These stories are from the Eskimo Folk Tales Unit.
Papik, Who Killed HisWife’s Brother: This is a good revenge story full of family drama. A man
kills his brother-in-law out of jealousy for his hunting skills. Then his
mother-in-law vows revenge against him, kills herself, and comes back as a
monster-ghost thing to eat her son-in-law. Papik never actually confessed to
killing his brother-in-law and the story never explicitly says that he did it,
only that he one day returned home without Ailaq. I don’t doubt that he killed
Ailaq, but I think it’s interesting that it was never explicitly stated.
Patussorssuaq, WhoKilled His Uncle: There seems to be a lot of killing in these stories!
Still, the guilty party always gets what is coming to him. It seems that
jealousy (whether it is over hunting or a wife) always is the motive. In this
story, the main character kills his own uncle because his uncle has a beautiful
wife. He then even tries to kill his own wife, but thankfully she was smart
enough to escape. The uncle avenges himself, though, by returning as a fox and
eating his murderous nephew.
The Wife Who Lied: My
goodness. Here is another bloody revenge story. This one was even more dramatic
than the previous two and involved the deaths of many more people. It’s a shame
that so many innocent people died because of one woman’s lie. She certainly got
her punishment for the crime, though. I wish they had talked more about her
original motivation for making it seem like she was being treated poorly by her
husband’s people.
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| (Eskimo building a snow house) |
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