Heroes and Heroines by Mary Giraudo Beck

Author:Mary Giraudo Beck
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780882409702
Publisher: Graphic Arts Books

BLACKSKIN

They called him Blackskin because his skin was sooty from sleeping too near the fireplace. His relatives, especially his two brothers, were ashamed of him because he slept late instead of taking the purification baths in the morning with the other young men. This was not fitting behavior for a nephew of the chief.

“How’s the weakling this morning?” the older brother asked when he returned from bathing. “You’re finally up.”

“Talk about lazy — and dirty!” chimed in the other brother. “You could use a bath.”

“Let the boy alone,” said his uncle, the village chief. “Some day he will surprise all of us.” He shook the boy’s shoulder affectionately. “It’s hard being the youngest.” Once or twice when he was wakeful, the uncle had noticed the boy going down toward the water after all were asleep. Once he spied him coming in just before dawn.

“He’s got his own plans,” the uncle mused. “I like that.” And he kept the boy’s secret.

Then the terrible accident happened. The uncle was killed in a sea-lion hunt, hit by the flapping tail of the huge bull sea lion.

Since spears and bows and arrows were used for hunting at that time, the men could not shoot from a distance. Shooting from a moving boat, often on rough seas, was not usually successful either. They had to get onto the big rocks with the animals. Often the hunters surrounded a herd of sea lions to attack several at once, before they were alerted to slip into the water and out of reach.

It was in this kind of hunt that the uncle was hit by the sea lion’s tail. The other hunters carried the body to the boat and brought it back for a funeral, with honors and festivities befitting a chief.

Blackskin was desolate at his uncle’s death. He had admired the powerful hunter and wanted to be like him. He felt that the uncle had liked him, too. He went now to pay his last respects. He looked at the dead chief, propped up in a sitting position to allow his spirit to get out easily and travel to Spirit Town, where it would stay until it returned to the family in the body of a newborn baby.

“I wonder whose body my uncle’s spirit will inhabit next,” Blackskin thought. Of course, the person was not bom yet. “I hope it will be someone worthy of him.” The chief looked so noble in death, dressed in his finest robes and headdress. The body had been prepared by the women of his wife’s phratry. To hurry his return to the living, the women had cut a lock of his hair and put it in safekeeping with some other personal belongings.

The eight-day mourning period had begun. A wake of three or four days allowed friends and relatives to come from a distance to view the body and pay their respects. Blackskin listened to the songs of the women mourners, who had cut their hair short. He watched them dance, carrying large sprays of hemlock and cedar.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.