Reading Notes: Alaskan Legends, Part B

(Ladder leading into the sky; source: Flickr)

Plot:

The First Woman

• Long ago there lived many men in the North but only one woman in the South. Eventually, a man from the North decided to travel to the South and wed this woman. He grew happy that he had a wife despite the chief's son not having one.
• The chief's son also started towards the South and arrived at night. He saw the woman in the hut and began dragging her out by the shoulders. Her husband awoke and hurriedly went over and grabbed her feet.
• The men tugged her both ways until she tore apart at the middle. The chief's son took the upper half and returned to the North while the woman's husband remained in the South with her lower half.
• Each man carved the missing part of her body out of wood. Therefore, the Northern woman was good at needlework but poor at dancing and the Southern woman was the opposite. Due to this, all Northern women and Southern women share the traits of their originator. Because these traits hold true to this day, this story must be true.

The Boy in the Moon

• There once lived a sister and her four brothers along with a boy who was a great friend of the sister.
• The brothers hunted at sea in the fall but went to the mountains to hunt after the Bladder-fest. The boy did not go with them because he was lazy.
• Eventually, the boy fell in love with the girl.
• One day, the girl went outside her hut with a platter of meat and berries and saw a long ladder leading up into the sky. She resolved to climb it and went higher and higher.
• When her brothers returned, they chastised the boy for not stopping her. The boy hurriedly put on his clothing and followed her up the ladder.
• Try as he might, he could not reach her and was always behind her, always too late. As such, the girl became the sun and the boy became the moon. Sometimes, the boy would grow very thin and fragile due to hunger but the girl would feed him from her platter of meat and berries so that he grew strong again.

Bibliography. Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry Judson (1911).