A hunter captures young geese and asks them to take him to their mother’s land. He falls asleep in his canoe and awakens in a different world. Following a wolf, he encounters a man who offers his daughter in marriage. After hunting together, the man advises the hunter to return to his own people, which he eventually does.
Source:
The Beaver Indians
by Pliny Earle Goddard
The American Museum of Natural History – Anthropological Papers
Volume X, Part 4
New York, 1912
► Themes of the story
Journey to the Otherworld: The protagonist is transported to another realm by the fledgling geese.
Sacred Spaces: The otherworldly lake and the land he arrives at can be seen as sacred or significant locations.
Guardian Figures: The wolf guides the man, acting as a protector or mentor.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Dane-zaa people
A man was hunting in a canoe when he saw some young yellow geese. He paddled up to them and caught them. He thought they were too small to kill. Tying them to the canoe, he told them to tow him to their mother’s country. He lay down in his canoe and fell asleep. He slept very soundly and a long time passed before he woke up, and then the geese were nearly large enough to fly.
It was not this earth on which he stood when he woke up, but he thought he was still in his own country. It was a large lake. He waded ashore and walked along by the lake, thinking intently. Suddenly in the distance he saw a wolf running along. The wolf was looking toward the man.
► Continue reading…
The wolf ran down until he came to the water which he entered. As he walked through the water he kept looking back toward the man who began to follow the wolf. They continued this way, the wolf running ahead and the man following until after they had gone a long distance when land appeared. He went ashore and walked along by the water.
He came where a man was living who had many children. This man gave the stranger a daughter in marriage. The man who lived there went hunting by himself and killed a moose. The other man killed nothing. The first man thought much about it. “He is my son-in-law and a relative, let him hunt with me once anyway. Let him hunt with my snowshoes.” He loaned him a pair of his own snowshoes and he went hunting. He had not gone very far when he killed a female with young. When he came back to the camp he saw many tracks. They thought they were the tracks of a good many people but they were really their own tracks. He returned the snowshoes to his father-in-law. “Go back to your relatives,” the old man told his son-in-law. He went hunting, paddling in his canoe. In the distance something was moving. When he crossed to them he found they were his relatives.
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Dreamtime Whispers 