A man and his wife face starvation during winter. The husband fails to catch fish or rabbits due to his laziness, while his wife successfully provides for them by fishing and setting snares. The story explains the origin of shiftless men, suggesting that such individuals exist because of this man’s behavior.
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
Moral Lessons: The story imparts a lesson on the consequences of laziness and the virtues of hard work and responsibility.
Conflict with Nature: The narrative involves attempts to procure food from natural sources like fishing and hunting, underscoring the challenges of survival in a harsh environment.
Cultural Heroes: The wife emerges as a cultural hero by exemplifying the values of diligence and competence, ensuring the family’s survival.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Dane-zaa people
A man who was camping by himself ran out of food and went with his wife to a lake to get some fish. He went out on the lake and sat by his hook, but came home at night without any fish. His wife wondered what was the matter, for fish had always been taken in that lake. She told her husband that she herself would go fishing the next day. Her husband assented to this. The woman got some fish very quickly. She found her husband had not even cut a hole entirely through the ice, and that was why he had not taken any fish. The woman got a good many. The man himself had gone to set snares for rabbits but came home without any. The wife wondered why he hadn’t caught any, for rabbits were plentiful.
► Continue reading…
“I will go to look after your snares tomorrow,” she told him. “All right,” he said, “you look after my snares.” She found he had merely cleared away the snow on the top of the mountain and sat there all day. He had set two of the snares and thrown the remainder down in the snow. She gathered them up and set them. She caught many rabbits which she took home with her. The man had spent the day fishing but had not caught any fish, for he had not gotten the hook into the water.
Now the woman suspected what sort he was. If it had not been for his wife he would have starved. They lived through the winter because of the woman’s effort. He was not a manlike fellow and had concluded he could not live anyway.
When the point of the story was asked for, the informant said this man was the first of such men. Because he was a shiftless man we still have them.
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