Sunday, December 12, 2004

A winnebago myth.

Little Fox was wandering about alone looking for food to satisfy his desperate hunger when he picked up the scent of human flesh and followed it to an abandoned village. All he could find there were a pair of abandoned moccasins. So he wandered over to the graveyard in hope of finding something to eat, but there were no graves to be found. Then he spied a platform in the distance with a corpse laid out on it. When he came to it he found that the body was out of reach. He stayed there even after the sun set. Then during the night, unexpectedly, the corpse spoke to him, saying, "Little Fox, what do I smell like?" Little Fox was alarmed, but decided he had better say something: "You smell like small kernels of dried corn boiled with bear ribs." The next thing he knew, there right before him was corn and bear ribs. Little Fox greedily gobbled up every morsel of the meal. That morning the corpse again asked Little Fox, "What do I smell like?" Little Fox replied, "Just like jerky wrapped in bear fat." Hardly had he finished speaking than he found before him this very dish. Little Fox wolfed this down as well. Every evening and every morning the same thing happened and in time Little Fox had eaten every kind of delicacy imaginable. All winter he fed himself this way. One evening Little Fox decided to make a very special request. When the corpse asked him what he smelled like, Little Fox said, "Just like a pint of Red Eye bourbon." Just then a flask of whiskey appeared before him. He drank every drop and became so drunk that he could hardly stand up. So that morning, having become sick from the whisky, he got the corpse to give him some deer loin soup, which sobered him up a bit. Four times he got himself drunk this way, and four times he sobered up the same way.

Spring was getting near, so Little Fox decided to try something very unusual. When the corpse said, "What do I smell like?" Little Fox answered, "Like the warpath." "All right, Little Fox," said the ghost, "you may go on the warpath after one man, and this man I will grant you." So Little Fox made his preparations and just before he left, he sang his death song:

Oh, you grass widows,
Oh, you grass widows!
When you look at your work, you will think of me!

Then he crept into a village graveyard where he dug up a body and took its scalp. When he returned, he gave the ghost a solo rendition of the Victory Dance.

Now the flowers had come into bloom and the leaves had reappeared on the trees, and Little Fox was fat and secure. So when the ghost asked him what he smelled like, Little Fox boldly replied, "You smell just like a rotting corpse with gaping holes for eyes!" The corpse suddenly rose up and declared, "For this you will surely die!" Little Fox took off running and every time the corpse drew near, Little Fox dodged his grasp. Finally he escaped down a hole in the ground. The corpse was angry, but there was little it could do. However, the tip of Little Fox's tail stuck out of the hole and the corpse savagely bit into it, tearing it completely off. When the coast was clear, Little Fox came out. As he walked along with part of his tail missing, he sang a plaintive song:

Uncles, my uncles;
Uncles, my uncles!
A corpse has bitten off my tail.

A bear passed by him, but could do nothing for him. Then a tciakcigega deer came up to him and gave him the white tip of its tail. Ever after the tciakcigega deer has had a short tail and the fox has had a tail with a white tip.




Combine Harvester8:19 PM

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