Reading Notes: Native American Marriage Tales, Part B

The Dog-Husband

from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson 

The story starts off with a young girl who is very fond of her dog. It was a common custom that the dog slept at the food of the bed at night. Every night the dog would change into a human and sleep with the girl, and would turn back into a dog before everyone woke up in the morning.

One day the girl gets pregnant and when the parents find out its the dog, they burn the house down and move away and leave her all alone.

This Crow had pity on her and helped her. She gave birth to five puppies and her father had killed the dog, so they didn't have a father. She looked after them all by herself.

Puppies. Source: The Guardian.

The secret was that the four male puppies and one female puppy could turn human like how their father could. So one day when the mom was suspecting that there was something going on, she pretends to go out of the house for work, and comes back to her house to see what was happening.

She finds out that her puppies are actually humans boys and a girl. She gets mad and scolds them. She tells them that they should've been in this form in the first place because she was shamed because of this.

So the kids remained in human form and as they grew older, she taught the boys how to shoot birds with the bows and arrows she made for them. She goes on to teach them how to hunt even bigger things like fur animals and even whales.

The boys one day catch a lot of whales and the Crow notices smoke and then the dead whales on the beach. The Crow goes to the children and meets them.

The Crow goes to the people who left and tells them how the boys killed the whales. The people go to see for themselves and when they do, they decided to move back to their old village. The boys end up becoming the chiefs and always kept the people supplied with whales.