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Reading Notes: Alaskan Legends, Part B

 The First Woman

I really enjoyed reading native american stories because they seem very different from the folklore's I have read previously in this class. This story begins with describing a village that is made up entirely of men. It is known that a ways away there is a woman that lives all by herself. One day, a man decides to travel all the way to go meet the woman. He arrives to her house and he marries her quickly. At the same time, another man gets the same idea to go meet the woman and make her his wife. When that man arrives, he sees the woman with the other man and thinks of a plan. That night, he sneaks into the house and grabs her. He pulls her by her arms and drags her out of the house. The sleeping husband is woken up by the noise and runs out to save his wife. He grabs her by her legs and pulls in order to get her away from the man. Unfortunately, the two men were in a 'tug-of-war' situation and ended up pulling so hard that they ripped the woman into two halves. Shocked, the men quickly gathered some wood to rebuild the halves of the woman missing. The husband built the top half of wood and the other man did the same with the bottom half. At the end of the day, two women were created and each man went home with one of them. The woman that lost her legs was never good at dancing and the woman that lost her upper half was never good at sewing. To this day the legend remains that women in the south are great dancers but terrible with their hands, and women in the north are great with their hands but terrible dancers. 

[Alaskan Women. Image Information.]



Bibliography

Judson, Katharine. The First Woman. Myths and Legends of Alaska. 1911. Link. 


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