A weary hunter encounters a grotesque, one-eyed woman with a monstrous mouth in an underground dwelling. Sensing her predatory nature, he cleverly uses stones to disable her dangerous teeth, rendering her sexually harmless. After neutralizing her threat, he takes her home as a house-slave, transforming a potentially deadly encounter into a strategic survival and subjugation scenario.
Source
The Jessup North Pacific Expedition
edited by Franz Boas
Memoir of the American Museum
of Natural History – New York
Volume VIII
1. Chukchee Mythology
by Waldemar Bogoras
Leiden & New York, 1910
► Themes of the story
Transformation: The woman undergoes a physical change when the hunter removes her teeth, rendering her harmless and altering her nature.
Cunning and Deception: The hunter employs clever tactics to deceive the monster-woman and protect himself from harm.
Conflict with Nature: The hunter faces a struggle against a natural force embodied in the monstrous woman, representing a confrontation with a dangerous aspect of the natural world.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Chukchee people
Told by Enmu’wgi, a Maritime Chukchee man, in the village Uni’sak, at Indian Point, May, 1901
A man who had a wife went to hunt wild reindeer. He walked around all day, and could not find anything. Evening came. He felt cold. His house was too far away. So he thought, “Where shall I find a suitable place for the night? There is no fuel, nor a human dwelling.” At last he saw traces of a sledge. He followed these. The trail became harder. A dog barked. He saw an underground house. A woman is cooking seal-meat over a lamp, — a strange-looking woman, with one eye in her forehead and her mouth quite big and all awry, still a stout person, with large breasts. She said, “All right! Till now I have not seen a man. Now I have found a husband.” He thinks, “Certainly, she is plump and full-breasted, but her face looks too strange. I will not marry her.”
They ate supper, then the lamp was put out. The woman moves toward him, he moves away. They reached the corner. “Sleep with me!” — “No, I refuse!” — “Yes, do sleep with me!”
► Continue reading…
He listens. Something in her body is grinding its teeth like a dog. “I say, sleep with me!” — “No, I am tired. Let it be tomorrow morning.” — “Well! Then at least louse me.” She lighted the lamp again. He loused her, and made her sleep on his lap. He thinks, “What is it in her body that grinds its teeth like a dog? Let me have a look at it.” He looked, and saw that she had plenty of teeth there, as in a wolf’s mouth. “Oh, oh!” says he. He crept out noiselessly. The seashore was full of stones. He took two stones, long and round, of just the size of the membrum virile. Then he went back into the sleeping-room and fell asleep. In the morning she wakened him. “Oh, get up! Make me a wife! Copulate with me!” — “All right!” he says. One of the stones he put between his legs and thrust it into her vulva. Oh, it clashed and ground the teeth. He tore it out. Almost all the teeth were sticking in the stone. Then he used the other one, and drew it back, together with the membrane in which grew the roots of the teeth. Then her vulva became like any woman’s. “Well,” he said, now let us try!” He put his own membrum in there and copulated with her one time and another. She became quite peaceful. He took her home and made her a house-slave.
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Dreamtime Whispers 