Folk Tales of the Blackfoot — Part 1 (The Peace with the Snakes · The Dog and the Stick · The Theft from the Sun)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part one — the premiere of a new shelf. Three tales of the Blackfoot people — the Siksika, the Kainah (Blood) and the Piikani (Piegan), as the book names them — from Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People, collected and written by George Bird Grinnell and published in New York in 1892; heard here in Grinnell's own printed English, complete and in book order. In The Peace with the Snakes, the Piegan chief Owl Bear, abandoned by his war party, spends a night in a cave beside a stranger who proves to be the Snake chief — each offers the other his knife, neither will use it, and the two make the great peace between their peoples. In The Dog and the Stick, Old Man and a chief's son, changed into a little dog and a root-digger, are carried into the lodge of the one who has hidden all the game, and drive the buffalo and deer out of his cave back to the hungry people. And in The Theft from the Sun, Old Man steals the Sun's medicine hunting leggings twice, and learns that the whole world is the Sun's lodge. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Aqua Elegie, heard also briefly between the stories.
Chapters
0:39 The Peace with the Snakes
23:55 The Dog and the Stick
32:04 The Theft from the Sun
Most of the book is not read on this shelf. Excluded by name after a full reading, each for enacted killing, mutilation or revenge as its substance: Kút-o'-yis (Blood-Clot) · The Lost Children · The Bad Wife · The Lost Woman · Mik-a'pi — Red Old Man · Adventures of Bull Turns Round · Old Man Doctors · The Bears · Old Man and the Lynx · The Race · The Elk · The Rock · The Wonderful Bird · The Fast Runners · Two War Trails. Held for a ruling: Scarface · The Blackfoot Genesis · The Fox · The Wolf-Man · Heavy Collar and the Ghost Woman. The ceremonial origin tales — Origin of the I-kun-uh'-kah-tsi, Origin of the Medicine Pipe, The Beaver Medicine, Origin of the Worm Pipe — are held as a class and are not read. Three more tales passed the screen and stand on the bench for later parts of this shelf. No claim of completeness for the book is made.
From Blackfoot Lodge Tales by George Bird Grinnell (New York, 1892), public domain — the three tales complete and in book order, in Grinnell's printed English. Narrated by Felix. Theme: Aqua Elegie.
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