A lone Beaver man and a Cree warrior, both having lost their companions, confront each other. The Cree takes the Beaver to his camp, where the people attempt to burn the Beaver alive. Using supernatural powers, the Beaver summons otters to cause chaos, leading to a series of events where alliances shift, and ultimately, the Beaver integrates into the Cree community by marrying one of their women.
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
War and Peace: The narrative centers on the conflict between the Beaver man and the Cree, each having lost their respective groups to the other’s people.
Revenge and Justice: The Beaver man’s younger brother seeks to avenge their fallen kin by attacking the Cree.
Family Dynamics: The narrative highlights the bond between the Beaver man and his younger brother, focusing on their collective response to their family’s demise.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Dane-zaa people
There was a powerful man all of whose young men had been killed by the Cree. He himself, a Beaver, was the only one alive. There was a Cree too, all of whose followers had been killed. Just the two men were alive, and they tried in vain to get the best of each other. Then the Cree went to his camp accompanied by the Beaver. There was another Cree at the camp who was a powerful man. When these men approached and the people saw them, the Cree was asked what he had done with his band and how it happened that he was accompanied by one of the enemy. The head man of the camp directed that a fire be made to burn the stranger. They got a lot of wood and set fire to it. Then they brought the man up to the fire which was burning fiercely.
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It happened that the man they were going to roast carried a wooden spoon. He held this up between himself and the fire, but it kept catching fire.
He began to study the situation intently. “I wish otters would run among the people,” he said to himself. Then otters rushed among the people who were standing at a distance. “Otters are running among us,” one of them said. They rushed away from there and where there had been many people there were now none. He sat there by himself while the otters rushed out on the ice. His former companion, alone, was running near them. Then the Beaver man himself ran with them. At one place where the otters were running the Beaver ran in front of them and caught two of them. He threw them at his former companion who caught them both and threw them back. The Beaver caught them again. Just as he caught them the other Cree said, “Do it to me.” He threw them at him. They really knocked him down because the Beaver was stronger than he. They started to kill him and just the otters were coming out of the snow covered with blood. The man himself was under the snow and the otters only were to be seen. Then the Cree who had been the companion of the Beaver caught the otters, held them together, and killed them. He was a powerful man. “This man was with me and alive and yet you spoke as you did,” he said to the other Cree.
He gave one of his wives to his companion and made a relative of him. The Beaver lived with him and had some children. After this, his younger brother, a boy, started after him accompanied by some others. He saw his brother’s tracks and followed him. He came back and reported that the man they were to attack was powerful, but that now they had started they would not turn back. “If we do not succeed we will all be killed,” he told them. “We will attack them tomorrow morning.” He came back and worked against them with his mind, using supernatural power. He appeared to kill them.
When the Beaver heard his younger brothers attacking them, he immediately ran to his former partner and began to kill him. “Now I can do nothing,” the Cree said, and after that was killed. Some of the younger brothers were killed, but they killed all of the Cree.
Second version
Obtained in English from Ike through John Bourassa.
The Cree living to the east were the first to come in contact with white people and consequently had guns before the Beaver did. The Cree used to fight with the Beaver and by the use of their flintlock guns killed a good many of them. Among the Beaver were some good medicinemen who had flint for medicine and were able therefore to keep the flints on the guns from acting on the powder.
There was a battle one time in which there was a Beaver who was a powerful medicineman and on the other side a Cree who was equally strong. All the Cree in the band were killed except this Cree medicine-man and all the Beaver save their medicinemen. These two being left were so evenly matched in supernatural powers neither could prevail over the other. The Beaver went home with the Cree and became a second husband of the Creeps wife, living in the same tipi with him.
The Beaver was bad and used to go about killing Cree whenever he could find one by himself. He was so powerful as a medicineman the Cree could not kill him. One day as he was returning from a hunt he fell in with a Cree who had killed two swans and was taking them home. The Beaver killed the Cree and took the swans. When the swans were cooked, he left a portion for this Cree he had killed, thinking to hide his guilt. One day as he was hunting he met his Beaver friends. He planned with them an attack upon the Cree promising them the aid of his supernatural help. He spent the night making medicine to weaken the Cree, but told the Cree the medicine was to make them irresistible. The Beaver had agreed to join the attacking party some distance from the camp to protect them by his medicine, but fearing they would not be able to kill the powerful Cree medicineman he rushed into his tipi and said, “I am coming to kill you.” The Cree, baring his breast said, “Stab me here.” The Beaver did so and killed him. Then the Beaver killed all the Cree.
The interpreter omitted the two following incidents which the narrator included in the story:
At the first fight the Cree sent two otters against the Beaver which the Beaver medicine-man caught and taking one in each hand knocked them together killing them. When the Beaver man met his friends he went to their camp. One of his moccasins was torn and his sister-in-law mended it for him using a piece of moose skin which had been used to tie up vermilion paint. When he returned, his Cree wife noticed this mended place, but said nothing and did not warn the Cree.
The man’s name in Chipewyan was said by Fournier to be Satselle’.
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