An old woman discovers a crying infant under a caribou chip and decides to raise him. The boy, often requesting young caribou feet, faces denial from others. He then exhibits mystical abilities, providing food and transforming into a caribou to supply meat for his grandmother. This tale, “Raised-by-His-Grandmother,” originates from the Chipewyan people and highlights themes of transformation and resourcefulness.
Source:
Chipewyan Texts
by Pliny Earle Goddard
The American Museum of Natural History – Anthropological Papers
Volume X, Part 1
New York, 1912
► Themes of the story
Sacred Spaces: The narrative includes significant locations, such as the place where the boy is found and the area abundant with caribou, which hold spiritual importance.
Healers and Cures: The boy’s actions provide sustenance and survival for his grandmother, acting as a form of healing and support.
Ancestral Spirits: The boy’s origin and abilities may suggest a connection to ancestral or spiritual entities, influencing the present.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Chipewyan people
Dr. Lowie secured the tale here given in much the same form at Lake Athabaska. Petitot gives four versions two of which he secured at Great Slave Lake, one from a Chipewyan, and one from a Yellow Knife in 1863. The third version was secured at Lake Athabaska in 1859 and the fourth one from a Caribou Eater of Hudson Bay and Churchhill River. In these versions from Petitot, Raised-by-his-grandmother is a person of great power who comes to relieve the natives to whom the caribou migrations have ceased. He restores the caribou on the condition of being given the tips of their tongues as tribute and when the tribute fails, he leaves them. He is ever after invoked as the deity in charge of caribou. According to one version, he joins the musk ox and to another the bear. Evidently then, this myth is related to a caribou hunting ceremony which, judging from their almost complete reliance on that animal for food, was probably the most important of their ceremonies.
An old woman heard a little child crying. After she had looked for him some time she discovered him sitting under a caribou chip. As he was a very little child she put him in her mitten, carried him home, and undertook to raise him. Whenever caribou were killed, and his grandmother went out after meat, the boy asked her to bring him the feet of the young caribou. One time when she went out after meat, the boy sat and waited for her return. When he saw her coming, he began calling to her, “Grandmother, the feet, the feet.” “Grandson,” his grandmother said, “the feet are not for you. You are not the only child. ‘He is always asking for young caribou feet. This time he shall not have them,’ they said about you.” “Let them all freeze, let them freeze,” he said. “What will your uncles do, if you say that?” his grandmother asked. “’May they find the last poor bear, the last poor bear,’ you may say,” he said. Then he told his grandmother when they moved camp, “Do not take me along.” “What will we do? We shall die for want of meat,” she said. “No, we will not die,” the boy replied.
When the people had all moved away, the boy went back to the campsites and pulled away the partly burned sticks from the fireplaces. After a while, he came to the deserted camp of his uncles where he found the partly burned feet and hoofs of the caribou. “It looks like partly burned hoofs right here,” the boy said to his grandmother. “Grandmother, carry me over in that direction.” She took him on her back and carried him. When she had gone a long way she put him down to rest. “Grandmother, sit there and fish in that small slough.” “There are not any fish there, grandson,” she replied. “Yes, there are,” he said. The old woman then cut a hole through the ice and let down a hook into the water of the small slough. She immediately pulled out a large trout. “Put the hook in again,” the boy said. When she put the hook down again, she pulled out a jackfish. “That is enough,” the boy said. “We will camp not far from here.” She made a shelter of spruce boughs in which they lived for some time.
► Continue reading…
“Make snowshoes for me,” the boy said one day to his grandmother. She made him small round snowshoes. Then he asked her to make him some arrows. When she made them he wanted her to dress him. As soon as she had done so, he said, “Put on my snowshoes. I am going outside a little way to play.” When he had been gone some time his grandmother went out to look for him. She followed his tracks for some distance and then came where his snowshoes, his arrows, and his poor little clothes were lying. From that place there was only a line of caribou tracks. His grandmother turned back, crying, and saying to herself, “My little grandson has left me and become a caribou.” When she got back to her camp, she sat far into the night waiting for him and crying. She heard something outside and later heard a noise again. “What can it be,” she thought. It was Raised-by-his-grandmother who came into the house and said, “Take off my belt.” As his grandmother loosened it, many caribou tongues fell out. “We will go after them tomorrow,” he said. “Where I went, there were many caribou.”
The next day, as his grandmother was carrying him along, the boy pointed the way saying, “It is over there.” When they came to the top of a hill near a large lake she saw something lying on the ice. “There they are,” the boy said. As they were walking along together on the lake, he said, “That young caribou, the farthest one that lies dead over there, laughed too much at me. Roast its head for me.” She saw that he had killed many caribou. While he was playing with them, he bit their tongues and killed them all. They camped there by the shore of the lake, where the old woman dressed the caribou and brought them into the camp. “I am going to play with the head you roasted for me, grandmother,” the boy said. He took it out-of-doors to play with, and the magpies ate it up.
After a while, without his grandmother’s knowledge, the boy went to the place where those who had left them had camped. He found where they had scraped the snow from the ice to fish. All the people had frozen except his uncles who had found a bear. The uncles found the tracks of a young caribou on the ice and the spruce with which he had cleared it of snow. “Perhaps it was not just a caribou that did it,” the uncles said to each other. “May be it was the small child we left behind which mother was carrying.” They followed the tracks of the caribou until they came to a big lake. There they found where he had walked along with small round snowshoes. These tracks led them to the place where Raised-by-his-grandmother was living with her. They had much meat there.
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Dreamtime Whispers 