge saying to herself, "Was there
ever so obstinate a boy?" She did not dare to answer this time that she
had nothing. Luckily she thought of her own beautiful hair, and pulling
some of it from among her locks, she quickly braided it into a cord,
and, returning, she handed it to her brother. The moment his eye fell
upon this jet black braid he was delighted. "This will do," he said; and
he immediately began to run it back and forth through his hands as
swiftly as he could; and as he drew it forth, he tried its strength. He
said again, "this will do;" and winding it in a glossy coil about his
shoulders, he set out a little after midnight. His object was to catch
the sun before he rose. He fixed his snare firmly on a spot just where
the sun must strike the land as it rose above the earth; and sure
enough, he caught the sun, so that it was held fast in the cord and did
not rise.

The animals who ruled the earth were immediately put into great
commotion. They had no light; and they ran to and fro, calling out to
each other, and inquiring what had happened. They summoned a council to
debate upon the matter, and an old dormouse, suspecting where the
trouble lay, proposed that some one should be appointed to go and cut
the cord. This was a bold thing to undertake, as the rays of the sun
could not fail to burn whoever should venture so near to them.

At last the venerable dormouse himself undertook it, for the very good
reason that no one else would. At this time the dormouse was the largest
animal in the world. When he stood up he looked like a mountain. It
made haste to the place where the sun lay ensnared, and as it came
nearer and nearer, its back began to smoke and burn with the heat, and
the whole top of his huge bulk was turned in a very short time to
enormous heaps of ashes. It succeeded, however, in cutting the cord with
its teeth and freeing the sun, which rolled up again, as round and
beautiful as ever, into the wide blue sky. But the dormouse--or blind
woman as it is called--was shrunk away to a very small size; and that is
the reason why it is now one of the tiniest creatures upon the earth.

The little boy returned home when he discovered that the sun had escaped
his snare, and devoted himself entirely to hunting. "If the beautiful
hair of my sister would not hold the sun fast, nothing in the world
could," he said. "He was not born, a little fellow like himself, to look
after the sun. It required one greater and wiser than he was to regulate
that." And he went out and shot ten more snow-birds; for in this
business he was very expert; and he had a new bird-skin coat made, which
was prettier than the one he had worn before.

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